Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Trump claims that the people he asks to be beaten up are big strong thugs who attack his supporters. This video gives the lie to Trump's claims. Trump is a thug who threatens free speech. If you support him, take a look at what you support; if you can.

From CREDO action:

Recently, CBS CEO Les Moonves came out and said it: Profiting from hate is not only more important to him than the good of the country — he wants to do more of it.

Speaking on a panel in San Francisco, Moonves said Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS” and that “The money’s rolling in, this is fun.” He went on to say, “it’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going.”1

Having the CEO of one of the nation’s most powerful corporate media outlets blatantly admit that profits and ratings are driving the non-stop, wall-to-wall coverage of Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is not only a damning indictment of corporate media, but also incredibly dangerous for the country. We need to make it clear to Moonves, CBS, and all traditional corporate media that Americans hold them to a much higher standard when it comes to racism and intolerance and the media’s responsibility to accurately and fairly inform the public.

It looks like something that I would expect in some other country, maybe one with no heritage of democracy or a weak heritage of democracy. This is the sort of rough politics that I might expect at a German-American Bund rally in the 1930s. In an apolitical context this is the Jerry Springer Show, when someone throws a plastic chair on the stage after calling his wife a whore or calling her husband a lout...or just a liquor-drenched brawl in a seedy tavern. The violent rhetoric is about what I would expect out of a Klan rally.

This is vile. Democracies die that way. Maybe that is not the full explanation of the demise of the Weimar Republic, but it is an ugly part of it. I do not trust Donald Trump with a political heritage that goes back 240 years as of July 4. Let us not make a great mistake out of July 4, 1776.

Now this is tongue in cheek, but then, we're supposed to take Trump's bluster as tongue in cheek too. But here is Maher translating Hitler into Trumpese.



If you don't like the comparison, you can watch Tom Richey's video pointing out the differences.
https://youtu.be/TA_cZxMu2b0

Or you can hear Maher's take on the dick battle
https://youtu.be/SNu0CRgMM0o

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

It looks like something that I would expect in some other country, maybe one with no heritage of democracy or a weak heritage of democracy. This is the sort of rough politics that I might expect at a German-American Bund rally in the 1930s. In an apolitical context this is the Jerry Springer Show, when someone throws a plastic chair on the stage after calling his wife a whore or calling her husband a lout...or just a liquor-drenched brawl in a seedy tavern. The violent rhetoric is about what I would expect out of a Klan rally.

This is vile. Democracies die that way. Maybe that is not the full explanation of the demise of the Weimar Republic, but it is an ugly part of it. I do not trust Donald Trump with a political heritage that goes back 240 years as of July 4. Let us not make a great mistake out of July 4, 1776.

This is what the early stages of 4T looks like. We saw this rough politics at Klan rallies in the 20s and 30s. We also saw that rough politics at union and Communist Party rallies in the 30s. And it was scary enough to the American elite that Congress passed the Smith Act in 1940 that established the House Un-American Activities Committee amongst other things.
And in the previous 4T we had the Wide-Awakes marching against the Knights of the Golden Circle, the precusor to the Klan. And soon, the militias of states (very well trained and drilled militias) marching against the militias of other states. It's ugly. It's Crisis. It's 4T. So far our 4T is a lot more non-violent than the 1930s 4T. Let's hope it can stay that way.
Yes, in crises when everything counts, when dissent DOES have more meaning than kittens squealing in a box (to use Heinlein's simile), this IS how democracies do things.
It's risky. But democracies can die more surely when they attempt to repress the expression of anger.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

For now the economic order remains in 3T mode: a big chunk of most people's lives is to meet the imposed costs of economic rent, essentially paying off economic elites for the dubious privilege of living in a world that they own.

In view of the more horrible weapons now in arsenals and the greatly-reduced time for delivering those weapons to intended targets, a war like WWII can make some American city look like Rotterdam, Hamburg, Warsaw, or worse. This is especially so if America should become an Evil Empire.

And we're not even necessarily talking about nuclear weapons. Thermobaric weapons can provide most of the blast and heat damage of nuclear weapons with none of the radioactivity. Or look at Homs and Aleppo today.
All we need is a President like Hillary Clinton or John Kasich who believes that the US is invincible enough to take on China and/or Russia.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

RE: The meme of Trump as a "businessman" and / or potential "international business mover and shaker."

I honestly don't understand how anyone can be so stupid to buy such a meme. Sure, the dude has done some real estate speculation, flipped properties (usually unsuccessfully) and more than anything else, licensed his name. But in terms of real business (making things, logistics, services, etc) he hasn't done diddly squat. He wouldn't know where to begin. He's the classic "wanna be my own boss" type writ large, but is a horrible team player. This is the pathology that can't handle normal corporate operations. People like this have only limited international impact. At best, they manage to use some international personal contacts to get a few modest things done. Ironically, I see this the most with immigrants, most especially Chinese immigrants. They get small businesses going that leverage their ethnicity and international personal connections. However, people like this rarely succeed at any grand level internationally. People like this are disasters when they attempt to negotiate with large overseas partners / firms not to mention foreign governments. In fact they tend to be liabilities.

