Summary: Politics in the West are changing. We see this in the rising polarization of US politics, the weirdness of campaign 2020 and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe. Here is a status report on the revolution. Its outlines are as yet only barely visible.
Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone.
For the times they are a-changin’.
– “Times They Are A-Changin'” by Bob Dylan (1964).
The 2020 presidential election is a milestone in American history. Both parties appear likely to nominate people who in a normal nation would never get close to the levers of power.
- Trump is an elderly clown.
- Sanders is a radical leftist running in disguise as everybody’s grandfather.
- Warren is a serial liar, running as the delusional elderly woman who thinks she has in her briefcase a simple solution to every problem.
- Biden is a creepy elderly guy with a mind-boggling history of corruption with Ukraine.
- Bloomberg is an elderly rich guy who was mayor of NYC.
- Pete Buttigieg is a small-city mayor.
We have had old presidents (but none so old as Trump). We have had many incompetent presidents, but few in Trump’s league. We have had unqualified presidents, but few in Trump’s league (i.e., Chester Arthur, and three generals). I doubt any president has been as temperamentally unsuited for the job as Trump.
None of these people should become president of a superpower. With 130 million eligible adults (age 35-64), we can do better. But instead we are not just putting America at risk, but also the world. We have a leadership position in the world which we no longer deserve. Slowly the people of the world are realizing that. That insight will change the balance of power in the world. America has descended into Clownworld. I doubt that the rest of the world wants to follow us.
Causes?
So what is causing this descent into weirdness? Perhaps this caused by the strain of US politics twisting as it evolves into a new form. The Liberals are moving radically Left. The Conservatives are moving radically Right. The existing political cast cannot adjust to this earthquake. So we are auditioning replacements from the fringes.
Liberals and Conservatives each see only half the scene. William Lind reports on a similar revolution occurring in Europe, from the conservative’s perspective. Liberals could write a similar story. Only time will tell which tale will prove correct.
“The British Election”
By William Lind.
The most interesting contrast to emerge from the recent British election is not the gap between the winning Conservatives and Labour, who lost badly. It is the difference between the elections of 2017 and 2019.
In 2017, the hapless Mrs. May, then the Conservative Prime Minister, tried the same thing Boris Johnson did this year. She called an election in order to get a solid majority in Parliament so she could make Brexit happen. Instead, the Conservatives lost seats, forcing them into a coalition government and making Brexit impossible. Why did it turn out so differently just two years later?
Mrs. May was an Establishment Conservative, similar to Establishment Republicans here. Her policies were geared toward Globalism and the big businesses such as finance that benefit from Globalism. She played nice at meetings of European leaders, duly parroted the shibboleths of cultural Marxism and had nothing to say to the traditional Labour voters in the north of England.
Boris Johnson, in contrast, is a populist, similar in many ways to President Trump. He was able to appeal to traditional Tory and Labour voters alike. He promised to make decisions and act where Mrs. May had dithered. He played the bull in the European Union’s china shop, taking pleasure in tossing and goring Eurocrats and Establishment European leaders alike. He seemed to care little for Political Correctness, standing instead for “Britain First,” or even “England First,” a point not lost on the Scots (who are massively subsidized by the English). Many English voters who had been Labourites on economic issues were swayed by the cultural message of “let’s keep England English.” As President Trump understands, at least in times of relative prosperity, culture trumps economics.
These factors were, I think, more important in shaping the election’s outcome than were Brexit or Jeremy Corbyn’s neo-Marxism. They represent a broad political movement that is growing throughout the West. More and more Europeans and Americans are rejecting cultural Marxism and all its works, including mass immigration, loser worship and the pretense that race, ethnicity, and culture do not matter. They are proud of their nation’s history, including in England’s case running most of the world for several centuries and doing a rather good job of it, better, certainly, than those who came after them (King George would never have dreamed of taxing Americans as heavily as “their own” government taxes them now).
Establishment parties and politicians are going to have to adjust to the rise of a real Right or be sidelined. In Europe, we see a combination of both. In Germany, the faux-conservative CDU is losing ground, as are the Social Democrats, and the real Right AFD is now the opposition in the Reichstag (as it will be called again when the AFD wins a majority. In France, Monsieur Macron can only envy President Trump’s popularity ratings. Italians are again finding much to admire in the Duce.
