(01-07-2017, 07:52 PM)radind Wrote:(01-07-2017, 05:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(01-07-2017, 09:31 AM)radind Wrote:(01-07-2017, 05:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The world is safe enough with the USA as a benign superpower. It is in mortal danger with the USA as an Evil Empire. So what is the difference between a benign superpower and an Evil Empire? A moral or at least cautious leader... and an evil, reckless one.
Much that was unthinkable two years ago or unlikely two months ago stares us in the face. A benign republic becomes an Evil Empire in two weeks.
You see the USA becoming Evil. I see the USA becoming better.
-We must wait for results to see what actually happens.
For now , all we have is speculation.
How does it get better? We get for all practical practical purposes a single-Party system.We have a ruling elite which believes that no human suffering is in excess so long as there is a profit to be had from it. The President-Elect is a demagogue and a sociopath. Corporate lobbyists wield the real power in the legislative branch. We will have an economic order with no mercy.
I do not see Donald Trump becoming a good person. He acts like a juvenile delinquent who never grew up. Had he been brought up poor he would be a gangster -- and still dangerous. If he were middle class he would be the sort of businessman who operates a sleazy business -- maybe some real-estate dealer who sells troubled properties and tells gulled customers "Sorry, I can't do anything more", or the operator of a bait-and-switch outfit.
It is as if Gilded-Age politicians of the 1920s and earlier and southern racist agrarians have joined in establishing an anti-worker system. Sure, there will be work -- but it will be paid far less.
We have totally different views of the situation. I was concerned about the future of the USA if Clinton had been elected.
I expect reforms to help US business and jobs. We will know later.
Hitler got more jobs (with huge pay cuts, of course) and made Big Business more profitable by unleashing the profiteering drive of would-be monopolists. Germany may have had full employment, but it still had the lowest industrial wages in Europe except perhaps in the Soviet Union. Germany had a labor shortage because it severely underpaid workers -- a labor shortage so severe that it had to kidnap foreigners to be slaves in German industry.
Will Trump be that bad? Probably not. But he will be awful.
You get a job -- but it comes with a 40% pay cut, and you get to face monopoly prices. What a raw deal! More work, but less pay. Is that "Making America Great Again", or is that making America great for only a small part of the overall population?
I expect the worst because Donald Trump is a horrible person -- maybe slightly better than the late John Gotti, but not by enough of a difference..
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.