(01-11-2021, 11:33 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-11-2021, 08:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Again, Classic X'er, your definition of what constitutes belief in America or identity as an American (differs greatly from mine). Of all the great empires in history (and I refer to scale and power, and the US as the Empire of Liberty stacks up to all of those empires as rather imposing in power, durability, scale, and influence) less defines what makes one an American than any other. "American" does not imply any race, ethnicity, or religion. It does not imply any particular ideology. One can be a Ku Klux Klansman and an American or a Black Panther and an American (yuck -- but that is the truth!)
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By narrowing what it means to be an American in good standing, one simultaneously takes away liberty... and if the narrowing should be enough, then we simply have a Big Bad Evil Empire.
Donald Trump is disgraced as no President in history. We have had failures, but no President has ever sought to nullify an election in favor of himself or a successor. Note well: one of the most reliable means of establishing a dictatorship is to nullify an election. We accept electoral results that we dislike but cannot disprove (there would have to be very strong evidence of electoral fraud, such as masses of ballots discarded floating down a river that seem marked contrary to the result) or we accept whatever some leader says that the vote was.
Events of January 6 look more like the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace in 1917 than they do like anything that we have ever seen in American history. Note well: there was an election for the Russian Constituent Assembly, but Vladimir Lenin nullified the vote that he lost because the 'wrong' people won. At that point the Soviet dictatorship began.
I'm not accusing you, of course, of being a Commie. That is not your ideology. Yours better resembles that of Augusto Pinochet... but his regime was a soul-crushing as any Commie regime except that of the Khmer Rouge.
Is the Democratic population free these days? How much power and authority does the Democratic party have over you and most of its base these days? Let's see, it spent months scaring its base into submission to the point where it was afraid to be vaccinated for Christ's sake. Mrs. Obama looked dumbfounded when she was asked by a reporter about that problem and what they planned to do to fix that problem. Whatever, you made your own choice which was the only choice that someone like you have these days.
As far as the situation that took place between us many years ago, you took what I said to someone else literally when you should have recognized it as a sarcastic bluff like most everyone else did at the time. Any how, what you guys did didn't matter in the greater scheme of things and the way things eventually turned out. I had an issue with a moderator upholding and applying a double standard. I basically used you to get to him and remove him. I was posting as the process of removing him was going on. You played a significant a role in that particular task at the time. My ideology is the same as Abe Lincoln, Ike, JFK, MLK, Reagan, Trump and most of the judges in the Supreme Court. I assume that you must be familiar with Classical Liberalism. According to my daughter, they're still teaching it to people her age in school today.
The event that took place on Jan 6th was a demonstration of willingness and capability and that's about it. You are over exaggerating the intent and significance again as usual.
When one part of the populace is in danger of losing its freedom (unless it does horrible things to people such as messing with children, human trafficking, dealing drugs, or outright terrorism), then we are all at risk. Many ways exist in which to destroy democracy, and Donald Trump has done several of them while doing nothing to fortify freedom (unless your idea of freedom is little more than the privilege of the super-rich to further enhance their power, indulgence, and gain).
No, your ideology cannot be the same as Abe Lincoln, Ike, JFK, MLK, Reagan, Trump and most of the judges in the Supreme Court. They are different. Any attempt to compare Abe Lincoln to Donald Trump is like comparing Tom Veryzer to Cal Ripken, Jr. because they were both major-league shortstops. Trump got three Justices of the Supreme Court nominated and confirmed in a lockstep process that, like much that happened while he was President, will look increasingly shady as time passes. Trump's ideology is closer to that of Ayn Rand than about any other political thinker that I know, and his sexual mores seem to come from Hugh Hefner.
I have compared Obama to Eisenhower for quality, temperament, and political values, and even noticed that an Obama win of the Presidency looks more like an Eisenhower win than any other before him, which suggests that Ike and Obama had similar constituencies. Both wiped out the Other Side with well-educated people, which is remarkable considering that they are from opposing Parties.
About all that Trump has in common with JFK is a high-risk sex life that well-protected people could get away with in the 1940's and 1950's but can't do so now. See also Bill Clinton. Then again I can't imagine Donald Trump piloting a PT boat in a great national crisis because Trump is completely unreliable in human relationships. Martin Luther King? I vomit at the comparison. Let's start with the obvious: Martin Luther King won a Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic, courageous quest for freedom and human dignity -- and Trump has eroded both.
If I see a connection between Reagan and Trump it is that Trump took Reagan's profits-first ideology that recognized some needs of the time (basically, for multitudes to reduce their expectations of the American dream in economic results, working cheaply at jobs far beneath their spirits so that profits would be increased and so in the end would opportunities emerge -- basically, you got that degree from college and you face the prospect of a long stay in a throwaway job? Work two such jobs to meet the rent, and make the best of "Do you want fries with that?" -- and always remember to consider working harder and longer for less as a cause for delight! Trump takes it to its preposterous extreme, endorsing what increasingly looks like an aristocratic order in which being born into the Right Family means more than does talent or ability, especially as the economy becomes increasingly monopolistic and economically-concentrated.
I see more in common between Donald Trump and political leaders that many Americans despise. He has gone far into the pattern of a dictator. When he lost his re-election bid he expected the rest of us to deny the reality that we saw in official reports because His Glorious Leadership could only win in a landslide. He chooses to be among people who give him unlimited adulation, and he can't recognize that the crowds that attend his rallies are basically the same people. Do you know who else had rallies like that? Fidel Castro!
We have institutions far stronger than Donald Trump -- thank God! (Or should I say the Founding Fathers and other successors). Even Reagan believed that profits were the engine of social progress. With Trump, profit and executive compensation are rewards for being what one is, and those shut out -- well, they can suffer with smiles that they must affect if they are not to be fired from miserable jobs and cast into homelessness and hunger. Trump's vision is the sort that makes someone like Lenin, Mao, or Castro relevant. Do bad things and you get bad results. That's karma, not an idea originally American or even Western, but one that has become popular in America.
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.