What does it all add up to? To the defeat of cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness or “multiculturalism”. Soon, throughout the West, majorities will be handing their governments to parties that reject the self-loathing cultural Marxism demands, the dismissal of proud nations’ history as just tales of “oppression”, the use of government power to put non-Whites and immigrants over native Whites, the flooding of orderly countries with agents of disorder. The cultural Marxists have overreached and are on a ballistic course toward history’s wastebasket. As they perceive that course, they respond by becoming more demanding, more shrill and more absurd. People have seen the man behind the Left’s curtain, Karl Marx, now dressed in failed cultural policies instead of failed economic policies. Their reaction is, “Ptui.”
As the line from Cabaret goes, the future belongs to me.
From TraditionalRight, 20 January. Reposted with his generous permission.
——————————-
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about ways to reform America, and especially these…
- Populism arises amidst American workers abandoned by both Left & Right.
- The Left goes full open borders, changing America forever.
- Visions of America if the Left wins.
- The key insight: the Left hates America and will destroy it.
- The Left can win in 2020 and dominate US politics.
- The middle in American politics has died. Now extremists rule.
- The Left crushes the Right. The counter-revolution will be ugly – There will be a second act.
- The Left crushes the alt-Right, but Darwin might bring them to power.
- Trump promised to rebuild America but did nothing – To the GOP, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
- Campaign 2020 shows who will mold America’s future.
- Two levers to bring the Democrats victory in 2020.
- A candidate can win in 2020 with popular proposals.
- Brexit and Trump began a new era for the West.
Useful books explaining what happened
I have not found a good book explaining what happened to the Left, causing its hatred of America. These are the best I have found, looking at our politics.
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
Mayor Pete has another liability, which apparently can no longer be discussed in polite company.
An then there is that promising free healthcare to illegals which candidates at the first Democrat debate all did. I’m sure that working families, regardless of race, who have crummy insurance with huge deductibles will be just thrilled about illegals not having to pay a single red cent to get care.
One thing you can count on the left to do every election here in the US — promise people ‘freebies’ paid for with their own money. Not that the Right is much better at fiscal responsibility.
MMT is headed our way. Right after the next bust. And boy will it be glorious! At first. Then the inflation will seriously kick in and like Weimar, the dollar will have the impact of ‘ptui’
At least we won’t be alone. Just as we ‘pioneered’ free floating currency, I expect the entire world to engage is such shenanigans right along with us.
Maybe Trump will buy into this if it’s on his watch, maybe not. However the Dems most definitely will as many of their core voting blocks will need to get bailed out and there isn’t enough money to steal from the rich to do so.
The saddest part of all this was it was readily apparent what the ‘end game’ would be back during the Reagan years. Only no one wanted to stop the borrowing, spending and ‘freebies’.
Europe won’t leave socialism behind — it’s in their blood. The US (already fairly socialist in many respects) will end up just as broken and sclerotic as the EU.
I’ll give Trump credit for one thing — he tried. He wanted to stop the needless war machine but was over-run. He wanted to stop illegal immigration but was over-run. He genuinely wanted to put ‘America First’ again, but he was over-run. The people with the TDS are simply too stupid to see that all the things Trump was trying to do were the same as a 1980’s centrist Democrat. Alas, the Dems have moved too far left to be saved now. Too many promises, too many special interests, and way too much money to be made in places like Ukraine.
I’m so glad I grew up when I did. Hopefully the country will hold it together another 25 years or so. I have my doubts.
One common factor I see in a lot of situations is that it is now relatively easy to destroy consensus, which means that people who have superior group discipline are able to dominate. This doesn’t seem to be party cadres so much as people sharing common and animating grievances. What happens when those grievances run out, or if the animus shifts?
SF,
“One common factor I see in a lot of situations is that it is now relatively easy to destroy consensus,”
Why do you believe that?
D,
“Not that the Right is much better at fiscal responsibility.”
The record is quite clear that the Republicans are much worse fiscally than the Democrats. Both Reagan, Bush Jr. and Trump cut taxes for the rich during economic expansions – which is madness, except for those who see the Treasury as something to be plundered. Clinton and Obama both raised taxes during expansions. The right thing to do. Conservatives predicted disaster from this, wrongly (as usual).
“Trump tried…”
That’s what we should expect when we elect someone both ignorant and inexperienced, with a temperment unsuited for the job. We elected him like we choose a float for the parade. Our rulers love it when we elect incompetent figureheads, behind which they can run the nation.
Being pleasant peasants is a choice.
