Populism is the opiate of the people
This post at Red State by Brandon Morse points out something Donald Trump said recently that is both troubling and Obama-like (is that redundant?):
Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.
That may be even worse, I think, than Obama’s statement in January of 2008: “a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany … and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama.”
Or this later utterance of Obama’s, from his nomination victory speech in June of 2008:
Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.
The first quote from Obama was about voting for him; the second was about what “we” (not just he) could do if elected. They were over-the-top, narcissistic, and rather religious in their implications and imagery, but they can’t hold a candle to what Trump said in terms of narcissistic self-credit. Trump’s statement first trashes all other politicians as having “stolen” the public’s votes. What does he mean? All I can think of as an interpretation is that he’s saying those others promised a lot and didn’t deliver, and therefore “stole” votes because they got them under false pretenses. So, is Trump promising something he can deliver when he says [emphasis mine], “I will give you everything. I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years“?
It’s beyond analysis, it’s so obviously incredible. Does anyone actually believe such a thing? Perhaps not the literal words, but the thought, the idea of getting whatever it has been that you’ve been desiring—anything and everything—whatever those thieving politicians haven’t been delivering to you. It’s politics and the presidency as gauzy, generalized wish-fulfillment.
That’s what Obama did, and that’s what Trump is doing.
One valid question is why do I bother to criticize Trump anymore? After all, he’s all we’ve got to counter Hillary Clinton, who is another abominable person. Well, shocking is shocking, and these statements were shocking—or at least they should be. Perhaps we’ve lost our ability to be shocked, because we’ve been in a very dangerous mode for a long time. As Morse says:
I was trying to find the words that accurately described why this [statement of Trump’s] horrified me, and I realized it wasn’t the words themselves…
But what scared me about it is that there are a good amount of people who do believe it. That somehow, he’s going to fix all our problems, and we will sail blissfully into a new golden age of America…
Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses. He was wrong, it’s not religion…
The real opiate is populism. Feeling like you’re part of something big, to be alongside your friends and allies as you push forward, that you’re on the verge of a movement bringing something new and exciting is a rush…
But America was founded on an ideal that counteracted populism. We developed a system that holds the mob, the angry reactionaries, and the cults of personality at bay so that we’re not swept up easily by men promising you the world if you give them power. We were a nation founded on the premise that no man should be worshiped, because no man is better than any other…
I feel revulsion because what others see as providence, I see as a cult.
True, true, true. The only problem is that it’s a cult we may have to vote for to stop an entirely different cult. Ugh. Populism will never lose its appeal, except through an aware, educated, and moral public, which is an extraordinarily difficult thing to maintain.
I find it interesting how conservatives are picking at the Johnson and weld ticket but finding all sorts of reasons for tolerating trump. Two experienced governors with good records and without any real personal scandals are light years ahead of both trump and Clinton.
Why do you (and I) criticize Trump? Because, as Orwell once said, it’s our duty:
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
Dirtyjobsguy:
Well, I’m certainly not picking on Johnson and Weld.
I think the problem, though, is the third-party stigma. I don’t want to support anyone (Johnson, Weld, or anyone else) who will merely split the right and further facilitate the victory of Hillary Clinton. I will consider it, though, if I think Johnson/Weld could gain momentum.
When I first heard Weld was running, I thought “Isn’t he old as the hills? Is he even still alive?” I was surprised to learn he was in the ballpark of this year’s other candidates, 70. It seemed to me he was governor of Massachusetts so long ago, almost in another lifetime. But it was only in the 90s.
But he’s not Hillary so it’s all good! NOT
More evidence that Trump is a Caesar. Demagogues always promise the moon and deliver hell. But hell is what the American people have chosen. The only argument among the majority is what version of hell that we shall have…
The elections of 2008, 2012 and now with the ‘choice’ of Trump or Hillary… unequivocally demonstrates that the majority of Americans are incapable of self-governance.
No society or nation can survive that circumstance.
Hillary’s path leads to reeducation camps, the gulag and the killing fields… to 1984.
IF he’s sincere, Trump cannot fulfill his promises without “cutting down all the laws, to get after the devil”. That path leads to Rome’s fate. True, arguably better than the path of ‘the Soviet’.
