Re: Donald Trump running for President.
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2020 3:23 pm
The Jane's Addiction Discussion Forum
http://aintnoright.org/
Well, I wouldn't disagree with most of this. Except I think the power of special interests is actually precarious. Citizens United and billionaire tinkering is awful, but certainly did not pick Trump. I think his general appeal is seen as an antagonist to their influence (a guy like "us" that busts up the elites, however messed up that is... ) and conversely, lucky for them, the billionaire class benefits from his crony capitalism. I think he is a product of populism and the long standing decline of the market economy. He was NOT the chosen one by the billionaire class.Hype wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:07 pmIt's more complicated than that. It's easy to say "it's capitalism". There's an obvious technical truth in that, but it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't, for one thing, show that things couldn't be better and still capitalist. The harder question is: what the fuck is actually going on?mockbee wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:05 amThat is a good map you have to demonstrate the dichotomy of represention in the US.
It may actually also represent the extreme balance we have going.... We don't think of the consequences of completely getting rid of the electoral college. How long do you think it would be until there would be real revolt if 90% of the land area of the US (the people who live there are important to consider, even if they are a significant minority...who makes the world's food..produces building/manufacturing materials..makes stuff...elves??!!!!) felt totally disenfranchized? And no, with the way things are going with national leaders on the left(democrats) I dont think there would be some magic reckoning of rural areas if these doofus democrats were magically in power perpetually. Obama wasn't a doofus, and even then there was just a formenting of hostility ( yeah yeah racism...but it went beyond that as well)..same with a woman.....and Biden....? No way.
What to do....? Its capitalism that is driving our cultural wedge...MLK understood this intimately.
Part of the story is clearly foreign influence. The other part that is difficult to deal with is the influence of moneyed interests since Citizens United. We know the names of a set of billionaires on both the right and the left who tend to have outsized influence in who runs for office and what policies they implement. Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, Bezos, Gates, etc., all put hundreds of millions, if not billions, into lobbying, "research" at partisan "institutes", media spin, and faux-grass-roots mobilizing (especially on FB / social media) This isn't strictly caused by capitalism, because it's identical in form with what goes on in Russia with oligarchs, in Africa and the middle east/west-Asia with warlords and local powerful men (it's almost always men) and in China with various regional members of the ruling "party" jockeying for power. What has radically changed in the West, especially in the United States, is that government power has been whittled away slowly but steadily for 40+ years, since at least Reagan, and the working class has been hoodwinked into agreeing with it. The middle of the country, the rust belt, the service-class everywhere, needs to unionize, to fight governmental and corporate union-busting, and to force things to change for the better. But saying that is one thing -- mobilizing people and getting it done takes powerful people with will and foresight to get it done. It's not clear that it will happen any time soon. But it has happened before. Don't forget, Bezos and his ilk are not the first batch of robber-baron billionaires the United States has been controlled by -- arguably Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, etc., were much, much, much more powerful, and much worse. But hard-fighting anti-fascists managed to force them to break up their massive companies and get the government to force them to respect human rights. It's doable. But people have to be able to see that it's worth doing.
Oh, it is still quite obvious to me. Possibly, even more so if stuff gets sort of normal...ish............Which I do admit, the whole thing (markets) could just collapse, and then who the fuck knows what happens next.....
Um, ......yaaaah!
