America has been rotten to the core since its foundation. Last night I watched "Client 9" on Tubi, Alex Gibney's documentary about the lynching of Eliot Spitzer, using consensual sex with a well-paid escort as the gallows to hang him for a decade of tackling corruption on Wall Street and in Albany. Most any doc or movie on the 2008 financial crisis is testament to how modern society is built upon crime, with the DOJ providing the veneer of justice while letting most white collar crime slide, all while packing for-profit prison systems with street-level criminals, themselves downriver victims of the wealth transfer to the 1%. I used to live in Chicago, where greasing an Alderman's hands helped my condo association get a working sewer system (the city placed a cap on our lines which they removed after payment), the Mafia runs the city's liquor distribution and vending machine network (mainly a money laundering operation), and even your local property taxes can be lowered with a bribe. Netflix's "Buy Now" documentary reminds us that while we're all distracted with identity politics, mass consumption, pollution, litter, and global warming are uniting to kill us all -- with Trump's food/water/air quality deregulation, drill baby drill, and vaccine negation only escalating the end of mankind from a few centuries to a decade or two... tops.
I agree with you 100% Ben! I am coming to realize, however that our argument is not only in reminding Americans about integrity, morality, ethics, democracy, and the rule of law. Here is what concerns me the most: "Trump's loyal supporters DO NOT believe Trump committed any crimes." They rest these beliefs on the references of tubular echo chambers funded by billionaires that tell them they are correct.
I know that many are shocked at how obvious it should be that a President must have some form of reliable character. Trump was actually convicted for many different cases civil, sexual assault, fraud, hush money! However, our battle rests with people like Victor Davis Hanson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU6x-9rhzQ who cooly, calmly, intellectually, and eloquently dismiss all Trump's crimes. This man wrote a book titled "The Case for Trump." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2019-04-16/case-trump
It is the uneducated wearing MAGA hats, taping napkins to their ears, dressing in garbage bags who follow up behind these educated scholars at Madison Square Garden Nazi rallies and say, "Yeah, watch this video of Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Victor Davis Hanson to see why our guy Trump is a hero! See, that smart conservative guy in Prager U, or Hoover Institution, or Heritage Foundation, see he's a (historian, lawyer, scholar, billionaire etc) "He says Trump is not guilty, and that the Deep state is committing lawfare!"
In effect, it is not that all Americans have lost belief in the rule of law. They have lost stable grounding in interpreting Truth, facts, and reality of who is breaking the law, who is their ally, and who is their enemy. They think the billionaire Trump is "different" due to racism, misogyny, and sexism . This is why in Tulsi Gabbard's book For Love of Country and others, they continually attack "the woke cabal establishment," with no facts or evidence, but do so in the name of saving democracy! Both sides are saying they want the same values: saving Democracy, fairness, justice, law, equality, and Truth!
How can both sides be right or both sides be wrong? In this book Democracy and Solidarity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfeb6ytlm7M James Davison Hunter begins to chip away at the problem. We have cosmopolitan America and provincial America who see the USA from two different paradigms. Our families, friends, communities, cities, states, are now divided among people who believe Trump is saving democracy, and those who believe Trump is destroying democracy. WE must break through to some form of Truth.
I think it's time we focus on the money trail. This divide and conquer is being thrust upon us by Billionaires cutting our society up into pieces for their delight and conquest. It's time to place massive blame on Big Tech algorithms, Big Media false equivalences, horse race gambling politics, Billionaires: (Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Gates, Thiel, Ackman, Robert Mercer, Koch Family). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/04/the-billions-behind-the-2024-presidential-election/
At this point, both sides of left and right have a hierarchy that leads to billionaires, and while I personally believe Trump is mentally unstable, a malignant narcissist, unfit to be a President, a criminal, conman, and corrupt; the next person, author, scholar or billionaire is right there to say he is not. We must get to the root of why this is the case and uproot it!
It feels like a complete collapse. Like a house of cards, along with the last of the fossil fuel that created this boom, it’s over. Fffwoosh. Just like that. Man, are we underprepared for what’s next
How did we get to this place? There’s a major failure somewhere along the line. In 2016 I yelled at the tv while dumbass incited violence from his crowds. Wasn’t it illegal? Isn’t that illegal? I honestly don’t know how or why it’s come this far. Is it because Democrat leaders were too polite to handle the bully? And now what? It feels and looks like we’ve polited ourselves right out of democracy
I just wonder what’s been said or threats made behind closed doors
Why did Jack Smith give in? I’m running out of possible scenarios
The America that you write about is gone. Trump and his cronies will work to ensure that their system stays in place. Like cow's going to slaughter the citizens voted for this felon return to office. whether it is the whiners who claimed that we're not a democracy, but a republic or the ones that feel the countries headed in the wrong direction, it's all the same.