But either path foretells that the American experiment in justice and liberty for all… is over.
It may be that we shall not hear the ‘fat lady sing’ for another generation but we can now hear her warming up.
Dirtyjobsguy,
That there were and even now are far better candidates is unarguably true and entirely irrelevant. As, Obama’s 53% approval rating combined with Trump’s supporters, amount to an insurmountable majority. We shall have one or the other, as the majority have already spoken.
Maybe the best thing we can do is mock Trump’s idiocies every time he opens his mouth. Let him know that we aren’t afraid of him and that we will hold him to standards. Direct attacks like those of Romney don’t seem to cut through the cultishness, but may mockery could. Alternatively it could cause him to blow a gasket,
No, no, no, Neo. That was deceptive editing of the 2008 Obama quote. I’ve never seen you do that before. Clarity is important, and normally you’ll dig until you find the best, most accurate way to represent a statement. Don’t play games like this.
With Obama it was all about race.
Still is.
Few of us understand what Trump is doing. I’m trying to get a handle on it, to comprehend why he hasn’t failed due to his shallow knowledge, flip flops on policy, bombastic boasting, and outrageous promises. I listened to Rush try to explain it this morning while driving to an appointment. The gist of it is that Trump is doing what the left does and in spades. We all know how the left promises things and never delivers. They have been promising the black community that they would solve their problems now for 50 years now, but nothing changes. They have been promising good jobs for the middle class yet every time they are in power things get worse for all classes except the elite. They have a narrative – we’re going to take care of you. Yet they don’t do it, but the MSM carries their water and keeps hammering their narrative for them. The MSM never points out the facts of their failures. Yet the MSM always points out the failures of the right.
Trump is changing all that. He is promising things he can’t deliver as well, but when the MSM challenges him, he fights right back, twice as hard. He changes positons and when the MSM points it out he gets in their faces and says they are lying. It amazes me and confounds me. I don’t like it, but so far, it’s working.
I’ve always said, that the GOP nominee needs a quick reaction media response team to attack lies, half-truths, rumors, innuendo, etc. before they assume the mantle of truth. That is what Trump is doing in a very aggressive way and he doesn’t mind playing fast and loose with the truth himself. Not what I would prefer, but so far it’s working. Can it work all the way to November? Ah, that is the question.
J.J.:
I don’t think Trump is so mysterious.
He’s an old-fashioned populist demagogue and an amoral Machiavellian Alinskyite.
J.J.:
And since Trump has long been a man who is of the left in many ways, his acting like a man of the left should not be the least bit surprising.
Maybe its time we consider that the American public is just tired of seeing the people most qualified and capable of leading America get torn to shreds by the media in a now decades long game that resembles whack a mole.
Mitt Romney is a fine example and
would have been a decent President. But he put up virtually zero defense against the media onslaught and it cost him the election. And not just because of his bad press, but because so many people stayed home after watching him take such a relentless pounding and never once get pissed off and fight back.
Perhaps unfortunately, it took a quirky and highly volatile New York real estate tycoon to figure out this problem and come up with the obvious solution that would attract enthusiastic support.
‘The only problem is that it’s a cult we may have to vote for to stop an entirely different cult.’
I don’t the same cult like devotion to Hillary. In fact people are already tired of her.
Unfortunately when Trump fails to move mountains and turn back the sea, it will make people (his former supporters and others) even angrier and they will vote for someone even worse in the next election cycle, thus propagating a continuous political downward spiral. We all know where that ends.
Steve D:
Well, I know some people who are that devoted to Hillary. But I wasn’t really meaning to refer to Hillary herself. I was referring to leftism, and to carrying on Obama’s legacy.
Sanders and Hillary voted exactly the same in the Senate 96% of the time. I’m doubtful that either Biden or Warren would significantly differ. The ideological rigidity demands purity in allegiance.
Trump’s demagoguery, while serious is of less concern than the process that Trump leads to, for whether he fails or ‘succeeds’ or achieves a mix of the two is less significant than the fact that a essentially evenly divided nation cannot achieve lasting constitutional change.
And that is the 800 lb gorilla in the room.