In short, he's just the kind of person you want if you want to demolish the System from within.

Originally Posted by naf140230

So far, what Friedman, who is now president of Geopolitical Futures and has left Stratfor months ago, is saying has come true. That's why I believe him.

It sounds like George Friedman had a disagreement with his partners and hived off to start a business competing with Stratfor. Same deal. Friedman has a lot of facts. Some of his analyses are very incisive. Friedman was spot on when Stratfor started about the real reasons the US went into Kosovo (to prevent Russia from building an Eastern Orthodox confederation extending through Greece to Cyprus). He gives us a good reminder that geopolitics is real. But the man has definite neo-conservative biases, as does most of his clientele, which is the most important thing.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

It's risky. But democracies can die more surely when they attempt to repress the expression of anger.

It's OK in Trump's mind if HE is angry and speaks for other angry people. But if anyone is angry at HIM, (s)he has to be repressed, preferably with mob action. Democracy? I hardly think so.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

In short, he's just the kind of person you want if you want to demolish the System from within.

And what will be demolished will be our world, and any hope of progress toward a better one.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

In short, he's just the kind of person you want if you want to demolish the System from within.

Donald Trump -- just the person you want as President if you want to see America as an object of contest in the Cold War between China and India, with America wrecked as an economic power and its democratic institutions warped into a monstrosity.

I claim no prophetic talent other than the ability to see patterns in history.

I was listening to a talk show tonight, and a young 22-year old guy who self-identified as a "millennial" said he was "voting for Trump at this point." He said he was doing so because he was tired of "white guilt." He was against what Bernie Sanders was saying about responding to black peoples' concerns. Trump is speaking to his concerns about political correctness and being blamed for others' troubles. And I thought, how ridiculous. He seemed a bright and articulate guy, but I just can't admire his point of view on that. I don't subscribe to the views some express here that it's "human nature" to identify with one's race or ethnic group, or one's religion, or that humans are naturally territorial, and identify with their nation.

Stuff like that is just evidence of being brainwashed by social conventional authority. And social conventional authority is not human nature. There is nothing in my brain or my soul that is marked as this or that; it's just human. In the Awakening, many of our generation were able to look higher and broader than such obviously old-fashioned notions, that are only based on SOCIAL CONDITIONING, and NOT on "human nature." We could "imagine" the truth, just as John Lennon sang what we already knew. Even according to the religious teachers that "social conservatives" who believe in "identity politics" supposedly venerate, bowing to this identity stuff is not fulfilling our "nature" as human beings at all. We are to learn that we are all children and expressions of one God, one divine being and presence, on one Earth that belongs to God. That is our true "nature," not what the authorities, the Pontius Pilates, the Caesars, the Ferdinand and Isabellas, King Henrys, Hitlers and Trumps of the world, tell us about whom is our kind, and who ain't.

In our irreversibly globalizing society, we are called on to oppose the retrograde, fearful resistance to the facts, and to love and care for all people instead. Why should I identify with my race, my ancestry, my cultural heritage? I am NOT those things. I have nothing to do with those things. I am a human being, and a spiritual being. I am free; not a slave to the categories that the conventional, reactionary authorities like Donald Trump want to put us in. I did not enslave the black people; and black people are not rebelling against me. I am not keeping people out of this country, and others are not blaming me for keeping them out. I don't have to identify with the things that my race or nation did, and I don't have to worry if anyone accuses or tries to make me feel guilty over them. Because, I am not a race, and I am not a nation. I am JUST ME; unique, and free from all this falderall; this nonsense, this limited and old-fashioned thinking created for social control of the many by the powerful few. And I am interested in anyone's suffering and prosperity, NOT in whether my race or my nation is "great" again, meaning winning against others.

Imagine if we go from President Obama to President Trump; from the adult in the room to the disturbed teenager in the room.......

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I was listening to a talk show tonight, and a young 22-year old guy who self-identified as a "millennial" said he was "voting for Trump at this point." He said he was doing so because he was tired of "white guilt." He was against what Bernie Sanders was saying about responding to black peoples' concerns. Trump is speaking to his concerns about political correctness and being blamed for others' troubles. And I thought, how ridiculous. He seemed a bright and articulate guy, but I just can't admire his point of view on that. I don't subscribe to the views some express here that it's "human nature" to identify with one's race or ethnic group, or one's religion, or that humans are naturally territorial, and identify with their nation.

Stuff like that is just evidence of being brainwashed by social conventional authority. And social conventional authority is not human nature. There is nothing in my brain or my soul that is marked as this or that; it's just human. In the Awakening, many of our generation were able to look higher and broader than such obviously old-fashioned notions, that are only based on SOCIAL CONDITIONING, and NOT on "human nature." We could "imagine" the truth, just as John Lennon sang what we already knew. Even according to the religious teachers that "social conservatives" who believe in "identity politics" supposedly venerate, bowing to this identity stuff is not fulfilling our "nature" as human beings at all. We are to learn that we are all children and expressions of one God, one divine being and presence, on one Earth that belongs to God. That is our true "nature," not what the authorities, the Pontius Pilates, the Caesars, the Ferdinand and Isabellas, King Henrys, Hitlers and Trumps of the world, tell us about whom is our kind, and who ain't.

