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Trump Talking Up New US Imperialism - Any Visual-Show Greatness Will Do

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Boydstun

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Tony posted this interesting poll of people in Greenland in a thread on tariffs, and I think it needs this new thread topic.

Let's join the US

For some years, I've urged the merger of the US and Mexico.* The 31 States of Mexico would become additional US States. There's some resistance to my idea. I think the results would go along lines of the results from the reunification of West and East Germany. (West revolutionized East for the better.) Even without a US-Mex unification, the prohibitions on drugs in both countries should be repealed, and trade between the two countries should be freed (like between Texas and Tennessee). Argentina is pushing such free trade with the US at present.

The Trump talk-up of international relations in this hemisphere is perhaps a diversion of attention from his possible upcoming delivery of Ukraine to the Brute of Russia. We'll see. 

And perhaps a diversion of attention from his possible declaration of a national emergency for accomplishing a roundup of migrants merely accused of a crime and deportation across the southern US border. We'll see. His campaign promise was such roundup and deportation of about 20 million illegal migrants. Now that would approach the "greatness" of Jackson's removal of the Five Civilized Tribes from SE United States to a US Territory. We'll see (if we keep eyes and mind open).

 

 

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Elections have consequences, I bet the coming consequences will be more positive and peace affirming than the most recent consequences. But I’ve been duped so many times my estimation is of course suspect, to think I expect much from a convicted felon.

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@tadmjones – I have an old ditty for you.

Yes, a man who was convicted beyond any reasonable doubt of committing financial fraud and now above the law may well commit other frauds window-dressed with the American flag and talk of "freedom." 

By the way, I do not think this ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is peace-affirming. This is a bad deal for Israel. It was irresponsible for Biden and Trump to pressure Israel into it. Hamas in Gaza must be annihilated if Israel is to be free from further Nazi-like atrocities against its people. Riddance of Hamas in Gaza has not yet been accomplished, and it must be for an enduring peace.

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Love the ditty, even though Trump ditched the WHO, still my favorite band.

Why would he need window dressing being above the law? Which financial fraud case was he convicted beyond reasonable doubt , the record keeping as it pertains to election expenses concerning an NDA, or ‘over valuing’ own’s assets when presenting documentation to acquire a loan from a party free to perform their own due diligence?

Israel is a sovereign nation last I checked, unless you mean the Abraham Accords is  the vehicle Trump is using to throttle Israel’s sovereignty?

Edited by tadmjones
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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

. . .

Which financial fraud case was he convicted beyond reasonable doubt?

. . .

This one

Tad, have you ever expressed here criticisms of any Trump policies (such as here)? I don't recall any. Let us know of any specifics. Left unmentioned = going along with = tacit complicity.

Even the Brute of Russia needs window dressing. Stalin's dressing was so effective that people on the train for extinction in Siberia wrote letters to Stalin pleading for his intervention, thinking that he surely did not know what was happening to them.

Edited by Boydstun
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15 hours ago, Boydstun said:

 

By the way, I do not think this ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is peace-affirming. This is a bad deal for Israel. It was irresponsible for Biden and Trump to pressure Israel into it. Hamas in Gaza must be annihilated if Israel is to be free from further Nazi-like atrocities against its people. Riddance of Hamas in Gaza has not yet been accomplished, and it must be for an enduring peace.

A bad deal, I'm also sure of, Stephen. Seized upon by Gazans/Hamas as a moral victory. Only delaying the task ahead when the IDF has to return (after an emboldened Hamas no doubt breaks the ceasefire).

Apropos, this new poll disturbs me coming out of the USA, it might tell of Israel's future and America's when - some portion - of the society's moral inversion is quite acceptable.

 

https://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/21-of-american-voters-support-hamas-over-israel-poll/&ved=2ahUKEwis7bnzt4eLAxXBT0EAHcH0LaIQvOMEKAB6BAgPEAE&usg=AOvVaw3cNySE_uq4reTC2yvbKCv4

Edited by whYNOT
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My biggest criticism of Trump is him giving into two weeks to flatten the curve. He was duped, but RFK Jr may be apology enough for me eventually.