Even Ted Cruz never stated how he would overcome that conundrum.
To say that Trump does not appeal to our better angels is putting it mildly, but this is more disturbing than usual in that regard — Donald Trump’s Vile Attack on Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel: Trump calls the U.S.-born federal judge a “hater” and a “Mexican.”
GB,
With regard to bho’s 53% approval rate, its important to remember the powers that be assured us the USA unemployment rate in April remained steady at 5%. With team obama and the msm cheerleaders liars figure.
BTW, I did appreciate djt’s response to msm questions about his donations to veterens groups. It was a very good smack down.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
“Sanders and Hillary voted exactly the same in the Senate 96% of the time. I’m doubtful that either Biden or Warren would significantly differ. The ideological rigidity demands purity in allegiance.”
I’ve mentioned this before but it’s still worth noting: according to Conservative Review, based on their voting records, Warren and Sanders are tied for first place among all the non-Republicans as the most conservative in the Senate.
parker,
That’s a valid point but the finagling that results in those bogus employment numbers is much more easily accomplished than spinning questions in such a way as to get people to express approval where there may be none. My point being that while the actual unemployment number is north of say 15%, that 53% approval rating cannot be off by more than in the mid-single digits.
geokstr,
Forgive my incredulity but are you stating that the record shows Sanders and Warren to be the least liberal of Senate democrats?
Ann:
I think to “Trump” someone will become much the same as to be “Borked.”
Nick:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
First of all, there are two Obama quotes from 2008. Which one are you referring to?
The one from his victory speech (that’s the second quote I offered) is a quote (see this) that doesn’t seem the least bit deceptive. It’s quite straightforward.
The other one, from an earlier 2008 speech of his, included a link to my original post on the subject of the quote (I’ll include the link here again), in which I actually dug quite deeply into the circumstances of the quote and whether he might have been joking or not, for example. I think I analyzed that quote far more than most people did, and looked into the context at the time. Did you read the link?
The real opiate is TRUE BELIEF. Feeling like you’re part of something big, to be alongside your friends and allies as you push forward, that you’re on the verge of a movement bringing something new and exciting is a rush…
FIFY.
The fella needs to read Eric Hoffer: “The True Believer.”
“Hillary’s path leads to reeducation camps, the gulag and the killing fields… to 1984.”
Really?
Do you really think that if Hillary is elected we’ll be in death camps?
I will never vote for her, but she just doesn’t strike me as the kind of demagogue who can sway the masses with her powerful oratory. I think she’ll stink as a president, but not get a lot done, because the R’s will still control congress. She’ll be like Obama with worse political skills.
I’m tired of the Lenin vs Caesar talk. The morality of both of those men aside (they were both monsters) neither HRC or DJT is worthy to clean their toilets, when it comes to political skills and leadership skills.
All that being said: I think Donald is the more dangerous one. He’s a repeat of Obama but far more unstable.
GB: “either path foretells that the American experiment in justice and liberty for all… is over.”
I don’t believe it. I just don’t. I’m not giving up. But it is an argument for not voting for either, especially if that keeps Trump out of the nuclear codes. HRC will, again, be a terrible president but there should be a cohesive loyal opposition and she doesn’t have the political skills of Obama. I think she’ll be pretty ineffective.
If Trump wins, conservatives (even ones like me who didn’t vote for him) own the result, which will be hideous.
Supreme court justices don’t live forever. Don’t vote for either one of them. If you do, you’ll just get more of the same, except worse.
If I really thought that EITHER of them meant the end of our country, as you seem to, there’s no way I’d vote for either one of them – if only to be able to sleep at night.
Bill:
GB is impervious to that argument. Well stated as it is.
blert:
He wasn’t saying that in an approving way.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
“geokstr,
Forgive my incredulity but are you stating that the record shows Sanders and Warren to be the least liberal of Senate democrats?”
Precisely – a point I’ve been making here and elsewhere to unanimous incredulity. Susan Collins (R-ME) actually has a lower rating than Sanders and Warren. So if Sanders is an avowed Socialist, that pretty much makes the rest what exactly – Marxists?
