Only Democracy leads to Tyranny - Plato

[dialamah]

This article helps me understand about the people who support Trump.

For the white working class, having had their morals roundly mocked, their religion deemed primitive, and their economic prospects decimated, now find their very gender and race, indeed the very way they talk about reality, described as a kind of problem for the nation to overcome. This is just one aspect of what Trump has masterfully signaled as “political correctness” run amok, or what might be better described as the newly rigid progressive passion for racial and sexual equality of outcome, rather than the liberal aspiration to mere equality of opportunity.

Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well. A struggling white man in the heartland is now told to “check his privilege” by students at Ivy League colleges. Even if you agree that the privilege exists, it’s hard not to empathize with the object of this disdain. These working-class communities, already alienated, hear — how can they not? — the glib and easy dismissals of “white straight men” as the ultimate source of all our woes. They smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them — all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities — and see themselves, in Hoffer’s words, “disinherited and injured by an unjust order of things.”

An American elite that has presided over massive and increasing public debt, that failed to prevent 9/11, that chose a disastrous war in the Middle East, that allowed financial markets to nearly destroy the global economy, and that is now so bitterly divided the Congress is effectively moot in a constitutional democracy: “We Respectables” deserve a comeuppance. The vital and valid lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that if the elites cannot govern by compromise, someone outside will eventually try to govern by popular passion and brute force.

[TimG]

helps me understand about the people who support Trump.

It is a good article.

I thought this advice for Clinton was very apt:

That it will fall to Clinton to temper her partys ambitions will be uncomfortable to watch, since her willingness to compromise and equivocate is precisely what many Americans find so distrustful. And yet she may soon be all we have left to counter the threat. She needs to grasp the lethality of her foe, moderate the kind of identity politics that unwittingly empowers him, make an unapologetic case that experience and moderation are not vices, address much more directly the anxieties of the white working classand Democrats must listen.

Democrats can't continue to pander to idiots claiming that all white men are "privileged" and must be punished for the sins of their ancestors and expect the votes from whites who are struggling with the changes in the global economy. Edited July 25, 2016 by TimG

[bush_cheney2004]

Donald Trump was able to overcome the tyranny of his party....Bernie Sanders could not.

[August1991]

Donald Trump was able to overcome the tyranny of his party....Bernie Sanders could not.

From Russia to America, from France and Poland to Britain, many ordinary people died to defeat the fascism of Adolf Hitler and Imperial Japan.

It is sad to see so-called modern, "progressive" leftist intellectuals, sophisticates, get this so wrong - and impugn such good people; the very ordinary people who defended our Civilisation through a Cold War and a more costly war just seven decades ago.

Edited September 18, 2016 by August1991

[eyeball]

Are conservatives in North America EVER going to do something about the progressives fouling our society? They didn't seem to have any problem sending money to right wing regimes that determined to rid their societies of progressives. Why are NA right wingers so wimpy about doing what many must think is required here?

[August1991]

Are conservatives in North America EVER going to do something about the progressives fouling our society? They didn't seem to have any problem sending money to right wing regimes that determined to rid their societies of progressives. Why are NA right wingers so wimpy about doing what many must think is required here?

Eyeball, what is this "conservative" and "progressive" labelling? Why do we do this?

Voltaire was a "progressive" for his time. Burke was a "conservative" later.

====

Yet, invariably, I find that "modern progressives" get it wrong. They claim the moral virtue of Voltaire without any of his logic - set aside his literary talent or even meager courage.

Edited September 20, 2016 by August1991

[Michael Hardner]

Back to the OP:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot/the-one-demographic-that-is-hurting-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

The divide that is described in the article is supported by surveys of age demographis that show Clinton 20 points ahead with 18-39 year old voters.

This may be a generational divide more than anything. But it's not covered that way. Thoughts ?

Nudge back to the OP with new information...

No debate with members... no problem with moderation...

More fuel for interesting debate, hopefully.

[August1991]

Back to the OP...

The OP has this quote: "And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment."

IOW, it's more "Trump as Hitler" tripe. The OP has reached the Godwin point.

=====

IMHO, many ordinary people defeated the tyrants of the past century.

[Peter F]

many ordinary people defeated the tyrants of the past century.

True. and many ordinary people fought to keep tyrants in place.

[eyeball]

Back to the OP:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/upshot/the-one-demographic-that-is-hurting-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0

The divide that is described in the article is supported by surveys of age demographis that show Clinton 20 points ahead with 18-39 year old voters.

This may be a generational divide more than anything. But it's not covered that way. Thoughts ?

Nudge back to the OP with new information...

No debate with members... no problem with moderation...

More fuel for interesting debate, hopefully.

I'm white and unedumucated and yes, I want Trump to win.

Go figure.

[Moonlight Graham]

I think people also like Trump because he's outside the establishment system. People see a lot of things going in the wrong direction in the country, like increasing government debt, endless wars, terrorism, financial crisis, jobs being shipped overseas etc. and they think a guy like Trump who isn't the typical Washington insider who kisses the party's ass and tries to say all the right things in carefully crafted doublespeak can maybe change things for the better.

People want change. Obama obviously campaigned on change, but most of the change he brought was simply that he wasn't George W. Bush. Not much change between him and Bill Clinton.

[eyeball]

I certainly don't like Trump I only expect him to make things worse.

I think the human race needs to hit rock bottom before it can change - the only reason I want Trump to win is that we're likelier to get closer to that point faster with him in charge.

[?Impact]

I think the human race needs to hit rock bottom before it can change - the only reason I want Trump to win is that we're likelier to get closer to that point faster with him in charge.

That is why am going to take up drugs and alcohol, best way to turn my life around.