“MMT is headed our way. Right after the next bust. And boy will it be glorious! At first. Then the inflation will seriously kick in and like Weimar, the dollar will have the impact of ‘ptui’”
And it doesn’t take much imagination to see the next step after the inflation kicks in. MMT can only work if the government has the power to pick winners and losers. And the next step after realizing that a command economy cannot create the goods that a free market can (in the expansion phase) is for the government (the “state”) to realize that the unproductive are a burden upon it and a threat to its existence.
The poet said “it is useless to see the future and screech at it,” but it is not useless to be prepared.
Epicur,
“MMT is headed our way.”
I’ve been reading such confident predictions of extreme outcomes for the past 17 years I’ve been publishing. I don’t know their error rate, but my guess would be close to 100%.
The US governing system is designed to fragment power and make such bold measures difficult to implement. Politicians’ bold statements on the campaign trail are an unreliable guide to their actions once in office. As Trump proved, to anyone who hadn’t learned that from the past century of US history.
“The US governing system is designed to fragment power and make such bold measures difficult to implement. ”
True, but the Defense Production Act of 1950, and all the knock-on “Emergency” provisions in a myriad of laws (including and especially the Patriot Act) are designed to bypass that fragmented power – all under the “rule of law.”
All that lacks is the Emergency.
Saying just when the bubble will burst is a fools game, saying that it eventually will, not so much IMO.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=TCMDO,#0
Appending GDP to that chart (linked above) is necessary to grasping its full import, but the site does not carry that forward in a link.
Epicur,
(1) Defense Production Act of 1950
That was passed 70 years ago and has been a staple of right-wing doomsterism since then. While it has been effective at boosting extremists fund-raising and keeping the tribe ignorant, the predictions about its use have a near-100% failure rate.
As I have written so often for so long, fear is the primary tool used by Left and Right to maintain control of their flocks. The near-perfect failure rate of their horrific predictions does not bother these tribes, but should encourage the rest of us to ignore them.
(2) US debt
Another right-wing scare story going back 90 years. Quite bogus. First, private sector debt is historically more dangerous – and has been dropping as a percent of GDP since the 2008 recession.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDDM03USA156NWDB
The US public sector debt (ie, not including debt owed by the government to itself) is 78% – far below the usually 100% level at which it becomes a serious concern (although developed nations have long carried higher levels). The reason for that is that GOP presidents keep giving the rich tax cuts financed by debt – Reagan, Bush Jr. and now Trump. Democratic presidents rationally raise taxes during expansions (fought by Republicans).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYGFGDQ188S
I explained that above to “D”. Others have pointed this out countless times, but extremists (left and right) hear only tribal truths – and are immune to facts and logic.
Mr Lind has got the British election wrong. One hardly knows where to begin to correct the account, so here are a few hints.
1) There is a third party, the Liberal Democrats. Look at what happened to them.
2) Corbyn was poison on the doorstep. If you want to know why, indecisiveness on Brexit, anti-Semitism, links to terrorists and Islamists, and the split between socially liberal young city voters and working class socially conservative town and village voters.
3) Seamus Milne, Andrew Murray, Karie Murphy.
4) The obvious fiscal insanity of the Labour manifesto.
5) People really like Boris Johnson.
6) Luciana Berger and Margaret Hodge.
Fundamentally, given a choice between a personable ‘one nation’ Tory with a sense of humour, and a set of humourless Trotskyites who never met a terrorist they didn’t like, who proposed to nationalize anything that moved… And when the third party was proposing simply to reverse the result of the Brexit referendum….
In the key places that counted they just said no.
This passage is quite wrong:
No, not England first. Never featured in the campaign. No, the reason Blyth and other places voted against Labour was not culture versus economics. It was economics, they didn’t believe any of it. No, it wasn’t ‘lets keep England English’.
It was objection to the EU because of what it is – ossified and authoritarian and corrupt. And they are not like the other EU countries. With the British, you don’t get to tell them, after they have voted, to go away and try again till they come up with the right answer.
My question is why dont any good people run for office? My answer is Because there arent any better. To get ahead in America requires you to sell your soul to party, money, special interests. As well as turn off your brain.
Basically well never get a choice except for the lesser evil.
Larry , I perceive you are not a fan of trump. Would hilary have been better?
Sven,
“My answer is Because there arent any better.”
That’s too absurd to discuss.
“Basically well never get a choice except for the lesser evil.”