The word “liberal” is meaningless as it applies to current Democrats. The Democrat party was taken over by the New Left radicals in 1972 and they have since purged the party’s leadership and elected officials of all those we would have called “liberals” in generations past, you know, those left-of-center on social issues but who still loved this country.
Bill,
“leads to” are the key words. If you wish, substitute Sanders, Biden or Warren for Hillary. They are all agents of the Left. The reason they all lead to re-education camps, the gulag, the killing fields and 1984 is because that is the end point of all collectivist ‘philosophies’ and because the completion of the “fundamental transformation” of America cannot be completed without them.
Evidently you imagine that Ayers and the 70’s marxist “weatherman” were kidding when they estimated that 25 million Americans (those who cling to thier guns, bibles and constitution) would have to be terminated. I take them seriously because it is an existential necessity for the societal transformation they champion.
Your faith that a RINO congress will stop another democrat President is astonishing given all public school bathrooms now becoming coed. Itself, just a step away from by law ALL public bathrooms becoming ‘discrimination free zones’.
An unlimited illegal invasion, near unlimited Muslim hijrah ‘migration’, astronomical and unsustainable debt, emasculation of the military, cultural dissolution with the country falling apart around us and you imagine that we can still recover after 8 more years of a democrat President. Dream on while you may and if denial is more important than survival, then so be it.
Acceptance of a horrific reality is only ‘giving up’, when you do not intend to fight another day. Fighting another way is necessary when defeat has already occurred.
Finally, voting for Trump, for in my view, voting for the probability of Rome’s fate… is much to be prefered over voting for the path of the collective.
OM,
I welcome a rationale argument that persuades. It brings me no pleasure to act as a Cassandra.
geokstr,
The difference between Sanders/Warren and the rest would appear to be forthrightness. They aren’t hiding what they are and yes, the last Patrick Moynihan type I recall was Georgia Sen. Zell Miller.
Neo – I’m referring to this quote: “a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany … and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama.”
In your 2008 article you used this quote: “My job this morning is to be so persuasive…that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack.”
In the 2008 article you discuss the possibility that this was said in “gentle mockery”. That reading has Obama describing what a political speech is supposed to do, overdramatizing it. In today’s article you (a) drop the first section [“My job this morning is to be so persuasive”] and (b) discuss the quote only as “over-the-top, narcissistic, and rather religious in their implications and imagery” and comparable to Trump’s recent statements. A person would not read today’s article and have the same impression of the quote as if they’d read the 2008 article.
And for clarity’s sake: I’m no fan of Obama (or Trump), and I am a fan of yours.
I’ve been reading and listening to Ben Shapiro lately – he’s got a similar opinion of Trump as you and I do. I really like him. But his website The Daily Wire keeps finessing every quote and fact in just such a way as to make it seem worse than it is.
We’re on the right side. We can be zealous without being Katie Couric. We don’t have to shade the bad to make it seem terrible.
GB:
No you just like to kibitz, to talk for talk’s sake. Why? because it’s all about talking, being profound.
Predictions of death camps, killing fields, reeducation camps. You seem to have no faith in Americans and yet you state with great authority that alternatives that won’t work. Americans are too stupid to figure things out. As if nNo one else in the country is thinking about these problems?
I doubt that Bill is a Rhino-bot and lover of the feckless Republican congress.
Cassandra foretold future events correctly but was not heeded. You aren’t Cassandra, more of an Eeyore.
Bill, SteveD, and the other #NeverTrump-ers out there — if Judge Napolitano is right, you’ll get your wish. He said on Fox this weekend that he didn’t see how DOJ could avoid convening a grand jury, and if a grand jury is convened, they will indict. And you’ll get to vote for Good Old Uncle Joe. Happy now?
Hrc is many things, her record is well known, she is an opportunistic criminal, and mainly interested in power and hording cash. Djt is many things, his record is well known, he is perhaps not a criminal, but there is no doubt he is mainly interested in power and hording cash. A choice between Twiddledee or Twiddledum.
I can not sign onto GB’s Caesar or Lenin theory. I think hrc morphed from her youthful utopian dreaming. For quite sometime she has been in the game for power, the legacy of the first vulva president, and cold hard cash. As far as djt being a Caesar, well he’s not that clever and probably too lazy.