Most of the ‘institutions’ are in the shitter which is more an indictment of the current leadership and not an argument or opinion against institutions qua institution , the resultant cream that rose to top. Maybe Yarvin has a point or two.

For now I’m very happy with an American jingoistic populist, feels like a needed curative balm.

ps

I disagree with making flag burning a crime , but flag burning  is a little silly anyway

Edited by tadmjones
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12 hours ago, tadmjones said:

My biggest criticism of Trump is him giving into two weeks to flatten the curve. He was duped, but RFK Jr may be apology enough for me eventually.

. . .

Whatever are you saying? To ring a bell, I've scanned the index of FFS from "abortion" to "welfare", but I get no association for what it is you indicate here as of your interest. I suspect I'm too old fashioned* to connect with some concerns of  contemporary folk.

Which institutions do you assess as in bad shape? Or which in good shape?

In all the contrivance I go through to raise our flag, that flag does not touch the ground.* And it is not worn as clothing, for crying out loud!

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Stephen 

What is/was your assessment of President Trump’s handling of the plague? 
 

If federal agencies that are centered on public health are considered institutions , I count them as thoroughly corrupt and hence in the shitter, though perhaps they never weren’t. 

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1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

Stephen 

What is/was your assessment of President Trump’s handling of the plague? 
 

If federal agencies that are centered on public health are considered institutions , I count them as thoroughly corrupt and hence in the shitter, though perhaps they never weren’t. 

If by "the plague" you mean the Covid pandemic, I'd say a B compared to Ike's response to the Asian flu pandemic of 1957–58. We had The FDA and CDC in those days as well. We knew that the flu contagion was coming. It was recognized by CDC that it was going to sweep so fast that little good would be done by ordering or urging people to stay home a while (cf. Spanish Flu, 1918). It mainly hit children, unlike Covid which was worst for the elderly. The decision to close schools or school districts was left up to local authorities. Parents who did not want their child exposed kept them home, called in, and lied that their child was ill. The economy was not impacted significantly. Ike's attention as well as the NYT (I've studied the archives for those years) was on military personnel. A vaccine had been developed privately before the Asian Flu hit here. But it couldn't be produced fast enough to save many. Ike got money from Congress to speed up production before the fall term of school. About 117,000 Americans died from the Asian Flu pandemic. As I recall, my scaling up (a few years ago) came to about 200,000 in today's population. 

Trump should have urged States to not order "stay-home". (Calling it a lockdown is an obscenity to anyone who knows what is the traditional application: lockdown of a military base or a prison.) That was disproportionate and mitigated an opportunity for dropping out stupid and politically overwhelmed people from the American theater of life. Trump should not have signed the CARES act. His efforts to find a vaccine and produce more test kits and respirators were right (like Ike on speeding production of the vaccine). I count those as "providing for the common defense" fair and square, regardless of the circumstance that the Founders could not have conceived of such future sort of defense.

We stopped going to the health club of our own accord, before the Governor closed them. We did not gather with friends or family. I kept my husband at home because he has COPD; I was the only in-person contact to the outside world for us. I wore a mask from common sense and scientific advice such as from CDC. It was eventually learned that the virus was spread mainly by airborne. We got all the vaccinations as they became available. We never got Covid.

When I was a child, we all got chicken pox, mumps, and measles. It is my understanding that there are now vaccines for those. If I had children, they sure as hell would get vaccinated.

People today who complain about their loss of freedom in being ordered to have their children vaccinated are a bunch of snowflakes. Live under the requirement of military conscription (as we did and as I've mentioned before in this connection) and you'll find out what a real threat to your liberty is. 