Whine to your heart’s content about the items on the menu, considering Americans to be customers at a restaurant. Eventually our rulers will realize that we have no interest in the burdens of citizenship. Then we can complain all day long, and our rulers will pay as much attention as the driver does to the barking of the dogs pulling the sled. That’s the Great Circle of Life.
Or you can get involved, and encourage others, to get involved in putting better people on the ballot.
Did you read the Wikipedia entry for President Chester A. Arthur? He became president after Garfield was assassinated four months into his presidency. Upon leaving office, most people agreed, as written by journalist Alexander McClure, that “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired … more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe.” Due to ill-health, he never ran for a second term. Even Mark Twain heaped praise on Arthur. His bio is the exact opposite of Trump, except for Arthur’s time in NY. I can think of much worse presidents than Arthur. Just in the past 50 years, I think Carter would be on the list of worst presidents (without including his exemplary post-presidency activities).
John,
I was not evaluating how well the president performed in office. That’s an after-the-fact assessment, the kind that we don’t have when voting. We’ve had some awful presidents. My personal vote would go to James Buchanan as the worst.
I was evaluating the qualifications of the people elected to the presidency – as we saw them when voting. Of course, qualifications are not everything. Buchanan, for example, has 43 years experience in public service – both as a representative and high officials.
He wasn’t elected president. He was elected vice president. He only became president upon Garfield’s death. Garfield chose Arthur for his East Coast roots (and votes) just as Obama chose Biden for his age and experience (to counter criticisms Obama was too green for the job–he was). And because the 25th amendment wasn’t adopted until 1967 Arthur had no VP for his roughly 3.7 year term.
John,
You are totally missing the point. It was an illustration, comparing current candidates with past ones. That’s all.
The current political system is radically different than in 1880. For one thing, the candidates were chosen entirely by political machines.
Larry:”
1.
Trump is an elderly clown.
Sanders is a radical leftist running in disguise as everybody’s grandfather.
Warren is a serial liar, running as the delusional elderly woman who thinks she has in her briefcase a simple solution to every problem.
Biden is a creepy elderly guy with a mind-boggling history of corruption with Ukraine.
Bloomberg is an elderly rich guy who was mayor of NYC.
Pete Buttigieg is a small-city mayor.
…
2. I doubt any president has been as temperamentally unsuited for the job as Trump.
None of these people should become president of a superpower. With 130 million eligible adults (age 35-64), we can do better. But instead we are not just putting America at risk, but also the world. We have a leadership position in the world which we no longer deserve.
…
3. I doubt that the rest of the world wants to follow us.”
Re: Comment 1: I’m going to rephrase your statement, working solely working from identifiable facts shown in the campaign (things are worse than you state):
– Trump is elderly and has shown exceedingly erratic behavior and might be suffering from dementia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia#Signs_and_symptoms
– Sanders is an elderly autocratic radical leftist who has shown major health problems
– Warren is elderly and continually offers different solutions to the same problems and does not seem to recognize major gaps or weaknesses in all of her solutions when she proposes them
– Biden is very elderly with a long history of gaffes, misstatements, and poor judgement
– Bloomberg is an elderly rich guy who was mayor of NYC and seems to be attempting to buy the election using advertising
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-trump-advertising.html
– Pete Buttigieg is a very intelligent, well-educated, ambitious, charismatic, very young, small-city mayor with REMARKABLY little experience in government, especially the messy sausage-making parts that are critical to being President.
Re: Comment 2: Agreed completely
Re Comment 3: Regarding desire, agreed. But they seem to be accelerating past us into Clownworld. Your article on Brexit is a good, although painfully incomplete, example. So is the behavior of the Indian Prime Minister in favoring Hindus in that very complex country.
The strange evolution of Justin Trudeau and the increasingly autocratic behavior of the French and German governments is also worrying.
I conclude with Yeats and a shudder.
https://poets.org/poem/second-coming
For all of Trump’s tweets and “temperament issues” he is the one President resisting the pressure to send more troops.
He is unconventional but very effective.
Really, DeepThought? Trump is sending 3,500 lightly equipped soldiers to an area of the Middle East that we have deeply offended (even enraged) with previous actions.
It makes me sick to think about it. This is the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” taken to an extreme measure and we will pay in blood and treasure. The worst of it is that it is so unnecessary.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/us-to-deploy-more-troops-to-the-middle-east-after-iranian-gen-soleimani-killed.html
Deep Thought,
“He is unconventional but very effective.”
