The perfect storm is here.

"The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience, the stupid
by necessity, and the brutes by instinct".  Cicero

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. Peter Drucker

The perfect storm is here.  Republicans now have the house, the senate, the executive and most likely the judicial.  As a friend said, “we are fucked”.   Of course Republicans feel vindicated.  Why it happened is what most pundits are hashing out.  It seems not enough blacks voted, white non college educated blue collar workers, traditionally democrat voters, voted for Trump.  More women shifted right than was expected the Russian’s release of emails to wiki leaks, and of course the collusion of the FBI, and of course there is more.

Why has it happened? A false perception of the truth; lies by Fox news and the great flimflam man Trump, and false innuendo of high crimes and misdemeanors by Hillary Clinton.  The result is that the American people put a man into the White House that is totally unfit for the job.  Not only is he unfit for the job he is unqualified for the job, not in the legal sense, but in temperament, knowledge and intellect.

We will have a man in the White House that cannot speak in complex sentences that demonstrates a depth of critical and analytical thinking.  In essence we have elected a 5 year old petulant thin skinned baby to the presidency.  We have gone from President Obama, an intellectual and scholar to a businessman, whose questionable business practices are known to be suspect.   

Trump whose campaign was based on racism, bigotry, misogyny, lies and prejudice was a candidate that the voters should have repudiated but surprisingly they didn’t.   He will not bring our country back together again, it will need a man or woman of character to do that, he has none.  Those steel town jobs he is going to bring back are gone forever.  If those industries came back they would only bring back a tenth of those jobs as the industry has changed and become modernized.  The same goes for those West Virginia coal mines.

The Republicans will use him to attack and gut health care, Medicare, Social Security, Education, the Environment, the EPA and they will stop any federal minimum wage proposals.  Pensions, unions, freedom of the press and freedom of speech will come under assault from the GOP.  When this is over we will be a poorer country and the rich will be far richer and the poor and middle class will be far poorer.  We will end up with the financial disparity of a banana republic.  Our allies abroad are frightened by an unpredictable and unprincipled stupid man in the White House.   Our enemies in Russia are gloating, they now will have their proxy in the White House. 

What can we do? A lot of liberals are now going out and buying guns.  Possibly a good idea if the economy crashes and law and order breaks down.  It is something to consider.  What we must do is be vigilant, and hold his feet to the fire.  Write, comment, call him out on everything he does, says, or tweets.  He is not popular; he did not win by a landslide.  He won with a minority of the voters. Hillary won the popular vote by close to 3 million votes.  When he fails to do what he said he would, and he will, and the rising tide dissatisfaction becomes apparent we can then begin to work for future without Trump and the GOP in charge, but only if we are vigilant and only if there is enough time.  We live in dangerous times. 

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John Stewart on Trump the media and the GOP.

Quote: Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. Edmund Burke


“Here is the real political incorrectness if they really want to be truthful: the problems in this country are not caused by Mexicans and Muslims. If they want to confront the problem in this country, it’s you have one party in America, whose sole purpose is to freeze the government, and to not fix any of the problems that are associated with it. They have a great game going: government sucks and can’t get the job done. And then they can sit as an impediment to that government, and point to their destruction, as evidence of their thesis. It’s a great tautology. Whatever you want to say about the Democrats, maybe they’re feckless, maybe they focus too much on identity politics, or they’re not fiscally responsible, at least they’re f***ing trying.”

The whole story.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2016/05/12/jon-stewart-gives-his-post-retirement-take-on-the-media-trump-clinton-and-congress/#6e80051e3c29





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Salon slams the GOP

Salon magazine calls out the GOP on what they really are in clear and concise terms that anyone can understand.  

Salon Magazine sums up the current GOP as follows:

The GOP tends to preach and practice intolerance, xenophobia, nationalism and anti-democratic values (i.e., voter suppression). In many ways, the GOP is anti-enlightenment, and embraces passion over reason. The dangerous denial of climate change and other scientific facts seems to come out of the corrupt alliance of anti-intellectual traditionalism and corporate influence (i.e., oil and gas).

Now, the fact of the matter is that fascism died in the mid-20th century. The GOP are obviously not fascists, but they share a family resemblance. As stated above, the base have many similar passions — traditionalism, nationalism, intolerance towards immigrants or minorities. They react with hostility towards the social progress of others and largely believe in a ‘survival of the fittest’ ideology.

Giovanni Gentile, the “philosopher of fascism” and ghostwriter for Mussolini, said of the definition of fascism in the Encyclopedia of Italiana: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” This definition may very well fit the GOP ideology: a kind of corporate fascism, where large corporations have the ultimate power; where the politicians spew a hateful, intolerant ideology based on “traditional” values, on a platform funded by corporate interests, elected by the people to serve those very corporate interests; and deny environmental degradation because it would be unprofitable for the funders to do anything about it, using the anti-intellectual hostility to convince the people that it is nothing more than a left-wing conspiracy.

To read the entire Salon article, click Donald Trump is an actual fascist: What his surging popularity says about the GOP base.

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Nick Hanauer- Inequality and Job Creators. The hypocrisy of the right.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Edmund Burke



This is what the GOP and the top richest Americans don't want the American people to understand.





























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If democracy means more than occasional elections and protection of those rights that are compatible with economic and political elites' interests, Wolin's analysis of our democratic predicament is shocking...

Quote: I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1816, quoted in Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment
 
Democracy Incorporated:
Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
 
Sheldon S. Wolin, 
With a new preface by the author.

Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?

Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level.
Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come.
In a new preface, Wolin describes how the Obama administration, despite promises of change, has left the underlying dynamics of managed democracy intact.                                                                   Princeton Press.

Review:
"[A] comprehensive diagnosis of our failings as a democratic polity by one of our most seasoned and respected political philosophers. . . . Democracy Incorporated is a devastating critique of the contemporary government of the United States--including what has happened to it in recent years and what must be done if it is not to disappear into history along with its classic totalitarian predecessors."--Chalmers Johnson, Truthdig

"[Democracy Incorporated provides] a rare, chilling analysis of intellectual critics of democracy. If democracy means more than occasional elections and protection of those rights that are compatible with economic and political elites' interests, Wolin's analysis of our democratic predicament is shocking, solid, and fundamentally correct."--C. P. Waligorski, Choice

"Sheldon Wolin has produced an ambitious and broad-ranging book that examines the current state of democracy in America. . . . Wolin argues that the unquestioned faith in the virtues of free market capitalism has dramatically narrowed the range of policy options that are on the table when debate turns to resolving the US's ills. . . .[T]his is a trenchant and powerful volume."--Alex Waddan, International Affairs
"Of the many books I've read or skimmed in the past seven years that attempted to get inside the social and political debacles of the present, none has had the chilling clarity and historical discernment of Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy Incorporated. Building on his fifty years as a political theorist and proponent of radical democracy, Wolin here extends his concern with the extinguishing of the political and its replacement by fraudulent simulations of democratic process."--Jonathan Crary, Artforum

"[W]e need to understand the deep roots of our present troubles ourselves and Wolin's book is an excellent beginning."--Toby Grace, Out in Jersey







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