While I both appreciate and respect Richard's posts, I remind him that
whether we happen to be in the majority or the minority at any given
moment, nonetheless, we are all living in a very flawed System. All
major political Parties are joined at the wallet. While I certainly
do not look for any improvements for the working class under Trump, I
never expected much once Obama took office and began backing away from
some of his basic promises. I think the turning point for me was when
Obama kicked his long-time pastor, and the God Father of his
Daughters, under the bus.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/12/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well Richard, it was in a few swing states if, in fact, the machines were
working correctly and the rules weren't preventing certain groups of people
from voting, that the Trump voters were in the majority. But if you look at
the country as a whole, or at all of the people who chose to vote in the
country as a whole, Hillary won by between 2 and 3 million votes. And when
we look at the congress and the state houses, remember that the Republicans
have been arranging voting districts so that they will have majorities. If
the voting districts were properly laid out, we might have a very different
story in terms of majorities. I'm sure we all remember that in 2000, Bush
won the election because his brother was Governor of Florida and he and the
person in charge of elections did not handle the votes equitably and the
Supreme Court with a Republican majority, handed the vote to Bush. Now in
2016, Republican judges in Pennsylvania and Michigan stopped the vote
count.
In Scott Walker's Wisconsin, each district is handling the recount
differently. There's no mandate for Trump now and there was none for Bush
in
2000.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Driscoll
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2016 7:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Demagogue-in-Chief
Miriam:
On this list I may be a loner. However in the general public it would seem
that I have a great deal of companionship. I am also more or less of the
opinion that a goodly number of us are not in the billionaire and
millionaire classifications. Who knows maybe the Koch Brothers are
fallible!
Richard
On 12/12/2016 4:26 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Richard,billionaires.
You're probably the only person on this list who doesn't think that
Trump's election is a disaster for everyone in the country, aside from
Even your friends the Koch brothers, don't like him much.society.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard
Driscoll
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2016 1:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Demagogue-in-Chief
All:
Oh my goodness.
I did not know the facts(?) as presented herein. I guess that the
good old USA is soon to be SOL and way up t he creek with not paddles.
Richard
On 12/12/2016 5:53 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Truthdigoutrageous. All love, devotion and allegiance will be to Trump.
Demagogue-in-Chief
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/demagogue-in-chief_20161211/
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Posted on Dec 11, 2016
By Chris Hedges
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
For Donald Trump, the presidency will be a vast stage for
accommodating his megalomania and insatiable appetite for money.
Those who mock, defy or anger him will feel the wrath of the state.
Those who are not obsequious will be cast aside. He will invest most
of his energy in his brand. Self-promotion is the only real talent he
possesses. Corruption, already rife within the political system, will
explode into a full-blown kleptocracy. Manufactured stories about
Trump's prowess, brilliance, sexual allure and goodness, as well as
how America is becoming "great again," will be pumped out by the
White House smoke machine. He will demand encomiums that will become
ever more
Trump is the sick expression of a dysfunctional political system andcommon good.
mass culture that celebrate the most depraved aspects of human
nature-greed, a lust for power, a thirst for adulation and celebrity,
a penchant for the manipulation of others, dishonesty, a lack of
remorse and a frightening pathology in which reality is ignored. He
is the product of our escapist world of constant entertainment. He
embodies the mutation of values in American society that has
culminated in an enormous cult of the self and the abandonment of the
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia," wrote Neil Postman
(http://neilpostman.org/) , "when cultural life is redefined as a
perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation
becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an
audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds
itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility."