Trump has accomplished almost none of his major campaign promises. Certainly not that.
Troops remain in Afghanistan. We have more in Iraq than when Trump took office (until they’re kicked out). With the Russian’s help, the Syrian government has won. Africom continues to expand. It’s the farm team for our future wars, much as a decade of work laid the foundation for our present wars.
Most important, Trump is pushing hard for war with Iran. Your statement is the equivalent folly to Obama’s Peace Prize. It’s a wonderful example of tribal thinking, divorced from reality.
“So what is causing this descent into weirdness? Perhaps this is caused by the strain of U.S. politics twisting as it evolves into new form.”
Part of this new form seems, to me, to be structural in nature.
The interdependence of market/finance and the state seems to have grown tighter than ever before–with our Central Bank (The Federal Reserve), evolving into a type of fourth power (with increased autonomy and authority) often overshadowing executive, legislative and judicial bodies as well as integrating more and more tightly financial market mechanisms into the practice of government as well as deep State foreign policy.
In addition, on a cultural level, we are seeing liberalism evolve (for complex reasons) into a type of absolutism centered on a type of hysterical identity politics that will fit nicely into a more and more centralized and interdependent structure of power.
James,
“with our Central Bank (The Federal Reserve), evolving into a type of fourth power (with increased autonomy and authority) often overshadowing executive, legislative and judicial bodies”
Examples, please. I don’t see anything remotely like that.
I can not comment on the US in inside the country, being British and living in Australia, so outside view only.
From the outside imagine Trump wanted more sanctions on Iran, but needed an excuse to put them on, he also had a list of several people he wanted to killed as they were threats to the US (real or perceived I am avoiding any right or wrong).
1, Kills a General seen as a threat 2. limit retaliation back (but a few killed is like sacrificing a pawn to get a knight or castle – sad but true) 3. puts on the sanctions he wanted and eliminates a key opponent.
Could he write a 1st class essay about it, like Clinton or Obama, no he hasn’t the book learning, could he pull off a strategy like the above, yes.
Just a Guy,
By now we know a lot about Trump – and it strongly implies that Trump had nothing so coherent in mind. His handlers are war-mongering neocons, who have wanted a war with Iran for decades. The saner voices have been driven out by Trump. They fed him information that got his ignorant and emotional mind excited, so he took action.
He or his handlers were very smart or very lucky.
In Asia a lot of people see Trump as the first president to stand up to China for a long time and since many factories are leaving China and coming to them they have the cash to increase defense spending, after the US ASEAN drills, on US equipment.
Imports from these countries will be even cheaper than Chinese goods in many cases as unit labor costs are lower. Have the goods and a lower deficit.
I teach International Students and over the last two years I have seen how a lot more non Chinese say to the Chinese OUR PART OF THE SOUTH SEA, heads down with Obama or Bush. Again it could all be his handlers
I thought the way it works was if a sitting President didn’t keep his campaign promises, both intellectuals and deplorables would be all over him. Instead of talking about him and sniveling about it.
You have a lot of power here Mr. Kummer, best you use it. He hangs out on twitter all the time, as we all know.
Ron,
“if a sitting President didn’t keep his campaign promises,”
It’s been a long time since presidents paid much attention to their campaign promises. In 1932, FDR ran on a fiscal austerity platform – to the right of Hoover. In 1940 he ran on a “keep us out of the war” platform, while he was planning to get us in. In 1964 LBJ ran as the peace president while his team was planning to escalate the Vietnam War. Etc, etc.
Larry,
“It’s been a long time since presidents paid much attention to their campaign promises.”
Nixon did, remember how? Look what happened to him, we lived it.
Ron,
“Nixon did, remember how”
No, I don’t. Nixon took us the gold standard, infuriating this right-wing fans. He lied in 1968 about his plan to end the war. I could go on – it’s a long list.
It strikes me that in our recent financial crisis ( beginning in the autumn of 2007) when private banks/insurance companie like AIG/ and investment houses. (both domestically and internationally) along with the asset backed commercial paper market, repo lending, the market for mortgage-backed securities, money market mutual funds as well as international currency swaps–U.S. financial and political elites appeared to use our Central bank as a type of executive boardroom for the State–declaring, in effect, a type of state of emergency with huge public funds suddenly becoming available to exclusive circles of private bankers, their organizations as well as shadow banking markets. Through the Federal Reserve these individuals made command type decisions, of some questionable legality, Such a Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion was in essence an emergency replacement of lost private sector balance sheet capacity by the public sector with the interrelationship between our central bank and the financial markets being nakedly revealed.
