Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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RWStanding
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Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by RWStanding »

Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue
Whether knowingly or not, President Trump is employing the language of a demagogue. Most politicians have a smidgen of this rhetoric, but it it is to be trusted that Prime Minister May will rise above it.
The inauguration speech has the words:
"From this day forward, it's going to be only America First. We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world - but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first."
This is the language of Anarchism at the international level, with nations bent on their own interests, and only beholden to keep the peace. It is not the language of altruistic Internationalism. Autarky or a pragmatic degree of economic independence is a quality to be shared, so as to reduce our footprint on the world.
With respect to his own people he has a sentiment that is ambiguous,
"Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighbourhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves."
The question is whether this is a concern for everyone's benefit, or mainly to ensure they contribute to national wealth and capital. And indeed to the wealth of those who control industry and commerce. Both Fascist and Communist regimes have vaunted how they provided security, income, and welfare for their citizens, but both as servile states.
Altruistically, the USA is the wealthiest nation we have, and has no excuse for anyone, who is willing and able to work, being unemployed.
There is however a complete absence of policy by Trump for the environment, or rather a policy to forget it. The poisoning of the biosphere, mass extinction of species by human greed, and global warming, are all one together, taking us to ruin. This is a question for all forms of society, not only altruist, in saving us from Chaos and worse.
Industry and commerce today are intent on reducing labour needs, and only innovation and expansion bring replacement jobs. If we reduce our needs and exploitation of the earth to sufficiency, and population drastically, with a reduction of trade across the oceans, we may answer the case. People who are released from industry can all be employed in social and health work, in return for their share of goods or the monetary means to obtain the same.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

Here's the how-to right here:
RWStanding wrote:There is however a complete absence of policy by Trump for the environment, or rather a policy to forget it. The poisoning of the biosphere, mass extinction of species by human greed, and global warming, are all one together, taking us to ruin. This is a question for all forms of society, not only altruist, in saving us from Chaos and worse.
Man is not separate from the world.

The world is more than a pretty park in a picture.

Man and his ways are always part of the picture.

No humans, no picture of the world.

The world is a self-renewing gift for the benefit of man, like apples on a tree.

To gaze at the perfect apple on the tree, and to not eat the apple because it’s so pretty, is to starve for an ideology, as the keepers of the seed bank starved for the ideology that their seeds were the veil separating mankind from extinction.

Look at China spewing all that filth into the air when folks now know better.
Or do they?

Even with today’s technologies, could any country produce what China produces without fouling the air?

Of course it could. Go nuclear and invest in sending the heavy toxic waste into deep space, the same way garbage has always been picked through, thrown into the ocean, buried, or burned.

However, to insure the public safety, the penalty for violating SOP at any energy plant would have to be death, or something close. :shock:

Unless it has once again been tweaked, as the CO2 PPM theory goes, without carbon emissions warming up the planet, that last barrier holding back the ice age will be gone.

Implications?

Because existence will become a more acute life and death situation when everything gets as cold as the North Pole, the meager cadre of human survivors on the fringes of the equator will begin praying for global warming to melt all that ice that once again has rearranged the landscape, and released extra-large carnivores the size of Polar Bears to roam the earth in predatory symbiosis with man, not a pretty picture but the cold chill seems to encourage that tendency in nature.

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” - Eric Hoffer
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

It was a pretty awful speech. So awful that he must have written it himself. Not exactly ('..ask not what your country can do for you...). Not that I have any respect for 'rousing rhetoric', and Trump was catering to idiots.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote:It was a pretty awful speech. So awful that he must have written it himself. Not exactly ('..ask not what your country can do for you...). Not that I have any respect for 'rousing rhetoric', and Trump was catering to idiots.
Gee. What a surprise.
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Arising_uk
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Arising_uk »

Walker wrote:...
Man is not separate from the world.

The world is more than a pretty park in a picture.

Man and his ways are always part of the picture.

No humans, no picture of the world. ...
Fair point but still a world.
The world is a self-renewing gift for the benefit of man, like apples on a tree.

To gaze at the perfect apple on the tree, and to not eat the apple because it’s so pretty, is to starve for an ideology, as the keepers of the seed bank starved for the ideology that their seeds were the veil separating mankind from extinction. ...
Not sure of your point here as 'apples' exist pretty much because of mankind?
Look at China spewing all that filth into the air when folks now know better.
Or do they?
From the looks of it they do.
Even with today’s technologies, could any country produce what China produces without fouling the air?

