06-14-2021, 02:12 AM
(06-13-2021, 05:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Jun-2021 World View: Committing Treason
(06-13-2021, 04:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > The difference between the US and China and Cuba goes far beyond
> form. As for stability, the political order in China is now
> approaching 72 years. Stability can arise from repression. As for
> the language of a US-style Constitution protecting human rights,
> most of Stalin's 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union is a
> plagiary of ours (if with plenty of weasel words and phrases that
> gut human rights and civil liberties). How well our Constitution
> protects our liberties and fair process depends upon how willing
> our top leaders are to accommodate the Constitution. Contrast
> Donald Trump with Gerald Ford on that.
The US Constitutional government has survived two generational crisis
wars, which China, Russia and Cuba have not.
Sears has been in existence far longer than Wal*Mart. You tell me which one you have some chance of shopping in at the end of this year.
The People's Republic of China is on the brink of lasting longer than the Soviet Union. North Korea has lasted longer than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union looked indestructible going into the 1980's. Not that that means much other than great human tragedy.
As late as the morning of January 6, 2021 I could not imagine a riotous mob storming the Capitol Building in an effort to nullify an election whose results that mob disliked. Did you see anything of the sort in 2001 with Gore supporters or in 2017 with Hillary supporters? Some people respect legal formalities and some people do not. Now that people with impressive achievements and fairly-high social class have done something unthinkable six months ago, we can only hope that the consequences for trying such a stunt again are personal ruin.
Surely you do not want my side doing 'our' equivalent of the Capitol Putsch of January 6, 2021 in the wake of a heated election. Well, do you?
Quote:It was the Democrats who "committed treason" by claiming for four
years that Trump's victory was illegitimate. It was the Democrats who
lied to the Fisa court. It was Democrats who perpetrated the Russia
hoax. It was the Democrats who perpetrated the Ukraine hoax. It was
the Democrats who flooded the country with 80 million blank ballots
and hacked Dominion voting machines, and used them to rig the 2020
election. And it's the Democrats who have engineered a Stalinist
censorship regime with no purpose except to censor conservative
voices, including 75 million hated Trump voters.
We had our suspicions but we couldn't prove anything. We could complain all we wanted. We could hone an electoral message. Yup, OJ Simpson probably did kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, but evidence wasn't strong enough. That happens, and that is how we do criminal trials. Guilty people occasionally walk.
Now if you see Wayne County, Michigan political figures discarding ballots into the Detroit River on Election Night instead of recognizing ballots that favor Republicans, then maybe we need to nullify some Democratic wins that might depend upon such happening. The analogy in sports judging applies: if you cheat while winning, then you forfeit your win. (OK, voting devices in Michigan are designed to fit standards for auditing cash and other fungible assets that tempt crooks). Also in Michigan -- Democrats changed their voter access material so that it could not be hacked. Beat-the-cheat strategies are always acceptable in any contest. If it is acceptable for gambling casinos to take measures against people putting slugs into slot machines, using marked cards, or introducing counterfeit chips, then it is OK for Parties to set traps for cheats.
Trump did better than most people expected, but he still came up short. He did better than late polling indicated.
Don't be fooled about any 'censorship' of conservative ideas. People face no problems in opposing abortion, supporting 'gun rights', advocating lower taxes and spending, privatizing everything possible, clamping down on immigration, or pushing the evisceration of trade unions. All of that remains within the realm of free speech. "Hang Mike Pence!" is abominable speech whether it comes from a Marxist-Leninist or from a fascist. Violence against elected officials and even election volunteers rips at the assumption of electoral choice.
Donald Trump is simply a horrible person, whatever one thinks of his political agenda. We have had plenty of conservative pols with solid moral compasses. One of those, had he been elected in 2016, would have almost certainly won in 2020 if at all competent. The big test would be on COVID-19, on which Donald Trump was a catastrophic failure.
Character matters. Character is the difference between marital loyalty and cheating on a spouse. Character is the difference between taking a cut of the money that you count and living on a modest salary. Character is the difference between telling convenient, attractive falsehoods and telling the truth when telling the truth makes one look bad. Character is the difference between telling ethnic jokes and figuring out that "Cole" might really be "Kowalski". Character is the difference between doing business that works for both sides in a deal and getting a killing from a one-time fleece. Character is not messing with vulnerable children even if one can get away with it.
Plenty of people have character, and they have miserable jobs as farm laborers, checker-cashiers, cleaners, phone solicitors, assembly-line workers... and the only bad consequences that they get in life is poverty. It's the people of bad character who go bigger and bigger into their depravity and make things all the more tragic because they mess things up for far more people. They crash businesses and economies. They charm their way into responsibilities that ensure calamity (I'm thinking of General George Armstrong Custer). They cut corners and end up with a bolt on a rear axle that can pierce a gas tank (the infamous Ford Pinto). Or perhaps they use some substandard steel on a ship going into iceberg-infested waters (RMS Titanic). Or they get caught "with a live boy or a dead woman" in politics. Or, like Bill Cosby, they use date-rape drugs to get them the opportunity to... well, we know what happened, don't we?
So said Herodotus: Character is destiny. Character may be the difference between stoking the furnaces of an ocean liner that does not sink and being the captain who tries to make a speed record for crossing the Atlantic during iceberg season. The problem with the captain of the ship that (RMS Titanic) takes an iceberg-prone course is that one takes the fellows who stoke the engines down to Davey Jones' Locker with him.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
