We saw that BS long before Nostradumbass to be perfectly honest.
In the end, you are 10000000% correct in that we can’t assume things will be fine because “Oh we can trust others to keep things on the up and up”. Yeah, right. I don’t think so.
Bill Maher keeps pointing out what guarantee do we have that 45 will leave office if voted out?! I trust the marine Corps and Secret Service will do their job and remove him by force if needed…but do we really want to make an assumption on that? 2020 election cannot be close…it really needs to be an absolute landslide victory by popular vote AND electoral college to ensure there is zero doubt. THAT will do more to ensure he leaves than anything else…IMHO.
This whole thread makes me shake my head. I fail to see what the purpose is from the origination of it, beyond to possible droll or “own the libs”.
The whole post-9/11 chain of events have been deeply dangerous. They share some of the same paranoid characteristics of the Cold War period such as ginning up an outside enemy that can also be inside, in part to better channel anxiety/control of the population (this happened on both sides during the cold war, just with different degrees of control). Today, we have more invasive and personalized technologies that can be employed in this project, which we ourselves embrace. And corporations are far more powerful than they were during the Cold War on top of that.
Ugh. Not a fan, but given some of the things he’s said, that’s a concern. Although I’m less worried about him and more worried about his base and what they’ll do if he loses.
Not to beat this already very dead horse, but the issue isn’t that the system isn’t there but that the system inherently favors people like Trump, whether it’s in the office of the President or one of the many offices of the Congress or judiciary. And that’s that a problem we have to tackle. We got a cobbled together system that’s semi-democratic for appearances sake but largely its power is held by those who are economically advantaged (land owners, shareholders, old and new money, etc). Right now, they don’t two hoots about the situation beyond whether Trump will level the economy with his protectionist fetish or turn on them and become a low-rent Huey Long (not much of an improve imo) and give away their ill-gotten wealth. So we can march all around the clock but it won’t do anything. If you said tomorrow we were going to have a general strike where everyone or nearly everyone wasn’t going to go to work for a week then maybe that might work because that would cripple the economy which the rich depend on. But random marches in the streets won’t put a dent in this system, ever.
I know he isn’t one of your favorite media folks…but his show is good IMO and I enjoy the discussions he gets going.
I think some of the most recent developments between Russia and the US are exactly reminiscent of the cold war. And I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if Putin engineered all this to bring us back to his version of the glory days.
Throwing a statement back that is a veiled insult at the very least is so better than thou of you. You do not know me, but thank you for making a baseless assumption about me nonetheless.
I really can’t deal with his low-level misogyny, both-siderism, and Islamophobia… but stopped watches and all that. He says some good stuff now and then, but I just can’t with him.
As a Cold War historian, I generally don’t agree. I think there are some parallels, but this is less about competing systems, and more about greater control over a singular, globalized economic system. I think Putin is especially good about employing Cold War language, and the way both sides are reaching out/imposing themselves in the global south is similar. But I think the differences matter, too.
Putin is pretty powerful in his region, but the Russians just don’t have the same reach that the Soviets did, and the Soviets back in the day never quite had the reach that we had, especially in our hemisphere. Other than the Cuban Missle Crisis (which ended up with them pulling their weapons out of Cuba), they just never had much of a reach, while we were able to build up a truly global reach during the same period. It actually puts the decision to drop the atomic bomb (twice) on Japan and end the war quickly into a more stark relief - it was as much about the war, as it was about Truman’s insistence that we establish a hegemonic presence in East Asia.
Would you agree though that the comparative vibe of 1960’s cold war is what feels the same (not so much the actual details/circumstances)?
Keeping people afraid and on edge plays right into that power structure you and @armozel are pointing out. They get to be the “protectors”…just another method to their madness for retaining their power structure.
Hm. Maybe to an extent, I’d agree. But I think some of that is us (not just me and you, but humanity) trying to make sense of what’s happening in a complicated global system.
I’d say that the current situation with the environment is much more intense and dangerous, which creates an added apocalyptic wrinkle. It’s no longer fears over nuclear annihilation (in fact, despite the bellicosity of the US and Russians on expanding their military capability), but fear over environmental collapse that is driving much more of the current wave of global anxiety than it was in the 60s.
It’s a war of two systems all over again: on one side, there’s an authoritarian clique using the state to keep their profits flowing, veiled in a thin layer of democracy; and on the other side is Russia.
edit: damn, it is really that hard to get that this is a joke?
Wait, now, I’m totally confused.
First, I was thinking “too well” of Trump, by only reluctantly comparing him and his cronies with Nazism.
Now, I’m thinking “too bad” of Trump, because whatever he is, Russia under Putin is so far worse, that they can not be compared?
Did I get this about right?
Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said that I thought you “thought too well of trump.”
I disagree that we’re talking about 2 systems. After the end of the Cold War, the vast majority of the planet has been subsumed into the global economy. Differences in governance matter less in this case, because with a few exceptions, everyone is now participating in a globalized economic system, whether they be authoritarian, democratic or somewhere inbetween. That’s where the real divisions were in the Cold War, two competing economic systems. Because, of course, plenty of the states that were part of the capitalist system were authoritarian. How one participates in the global economic system has little to do with their internal politics.
Because those who support him were never interested in whether he could actually deliver on his promises or even whether he upheld any of the principles conservatives pretend to care about. Anyone who genuinely cared about stuff like that would have been able to see he wasn’t their guy long before the election.
So you’re left with supporters who only care about what he is, which is a tough-talking nativist who pisses off the libs and gives conservatives permission to be their worst selves. In that respect Trump has been as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
the only caveat I’d add to that is that he got the contingent of anti-immigration hardliners and anti-choice hardliners. And the homophobic and transphobic bigots are sort of pleased, too. And for them, he’s delivering. These are basically groups that want to make the country a much worse place… They will all turn out for him.
I think that basically, we’re on the same page about Trump, and there’s only some secondary disagreements about how he “ticks”? To which you responded in a way, that looked like you were calling me out as some kind of crypto-Trumpist? That was really the only assumption I was making there.
