04-18-2017, 10:22 AM
(04-17-2017, 10:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: My horoscope methods suggest that Hillary Clinton would have beat Mitt Romney. She had a better horoscope score than he did, as well as a favorable new moon for winning the popular vote. Trump was under-estimated as a candidate.
America was ready for a change, and got it. It may regret that change in 2018 and 2020.
If Trump gets his way, America will be the sort of place that people get away from if they have ability and a chance, the inverse of what America was "great" if not by current standards, then "great" by standards of the Russian Empire, southern Italy, and Mexico at the time. I can imagine medical care pricing me into another country. Or for Communist, fascist, or Ba'athist regimes at any time.
Could it be that the secret to winning is to be ruthless and dishonest, and to have connections to the most corrupt and rapacious interests in America? If so, then this country is cooked, and I am really glad that I have no children or grandchildren. If I were to go to Hell, I would certainly not want to impose its nastiness upon loved ones just to have some predictable company. See also "prison".
...I can think of a sick parody of the "Hallelujah" Chorus from Messiah, celebrating the rise and beginning of eternal rule of Greed:
For vile Greed Omnipotent reigneth!
Greed shall reign forever and ever...
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Vicious Greed!
Cruel Greed!
Boundless Greed!
Beastly Lord! Corruption! Corruption!
Bleed all else!
Such describes the President and his most fervent supporters.
Is it any wonder that dystopian novels that most of us thought could never apply to America have gotten new life?
Evil may be incompetent at meeting human needs except at the cost of destroying the people who make the unconscionable bargains just for immediate survival, but it has shown itself remarkably competent at entrenching itself and committing all the resources of a nation that it infests to its extension and defense. It may die, but it usually takes plenty of innocent people (including heroes) with it.
With Trump as President I can easily imagine America on the losing side of a Crisis War. I can imagine the FDR or Lincoln of the time as someone not an American. I can imagine the leadership of America in this Crisis being disgraced and severely punished for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I can imagine the victors imposing their concept of a "New Birth of freedom" -- something radically different from what Americans had recently known in politics, economics, and culture. Sure, we could have a Constitutional order -- but the Constitution in effect might be a near-translation of the post-WWII constitution of the German Federal Republic, one with far fewer seams than the one that we have, seem that right-wing interests have ripped by driving the equivalents of eighteen-wheel trucks through in recent years.
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.