Of course it could.

Go nuclear and invest in sending the heavy toxic waste into deep space, the same way garbage has always been picked through, thrown into the ocean, buried, or burned. ...
Hmm...oceans are now very polluted due to this habit and rockets have a habit of blowing-up. We could vitrify and bury the waste deep in deserts.
However, to insure the public safety, the penalty for violating SOP at any energy plant would have to be death, or something close. :shock:
Bit late tho'
Unless it has once again been tweaked, as the CO2 PPM theory goes, without carbon emissions warming up the planet, that last barrier holding back the ice age will be gone. ...
According to the theory even this won't be enough to halt the next Ice Age.
Implications?
We're all in trouble in a couple of thousand years.
Because existence will become a more acute life and death situation when everything gets as cold as the North Pole, the meager cadre of human survivors on the fringes of the equator will begin praying for global warming to melt all that ice that once again has rearranged the landscape, and released extra-large carnivores the size of Polar Bears to roam the earth in predatory symbiosis with man, not a pretty picture but the cold chill seems to encourage that tendency in nature.
Or in 2000 years we're spread all over the Solar System or any other myriad scenarios.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

Here’s an interesting opinion that includes some facts:

“Most of all Trump wants to protect Americans from globalization, and rightly so. At the peak of its technological dominance in the decade after the Cold War, when America fielded the technologies that made the modern economy, America opened its gates to China (allowing it into the World Trade Organization) and Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement. This occurred during the Clinton Administration at the peak of America’s investment boom in technology. We invented semiconductors, lasers, optical networks, sensors, displays, virtually the whole of the modern economy.

“But America was too complacent. Its share of global high technology exports (as defined by the World Bank) fell from 18% to 7% between 1999 and 2014, while China’s share soared from 3% to 26%. China used every lever of industrial policy, including state subsidies, loans from state-owned entities, and so forth, to create employment in tech industries. That is the Asian industrial model, and in many cases it works. It is hardly fair to expect America to play by free market rules while its competitors indulge in aggressive mercantilism.”

- David P. Goldman


Donald Trump, American hero
http://www.atimes.com/article/donald-tr ... ican-hero/
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Why accuse others of mercantilism when that quote drips with nothing but that same zero-sum stupidity?
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Trump at a pen stroke destroys an entire generation of abused women across the world.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tru ... cy-n710081

No mandate for this act; no consultation.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

At the stroke of a pen Trump walks all over the Dakota lands, breaking age old treaties, and commits environmental vandalism.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38734450
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

At a stroke Trump gags government agencies, and a cloud of secrecy begins to descend on Washington.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... rder-trump
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Hobbes' Choice wrote:At the stroke of a pen Trump walks all over the Dakota lands, breaking age old treaties, and commits environmental vandalism.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38734450
Well Obama finally did the right thing about 5 minutes before he left office. He knew what Trump would do. How cynical.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

The inability to fit what should be, into what is, can be distressing.

This is understandable.

In these times more than ever, exercising the objectivity to distinguish fact from opinion determines the depth and maturity of the view, and with a bit of introspection can reveal how subjectivity influences one's own actions.

To that end, quite often extensive dialogue is either repetitive squabbling over well-worn premises, or preaching to the choir to drum up supportive justification for the dream of what should be, in a land far away.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Trump begins war on freedom of speech.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/ ... ion-unrest
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Walker wrote:The inability to fit what should be, into what is, can be distressing.

This is understandable.

In these times more than ever, exercising the objectivity to distinguish fact from opinion determines the depth and maturity of the view, and with a bit of introspection can reveal how subjectivity influences one's own actions.

To that end, quite often extensive dialogue is either repetitive squabbling over well-worn premises, or preaching to the choir to drum up supportive justification for the dream of what should be, in a land far away.
Have you ever thought of going into PR, or perhaps politics? Meaningless babble that sounds vaguely like language is what they excel at.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Trump begins war on freedom of speech.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/ ... ion-unrest
You have to admit it's fascinating to watch the implosion. He will probably get shot or something (by his own side). It's like watching the fall of the Roman empire in HD.
When this guy's good he's excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DUM-7h1AlY
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