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Breaking w/my own rules so I can talk politics
9 years ago
General
I have a rule never to discuss politics in a public forum or with 99.999% of my friends.
Having been burned all the time for my input on politics and religion in the past, I usually keep things like that pretty much guarded secrets. I even go so far as to neither delete nor respond to most unwarranted comments or posts on the subject of politics. Facebook in particular is a bad spot for me now because I have so many supposed friends who randomly tag me in political posts and tirades, or else comment on my posts inexplicably in one direction because they assume I'm just part of their "team."
So, I really have nowhere to post this because everywhere else on the internet, my identity is plainly out there in the open for all to see, and I'd lose people over something they don't understand.
This election was a protest election. People saw Donald Trump as a messiah to save us from America's decline and from the corrupt and broken system that has continually let a large portion of the population feel powerless. He sold himself as such. He did everything by the book: he insulted and mocked groups of people who are perceived as the "weird," the "other," the "minority," he showed disdain for rule of order in debate, he literally claimed that only he could save us...he packaged himself perfectly. And, he's made bold and preposterous claims such as that he would immediately jail his opponent.
What is perceived as simply corruption of politicians is nothing new. It goes back all the way through the history of civilization. Some of it is blatantly horrible (such as pandering to campaign contributors), but honestly, a rather large portion of what leaves a distaste for politics in the mouths of the citizenry is rhetoric. It's posturing, it's assertion of obviously very distorted and biased arguments, and it's compromise or failure to stick to one's guns.
But that's what politics is, and people often don't seem to know or understand that. It's all compromise and such just to try and get things to work while still shifting power around. It sounds disgusting and machiavellian--and it often is--but that is politics.
What's really been keeping Americans in a weird state is our quality of life really has diminished greatly since 1978 when a landmark Supreme Court decision (Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp.) led to the deregulation of banks and the neutering of laws established to protect the citizens of the country from the interests of the financial sector--essentially, the robber-barons. It's Greenspan. It's "trickle-down." It's subprime mortgages. It's the lack of a living wage. It's the Citizens United ruling. It's our disenfranchisement, wealth disparity, lack of social programs (compared to almost every other wealthy nation on the planet)...it's the fact that the quality of the life of an American citizen is absolutely unprotected--in fact, preyed upon.
But people don't understand this, because nobody ever wants to think or read up on anything that's not their team's garbage spouted at them (and before anyone starts, I should note that this is clear on both sides).
What we get instead is a bogeyman. This is true throughout history. Trump has made a bogeyman out of many groups but he's also made one out of the political system of America itself.
I have been saying for years now that the country is in decline. I've heard a general rule of thumb from my historian and political-science-studying friends, colleagues, instructors, and from essayists and economists, that a nation state generally only lasts about 250 years. That doesn't mean we're all going to vanish or become absorbed into the British Empire again, or anything; that just means the system itself is going to change in favor of another kind of government.
Let's take Japan as an example (since it's my field of study and the one I'm most familiar with). Following years of wars and disputes among what were tiny republics basically needing to be brought together to form a nation in 1605, a federated, feudal society was established in place of a failed despotic state.
Everyone's familiar with the age of the samurai, but most people buy into their romantic propaganda that it was a time of war and brave warlords fighting it out, but this Shogunate system actually was relatively peaceful and stable. Sure, the country was officially closed, but they did engage in a lot of domestic and foreign trade through the southern port of Nagasaki.
Eventually, however, politicking and the lax enforcement of rules established to keep the feudal lords in place in the various hans (provinces?) combined with lords opting to trade for goods directly in competition with their own people's livelihoods led to a disenfranchisement, again. What happened? A foreign power come along (the U.S. and Britain) and backed a revolution known as the "Restoration" that took place in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The people went with the fascists, who became increasingly so...and about 60 years later, we all know how that ended up.
This country has enjoyed 240 years of peaceful change of power, which is what has supposedly kept us immune to that "250 years" rule. But, I've always been skeptical.