Y’know, I’ve studied ancient history a bit, and in Ancient Greece, in the 7th and 6th Centuries BCE, they, a few times, elected a demagogue as leader. Enemy time they did that, he became a tyrant and had to be removed. 🤔😉😊
The point of America has never changed. Like all empires, it’s to project power and influence beyond its borders through a variety of means, protect the powerful, help the rich to rise and stay at the top, encourage the in-group and discourage the out-groups. Clinton and Bush did it one way, Obama and Biden another way, and Trump yet another way - the strongman way. His impunity is not unusual and not the most surprising thing about his hold on power.
Ah, the both sides argument. That there is no difference between, say, Russia which suppresses its people and invades its neighbors and America which still enforces a Bill of Rights and works to protect those invaded.
Sure, no country is perfect. There are legit criticisms to be made of any nation.
Russia invades it's neighbors? Which country has been involved in most of the invasions over the last 30 years? Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, just to name a few. And sanctions are also a form of invasion. Cuba and Venezuela. You are living in a fantasy world.
Notice, folks, how he’s not denying Russia’s crimes. He knows he can’t so tries for the usual “Look! Over there!!” attempt at distraction that we always get from Russian trolls. “Don’t look at us invading and stealing children over here. Look at those sanctions that hold people accountable for their actions over there! That’s worse than targeting schoolchildren, right!”
The US claims to be enforcing a "rules based order" that they violate whenever it is convenient. You can scream "whataboutism" all you want but it does not justify the double standard. And just like someone with no argument, you attack me rather than address my point.
Describing accurately what you’re doing isn’t it attacking you. And your rush to claim victimhood was as expected as it is typical.
It’s what happens when you’ve already settled on your conclusion (America is bad. No matter what anybody else ever does, America is the worst.) and have to distract people from those pesky facts that get in the way.
You continue to make it about me. But you can’t address your dounke standard. You claimed that Russia is different because they “invade their neighbors” and i pointed out that the US also “invades their neighbors”. So, what’s the difference? Instead of addressing the issue you begin to point at me “my positions” that come from your head. You are all about straw men and moralistic attacks.
I don't deny Russia crimes. All large power structures revert to might makes right, just as the US does. And you can't justify your ridiculous assertion that Russia is different because it invades other nations. If anything, the US is worse when we count invasions/attacks. But you ignore the crimes of the US and attack anyone who tries to debunk your assertion by showing some context. And sanctions do target children. Pathetic lol
No, it isn’t. I’m taking America on its own terms, judging it according to its own high goals and looking at its own history. It is, however, an empire, and there have been enough of those to be able to generalise certain common aspects.
"The point of America has never changed. Like all empires, it’s to project power and influence beyond its borders..."
Is that all America is about? Is protecting the powerful/helping the rich to only thing Obama did? Is that why he got the ACA passed? Is "discouraging the out-groups" why Biden walked a picket line and forget student debt? Was Harris aiming to go after price gougers while providing help to homebuyers her way of helping the rich stay at the top?
Are you really that eager to empower the criminals?
The Rule of Law is too important, **for our own safety**, for us to be willing to just give it up.
Yes, Trump has gotten away with many crimes and that has been a terrible failure of the law. But it’s an excuse to fight to support Law not do away with it entirely.
Because we don’t give up so easily. And because we need it for our own safety’s sake.
Sure, those who are eager to commit crimes will happily throw up their hands and encourage others to just disregard the law as an excuse for them to do their own crimes.
But those of us who respect the Rule of Law, who understand that we need it for our own self interest as the only real protection we have from those eager to just throw it out, aren’t willing to just give up and obey in advance.
Rule of law? Bush and Cheney were never punished for the crime of starting an aggressive war, wall street criminals were bailed out while regular Americans lost their homes in droves. Trump came to power because of the corruption of the DC establishment.
