Over the last week or so, and as Trump’s “policy” seems to be emerging into the light, I found my memory going back to 1964, when I was a pupil at Kibworth Beauchamp Grammar School in Leicestershire.
I think Hitler allied himself with corporations, which Trump has certainly done and to the extent it could be said that they own him. But he's the guy who borrowed money all over town and it's as much a question of whose goons show up first as who has the gooniest goons. Evangelicals have some great goons. Highly armed enforcers, as good Christians would, I guess. And Trump isn't ultimately owned by anybody, not even himself, because he's basically mentally ill and VERY sensitive to slights. Man, what a situation.
I was intrigued by your title and take on this because I've suggested that if Marx is looking down from commie heaven he has a MAGA hat on. Republicans are about to prove Marx right, that capitalism always leads to unsustainable concentrations of wealth and booms and busts and massive social stratification and we all end up killing one another, which I think is his central belief, in the inevitability and transcendence of the class war. Not that the rich get killed, because the clever bastards play the 'little people' off against one another.
But, what do I know.
Having a skeptical side, I used to argue that we had no idea what Plato's Republic was really about. His ideal government? Or a teaching tool in the context of the times. The Socratic Method, and all. I DO believe that things meet up at the extremes, and that people who lose their souls through submission and those who do so through a desire for domination are together at the punchbowl in the end. And I hope that supports your point, Helen, because that was my intention, but when extremists show up it can be a muddle.
Big government or small government, tyrants will do whatever works in the end, improvising along the way until they cast up at the top and have nowhere to go but down and are scared out of their pants. Which is why sane people resist this stuff, but probably also why they're at a disadvantage because they aren't powered by the rocket fuel of fixed ideas and delusions. Who invented this game, anyway? I'd like to opt out.
My title was chosen very much with my tongue firmly in my cheek. I have noticed that for those on the far right, anyone even marginally less far right is a Socialist or Marxist, and vice versa is a Fascist and that the biggest insult you could give Trump followers is accuse them of being leftists. I was interested by your comment that things meet up at the extremes. The horseshoe theory of political thought? Perhaps we can take from this that the labels we give to others say more about us than the others. it is so easy (and needs so little thought) to label the opposition Fascist or Communist regardless of actual ideology. You are certainly right to say that Trump has no ideology in the usual definition of the word, apart from a total concentration on himself. I was listening to a book-reading on BBC radio a few months ago. I had missed the 1st few minutes and assumed, as the main protagonist was a Jew in a concentration/labour Camp it was set in Hitler's Germany. Nothing, until the last 5 minutes disabused me of that impression until the narrative moved to the present and it was clear that it was set in Stalin's gulag.
We are in a pretty deadly game but please do not opt out. The American voters who opted out last November because they could not bring themselves to vote for a woman of colour, Not even only as a protest against an obviously unfit crook, will have to carry much of the blame for the consequences of Trump's election. We cannot afford to turn our backs - and you can take that comment any way you wish. Keep up the good fight, James. We are doing what little we can from this side of the pond.
Trump ultimately has no ideology other than to feed his sociopathic-narcissistic-self-only first above all others mentality.
That being said your observation has significant merit, when applied to Socialism; if socialism has as a primary objective the centralized ownership and control of all means of production and distribution, then the Republican Party has been projecting socialism for decades, as they have slowly been working towards this moment in time wherein everything that is coming out of the current illegally occupied White House Maladministration is bent on controlling as many things as possible, all presumably for the intent purposes of controlling the flow of money, so as to fill the coffers of the super wealthy first and foremost above and before all the poors, as Cheryl of Archer would say.
From my perspective, anyone who has a net worth of less than 100-million dollars will soon become fair game for Trump and his Capital Cabal.
I do not disagree with you. I wrote this with my tongue firmly in my cheek. For the average Far-right winger there is no greater insult than to mark them as a socialist or Communist - there is a difference, especially in the real world. I was interested in your description "illegally occupied" WH. I was an electoral administrator here in UK for almost 40 years (also a member of our national training team) and your electoral system in some places is deeply flawed. I cannot say that any US election at the moment is valid, and not only in Red areas. We used to have US reps come to our national seminars till 2000, when they seemed to be hesitant to brag as to their elections apparatus. Having said that, I have known personally a number of US elections officers and they could not have been more professional and incorruptible. However, something is rotten.
"The appointment of seemingly unsuitable heads of branches of Government, including the military, is incomprehensible if you assume their task is to run the Government, but it does make sense if their actual purpose is to dismantle good governance, to break it totally, so that something different to a representative democracy can be built." What I have been thinking all through this past week. I haven't read it expressed clearly anywhere -- certainly not as clearly as you have done here. Startling, terrifying, true. Thank you, as always.
