Another rambling, emoting article from Common Sense. Where's the editor? Is there one? Its thesis, that we're now in a new order, goes completely unsupported. Apparently we're just supposed to accept it. Tell the Russians hit by U.S.-led sanctions that we live in a new order now. They might differ.
I would love to read an article that doesn't feel the need to denigrate Trump in some fashion. Saying Trump "made things worse" is to miss completely what happened. He is an outsider who had the temerity to challenge the assumptions of our so called leaders. Almost everything got better under Trump. No new wars, a peace treaty in the middle east, low inflation, high employment, low gas prices etc. The left and RINO's were so threatened by his policies that they declared all out war internally by fabricating the Russia hoax, the Charlottesville fine people hoax, drinking bleach hoax, military people are stupid hoax etc. and unleashing riots in 2020 where Dem governors and mayors decided to do nothing to protect their own people.
I do not think Trump is perfect by any stretch of the imagination but he is the best president of my lifetime and I include Reagan in that assessment so the apparent necessity of writers to slam him when it is undeserved is quite annoying.
There's just so much wonderful information included in your commentary. I add, Bari, that your global perspective and overview offer an insightful way to look at our recent past history. Indeed, as you correctly point out, the world has changed, and the transformation has been dramatic.
The slow, steady creep of socialistic/left-wing thinking, which has been demonstrably proven again and again to be a failure, has become pervasive in our media, our universities, and our political life.
Unless we can stop giving away everything for nothing in return (see the coming Iranian agreement debacle), and start demanding responsibility and accountability for our actions, in effect, establishing a pay-as-you-go foundation, our "uncivilization" will crumble.
Like you, Bari, I grew up believing that liberalism could solve every problem. Unfortunately, I got mugged by a reality where personal gain, a selfish desire to put oneself before others, and a collective moral compass that did not point north toward the betterment of all.
I'm an old man now, but I am encouraged by your writing and insight to help us navigate a new path out of this morass.
"“It’s not your sunny disposition. It’s your frame of reference. Your frame of reference is America. But Russia does not want to be America. Russia exists in a parallel universe.”
A bunch of gibberish. He seems to be trying to be philosophical but I can’t see what point he is making rather than a long-winded way of saying the post-cold war order is broken. Still sounds pretty much an America-centric view of the world by saying American dominance brought world peace. Plenty of other countries do not think so. There probably would have been peace in Ukraine if the US had not led NATO to push close to the Russian border. America does very little self examination.
At the end of WWII, the US was the dominant economic power of the globe. The US accounted for 1/3rd of global GDP. Roughly 50% of global manufacturing and much more than 50% of global oil and gas production. The US also controlled that global banking system, the global telecommunication system, the global airline system, the global energy system, etc.
None of those things are true anymore. Now the US is just another large country, in a world with many large countries (China's GDP is now larger than the US).
The US just does not have the power to shape global events in a way that it did before. We live in a different world. Somewhat predictably, the world is now acting like it did, before the rise of the USA.
Great article --- but I'd trace most of today's problems including Russia to a profound mistake by mid-20th century intellectuals to recognize that communism and fascism are the exact same thing.
Western liberals rightly condemned fascism, but not communism. they contorted themselves into non sequitor pretzels of "left / right political spectrum" where one somehow ended up at the extreme opposite end from the other. This was patently wrong: life under communism, and the regime's crimes, were indistinguishable from fascism, and communism should have been rejected utterly, unequivocally.
If the recognition that fascism and communism are the same became internalized in 1945, many of our problems today would not exist. Would America and Allies have traded with Hitler? Would they have bought his oil, or transferred technology to companies he controlled? The answer is plainly no. It should have been just as plain when asked about China (still communist) or Russia (never took responsibility for tens of millions dead and purged).
Can't trade with communists. Can't wink and nod, or construct moral equivalencies, or draw up "spectrums" that indulge the pretense that communism is any less brutal, or authoritarian, or deadly than fascism. Acknowledge this, and many of today's seemingly incomprehensible or unexpected developments begin to make perfect sense.
There's a good deal of truth in this. If one disregards ideology and looks at the functional systems of National Socialist Germany and Stalinist Russia, they had a lot in common. It's no coincidence, for instance, that both Hitler and Stalin distrusted and feared their military leaders. Both correctly judged that in a totalitarian state, the military was one of two institutions—the other was the security services—that possessed the power to overthrow the regime. Thus both dictators conducted purges of the military leadership and took measures severely to limit the autonomy of the armed forces.