America has been rotten to the core since its foundation. Last night I watched "Client 9" on Tubi, Alex Gibney's documentary about the lynching of Eliot Spitzer, using consensual sex with a well-paid escort as the gallows to hang him for a decade of tackling corruption on Wall Street and in Albany. Most any doc or movie on the 2008 financial crisis is testament to how modern society is built upon crime, with the DOJ providing the veneer of justice while letting most white collar crime slide, all while packing for-profit prison systems with street-level criminals, themselves downriver victims of the wealth transfer to the 1%. I used to live in Chicago, where greasing an Alderman's hands helped my condo association get a working sewer system (the city placed a cap on our lines which they removed after payment), the Mafia runs the city's liquor distribution and vending machine network (mainly a money laundering operation), and even your local property taxes can be lowered with a bribe. Netflix's "Buy Now" documentary reminds us that while we're all distracted with identity politics, mass consumption, pollution, litter, and global warming are uniting to kill us all -- with Trump's food/water/air quality deregulation, drill baby drill, and vaccine negation only escalating the end of mankind from a few centuries to a decade or two... tops.
I agree with you 100% Ben! I am coming to realize, however that our argument is not only in reminding Americans about integrity, morality, ethics, democracy, and the rule of law. Here is what concerns me the most: "Trump's loyal supporters DO NOT believe Trump committed any crimes." They rest these beliefs on the references of tubular echo chambers funded by billionaires that tell them they are correct.
I know that many are shocked at how obvious it should be that a President must have some form of reliable character. Trump was actually convicted for many different cases civil, sexual assault, fraud, hush money! However, our battle rests with people like Victor Davis Hanson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU6x-9rhzQ who cooly, calmly, intellectually, and eloquently dismiss all Trump's crimes. This man wrote a book titled "The Case for Trump." https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2019-04-16/case-trump
It is the uneducated wearing MAGA hats, taping napkins to their ears, dressing in garbage bags who follow up behind these educated scholars at Madison Square Garden Nazi rallies and say, "Yeah, watch this video of Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Victor Davis Hanson to see why our guy Trump is a hero! See, that smart conservative guy in Prager U, or Hoover Institution, or Heritage Foundation, see he's a (historian, lawyer, scholar, billionaire etc) "He says Trump is not guilty, and that the Deep state is committing lawfare!"
In effect, it is not that all Americans have lost belief in the rule of law. They have lost stable grounding in interpreting Truth, facts, and reality of who is breaking the law, who is their ally, and who is their enemy. They think the billionaire Trump is "different" due to racism, misogyny, and sexism . This is why in Tulsi Gabbard's book For Love of Country and others, they continually attack "the woke cabal establishment," with no facts or evidence, but do so in the name of saving democracy! Both sides are saying they want the same values: saving Democracy, fairness, justice, law, equality, and Truth!
How can both sides be right or both sides be wrong? In this book Democracy and Solidarity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfeb6ytlm7M James Davison Hunter begins to chip away at the problem. We have cosmopolitan America and provincial America who see the USA from two different paradigms. Our families, friends, communities, cities, states, are now divided among people who believe Trump is saving democracy, and those who believe Trump is destroying democracy. WE must break through to some form of Truth.
I think it's time we focus on the money trail. This divide and conquer is being thrust upon us by Billionaires cutting our society up into pieces for their delight and conquest. It's time to place massive blame on Big Tech algorithms, Big Media false equivalences, horse race gambling politics, Billionaires: (Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Gates, Thiel, Ackman, Robert Mercer, Koch Family). https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/04/the-billions-behind-the-2024-presidential-election/
At this point, both sides of left and right have a hierarchy that leads to billionaires, and while I personally believe Trump is mentally unstable, a malignant narcissist, unfit to be a President, a criminal, conman, and corrupt; the next person, author, scholar or billionaire is right there to say he is not. We must get to the root of why this is the case and uproot it!
The rule of law is dead.
This country is now headed for collapse and will break into pieces like the USSR did.
lastly, we should acknowledge that this country is not run by citizens.
Rather, it's run by Oligarchs or the top 5%
Whether Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter
The people get in office and just want to stay there and reward the lobbyist and their 5% masters
All this blah blah about voting is a ruse
We already have an under educated public now they can finally destroy the Department of education to complete the task
It feels like a complete collapse. Like a house of cards, along with the last of the fossil fuel that created this boom, it’s over. Fffwoosh. Just like that. Man, are we underprepared for what’s next
How did we get to this place? There’s a major failure somewhere along the line. In 2016 I yelled at the tv while dumbass incited violence from his crowds. Wasn’t it illegal? Isn’t that illegal? I honestly don’t know how or why it’s come this far. Is it because Democrat leaders were too polite to handle the bully? And now what? It feels and looks like we’ve polited ourselves right out of democracy
I just wonder what’s been said or threats made behind closed doors
Why did Jack Smith give in? I’m running out of possible scenarios
America has only itself to blame
Voters put this monster back into office
The America that you write about is gone. Trump and his cronies will work to ensure that their system stays in place. Like cow's going to slaughter the citizens voted for this felon return to office. whether it is the whiners who claimed that we're not a democracy, but a republic or the ones that feel the countries headed in the wrong direction, it's all the same.
