01-25-2017, 11:01 PM
(01-24-2017, 12:54 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-23-2017, 11:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Two delights (irony intended):I don't know which is worse, the Trump administration misleading people about the size of its crowd or the Obama administration misleading people about the reason and the facts associated with the death of a US ambassador considering they're both guilty of misleading. However, I do view one as being relatively insignificant compared to the other one. PB, if you find yourself alone with no political party left for you turn to or rely for support, it will be your own fault.
Kellyanne Goebbels -- excuse me, Conway coined the spectacularly-fraudulent oxymoron "alternative facts".
The other: Donald Trump said to the CIA that it would be wise to seize the oil of counties that the United States defeats in war. Chris Matthews pointed out that the USA went to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait because Hussein intended to take Kuwaiti oil assets.
George Orwell and Hannah Arendt are becoming relevant to a country that we never expected them to be relevant.
Ambassador Stevens being killed in a fire that results from a benign-looking protest (it was about a horrid movie that did more to offend than entertain or educate) was a tragedy. I have no idea why Mr. Stevens went back into the burning building -- to rescue classified material, perhaps? Dangerous situations elicit heroic behavior, and those dangerous situations can get a hero killed. Heroic death is still tragic -- indeed, it might be more tragic for the loss of the hero.
Give credit to President Obama -- any deaths in that incident do not lead to a cascade of further tragedies for Americans. President Obama responded properly. I can assure you that he did not feel good about the situation.
President Trump lying about a triviality may not cause direct death or crippling injury to Americans, but it does bode ill. At one time or another any President will face some analogue of a Kobiyashi Maru test (OK, I may have been exposed to too much Star Trek for your taste -- tough!) -- a sure loss that will expose the flaws of any potential leader. President of the United States or captain of an interstellar space ship with double-talk drives and potential conflicts with Klingons.... you can take your choice of which is tougher.
The faults of Donald Trump are being bared long before he finds himself in a great tragedy not of his making. This is a vindictive, intellectually-lazy, thin-skinned person willing to make any unfounded claim just to protect his bloated self-image. He is more likely to find scapegoats than solutions... and people who find scapegoats instead of solutions solve nothing. Baring their weaknesses of character, they expose us to one calamity after another.
I have yet to figure why so many as 46% of the electorate could vote for someone so obviously inadequate to the role and elect him President. Maybe enough people think that that electing a roguish character will send a message to the enemies of America. Maybe people think that a businessman can run the federal government like a business (it is most definitely not a profit-and-loss operation). Maybe people believe that businessmen who generate profits can inspire job-creating activities.
Then again, many people fall for rogues -- the floozie who makes some old, lonely widow think that he is getting a new burst of youth by sharing his assets with a materialistic semi-whore, the confidence artist who seems like such a nice young man, and the suitor who showers a future victim with effusive displays of affection only to become an abusive spouse. Old men who get the floozy end up with their bank accounts drained. You know the rest of the story. I know enough philosophy, history, psychology, semantics, and economics to see the worst in Donald Trump. Multitudes saw something else before the election. I take no delight in saying that many such people will see Donald Trump as I do -- but too late to avoid experiencing the very things that I dread.
One thousand, four hundred and twenty-six days to go. The time between elections can seem like a prison term when one despises the President, as you probably felt was the case with Barack Obama. We may get out of this nightmare with the desire to establish a parliamentary system of government in which a Prime Minister is chosen by the winning party for his qualifications (which might not preclude Barack Obama, who would thrive in a parliamentary system but would preclude Donald Trump) and the potential for the vote of no confidence for a government that goes bad.
The consequences of the Obama Administration are now set in stone. We can argue to no end on how to interpret the prose. We have yet to know the consequences of four years following the election Donald Trump as President. The best that I can hope for is a leader tied to an obsolete ideology, an early-industrial paradigm in which greater production and higher profits generate human happiness. The elites around him are as out of touch with the consequences of their beliefs as the quasi-aristocrats at the start of Gone With the Wind. The methods of military conquest include weapons far more horrible than those that William Tecumseh Sherman had at his disposal.
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.