We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Re Trump, I am not a big fan but I am amused by it all. A Pres does not need to be your best pal. He has made some good appts. Yes, he should give Mittens a job. Romney needs a job. Take one more guy off unemployment in this economy.
Thornton: "If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming
their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would
start with the Democrat party."
Supermarkets are packed with aggressive white supremacists, Esp. Whole Foods. They hassle me all the time cuz of my Hillary button. Hey, she could still win.
Every immigrant to the US should make legal application, and be vetted, interrogated, and given probationary status. That's normal everywhere. Basically, a would-be immigrant is applying for membership.
In socialism's 1930s heyday cadres were exhorted to bear on their shoulders the task of murder, genocide, deceit etc -- so that the masses might be happy in their simple hopes for a Worker's Paradise. The ones in the know knew the earthly paradise would never come. The Grand Inquisitor wore Chekist uniform but his function was otherwise the same. In 2016 the Inquisitors no longer shoot people but they still kept the secret. The reason the liberal project will never perform an autopsy on itself is because that would reveal there's no there there. It's the pretend that counts. The big secret the Left never wants to face is there's no "arc of history" they control.
Still there are always enough people who would rather be ruled by Grand Inquisitors than bear the burden of freedom; enough to keep a leftist project alive indefinitely. Life in a community is simple. And perhaps they are on the correct side after all. There may be nothing beyond the Big Crunch and the Big Pretend. So let's pretend.
I have never met a lib who could tell me when the Progressive Project of government expansion could be considered completed
I did vote for him, but not a big fan. Yes, he is a player, he is a big-shot New Yorker and he wasn't born yesterday. However things go, when he is old he'll be able to sing this. Sheesh, what a song. Everybody might wish to own this tune, including me:
Contra Hegel, MLK, and Obama, there is no mystic "arc of history" bending in any beautiful direction on this planet. It's a lovely myth. If anything, it seems to me that there is a gravitational pull towards authoritarian power. Darwinian, in other words, Lord of the Flies.
As I see it, the "Left" tends authoritarian in its impulses. The part of the "Right" that I identify with as an American tends towards individual freedom from power, but few talk about that anymore except at the margins (eg pot smoking and job licensing).
Really, now it's all about what government power can do for/to me or can do for/to you. Leviathan won as if so often does. Gravity. Not just in the US, but all over.
Intimidation tactics will not work. Still, they should attack the Trump voters instead of Trump himself. Blame the people - roughly half the voters - not The Donald. Blame me. Donald just offered people a choice. Not his fault. Choice is good.
We mortals are not worthy of Hillary. "Hillary didn't fail us, we failed her," asserted a writer for the Guardian. The press, and by extension the rest of us, "crucified her," claimed someone at Bustle. We always do that to messiahs, assholes that we are.
Sheesh. "Obama and Angela Merkel Blame Internet and Social Media for Disrupting Globalism." I guess our moral and intellectual superiors don't like us having too much information.
Both Brexit and Trump were manifestations of cascading failures of the governing elites of the Western world, who pushed too hard for universalistic values and grew fundamentally disconnected from their populations. Saving liberalism will require elite introspection and a deeper understanding of our current crisis of governance. Self-satisfied assurances that anti-establishment voters are clueless—that they didn’t understand the significance of their vote and will now change their minds, or that they could be educated if social media sites simply promoted the right news outlets—are borderline suicidal.
Trump succeeded in doing something Republican strategists and campaign geniuses have failed to do since 1932: smack down an ideologically hostile press.
So the Democrats have pulled out their old reliable, the race card. Which causes me to wonder: has the race card ever actually worked? The Democrats obviously think that false accusations of racism are political dynamite, but if that were true, why don’t they win more elections?
It's just an all-purpose smear, same as "He's a poopy-face."
Is it any wonder, then, that the pragmatic and commonsense Americans, along with those whose consciences and religious freedoms were constantly violated, revolted at last? Is it any wonder that when an elite few invent a world without any relationship to reality, the rest of unconverted society refuses to accommodate itself to their confabulist insanities? Is it any wonder that honest Americans saw, as did the late theologian John Webster, that “The lie can be kept intact only if anything which threatens to expose it is destroyed?” Is it any wonder that the mere mortals among us have seen that the progressive gods are mad, and that their insistence that we retrofit our existence and all of society to accommodate their insane demands was a potentially fatal assault on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Think
federal policy matters? Here’s why conservatives have a
once-in-a-lifetime legislative opportunity at the state level - See
more at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/11/think-federal-policy-matters-conservatives-have-a-once-in-a-lifetime-legislative-opportunity#sthash.WffBKmgm.dpuf
Calling modern Progressives “the Left” turns history on its head. Progressives are the champions of privilege and advocate what amounts to the return of active and passive citizenship. They and their attendants will be the active citizens while the rest of us, including whoever happens to wander in from who knows where, will be the passive citizens. The only difference is the 18th century aristocrats were honest about what they wanted. The modern aristocrat prefers to lie about his intentions.