Of course, the two regimes came to power by different means and superficially there appeared to be many differences between them. One lasted seven decades, the other a mere twelve years. I believe, however, that if Nazi Germany had not been defeated, it would have developed in such a way as to greatly resemble the post-Stalinist USSR, with a collective leadership replacing one-man dictatorship, a more or less centralized economy, and a great conspiracy of silence regarding certain parts of the past.
Unfathomable to imagine, but if Hitler had stopped at Poland in 1939, carving it up with Stalin, and cut a deal with both France and Britain not to fight (who didn't want a war anyway) - Nazi Germany would have turned into a military behemoth (probably with nuclear weapons), and lasting far longer than twelve years. Hitler was only 56 when he committed suicide in 1945. Without WW2 he might have been in power for another twenty years. A very frightening what if.
You write that Western liberals did not condemn communism. Who do you mean? Take the four Democratic Presidents from 1945 until 1991 - from Truman, through Kennedy, Johnson (who fought a war in Viet Nam over it), and Carter - all condemned Communism and recognized it for what it was - sheer totalitarianism hiding under an ideological face, with all the terrors therein.
And respectfully, if you are using today's Russia as an example of Communism, I think you are mistaken. Under Putin it has become a mafia run autocracy attempting to run a capitalist society, complete with profits, corporations, banks, credit cards, stock market, property rights and a (struggling) middle class. Hardly Communist. Putin in his delusions of grandeur wants to have the Empire as it existed under the Soviet Union, without the messy ideology, just the nationalism thank you very much, with all the billions in his and his oligarchs' pockets.
You're right that plenty in the West did condemn communism, but it wasn't rejected utterly by intellectuals in the West in the same way as fascism. If it had, no U.S. company would do business with the CPP.
As for Russia, if it ever acknowledged the barbarity and atrocity of its communist years, it might also have ended many of the trappings of the old regime -- like corruption, propaganda, and the collective lies that have allowed Putin & cronies to thrive.
I certainly agree that in the '30's through the '40's there was admiration for the Soviet Union from many of America's academic elite, quite prevalent before its atrocities came to light. Its ideology was attractive, as was the Republicans in Spain at the advent of their civil war with Franco. In my opinion, the dichotomy between fascism and communism, at least in American eyes, started in Spain in 1936.
Your last paragraph is right on. Of course, we can never expect Putin to acknowledge anything that might tarnish Russia (I'm not sure Yeltsin did either), either from the past or recognition of the blatant corruption of the present. He will only double down.
Who would have thought that Joe Biden would become the most responsible person to boost Profits for the fossil fuel industry? While the Dow/ Naz drop 10%. the Oil/Gas co. worth go UP 15/20%...so funny!
There's no explanation of how Trump "made things worse" beyond the hand wave that he was "bumbling and polarizing." That’s the equivalent of leaving the proof to the student as an exercise. While in no way perfect, Trump was a big improvement.
Trump's energy policy encouraged an expansion of US oil and natural gas production that led to energy independence. Biden killed US energy independence on day one of his term, with a flurry of anti-energy executive orders. High oil and natural gas prices gave Putin the cash to invade Ukraine.
Trump's foreign policy was talk nicely, but strike hard. Trump changed the rules of engagement so that the US could ignore the possible presence of human shields, and bomb ISIS anywhere, wiping most of them out. Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's terrorist Quds Force, with a drone strike, showing himself willing to use force against our enemies. When over a hundred Russian mercenaries attacked a US Special Forces Camp in Syria, Trump ordered an air strike that wiped them out. Near the end of Trump's term, Trump's son in law Jared Kushner negotiated the Abraham Accords, peace between Israel and several Gulf Arab states.
Economically, Trump's tax cuts and deregulation lead to job growth and real wage growth for the working class.
Biden is such a big disaster compared to Trump that Trump beats Biden in rematch polls.