GB,
You seem to assume polls on bho’s approval are more honest than than BLS numbers, I can not make that leap.
RS,
“Happy now?”
Where does that come from? (Sorry to be so flyover country to end a sentence with a proposition.) If anyone is happy with the choices presented so far, including the possibilty of Biden; its not me. I try to cling to reality. I may in your POV be seriously delusional, but I am not voting for djt or hrc or uncle joe.
But then, I have my own standards, and you are welcome to your own. (There, I ended a sentence without a preposition.)
The only good thing about a Trump presidency would be finally learning what the real unemployment numbers are. Not that Trump would expose this fact, I assume it would be the bureaucrats sabotaging his policy.
Doesn’t matter though, the truth is the truth and we can easily trace the numbers to Obama.
Imagine the most competent and qualified leader of the free world you can think of, Now imagine how he gets elected with the existing crop of eligible voters and a MSM as currently constructed.
He doesn’t get elected.
So far I only see one candidate standing that may actually get this.
Nick:
I still don’t have a clue why you think that sentence was so important, dropped or not (I dropped it merely for brevity, not because it changed anything)—particularly since I included a link to the post in which I discussed the whole thing at great length and in great detail.
I can’t include everything in every post—that’s what links are for.
SteveH,
And that candidate is?
Neo,
Politely, you are too gentle for attempting to reach out to the irrational. That may be your way, but you are not a saint. You are the dancer behind the apple. Kindness is a virtue, but it must (in my POV) be deserved. Perhaps, I am a bit testy to learn my examine revealed my eyesight went from 20/15 to 20/20. Time to buy scopes for all my 30 caliber rifles. 😉
GB @9:08 pm gets it right.
People, the USA as a Constitutional Republic is DEAD. Stop singing “America the Beautiful” because it is ugly and getting uglier by the day.
The Tax Code is 60,000 pages long. The IRS Commissioner lies to the Congress, smiling as he does so. The Navy cannot fight two regional tiffs simultaneously-ain’t got the ships. Just examples.
We are as regulated and as lied to as were citizens in the USSR.
Parker i’ll put it this way. I bet Donald Trump negotiates a deal for a golf course differently in New Zealand than he does in South Carolina. I bet he negotiates a deal for a hotel differently in Maine than he does in California.
The point being, he instinctively knows what techniques give him an advantage depending on the demographic hes dealing with.
And right now, he knows the American electorate like nobody else has.
.
Trump isn’t a genius, his supporters are either morons or hate Hillary more.
SteveH,
Negotiating golf courses and hotels is your claim to his acumen? Ah, come on. And, if that transelates to he knows the electorate like nobody else, well I am too old to smoke from that pipe. I will refrain from commenting further. But please tell me you have no children or grandchildren.? And you don’t give a shit about the future.
Frog:
Remember never loose your spoon or bowl when in the camp. Since we are all doomed to be rounded up at any moment, or so said Cassandra. But all will be better after the civil war ends….
The Republic is dead if you give up to the msm, hollyweird, and the politico rino or dem in the beltway. Learn to reload, purchase powder, primers, and learn to cast bullets. Next learn tactics and teach them to your children. Most of all, learn to kill carefully selected targets silently.
This is last measure, but never be unprepared.
OM,
This forum is about talk, about communication. “Eyeore” is about substituting a lame put down for reasoned rebuttal. I chose ‘Cassandra’ specifically because her predictions were rejected, not as a signifier of accuracy. I’ve been wrong before, will be wrong again and hope that I’m wrong about the republic.
Nor is it profundity that I seek but instead clarity, while knowing that it is impossible to speak so clearly that it cannot be misunderstood.
You have a perfect right to disagree, as do I. Why, when your argument proves unpersuasive, the need to resort to personnel insult?
If the likes of Hillary leads inevitably to death camps, how has Sweden managed to come out unscathed? They had leaders, parties, governments well to the left of her. Way out left past Sanders, in fact.
Then they tired of them and swung back.
Tired conceits of all the Left being mini-Lenins hides their actual faults.
The only thing that will bring the US an authoritarian government is if the Army want it. In that case, Trump is a much bigger danger.