I think Hitler allied himself with corporations, which Trump has certainly done and to the extent it could be said that they own him. But he's the guy who borrowed money all over town and it's as much a question of whose goons show up first as who has the gooniest goons. Evangelicals have some great goons. Highly armed enforcers, as good Christians would, I guess. And Trump isn't ultimately owned by anybody, not even himself, because he's basically mentally ill and VERY sensitive to slights. Man, what a situation.
I was intrigued by your title and take on this because I've suggested that if Marx is looking down from commie heaven he has a MAGA hat on. Republicans are about to prove Marx right, that capitalism always leads to unsustainable concentrations of wealth and booms and busts and massive social stratification and we all end up killing one another, which I think is his central belief, in the inevitability and transcendence of the class war. Not that the rich get killed, because the clever bastards play the 'little people' off against one another.
But, what do I know.
Having a skeptical side, I used to argue that we had no idea what Plato's Republic was really about. His ideal government? Or a teaching tool in the context of the times. The Socratic Method, and all. I DO believe that things meet up at the extremes, and that people who lose their souls through submission and those who do so through a desire for domination are together at the punchbowl in the end. And I hope that supports your point, Helen, because that was my intention, but when extremists show up it can be a muddle.
Big government or small government, tyrants will do whatever works in the end, improvising along the way until they cast up at the top and have nowhere to go but down and are scared out of their pants. Which is why sane people resist this stuff, but probably also why they're at a disadvantage because they aren't powered by the rocket fuel of fixed ideas and delusions. Who invented this game, anyway? I'd like to opt out.
My title was chosen very much with my tongue firmly in my cheek. I have noticed that for those on the far right, anyone even marginally less far right is a Socialist or Marxist, and vice versa is a Fascist and that the biggest insult you could give Trump followers is accuse them of being leftists. I was interested by your comment that things meet up at the extremes. The horseshoe theory of political thought? Perhaps we can take from this that the labels we give to others say more about us than the others. it is so easy (and needs so little thought) to label the opposition Fascist or Communist regardless of actual ideology. You are certainly right to say that Trump has no ideology in the usual definition of the word, apart from a total concentration on himself. I was listening to a book-reading on BBC radio a few months ago. I had missed the 1st few minutes and assumed, as the main protagonist was a Jew in a concentration/labour Camp it was set in Hitler's Germany. Nothing, until the last 5 minutes disabused me of that impression until the narrative moved to the present and it was clear that it was set in Stalin's gulag.
We are in a pretty deadly game but please do not opt out. The American voters who opted out last November because they could not bring themselves to vote for a woman of colour, Not even only as a protest against an obviously unfit crook, will have to carry much of the blame for the consequences of Trump's election. We cannot afford to turn our backs - and you can take that comment any way you wish. Keep up the good fight, James. We are doing what little we can from this side of the pond.
Trump ultimately has no ideology other than to feed his sociopathic-narcissistic-self-only first above all others mentality.
That being said your observation has significant merit, when applied to Socialism; if socialism has as a primary objective the centralized ownership and control of all means of production and distribution, then the Republican Party has been projecting socialism for decades, as they have slowly been working towards this moment in time wherein everything that is coming out of the current illegally occupied White House Maladministration is bent on controlling as many things as possible, all presumably for the intent purposes of controlling the flow of money, so as to fill the coffers of the super wealthy first and foremost above and before all the poors, as Cheryl of Archer would say.
From my perspective, anyone who has a net worth of less than 100-million dollars will soon become fair game for Trump and his Capital Cabal.
I do not disagree with you. I wrote this with my tongue firmly in my cheek. For the average Far-right winger there is no greater insult than to mark them as a socialist or Communist - there is a difference, especially in the real world. I was interested in your description "illegally occupied" WH. I was an electoral administrator here in UK for almost 40 years (also a member of our national training team) and your electoral system in some places is deeply flawed. I cannot say that any US election at the moment is valid, and not only in Red areas. We used to have US reps come to our national seminars till 2000, when they seemed to be hesitant to brag as to their elections apparatus. Having said that, I have known personally a number of US elections officers and they could not have been more professional and incorruptible. However, something is rotten.
"The appointment of seemingly unsuitable heads of branches of Government, including the military, is incomprehensible if you assume their task is to run the Government, but it does make sense if their actual purpose is to dismantle good governance, to break it totally, so that something different to a representative democracy can be built." What I have been thinking all through this past week. I haven't read it expressed clearly anywhere -- certainly not as clearly as you have done here. Startling, terrifying, true. Thank you, as always.
Yup.