One thing that has struck me about Trump's presidency is that we all always thought that the whole point of that role was to be one of three equal branches of government, with each possessing certain checks and balances against the others. So it never was understood that the President would ever be "like a king", and certainly not like a Hobbesian Sovereign (literally wielding the infinite power of the body politic). But what Trump has exposed is that (with the help of certain pre-existing corrupt forces like McConnell) all it takes to break that system is for elected officials to simply not act, or to act in ways that don't have clear cut and dry prosecutable consequences. One of the first things Trump did that was reported widely was tear up notes into tiny pieces, despite the fact that legally all presidential notes, documents, etc., must be archived. That was the beginning of the press pointing to Trump doing something we call out as "illegal" but there being no clear way to do anything about it. Why not? Because I don't think the founders of the country or the subsequent two centuries of legislators and justices ever thought they'd have to manage so much bad faith in one actor. Worse: the increasing politicization and polarizing of the Supreme Court became a victim of that unpunished, apparently unpunishable bad faith before Trump, when McConnell and co. simply declined to accept Obama's Supreme Court appointee, Merrick Garland. All their rhetoric about "lame duck presidency" had nothing to do with what was going on. They simple figured out that they could get away with not doing their jobs, and not ceding anything to their "opponents".Charles wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 12:06 amHow can one person ever represent a country like the USA? It is and always will be a source or division between us. It seems like an antiquated idea anyway. It's like a king or emperor or czar. One person to represent an entire nation created from people all over the world. No single person should have that kind of power...
Maybe that is the point. Put a stop to the charade.But in practice, he has helped show just how much wiggle room can be found in this.
Can you think of a time when there was reasoned problem solving on a national level that had good results in the last 30-40 years....?
I think this is a mistake. There's a classic work of political philosophy from the last century from David Gauthier, a great Canadian philosopher, called Morals by Agreement. You might enjoy it: https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/ ... 0198249924 It has its share of critics (in fact, quite a lot of them; Hobbes hasn't enjoyed much popularity in Anglo-American politics/philosophy since WWII, when there was a resurgence in interest in Kant, but I think this is a mistake).mockbee wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2020 7:50 am
You could just as easily slide W, Bush I, or Reagan, even Obama, into this statement. Heck....Nixon, LBJ, etc. Just pick a war/egregious military action...pick among the dozens of options.....
Maybe war adventures are more forgivable than being......grossly and blatantly slippery with the truth. Yes, a despicable quality. But how can this be legions worse than executing illegal wars....? Because the previous presidents were more "respectful" and cognizantly concealing their illegal actions?
Maybe that is the point. Put a stop to the charade.But in practice, he has helped show just how much wiggle room can be found in this.
One of the hardest things to figure out as citizens is how to get more power when we need it, and if we get it, how to use it responsibly. Populist power-grabs almost never end well, yet they're always portrayed as "the people" taking power from "the elites" (that's literally the textbook definition of populism). That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to figure out how to get enough power to make political changes happen. It's more a question of how to go about doing it in a way that doesn't backfire or lead to things getting much, much worse. Often apparent "grass-roots" or "populist" uprisings are really just a smokescreen for one group of elites using people to take over for another group of elites. E.g., the "Tea Party" movement and its current fallout as a way for harder-right factions and a different kind of corporatists and libertarian wing-nuts to take over the Republican Party; or the maneuvers of the corporatist Clinton-style democrats to take over and exorcise the progressive factions from the Democratic party. Both have had pretty disastrous consequences.Pandemonium wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2020 5:10 pmYou're never going to get anywhere letting the people in power and their backers who make and re-shape rules that ultimately benefit their own agenda.
Outside of the grocery store, (90% being essentials like cereal milk beans bread eggos ketchup), gas, some small stuff at the hardware store and the basic bills, I have spent maybe $20 total in the last 3 months. My wallet never gets any thinner (mostly use cash, except for groceries). So no problem here.
Totally agree. I think the single biggest anti Trump, anti populist charade bullshit thing we could do as Americans is.... get along.And hype makes a point about NOT ending the charade...and I'd like to take that viewpoint and twist it...because I think in society the charade is society...it's the "I don't agree with you but I don't have to...let's just pretend and be civil".....it used to be common decency...but now it's been stripped bare and people are getting comfortable not being civil....whether it be on social media or in text....on a plane...at Walmart...at the DMV...it's the bullshit lie of being civil that's the bumper between us...so if the charade all comes down...the gloves will come fully off...and then chaos will rule for a while...and most don't want that...I think most would rather just wear the blinders and accept their fate as ants...the system isn't for us...just fucking adapt and be nice to people fuck... the government has way too much power and I'm feeling old and not ready for war....