Demagogues-insecure and crippled by an unbridled narcissism and
seldom of high intelligence-play to the inverted values of a decayed
she said.They attack all who do not kneel before the idol of "the greatwill be dangerous.
leader." "Saturday Night Live" can continue to go after Trump
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/1
1
/20/fa
ke-donald-trump-returns-to-snl-and-the-real-one-is-not-happy/?utm_ter
m
=.7ed9
4d79d476 ) , but Trump, as president, will use every tool in his
arsenal, no matter how devious, to banish such public ridicule. He
will seek to domesticate the press and critics first through the
awarding of special privileges, flattery, gifts and access. Those who
cannot be bought off will be destroyed. His petulant, childish
taunts, given authority by the machinery of the security and
surveillance state,
Trump's fight with the Fox News host Megyn Kelly illustrates his
vindictiveness. Kelly, who was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes when
Ailes was Fox News chief, questioned Trump on her television program
about allegations of rape made by Trump's first wife, Ivana. Ivana
Trump later recanted the allegations, although she had provided
graphic details of the rape in a signed deposition during divorce
proceedings. Trump was furious with Kelly for raising the matter.
In an interview by Terry Gross
(http://kdlg.org/post/megyn-kelly-trump-and-media-were-dangerous-phas
e -right -now ) on "Fresh Air" that was posted last week, Kelly said
that for months Trump attempted "to woo me-not romantically, but
just, you know, into favorable coverage." Trump demanded that she
phone him, Kelly said, and she did so. There was a moment in that
telephone conversation when he realized he had failed to persuade her,
interview."He became very angry. He told me I was a disgrace, that I ought to
be ashamed of myself, and that's when he said, 'I almost unleashed my
beautiful twitter account against you and I still may.' "
The conflict between the two exploded after the first Republican
primary debate, in August of 2015, in which Kelly asked Trump about
his derogatory comments about women.
Kelly was savagely attacked by Trump for nine months after the
debate, including repeatedly on Trump's "beautiful twitter account."
The attacks ended when Kelly went to Trump Tower to film what she
called "a softer focus interview" with Trump but which in journalism
slang is called a "puff piece," one that flatters the subject of the
self-created edifice of their own glory.on me."
Kelly told Gross that the attacks by Trump "unleashed a chaos in my
life unlike any I have ever experienced."
"I was receiving death threats regularly, serious death threat
against me, against my family," she said. "Strange men showed up at
my apartment building demanding to see me in a threatening manner.
People started casing my home. Photographers were found on my
property. I don't know if they were private investigators or what
they were, but people started digging into my past, bothering my
mother, bothering my closest friends, bothering my high school
friends, trying to dig up dirt
"The c-word was in thousands of tweets directed at me," she said.after you,"
"Lots of threats to beat the hell out of me, to rape me, honestly the
ugliest things you can imagine."
"The thing I was most worried about-I have a seven, a five and a
three-year-old-and I was worried I would be walking down the street
with my kids and somebody would do something to me in front of them,
that they would see me get punched in the face, or get hurt."
Kelly said the "crescendo of anger" sent "my life into lockdown."
When Gross asked Kelly about the "alt-right" figures gathered around
Trump, including Steve Bannon, Kelly was unequivocal. "They will come
she said. "They will target you. And they will be relentless about it."
Ridicule especially antagonizes the demagogue. It deflates the
pretentious and the powerful. It reduces to human size those puffed
up by their self-importance. It exposes them for who they are. It
affirms the self-respect and dignity of the oppressed. Demagogues,
lacking the capacity for self-transcendence, cannot see the
ludicrousness and absurdity of their pretensions. They cannot
distinguish between their inner fantasies and reality. They can
belittle and ridicule others, as Trump does, with great cruelty, but
they see nothing humorous about similar treatment directed at the
parade.rule.
"There are people who tell jokes," goes a joke illustrating the
morbid humor prevalent among the populace in East Germany during the
communist
"There are people who collect jokes and tell jokes. And there areexhibited by Trump.
people who collect people who tell jokes."