I've seen all the theatre against Covid vaccine and skepticism about the virus before, during the AIDS years when the only anti-viral was AZT. It was politically motivated to give platform to Dr. Duesberg, who was a skeptic that HIV was the cause of AIDS; he preached that the real cause was taking that med (which alone is damaging, as everyone knew) and unhealthy lifestyles of gay people (stereotype, that is). That message was pleasing to citizens who did not want to be paying taxes for saving a population of mainly homosexuals in this country. Libertarians urged me to not take the meds. I knew their real concerns, and I listened instead to my Scientific American and my physician and Dr. Fauci. I shall be always grateful to Dr. Fauci who fought to try to rescue us from that killer and to big pharma who keeps me alive.

 

1961.jpg

Edited by Boydstun
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George_Wallace_standing_at_the_podium_addressing_an_audience_at_the_Democratic_National_Convention_in_Atlantic_City,_New_Jersey,_August_1964.jpg

In 1968 Ayn Rand wrote:

“But even Humphrey looks like the remnant of a civilized past—like a decaying dowager who is ending her days in genteel poverty and clutching at musty mementos—when compared to the third candidate in this election: George C. Wallace.

"I have said repeatedly that the ‘liberal’ welfare-statist movement in this country represents not socialism, but fascism—a hidden, disguised, unadmitted, implicit fascism. (See my article on ‘The New Fascism—Rule by Consensus’ 1965.) George Wallace represents the emergence of an open fascism in this country—or, more exactly, the crude elements from which an explicit fascism is to come.

“Observe the symptoms: RACISM (which he denies, but which is quite obvious in his own utterances and in his past record)—a primitive, undefined NATIONALISM (not a rational patriotism, but nationalism in the form of a pseudo-self-esteem)—militant ANTI-INTELLECTUALITY (not an opposition to a specific group or kind of intellectual, but to all intellectuals, to the intellect as such)—the constant appeal to ‘the little people, or ‘the plain people’ or ‘us folks’ (which, socially, is an appeal to the lowest elements in society, and, psychologically, an appeal to an individual’s lowest potential: to self-righteous mediocrity)—and FORCE, the explicit and implicit reliance on the ‘activism’ of physical force as the solution to all social problems. . . .

“It is the fact that some of his statements—apart from and out of HIS context—are true and needed saying that deludes many people into the belief that he is a defender of freedom or capitalism. Quite obviously, he is not. . . .”

In the past, I have often referred to Trump and his MAGA faction as proto-fascist. That would be a faction such as Rand had described in 1968. However, I now think that faction evolved into something more decidedly fascist. Much window dressing with the American flag, but the old representation of the flag for a nation of individual liberty is now fading. The rights and legal equality won by Black Americans during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s are being suffocated by the newly elected LEADER in control of executive Departments. On every front, the new administration is deliberately moving the form of government here at the federal level to the fascist form. It is not merely making moves which, independently, will be picked up and put into the purpose of fascism. If you visit whitehouse. gov, you find it has been dumbed down to adulatory photos and vague pleasant slogans, not the long-standing repository of texts of presidential public speeches and other presidential remarks. The free and independent press is under continual threats from LEADER. Loss of individual rights and the release of his Brown Shirts from prison for their individual criminal actions in support of his continuing rule coddling White Supremacist propaganda is called freedom and justice by LEADER and his ideological circle. Other public smearing of individuals opposing HIM and Big Lie after Big Lie, and HIS use of presidential power to rewrite history of his crimes and crimes of his Shirts is daily faire. To the glee of millions of citizens.

Since 1968, there were changes in the proto-fascist (now deliberate) faction. They took over the Republican Party and thereby could win more than the seven States won by Wallace. The so-called Moral Majority became a block in the party which candidates therein must placate to win a nomination. The Party winners pay empty lip service to rule by the constitution and the rule of law it enables, but support every push by LEADER to test overrunning what remains of legal restraints on HIM.

Additionally, an excellent diagnosis already in 2019.

Edited by Boydstun
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