That's what's happened for the most part so far all along...hopefully it does not falter....courts will fuck trump on this....
The charade of society is aka 'the social contract', broadly speaking: I agree not to kill you and take your stuff if you agree not to kill me and take my stuff, and if either of us violates this, our friends and family agree to take it to a third party arbitrary to solve rather than becoming a murderous mob. Narrowly speaking: it's what Rawls would call "the space of public reasons" -- your private reasons don't count as civil reasons in public unless they're reasons that I could reasonably adopt. So you don't get to shove your religion on the rest of us, and I don't get to force you to have an abortion, or whatever.kv wrote: ↑Thu May 28, 2020 5:20 pmI really don't think he's winning in the fall...of course I didn't think he was winning last time...but I've seen a change...and I think it's enough to tilt this...
What's your guys thoughts on peaceful protest blackout day set for July 7th where no minority spending is to take place ...love it...
And hype makes a point about NOT ending the charade...and I'd like to take that viewpoint and twist it...because I think in society the charade is society...it's the "I don't agree with you but I don't have to...let's just pretend and be civil".....it used to be common decency...but now it's been stripped bare and people are getting comfortable not being civil....whether it be on social media or in text....on a plane...at Walmart...at the DMV...it's the bullshit lie of being civil that's the bumper between us...so if the charade all comes down...the gloves will come fully off...and then chaos will rule for a while...and most don't want that...I think most would rather just wear the blinders and accept their fate as ants...the system isn't for us...just fucking adapt and be nice to people fuck... the government has way too much power and I'm feeling old and not ready for war....
As for Art's point about why more aren't in the streets....covid has me not wanting to take risks...sure a lot feel that way...courts will fuck trump on this....
One can make the strong argument that the whole concept and origin of Police in the US is doing exactly what it was created to do......
https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/4 ... 3famp=true
In fact, the U.S. police force is a relatively modern invention, sparked by changing notions of public order, driven in turn by economics and politics, according to Gary Potter, a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University.
Policing in Colonial America had been very informal, based on a for-profit, privately funded system that employed people part-time. Towns also commonly relied on a “night watch” in which volunteers signed up for a certain day and time, mostly to look out for fellow colonists engaging in prostitution or gambling. (Boston started one in 1636, New York followed in 1658 and Philadelphia created one in 1700.) But that system wasn’t very efficient because the watchmen often slept and drank while on duty, and there were people who were put on watch duty as a form of punishment.
Night-watch officers were supervised by constables, but that wasn’t exactly a highly sought-after job, either. Early policemen “didn’t want to wear badges because these guys had bad reputations to begin with, and they didn’t want to be identified as people that other people didn’t like,” says Potter. When localities tried compulsory service, “if you were rich enough, you paid someone to do it for you — ironically, a criminal or a community thug.”
As the nation grew, however, different regions made use of different policing systems.
In cities, increasing urbanization rendered the night-watch system completely useless as communities got too big. The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.”
In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.
In general, throughout the 19th century and beyond, the definition of public order — that which the police officer was charged with maintaining — depended whom was asked.
For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. For example, people who drank at taverns rather than at home were seen as “dangerous” people by others, but they might have pointed out other factors such as how living in a smaller home makes drinking in a tavern more appealing. (The irony of this logic, Potter points out, is that the businessmen who maintained this belief were often the ones who profited off of the commercial sale of alcohol in public places.)
At the same time, the late 19th century was the era of political machines, so police captains and sergeants for each precinct were often picked by the local political party ward leader, who often owned taverns or ran street gangs that intimidated voters. They then were able to use police to harass opponents of that particular political party, or provide payoffs for officers to turn a blind eye to allow illegal drinking, gambling and prostitution.
This situation was exacerbated during Prohibition, leading President Hoover to appoint the Wickersham Commission in 1929 to investigate the ineffectiveness of law enforcement nationwide. To make police independent from political party ward leaders, the map of police precincts was changed so that they would not correspond with political wards.
The drive to professionalize the police followed, which means that the concept of a career cop as we’d recognize it today is less than a century old.