I grew up under Reagan. Don't talk to me about him like he was God made flesh. He engaged in fantasy lies targeting minorities and social programs. He authorized sale of illegal narcotics to fund a ridiculous war to protect his cronies' interests. Worst of all, he touted and successfully brought everyone on board with the idea of "trickle-down."
I mention him because a lot of people are likening Trump to Reagan, and he isn't. He's a power-hungry and manipulative man only interested in his wallet and bragging. Any and all attempts to restore regulation or invest our tax revenues in the people are or to protect the rights of the minority (which, yes, is paramount in importance to a nation's success) are all out the window now.
At best, he will be another Andrew Jackson (one of the worst embarrassments in the history of the presidency of the United States). At worst, he will figure ways to circumvent or change the laws of our nation to the very core of the Constitution and rewrite it into something entirely else--probably a European-style autocracy (read: fascist).
If you voted, good for you! If you voted for Trump, you were either misled, misinformed, or else simply a bigot who simply can't suffer the "weird" or the "other" (wait until it happens to you one day). If you said what I've heard from many, many, many disenfranchised people, these lines of "Well I don't like either one, ha ha ha!" or "I don't care, it's all the same" or "I voted third party" or "I wrote in ___, don't blame me!" or "I didn't even vote, ha ha ha, fuck it" or whatever idiocy, shame on you. Huge shame on you, to quote the guy you just helped accelerate our demise as a nation state.
Anyone cool enough to have read this whole rant...now you probably see why I can't say anything on social media or to any of my friends right now. Sorry, I just had to blow off some steam, but I also wanted to offer this in case people are scratching their heads over the way the world has viewed this election from the beginning.
These next months and years are going to be very hard for America. Even if he hadn't won, they would still be very hard because his supporters are in the tens of millions, so politicians will all now take note and realize they have to change their tune--to his.
All I can say is I hope everyone tries to protect themselves and those they care about because I can't imagine any amount of political activism will do even the slightest modicum of good for generations to come.
Having been burned all the time for my input on politics and religion in the past, I usually keep things like that pretty much guarded secrets. I even go so far as to neither delete nor respond to most unwarranted comments or posts on the subject of politics. Facebook in particular is a bad spot for me now because I have so many supposed friends who randomly tag me in political posts and tirades, or else comment on my posts inexplicably in one direction because they assume I'm just part of their "team."
So, I really have nowhere to post this because everywhere else on the internet, my identity is plainly out there in the open for all to see, and I'd lose people over something they don't understand.
This election was a protest election. People saw Donald Trump as a messiah to save us from America's decline and from the corrupt and broken system that has continually let a large portion of the population feel powerless. He sold himself as such. He did everything by the book: he insulted and mocked groups of people who are perceived as the "weird," the "other," the "minority," he showed disdain for rule of order in debate, he literally claimed that only he could save us...he packaged himself perfectly. And, he's made bold and preposterous claims such as that he would immediately jail his opponent.
What is perceived as simply corruption of politicians is nothing new. It goes back all the way through the history of civilization. Some of it is blatantly horrible (such as pandering to campaign contributors), but honestly, a rather large portion of what leaves a distaste for politics in the mouths of the citizenry is rhetoric. It's posturing, it's assertion of obviously very distorted and biased arguments, and it's compromise or failure to stick to one's guns.
But that's what politics is, and people often don't seem to know or understand that. It's all compromise and such just to try and get things to work while still shifting power around. It sounds disgusting and machiavellian--and it often is--but that is politics.
What's really been keeping Americans in a weird state is our quality of life really has diminished greatly since 1978 when a landmark Supreme Court decision (Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp.) led to the deregulation of banks and the neutering of laws established to protect the citizens of the country from the interests of the financial sector--essentially, the robber-barons. It's Greenspan. It's "trickle-down." It's subprime mortgages. It's the lack of a living wage. It's the Citizens United ruling. It's our disenfranchisement, wealth disparity, lack of social programs (compared to almost every other wealthy nation on the planet)...it's the fact that the quality of the life of an American citizen is absolutely unprotected--in fact, preyed upon.
