America already hates him or her, and we haven’t even had the election yet.
Well, they should. They’re both terrible.
A system that produces nominees like this is dysfunctional. But will anybody do anything?
It seems like it just gets worse every cycle.
“…but the media really is treating him unfairly.”
Yes. Unfortunately, he keeps providing them with ammunition, giving them an illegitimate excuse to ignore Hillary’s actual scandals and crimes. He’s a political disaster. As I expected him to be.
[Update a while later]
Found missing link.
…are worse than robber barons.
Yes. Yes they are.
…are about to get awesome.
This seems like what I probably need. My Gateway laptop is impossible to use on a plane unless I’m in first class (which I rarely am), and it’s getting a little long in the tooth, with some keys starting to fail. It also tends to hang after a while in Fedora 23. So if I can replace it with something with a touchscreen and separate keyboard, compatible with my Android phone, that’s probably the way to go now.
…are those who think that “people of color” can’t make it on their own. Because that’s, you know, “progressive” thinking, and always has been.
Let them in the debates: “Our third parties are fielding credible candidates as Democratic and Republican parties give us shady characters.”
“Shady characters” is being kind.
I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m glad that it exposes young people who’ve been taught a false history (or little history at all) of the Clinton crime syndicate, and the vile racist nature of the Democrat Party, going back to its founding and continuing through today. But the Republicans have their own issues, and the notion that it’s unpatriotic to not be one is nonsense.
What’s with the post-modern emphasis on it?
As noted, it provides an excuse to redistribute from those who have “won life’s lottery” (as Dick Gephardt once put it), to those less “fortunate,” who then can purchase steaks on food stamps from a hard-working sales clerk who has to get by on hamburger, or worse.
It’s worth noting that there are some fields in which a lot of luck is involved, because the supply of “talent” (such as it is) vastly exceeds demand (e.g., Hollywood). When you see a family of actors (e.g., the Baldwins or Afflecks), it’s because once one of them is in, they then have the connections to bring in the others. And they know it. The guilt they feel knowing that they lucked out while others equally talented didn’t make it probably drives a lot of their “liberal” (which isn’t really; it’s leftist) guilt.
What do they have in common with Rob Ford?
I think this is right. I wish very much that I didn’t think this is right:
…for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.
At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a minor European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.
Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.
That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unravelled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving. See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.
But at the time people don’t realise they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:
1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future
2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally
3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views
Trump is doing this in America.
Yup. Read the whole thing, despite how depressing it is.
It is similar to people who think that the climate is going crazy, because they didn’t live through the 30s, or the 50s. Let alone times farther past.
…is far from libertarian:
The Federation isn’t just socialist in the hyperbolic sense in which some conservatives like to denounce anyone to the left of them as socialist. It’s socialist in the literal sense that the government has near-total control over the economy and the means of production. Especially by the period portrayed in The Next Generation, the government seems to control all major economic enterprises, and there do not seem to be any significant private businesses controlled by humans in Federation territory. Star Fleet characters, such as Captain Picard, boast that the Federation has no currency and that humans are no longer motivated by material gain and do not engage in capitalist economic transactions.
The supposed evils of free markets are exemplified by the Ferengi, an alien race who exemplify all the stereotypes socialists typically associate with “evil capitalists.” The Ferengi are unrelentingly greedy and exploitative. Their love of profit seems to be exceeded only by their sexism—they do not let females work outside the household, even when it would increase their profits to do so.
The problem here is not just that Star Trek embraces socialism: it’s that it does so without giving any serious consideration to the issue. For example, real-world socialist states have almost always resulted in poverty and massive political oppression, piling up body counts in the tens of millions.
But Star Trek gives no hint that this might be a danger, or any explanation of how the Federation avoided it. Unlike on many other issues, where the producers of the series recognize that there are multiple legitimate perspectives on a political issue, they seem almost totally oblivious to the downsides of socialism.
You don’t say. That episode TNG did on cryonics was extremely off putting to me.