I am sorry that I forget which commentator observed that US voters have now elected the fourth Republican Hitler in his or her adult life. The Hitlers keep coming, yet somehow we muddle along.
Matt Yglesias may be too young to relax about the latest American Hitler. Reading this, definitely.
I am certain about two things only: There is no new Hitler, and the Federal government will expand.
Trump made gains among blacks. He made gains among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.
The Left’s trivialization of the charge of racism only made it easier for Trump to win. Previous GOP candidates lived in dread fear of the media’s PC mau-mauing. Trump didn’t and ended up getting a higher percentage of the Black and Hispanic vote than Romney. While Hillary wrote off half the country as a basket of deplorables, Trump turned up in inner cities. Obama and other Hillary surrogates mocked him for his “Make America Great Again” slogan, but next to the “God damn America”-style multiculturalism of the Left, Trump’s simple nationalism looked less scary than sane.
I received a bit of pushback yesterday from my post on wars but I am not changing my view yet. Looking for fights is neither Conservative nor patriotic. Bellicosity is just foolish and weak.
Look at it this way: From Russia's standpoint, NATO (ie mainly the US) seems like a threat. a threat in their backyard. I feel NATO is an obsolete remnant of the Cold War. Leave it. There is no Soviet Union. The Ukraine, historically part of Russia, is of no national interest for the US. Major powers want their spheres of influence and power, and tend to be a little paranoid and bullying. Russia and China included. Yes, it all seems stupid in the modern world where economics rule. However, those are not America's issues. They do not wish to invade the US, for heaven's sake.
Except for Israel, the Middle East is a God-forsaken s-hole. Despite 9-11, I refuse to be intimidated by those backward lunatics. This is their extended Dark Ages, and nobody can pull them out of that. Bush's and Hillary's wars and interventions were wrong, in retrospect. In the ME, whatever you do is wrong. What could be more obvious? Nuke ISIS, but there will be another one popping up a week later. Evil perseveres.
Life sucks for many people on the planet, but we can't fix that. We are not God and we often make well-intentioned mistakes. We must count our blessings.
Contrary views welcome, as always. No Thought Police here but personal insults are not arguments and good manners are always appreciated.
Where do all of these spineless candy-ass university administrators come from? Are they as immature and babyish as the students, or are they just afraid of the Stalinist Thought Police? This is refreshing:
Depending on how you define it, "American interests" deserving of military force or threats thereof can be construed to involve everywhere on earth. However, we have just elected a guy with far less warlike or quasi-imperialist tendencies than the John Boltons, the Bushies, the Neocons, and Hillary. That's good. Governments often look for enemies for their own purposes.
Just because countries like pathetic Russia or growing but still adolescent China want to play geopolitics does not make them enemies or even adversaries. America today has no credible enemies but, as always there are plenty of bad actors and nasty talkers in the world. There always are and always will be.
The world is not America's sandbox. In my view, Europe can take care of itself. NATO is obsolete. If China wants to be a tough guy in south Asia, it's fine with me. It's not critical to the US. The middle east will be a mess for another 100 years unless the Ottoman Empire is restored. Of course America should be militarily competent - Always Be Prepared.
Trump does have a chance to do some of this if it is the priority.
For all the awfulness associated with Trump, his election stemmed from a disinclination among Americans to accept their place in the new technocratic order. Trump is best praised for some of the enemies he has made—movie stars and hierarchs of the environmental left, the racial grievance industry, the high-tech oligarchs, the bureaucracy and a university system that serves largely as a giant re-education camp. Not surprisingly, those enemies are having a collective fit about his victory.
All this about the popular vote is nonsense. Clearly, if the rule of the game were popular vote instead of electoral college, national election campaigns would be planned entirely differently.
As it is now, candidates must appeal to broad sectors of the country and to a broad geography instead of just to the largest urban areas. The electoral college, like the Senate, gives some importance to states with differing interests or without large urban centers. That was part of the deal. Our republic was designed with many systems to prevent majorities from overpowering the rest.
The Federal
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