Trump supporters at the president's rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania tell CBS News their thoughts on impeachment and the possibility of his removal: "It would become the second Civil War." https://t.co/jPUmfWREbX pic.twitter.com/bzT0v9oaWN
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 11, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
You've Been Warned
Should the legislative branch of the American government do what a functioning democracy requires and hold an out-of-control President to account, mayhem will ensue, according to Trump Nation:
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As Mr.Twain wrote, "The fools are the majority in any town."
ReplyDeleteMark Twain and George Orwell: I fear we shall not look upon their like again, Owen.
Delete.. ass talkers & the deluded as fsr as I can figure.. I still maintain that either lead poisoning or some other substance is melting the cognitive aspects of amerikana. The swarms fawning over Trump's jackassery or boasting of their weaponry.. may have some just cause.. After all, the only other political seat on the American teeter totter across from the soulless rotted Republicans is the deadwood derelict Democrats.. like pick your zombie koolaid flavor eh ?
ReplyDeleteI certainly do not envy the limited options Americans have on offer, Sal. My suspicion with the Dems is that they will pick a status quo candidate like Biden rather than take a leap of faith with someone like Elizabeth Warren.
DeleteThe US has become a deeply divided, borderline Lord of the Flies, society. I'm convinced there is nothing inadvertent in that. The rift has been cultivated, nurtured and inflamed. The question is "cui bono"? Who benefits from the breakdown of social cohesion? What is there to gain from it?
ReplyDeleteWe remember when Trump boasted that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody"and he wouldn't lose any voters. That was dismissed as hyperbole but there was at least some truth to it and I'm sure he had no doubt he was at no risk for saying it.
This didn't begin with Donald Trump and I doubt it will end with him. A sizeable segment of the American public is in harness. The stressors that drew them to the flame - economic, demographic - are not expected to abate. White America, their America, is being overtaken and they're fearful and angry. Someone is always going to exploit that.
A look at domestic terrorism in America since 9/11 shows that it has two distinct features - it is disproportionately white and Christian. Despite the clear evidence you won't find the political caste standing up to it. It serves them to continue to cast blame on "the other" which means those of other faiths and swarthy complexion.
Hedges argues that America is in a pre-revolutionary state and compares it to a pot of water on a stove top burner on high. You know it will boil but you don't know when. He could be right.
All of this seems lamentably true, Mound, but I wonder how much the process has been accelerated by a supine Senate dominated by Republicans for whom constitutional duties and imperatives are but quaint notions to be overrun whenever it serves their venal, cowardly purposes.
DeleteYour question conjures up the observations by Israeli historian, Yuval Harari, on the degraded state of political leadership in the neoliberal era:
Delete"...traditional democratic politics is losing control of events and is failing to present us with meaningful visions of the future.
"Ordinary voters are beginning to sense that the democratic mechanism no longer empowers them. The world is changing all around, and they don't understand how or why. Power is shifting away from them, but they are unsure where it has gone."
"...present-day politicians are thinking on a far smaller scale than their predecessors a century ago. Consequently, in the early 21st century politics is bereft of grand visions. Government has become mere administration. It manages the country but it no longer leads it. Government ensures that teachers are paid on time and sewage systems don't overflow, but it has no idea where the country will be in twenty years."
They are, as I've argued ad nauseam, petit fonctionairres, grey suits stuffed with wet cardboard. They enter politics for their own sake, for the sake of being in politics, not to serve the nation or the public. As Harari contends, they're bereft of grand vision but they fill that void instead with lies and appeals to our emotions, sometimes playing on our darker instincts.
This brings us to where we are today - where we can declare a "climate emergency" one day and greenlight a massive bitumen pipeline expansion the very next.
I've had a few lengthy conversations with friends recently and, while they approach it differently, they all express a jarringly similar concern - we're broken. The wheels are coming off the wagon.