Neo:
“Dirtyjobsguy:
…
I think the problem, though, is the third-party stigma. I don’t want to support anyone (Johnson, Weld, or anyone else) who will merely split the right and further facilitate the victory of Hillary Clinton.”
That’s the nub of the matter.
The current situation is crying out for a viable 3rd option, which now is the most realistic that it has been in the modern era.
But the primary litmus test for the Libertarian Party or any other 3rd option is not the meritorious governance-and-leadership quality of the individual candidate, but rather, as Neo points to, the practical competitive quality of the campaign.
A 3rd-option campaign that will compete for real to play to win is the need. An ideal 3rd-option candidate is the want.
A 3rd-option campaign is doable.
It just needs a compelling candidate, a compelling story (narrative), and most of all, the essential character of the campaign must be defined by a zealously vigorous activist mindset and skillset – which is the minimum required to compete for real versus Democrat-front Left activists and Left-mimicking Trump-front alt-Right activists.
The lesson of the 2012 presidential campaign, repeated with the 2016 GOP primary race – that many conservatives and Republicans even now have failed (or refuse) to pick up – is that participatory politics subsume electoral politics, and a social activist movement is required to compete for real against a social activist movement.
To compete for real, Trump read the political market, identified the fundamental market inefficiency, and aligned with alt-Right activists to displace the activism-deficient Right to usurp GOP.
A 3rd option in the 2016 presidential election is realistic.
But the minimum standard for a 3rd option to compete for real is the requirement that alt-Right-displaced conservatives – possibly in a (probably necessary) practical alliance with Left-displaced liberals – collectively adopt the activist mindset, adapt the activist skillset, and commit zealously and permanently to full-spectrum activism. That’s the minimum standard to compete for real.
There’s no choice. You’re backed into a political evolutionary corner. Any less than full activism, and you’re meekly surrendering the nation to your own political obsolescence despite that right now is the time, place, and the opportunity to compete for real for social dominance as an insurgent in the political evolutionary arena. So far, though, displaced conservatives appear to be rejecting necessary activism out of hand and resigning themselves to docile submission to any ‘other’ that fields the activists necessary to compete for real in the only social cultural/political game there is.
Especially in the US, social cultural/political history is and has always been a product manufactured by activists in the arena – just regular people competing as a team applying a prosaic social method – not a divine tide.
GB:
You “rationally” swat down arguments that do not agree with your pessimistic “reasoned” expected outcomes. Talk of slander when criticism becomes sharp, then return to the same trope. Eeyore was a depressive pessimistic character indeed, don’t be one.
“If the likes of Hillary leads inevitably to death camps, how has Sweden managed to come out unscathed?” Chester Draws
Sweden, as a representative of Western Civilization, will not exist 20 years from now. Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city has the highest rate of rape in the world and, 98% of it is by Muslims. There are “no go” zones in Swedish cities and they are growing.
Sweden’s birth rate demographics spell out her doom. Her socialist welfare system spells her doom, as it does all of Western Europe because their welfare/socialism is unsustainable.
Off the radar, the EU is clandestinely moving to create an army answerable only to Brussel’s bureaucrats.
“You “rationally” swat down arguments that do not agree with your pessimistic “reasoned” expected outcomes. Talk of slander when criticism becomes sharp” OM
Premise, internally consistent extension of the premise and a logical conclusion are the essence of rationality. Reasoned rebuttal is not “swat[ting] down” an opposing argument but exposing its flaws. “Criticism” that doesn’t address the argument but denigrates the other’s character (“depressive pessimistic”) is slander by any metric.
Geoffrey Britain:
But what you are describing in Sweden is a different fate than the death camps/gulags.
neo,
That’s true, though Muslim immigration into Europe is directly tied to its social welfare system. It cannot be otherwise, so immigration of the young is an inherent operative principle of social welfare systems.
I included the link to the EU’s covert ploy to create its own army to demonstrate the other inherent quality of social welfare systems, an unelected bureaucracy laying the groundwork for the means to control the ‘people’. Always for their own good, of course…
All forms of collectivism are inherently unsustainable because they reject key aspects of the external reality within which we exist and as a necessary compensatory premise, fantasize that human nature is utterly malleable. Thus the insistence that basic human nature is a “social construct”.
