That metaphor only falls short because Trump is not the man behind the curtain. In fact he’s so clueless he’d be shocked to learn there even is a curtain and that his sole job is to stand in front of it.
11 Likes
I’ve been trying to express a similar feeling over the last few days: the innocent people stuck at airports right now aren’t “collateral damage”, the intention was always to victimise people who obviously don’t deserve it because that provokes a stronger reaction.
It also encourages Americans to cross a moral line, after which they’ll feel complicit in whatever Trump does next and be less likely to resist.
9 Likes
To me it looks more like a bunch of incompetent management types trying to gain control of something far outside of their class. But I will allow that it could morph into fascism through their massive ignorance, egos, and ham-fisted tactics.
10 Likes
Stop goddamn deluding yourself. You’re just trying to make yourself feel better, and I get it. But Hitler was a paranoid freak, so was Mussolini – it kind of goes part and parcel with the evil villain thing. These are not “normal” people. They are oddballs. Doesn’t mean they haven’t killed tens if not hundreds of millions over the past couple centuries. ASSUME THE WORST. I’m a big supporter of game theory, and this is a situation where NOT building “assume the worst” into your simulations can really bite you in the ass.
6 Likes
It doesn’t need to “turn into fascism,” when all of the people behind this are committed to fascist-principles. IT ALREADY IS. We’re ten days in and society is already being radically reshaped (which a lot of us were expecting, I will add). It’s literally getting worse by the day. EVERYTHING you hold dear is in danger. Act that way, please! We all need to, or we are fucked. Nobody else is going to come to the rescue.
15 Likes
Same problem exists all over the world.
So come on, what did you do about Obama? What were you fighting and campaigning for that would have stopped him?
I’ve from the UK. We’ve had one example recently with Brexit. Elites are still moaning that they don’t want to obey democracy.
The solution is more direct democracy. Couple that with laws that you can’t inherit debt, and it solves itself.
1 Like
Donald Trump is not stupid. The more you trick yourself into falling for the “comedic oaf” routine, the more you will be distracted from the moving pieces. Trump may lack certain “intelligences,” but it doesn’t mean he lacks all intelligence. Underestimating the man is very, very dangerous. He’s smart enough to have become the President of the United States. He’s smart enough to be in power despite the fact that he is in BLATANT violation of Article 1 Section 9 Clause 8 of the Constitution of the United States. Game theorize it: There is only much to be lost, by underestimating the man.
7 Likes
Oh please. The article’s premise is that this is all part of a master plan. That’s what I dispute. It as at least as important to understand the enemy as it is not to underestimate them.
I am of the belief that rulers “fail into” dictatorship through incompetence. That each crises provokes a poor response that can’t be walked back for fear of losing the confidence of the population or worse, ending up in prison or executed.
As each new crises happens, they are pushed further and further down the road to dictatorship until one day they wake up and they discover they are in exactly the same position that Ferdinand Marcos, Hosni Mubarak and Robert Mugabe found themselves - isolated on top of a throne of near absolute power and fearful that any misstep means the end of them.
If you treat president bannon like he’s an evil super genius you are going to fight the wrong enemy and may well end up accidentally enabling him rather than ushering him out the door with the least collateral damage.
5 Likes
You’re completely missing the point of shock tactics then. Sure, people are standing together. Paying very close attention to that one executive order about immigrants and foreign nationals. Notice how the OTHER key executive order from the weekend, the one that replaces the JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF with STEVE BANNON on a KEY committee of the National Security Council is getting a LOT less press? By at least an order of magnitude? Yeah, that was the thing the chaos of the immigration ban was intended to distract you from. And it’s a much more frightening development on pretty much every level as far as I’m concerned.
9 Likes
Was this weekend a trial balloon for a coup?
Oh, you noticed that too…
16 Likes
“The solution is more direct democracy.”
Actually, I don’t want to live that way. The idea that averaging the opinion of an uninformed group of people somehow gives good results is nonsense. What we need is open decision making, with all the arguments out in the open, with anybody able to see whether there is an argument wrong, missing etc. and have that added (no repetitions allowed). Then you can use the knowledge of the people to get to the bet decisions. Also, politicians should pass an exam (topics like logical thinking, fallacies; errors made during decision making etc); even a damn taxidriver has to pass one. Why not people who vote over the way our lives look like?
Bert
14 Likes
If you’ve studied history, which your responses indicate you either have not, or did not understand, you would be open to the idea that small groups of people have absolutely conspired to take control of power, even in democratic societies. It’s a damned good thing the vast majority of people I know are much more open to these possibilities than you are. I would hope that you’re joining in on the resistance movement, even if you consider this stuff to be more banal than I and many others do.
4 Likes
Oh I’d love that. An SAT for government office, a GSAT. We wouldn’t even need a minimum score to run for office, just a requirement that they take the test and make their scores public. I can see a whole industry of GSAT prep courses though.
5 Likes
Deflection attempt denied.
We’re talking about the USA right now, (which could have detrimental ramifications for the entire world.)
Second deflection attempt, denied.
I am not the one who made the contention that a solution to this massive set of complicated problems is “very simple.” You were, and you stated it twice within one comment.
I am now asking you to elaborate, since it’s so “very simple.”
Color me shocked!
That’s a very vague answer, to a immensely complex problem; but since it’s not another obvious attempt at deflection:
Again, that’s far easier said than done, so I implore you again:
#Elaborate.
How do you propose the citizens of the US go about reversing the current status quo where our government “wields immense political power which we don’t want used against us?”
How do we go about just “abolishing” it?
You yourself said it was ‘very simple’; therefore you must have a viable, easy to follow, step-by-step foolproof plan… so let’s hear it.
27 Likes
Well, at least he’s shut the fuck up about pensions for a bit…
20 Likes
Does this mean we can kill him now?
3 Likes
Please do.
2 Likes
… while hoping that people don’t notice that downsizing of the Fed as Trump has promised means loss of jobs.
1 Like
Yes. Better not let them know that you’re oriented toward compassion and liberalism.
1 Like
(Another UK person here.) As I get bored of pointing out, but will continue to do so - just because an election had a particular result doesn’t mean that opponents just roll over and die. If that was the case, then a government could just stand up in parliament and say “here’s the law, like it or lump it.” No, we have a lengthy process of examination that often results in amendments, rebuffs and sometimes, in interesting cases, losses and even withdrawals of governmetn bills (all of those have happened in the last year.) The US systems have something similar - which is why a judge was able to suspend the EO, albeit temporarily.
And Brexit is far worse than that, because it was clearly not decisive. Even Nigel Farage said that if the result was 52/48 it wouldn’t be decisive - although admittedly he was expecting it to be the other way around. Sure, the UK voted to leave the European Union, but I don’t recall going into the polling booth and being presented with options about how that might happen, just a flat question about whether we should leave or not. (Oh, and a campaign in which both sides resorted to cheap soundbites because actually discussing the issues is complex; both sides had valid and serious points to make, but they ended up making things up.)
The notion that the solution to this is more direct democracy, when we’ve just demonstrated why that’s a bloody stupid idea, is baffling. You can’t just say “hey folks, here’s a yes/no question with no explanations of consequences, pick a side” - it doesn’t work.
25 Likes