What appeared, however, to be the greatest legal overreach were the international currency swap lines created and initated by our U.S. Federal Reserve Bank..
“It lent to the ECB. the Bank of England, the national Bank of Switzerland and the central banks of Scandinava. They then channeled the precious dollar liquidity to the European megabanks at one remove… By 2011 total lending and repayment under the terms of the swap facility came to $10 trillion at varying lengths of maturity…Prior to the crisis the transatlantic offshore dollar system had lacked a manifest center of leadership..after 2008 it was openly organized around the Fed and its liquidity .provision,,,,As one European central banker remarked–we became the thirteenth Federal Reserve district….But if that was the case, the American public was not informed about the extension of their country’s monetary territory…not the least remarkable thing about the Fed’s response was its politics or rather the lack of explicit political legitimation…The emergency liquidity provision to the international economy by the Fed between 2007 and 2009 was shrouded in as much obscurity as possible….The scale of lending to foreign banks was a closely guarded secret even by the always secretive Fed. During the panic, this information was closely held–and had it been known, publicly, so potentially explosive–that only 2 people,each of the dozen reserve banks were allowed access to it. (Adam Tooze (Crashed) pp. 204-214).
James,
Wow. Solid weirdness. Crisis management has been the primary role of Central Banks since the mid-19th century. I doubt anyone in Congress or the White House had any interest in stopping the Fed.
Right-wing kooks would have had the world in a 1930s collapse if they had been in power, implementing their nutty theories. Fortunately for America and the world, they were not.
Tuomas Malinen Ph.d in interesting on crisis, thinks it is unstoppable now.
Has a more academic argument, though.
Just a Guy,
These economic doomsters are a dime a dozen. They are always out there, and almost always wrong. The extraordinary aspect of this business niche is that anyone pays attention to them.
Just a Guy,
“Has a more academic argument, though.”
I’ve read the transcript. No, it’s not “academic.” He blathers on with a lot of assertions, gives no facts, and tells stories. There is no coherent arguement at all. This nonsense wouldn’t last two minutes in an economic workshop.
So Larry, Mr. Fountain-of-Knowledge, who would you specifically nominate from the right-of-center to be POTUS other than Trump? Perhaps you should run in 2020.
Mortimer,
I said the same thing three years ago. And here we are.
Mortimer,
I’ll give you the same answer I gave Sven earlier today, with the same metaphor i have said so many times (164 times): citizens of a Republic are not like customers at a restaurant choosing from the menu – whining that the selection isn’t worthy of our awesomeness. If we just choose from the menu (the ballot), then we’re just pleasant peasants. Easily governed peons, a gift to our rulers.
We need to learn from this election, as we have not from those of the past, to get involved at the earliest stage of the political process – to put competent people on the ballot.
Yesterday’s post discussed this in greater detail: This is why we’re weak. Here’s how we can become strong.
Here are 140+ other posts with ideas about political reform from a score of perspectives.
“So Larry, Mr. Fountain-of-Knowledge”
Please be civil. My tolerance for that kind of personal nonsense is low. It gets out of hand very fast, but I’ll stop it even faster.
Follow-up
More precisely, I used the “America as a restaurant” metaphor in 164 posts and mentioned it in 121 comments.
I have made the same point in other ways at other times.
Larry,
I had read all your previous posts. I am involved at the grass-roots level in a BPOU and work with our selected candidates though literature drops, door-knocking, posting campaign signs, walking in local parades, working in county fair booths, and making monetary contributions. But, once a primary candidate has been chosen from my Party I support that candidate (even if I don’t particularly like him/her) rather than not vote or vote for some other opposing/third party candidate. I just don’t like making disparaging comments (“elderly clown”) about a sitting President. I prefer registering my policy disagreements directly to the White House through http://www.whitehouse.gov.
Mortimer,
“am involved at the grass-roots level”
Good! That’s our only path to a better future.
“I just don’t like making disparaging comments (“elderly clown”) about a sitting President.”
How sad. Trump is elderly (that’s a fact) and acts like a clown (my opinion, but I believe most futuire historians will agree).
“I prefer registering my policy disagreements directly to the White House”
Why should he care? I wouldn’t.