Ideological fanaticism prevents objective evaluation, so in order to survive, all collectivist ‘philosophies’ must gradually impose an ever greater degree of political correctness until an end stage is reached, where all thought, speech and behavior is declared by the State to be either forbidden or mandatory. The foremost current example being N. Korea.
Given the above factors and socialism’s ‘reality defiant’ premises, all forms of socialism must gradually evolve into totalitarian communism. And communism, to secure itself and then maintain its power, inescapably leads to the death camps/gulags.
Human nature being what it is, dissent is certain but the end stage totalitarian State cannot tolerate the ‘people’ being aware of individual dissent, thus the need for the gulags and death camps. Once beaten down enough, a population can be controlled with a minimal amount of them. Reeducation for the least recalcitrant, gulags for hard labor, medical experimentation, etc. and death camps for the disposables. It is a methodology that all communist States have employed because… it works.
Geoffrey Britain:
You write:
That is a conclusion that cannot be proven or disproven, because you can always say “well, even though it hasn’t happened yet in most socialist countries, it will happen, given enough time.”
That’s an article of faith. You may think your logic is unassailable, but I don’t see it that way. If the control can be exerted through other means, the gulag is not only not necessary but can lead to too much backlash. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
The fact is that most socialist countries don’t have gulags and don’t seem to need them to perpetuate socialism, which is done through education and cultural pressures of various kinds far short of a gulag. I don’t see that gulags are either necessary or inevitable.
“I don’t see that gulags are either necessary or inevitable.”
And neither do I.
Many on the right are so used to demonizing the left that it becomes hard to discern, when it counts, the reality vs hyperbole.
Of course, a further slide leftward is rather bad for this country.
However, shouldn’t we ask, compared to what?
We are so dead set against Clinton that we find it easy to rationalize backing someone because he is “our guy” (wearing our “team’s” colors)?
Does that “trump” all the rest?
.
It is hard to express the scale and quality of Trump’s lies (including things he didn’t need to – e.g. his fundraising, and his malleability on issues/policies), and just how much his demeanor way more than thumbs the scale towards Authoritarianism.
Charles Murray does his best, but it still seems to understate the danger…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435805/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-why-hillary-is-even-worse-doesnt-cut-it
We need to start believing our eyes and ears about Trump.
The nature of this-all is a marked departure from anyone we’ve encountered in our lifetimes. Of course, we don’t want to believe Trump could be really all that bad, so we ignore all the signs, and fall back to our comfortable position/habit of fighting Dems, carrying the ball for “our team”.
.
Clinton is still within “normal” political bounds.
Trump is completely unbounded.
Lest we think that is a good thing, that means he is not beholding to anything. Not to principles, not to policies he espouses/flip flops on, not to limits to power. What makes us think he would be accountable to his supporters about anything? One step further, then what is the point of Trump?
If we want to raise the specter of “gulags”, Of the two candidates, Trump seems an order of magnitude closer to delivering on coercion in a brutal way vs Clinton.
.
Four more years of slide into “Europeanization” isn’t great, to be sure, but if Trump’s chaos brings Authoritarianism, all bets are off on reviving our country and what it stands/stood for.
So, we want to gamble on Trump, for what? If anyone thinks he will deliver on any imagined “promises”, where’s your proof, that doesn’t also have several counter points (largely from Trump himself)? Is it worth the risk to find out?
.
Support Libertarian or third party, and GOP down-ticket (in hopes we have GOP with backbone in Congress to limit whoever gets to power).
If we ALL wait around for everyone else to move, until we see some “momentum” in the Libertarian/third party, it will become a self fulfilling prophecy that there is NONE.
Big Maq
Well said.
Whenever I hear the “not voting for Trump is a vote for Hillary” argument it does feel as if, as you expressed so well, the speaker thinks I’m wearing the same team jersey as them. Which makes sense, since I wore that jersey for so long. But once they nominated Trump I took the jersey off. And burned it.
We’re in a pickle, to be sure, and it’s very depressing, but free agency feels pretty good.