Germany 1933
We know how that went
Now we get to experience it here
Thanks, Ben. I have little hope in there being any such mass protest or resistance.
Y’know, I’ve studied ancient history a bit, and in Ancient Greece, in the 7th and 6th Centuries BCE, they, a few times, elected a demagogue as leader. Enemy time they did that, he became a tyrant and had to be removed. 🤔😉😊
The point of America has never changed. Like all empires, it’s to project power and influence beyond its borders through a variety of means, protect the powerful, help the rich to rise and stay at the top, encourage the in-group and discourage the out-groups. Clinton and Bush did it one way, Obama and Biden another way, and Trump yet another way - the strongman way. His impunity is not unusual and not the most surprising thing about his hold on power.
Ah, the both sides argument. That there is no difference between, say, Russia which suppresses its people and invades its neighbors and America which still enforces a Bill of Rights and works to protect those invaded.
Sure, no country is perfect. There are legit criticisms to be made of any nation.
But any form of “both sides” is just bullshit.
Russia invades it's neighbors? Which country has been involved in most of the invasions over the last 30 years? Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, just to name a few. And sanctions are also a form of invasion. Cuba and Venezuela. You are living in a fantasy world.
Notice, folks, how he’s not denying Russia’s crimes. He knows he can’t so tries for the usual “Look! Over there!!” attempt at distraction that we always get from Russian trolls. “Don’t look at us invading and stealing children over here. Look at those sanctions that hold people accountable for their actions over there! That’s worse than targeting schoolchildren, right!”
Pathetic.
The US claims to be enforcing a "rules based order" that they violate whenever it is convenient. You can scream "whataboutism" all you want but it does not justify the double standard. And just like someone with no argument, you attack me rather than address my point.
Describing accurately what you’re doing isn’t it attacking you. And your rush to claim victimhood was as expected as it is typical.
It’s what happens when you’ve already settled on your conclusion (America is bad. No matter what anybody else ever does, America is the worst.) and have to distract people from those pesky facts that get in the way.
You continue to make it about me. But you can’t address your dounke standard. You claimed that Russia is different because they “invade their neighbors” and i pointed out that the US also “invades their neighbors”. So, what’s the difference? Instead of addressing the issue you begin to point at me “my positions” that come from your head. You are all about straw men and moralistic attacks.
I don't deny Russia crimes. All large power structures revert to might makes right, just as the US does. And you can't justify your ridiculous assertion that Russia is different because it invades other nations. If anything, the US is worse when we count invasions/attacks. But you ignore the crimes of the US and attack anyone who tries to debunk your assertion by showing some context. And sanctions do target children. Pathetic lol
No, it isn’t. I’m taking America on its own terms, judging it according to its own high goals and looking at its own history. It is, however, an empire, and there have been enough of those to be able to generalise certain common aspects.
"The point of America has never changed. Like all empires, it’s to project power and influence beyond its borders..."
Is that all America is about? Is protecting the powerful/helping the rich to only thing Obama did? Is that why he got the ACA passed? Is "discouraging the out-groups" why Biden walked a picket line and forget student debt? Was Harris aiming to go after price gougers while providing help to homebuyers her way of helping the rich stay at the top?
Am truly interested in your answers.
Then nobody should be held accountable. Close the prisons and have a lawless society.
Are you really that eager to empower the criminals?
The Rule of Law is too important, **for our own safety**, for us to be willing to just give it up.
Yes, Trump has gotten away with many crimes and that has been a terrible failure of the law. But it’s an excuse to fight to support Law not do away with it entirely.
I was being sarcastic.
Exactly! If he can commit crimes and not face any consequences for those crimes than why should Americans care about following the law.
Because we don’t give up so easily. And because we need it for our own safety’s sake.
Sure, those who are eager to commit crimes will happily throw up their hands and encourage others to just disregard the law as an excuse for them to do their own crimes.
But those of us who respect the Rule of Law, who understand that we need it for our own self interest as the only real protection we have from those eager to just throw it out, aren’t willing to just give up and obey in advance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk&t=5s&pp=2AEFkAIB
Rule of law? Bush and Cheney were never punished for the crime of starting an aggressive war, wall street criminals were bailed out while regular Americans lost their homes in droves. Trump came to power because of the corruption of the DC establishment.