I have covered numerous demagogues as a foreign correspondent,
including the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Panamanian
dictator Manuel Noriega, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the
Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and the Syrian dictator Hafez Assad
of Syria, as well as Erich Honecker of the former East Germany,
Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. They
had different idiosyncrasies and styles. Gadhafi and Ceausescu loved
the spectacle and pomp that come with power. Milosevic and Assad
spent long periods out of the spotlight. But all had patterns of
behavior
Bertolt Brecht (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bertolt-Brecht ;)prologue:
's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" provides the blueprint for how
demagogues work. It is the story of a Chicago mobster cornering the
cauliflower market in 1930s Chicago through threats, blackmail and
coercion. It is also a thinly disguised allegory for the rise of
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The Barker, who opens the play, lays it
out in the
Trump's misogyny is well documented.
Ladies and gentlemen, we present today,
The great historical gangster-play!
Learn all bout blackmail and framing! Further:
How to succeed in big business through murder.
Demagogues expend great energy marginalizing, censoring and silencing
all critics, something the corporate state has already done to
dissidents such as Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader. They use the media,
especially the airwaves, as a vast public relations department to
amplify their lies and promote their personality cults. They destroy
cultural and education institutions, replacing them with rote
vocational training, nationalist kitsch and tawdry entertainment.
They elevate members of their family, sect, tribe or clan to the
inner circles of power. (Trump's tribe, of course, is the billionaire
class.) They put generals in key positions. Those in the military
appeal to demagogues because they are not trained to think but to be
obedient. The military also does not shrink from violence. The
demagogue and the inner circle grow fabulously rich by pillaging the
state. They live in private inner sanctums of opulence and depravity
that resemble Versailles or the Forbidden City
(http://www.chinahighlights.com/beijing/forbidden-city/ ;) . They
banish anyone in the court who tells them unpleasant truths. They
read into the most benign acts wild conspiracies. They often sexually
assault girls and women. Hussein and Gadhafi were notorious rapists.
Demagogues foolishly see the elaborately staged public events helddecisions based on hallucinations.
for them as proof that a populace loves and respects them. And in the
final, decrepit stages of their rule they became grotesque parodies
of themselves. The sycophants around them, profiting from the orgy of
corruption, feed their gargantuan self-delusion. The demagogues,
believing they are divinely inspired geniuses and omnipotent, make
When a demagogue reaches that stage, society can be obliterated.it "the eighth wonder of the world."
Demagogues usually seek to immortalize their grandeur in huge
building projects that are monuments to their immortality. Saddam
Hussein sought to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon. He constructed
a replica of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II on the ruins of the
original, embossing his name, like Nebuchadnezzar II, on many of the
bricks. Gadhafi built the largest irrigation system in existence,
calling
Ceausescu, whose birthday was a national holiday, constructed a
massive palace, The People's House, at a cost of $1.75 billion in
Bucharest. He conscripted as many as 100,000 workers for the project.
There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, who died from accidents
during the construction. The palace, which is the second largest
building in the world, after the Pentagon, has 3,500 tons of crystal
and 1 million cubic meters of marble. It was two-thirds finished in
December 1989 when the regime was overthrown. In a visit to the
national museum that winter, I found it filled with idealized
portraits and busts of Ceausescu. Rooms were devoted to hagiographic
accounts of his mythical life story. Building projects and image
creation of this kind make Trump-who has decorated his residence in
Trump Tower
(http://www.idesignarch.com/inside-donald-and-melania-trumps-manhatta
n
-apart
ment-mansion/) as if he were Louis XIV, the Sun King-salivate.
Demagogues foster the psychosis of permanent war, which often leads
to actual war. The psychosis of permanent war becomes a tool to
abolish civil liberties and condemn dissent as treason. Huge
expenditures go into the military, which demagogues see as an
extension of their personal power, while the rest of the country
decays. There is nothing a demagogue loves more than a big military
rule.
The story of demagogues is as old as civilization. They have risen
and fallen like the tides, always leaving in their wake misery,
destruction and death. They exploit the frustrations and anger
generated by a decayed society. They make fantastic promises they
never keep. They demonize the vulnerable as scapegoats. They preach
hatred and violence. They demand godlike worship. They consume those
they
Demagogue-in-Chief
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