In our irreversibly globalizing society, we are called on to oppose the retrograde, fearful resistance to the facts, and to love and care for all people instead. Why should I identify with my race, my ancestry, my cultural heritage? I am NOT those things. I have nothing to do with those things. I am a human being, and a spiritual being. I am free; not a slave to the categories that the conventional, reactionary authorities like Donald Trump want to put us in. I did not enslave the black people; and black people are not rebelling against me. I am not keeping people out of this country, and others are not blaming me for keeping them out. I don't have to identify with the things that my race or nation did, and I don't have to worry if anyone accuses or tries to make me feel guilty over them. Because, I am not a race, and I am not a nation. I am JUST ME; unique, and free from all this falderall; this nonsense, this limited and old-fashioned thinking created for social control of the many by the powerful few. And I am interested in anyone's suffering and prosperity, NOT in whether my race or my nation is "great" again, meaning winning against others.

Eric you've arrived using logic where those of us who are mixed race spend our entire lives. Scientifically speaking, race is an artificial concept. At most, races are like breeds of Homo Sapiens but even the use of the word "breed" is conceptually flawed since, other than certain families and individuals who attempt to only mate with members of their own race (and "attempt" is they key operative here since most mating pairs don't insist on genetic testing of the other person), there is no "breeding" being done like breeders do with animals. One of the beautiful things about being mixed race is, barring insanity, we mixed folks can't be racists.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I was listening to a talk show tonight, and a young 22-year old guy who self-identified as a "millennial" said he was "voting for Trump at this point." He said he was doing so because he was tired of "white guilt." He was against what Bernie Sanders was saying about responding to black peoples' concerns. Trump is speaking to his concerns about political correctness and being blamed for others' troubles. And I thought, how ridiculous. He seemed a bright and articulate guy, but I just can't admire his point of view on that. I don't subscribe to the views some express here that it's "human nature" to identify with one's race or ethnic group, or one's religion, or that humans are naturally territorial, and identify with their nation.

OK. I had no involvement in the ethnic cleansing (genocide) of the Americas of First Peoples. I had no involvement in the slave trade or the plantation system. I had no involvement in the Holocaust. I had no involvement in Apartheid. But I am related to such people because of my ethnic mix.

So how do I exculpate myself? Four little words: "It was all wrong!"

So how does one avoid 'white guilt'? It's very simple -- denounce the crimes of white people against non-white peoples. (Hitler's Jewish victims were white, but he could never accept them as such. He could recognize the Japanese people as white because of their achievements, but not Jews. Weird, but racism creates some weird and often horrible consequences in word, thought, and deed).

Stuff like that is just evidence of being brainwashed by social conventional authority. And social conventional authority is not human nature. There is nothing in my brain or my soul that is marked as this or that; it's just human. In the Awakening, many of our generation were able to look higher and broader than such obviously old-fashioned notions, that are only based on SOCIAL CONDITIONING, and NOT on "human nature." We could "imagine" the truth, just as John Lennon sang what we already knew. Even according to the religious teachers that "social conservatives" who believe in "identity politics" supposedly venerate, bowing to this identity stuff is not fulfilling our "nature" as human beings at all. We are to learn that we are all children and expressions of one God, one divine being and presence, on one Earth that belongs to God. That is our true "nature," not what the authorities, the Pontius Pilates, the Caesars, the Ferdinand and Isabellas, King Henrys, Hitlers and Trumps of the world, tell us about whom is our kind, and who ain't.

Isn't "I love opera", "I play chess", "I am (name religion)", or "I enjoy sailing" more important than "I am white"? Truth be told, most of us liberals have abandoned the concept of political correctness. It is enough to insist on politeness and empathy.

In our irreversibly globalizing society, we are called on to oppose the retrograde, fearful resistance to the facts, and to love and care for all people instead. Why should I identify with my race, my ancestry, my cultural heritage? I am NOT those things. I have nothing to do with those things. I am a human being, and a spiritual being. I am free; not a slave to the categories that the conventional, reactionary authorities like Donald Trump want to put us in. I did not enslave the black people; and black people are not rebelling against me. I am not keeping people out of this country, and others are not blaming me for keeping them out. I don't have to identify with the things that my race or nation did, and I don't have to worry if anyone accuses or tries to make me feel guilty over them. Because, I am not a race, and I am not a nation. I am JUST ME; unique, and free from all this falderall; this nonsense, this limited and old-fashioned thinking created for social control of the many by the powerful few. And I am interested in anyone's suffering and prosperity, NOT in whether my race or my nation is "great" again, meaning winning against others.

All Humanity has a shared enemy: EVIL.