But people don't understand this, because nobody ever wants to think or read up on anything that's not their team's garbage spouted at them (and before anyone starts, I should note that this is clear on both sides).
What we get instead is a bogeyman. This is true throughout history. Trump has made a bogeyman out of many groups but he's also made one out of the political system of America itself.
I have been saying for years now that the country is in decline. I've heard a general rule of thumb from my historian and political-science-studying friends, colleagues, instructors, and from essayists and economists, that a nation state generally only lasts about 250 years. That doesn't mean we're all going to vanish or become absorbed into the British Empire again, or anything; that just means the system itself is going to change in favor of another kind of government.
Let's take Japan as an example (since it's my field of study and the one I'm most familiar with). Following years of wars and disputes among what were tiny republics basically needing to be brought together to form a nation in 1605, a federated, feudal society was established in place of a failed despotic state.
Everyone's familiar with the age of the samurai, but most people buy into their romantic propaganda that it was a time of war and brave warlords fighting it out, but this Shogunate system actually was relatively peaceful and stable. Sure, the country was officially closed, but they did engage in a lot of domestic and foreign trade through the southern port of Nagasaki.
Eventually, however, politicking and the lax enforcement of rules established to keep the feudal lords in place in the various hans (provinces?) combined with lords opting to trade for goods directly in competition with their own people's livelihoods led to a disenfranchisement, again. What happened? A foreign power come along (the U.S. and Britain) and backed a revolution known as the "Restoration" that took place in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The people went with the fascists, who became increasingly so...and about 60 years later, we all know how that ended up.
This country has enjoyed 240 years of peaceful change of power, which is what has supposedly kept us immune to that "250 years" rule. But, I've always been skeptical.
I grew up under Reagan. Don't talk to me about him like he was God made flesh. He engaged in fantasy lies targeting minorities and social programs. He authorized sale of illegal narcotics to fund a ridiculous war to protect his cronies' interests. Worst of all, he touted and successfully brought everyone on board with the idea of "trickle-down."
I mention him because a lot of people are likening Trump to Reagan, and he isn't. He's a power-hungry and manipulative man only interested in his wallet and bragging. Any and all attempts to restore regulation or invest our tax revenues in the people are or to protect the rights of the minority (which, yes, is paramount in importance to a nation's success) are all out the window now.
At best, he will be another Andrew Jackson (one of the worst embarrassments in the history of the presidency of the United States). At worst, he will figure ways to circumvent or change the laws of our nation to the very core of the Constitution and rewrite it into something entirely else--probably a European-style autocracy (read: fascist).
If you voted, good for you! If you voted for Trump, you were either misled, misinformed, or else simply a bigot who simply can't suffer the "weird" or the "other" (wait until it happens to you one day). If you said what I've heard from many, many, many disenfranchised people, these lines of "Well I don't like either one, ha ha ha!" or "I don't care, it's all the same" or "I voted third party" or "I wrote in ___, don't blame me!" or "I didn't even vote, ha ha ha, fuck it" or whatever idiocy, shame on you. Huge shame on you, to quote the guy you just helped accelerate our demise as a nation state.
Anyone cool enough to have read this whole rant...now you probably see why I can't say anything on social media or to any of my friends right now. Sorry, I just had to blow off some steam, but I also wanted to offer this in case people are scratching their heads over the way the world has viewed this election from the beginning.
These next months and years are going to be very hard for America. Even if he hadn't won, they would still be very hard because his supporters are in the tens of millions, so politicians will all now take note and realize they have to change their tune--to his.
All I can say is I hope everyone tries to protect themselves and those they care about because I can't imagine any amount of political activism will do even the slightest modicum of good for generations to come.
