A neat summing up, imho, of where we are at with the United States political scene right now:
How Did We End Up With Such Unpopular Candidates?
And do notice it’s published in The American Conservative. It’s true, I do subscribe to feeds from a range of media, including those on the opposite side of the ideological room from where I generally feel more comfortable. The article may contain nothing new for most of us, but it is a neat encapsulation of the what and why behind the Sanders-Clinton-Trump show this year, and a neat statement of the pits to which American “democracy” has finally descended.
Peter Van Buren’s conclusion:
Clinton is the ultimate end product of a political process consumed by big money. She is the candidate of the 1 percent. She believes in nothing but the acquisition of power and will trade anything to get it. The oligarchy is happy to help her with that.
Trump is the ultimate Frankenstein product of decades of lightly shaded Republican hate mongering. He is the natural end point of 15 post-9/11 years of keeping us afraid. He is the mediagenic demagogue a country gets when it abandons its people to economic Darwinism, crushes its middle class, and gives up on caring what happens to its minorities.
Both candidates are markers of a doomed democracy, a system that reached its apex somewhere in the past and has only now declined enough that everyone can see where we are. They’re us . . . .
And then I hear a surprising number of young people saying they don’t really care for democracy. Meanwhile in the background our planet’s climate is changing . . . .
Optimism, anyone? Is there any Optimism on today’s menu?
Neil Godfrey
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Democrats supported Clinton because they were afraid too, of any of the Republican hate-mongers winning. It wasn’t just the 0.01%, but the masses accepted that she was anointed by them by looking the other way. The way to make sound decisions is not to base them on raw fear. Those awful abyss-gazers ruin everything.
‘those awful Abyss-gazers ruin everything’
talking about Christians, huh? If they ruin everything, why are YOU still here, pal? Your physical body decays in the grave yet your INDELIBLE soul rises-up to meet his Maker, you should be verrry happy you aint deceased yet; you still got time to read this and thereby save yourself from falling into mortal sin.
TrustNjesus, pal.
Meet me Uppastairs.
Let’s getta Big-Ol beer…
gotta lotta tok about, brudda
Either you’re a mocking atheist or a child. Either way irrelevant.
Optimism here!! I think he’s reading too much import into the situation of the moment. He says Hillary is the candidate of the 1%, well name the last major party candidate who wasn’t. In spite of all the “doomed democracy” gloom, our democracy has consistently made progress in expanding human and civil rights, and “liberty and justice for all”. There was never a better time or place to be alive than in the US today. Down with negativity.
bernie sanders would have been if democrats had not sabotaged his campaign…
Who chose that horrible swastika als a symbol for his comment?
That’s a symbol for vortex mathematics.
Old Hawaiian saying: In low cycles corrupt leaders come to power.
If that’s the case, what would a high cycle be? One with intelligent people in leadership positions, a low world population so we can have babies to our heart’s content, and a clean world so we can mess it up like there’s no tomorrow? At this point it doesn’t really matter who the winner of the presidential election will be imo. We don’t live on isolated continents anymore and so presidents must get along with each other or there will be worse mass destruction than there already is. Nobody wants that. Eating yesterday’s leftovers is what’s on the menu. We have to eat the mess our grandparents left us, clean up the world. The population is going down because people can’t afford to procreate. That’s the good news? Maybe.
Fascinating how the mythological side of Christianity seems to resemble US politics. That hundreds of millions of people were duped into submission to the Church’s power is like the populus serving the US system. Christian history was likely founded on a cosmic Messiah while Clinton’s power is likely founded on a delusional democracy. The 1% (oligarchs of the Rothschild Bildeberg group) control the money supply, business, the military and most of the media. Last Christmas I put $A 1,000 on Hilary to win as I believe she will be installed, like Obama, by the oligarchs (a fraudulent voting system is my conjecture) to further deceive the world that the US is a democracy. In reality of course the US is a fascist war economy infiltrating and destabilising many nations, committing atrocities, surveiling, attacking and imprisoning whom it wills now that it has succesfully pulled off the inside job that was 911. I will be donating the winnings to the Palestine Museum of Natural Science.
Poverty is way down in US and the world. Birth rates are declining world wide. Crime rates have been declining in the US for 25 years. Teen pregnancies are down. Educational opportunities for women are expanding in most of the world. Women are advancing toward political equality, with Germany, UK, and soon US to be led by women. Significant advances for LGBT community. Increased focus on minority rights. Steven Pinker says violence has been on decline for millennia. Access to medical care has advanced world wide. New technologies make it possible, perhaps for the first time in history, to provide food, shelter, education, and healthcare for all people in the world. Media and politicians focus on the negative for their own advantage, but there is much reason to be optimistic. Don’t give in to negativity.
On the other hand, the annual minimum CO2 measurement at Mauna Loa Observatory was 402 ppm, meaning we are unlikely to ever fall below 400 ppm again. Meaning there is very little chance we’ll ever be able to keep global temperature rise to 2 deg C.
We survived the ice age when it was 6 C colder than today. We can survive a warmer world also. The only thing we really have to fear as a species is nuclear Holocaust.
Our present election malaise might be a good time to make some changes with the majority-rule concept. I can’t help but weigh the merits of the plurality-decision rule where the option with the most votes wins. Wouldn’t this allow for more options and natural coalitions?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1RYg2c3PFs is my video quip as expressed by five bird calls that I am familiar with.
Well well — speaking of the devil . . . . look what just popped up in Salon.com
You’re likely optimistic about the future of America, unless you’re white