Trump ain't a role model. He didn't run on his record, but instead picked petty fights. Some of his appointments, like Jeff Sessions as AG and Chris Wray as head of the FBI, were disastrous. However, he was attacked with the Russia Hoax attempted coup throughout his term, and two impeachments without any admissible evidence, and still got a lot done. Biden is protected constantly by an army of Democrats who identify as journalists, and still manages to do badly and look worse.
So no, you can't say Trump "made things worse." Trump overcame great obstacles to make things noticeably better, then fell victim to a combination of his enemies and his own flaws.
I really like this platform and forum. I can always expect to learn a lot here. However, there seems to be an irresistible urge by most writers (maybe all of them?) to include, as a sort of disclaimer, an offhand swipe at Donald Trump. "He made things worse." Really? Hard to see how. Wanna see "made things worse"? Just look at the last thirteen months.
I'm sure I will be told that Trump was polarizing. Not true. To the extent that we are deeply divided in some ways -- I don't dispute that -- we were already there by November 2016. I am tempted to say that the legacy media are a far more polarizing influence, but their own influence is much diminished and has been waning for a long time now.
What made Trump's political rise possible was precisely the polarization of American politics that he came to symbolize. It was not exactly a radical split between Democrats and Republicans or even between liberals and conservatives. Trump is only nominally a Republican, and he's certainly no conservative. What facilitated Trump's rise was the alienation of American elites—who, so to speak, lost spiritual contact with the America outside a handful of major urban areas. Yes, I know, this is a generalization and exceptions can be cited, but in the large I believe that it's valid.
Trump was shrewd enough to spot this sense of alienation and exploit it politically, but once in office his indiscipline, egomania and mendacity did him in. I will not say that everything he did as president was bad. But his behavior cost him the 2020 election, and his behavior post-election demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is unfit to be president.
However, Trump's defeat did nothing to change the underlying political dynamic, as Joe Biden has learned to his discomfiture. And if anyone doubts my diagnosis of elite alienation, I refer them to the debacle of the pandemic now ending, which showed us just what various elite groups really think of ordinary American citizens. That thinking can be summed up in one word: contempt.
I myself hold no brief for that puerile abstraction, "the American people." But in a republic like ours the people cannot be treated—must not be treated—as irresponsible idiots who have to be managed and cajoled and even lied to in the service of some greater good. How can we take seriously talk of "our democracy" when that's the attitude of those who govern us? Indeed, I don't take such talk seriously when it emanates from the fever swamps of Woke progressivism. To people like that, "democracy" only exists when it appears to be serving their purposes. Otherwise, "fascism" prevails.
Considering the damage that Trump did to the Republican Party, it's very telling indeed that all signs point to red wave election in November. That shows you just how disgusted people have become with elite institutions. And note that the disgust is to some extent bipartisan. In Virginia, San Francisco and other places, people who describe themselves as Democrats and liberals have turned on the progressive elites who mostly control the Democratic Party. And it loos to me as though the party has no idea what to do about it.
Richard, can you give me an example of another president with this kind of reputation?
A white man in 2016 who threatened his black neighbor with a knife told police officers, “Donald Trump will fix them.”
Or how about when a Tampa, Florida man threatened to burn down a house in his neighborhood simply because it was being bought by a Muslim family, claiming that Trump’s Muslim ban made it a reason for “concern.”
Here’s another example, 16 pipe bombs mailed to Democratic leaders by Cesar Sayoc; he attended Trump’s rallies and wrote, “You met people from all walks life … color, etc.,” “It was fun, it became like a new found drug.” and referred to Trump as a “surrogate father”;
Another example wherein a mass shooting over 20 people died in El Paso, Texas, where the shooter’s manifesto parroted Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants.
“…54 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults.”
Good piece but written by someone whose moral compass is somewhat dislodged. There are such things as good values, but humans only exhibit them for relatively short periods of history. We have left a remarkable era, likely gone for a long time. The timeless human values of relative decency and relative justice will be relearned when we are long dead. So few understand human history or human nature.
Trump was a very messy character, but his accomplishments are legion. His Abraham Accords, allowing small business to thrive, bringing back manufacturing of essentials to within safe borders, reducing minority unemployment, and finally he was someone who stood up to China and Russia, and began enforcing the very rich Germany to pay for the defense the US provided them. Oh, and he made us energy independent - a crushing blow to Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
But for so many his lack of good manners was the deal-breaker. Good manners can be demanded when a country is on the rise, not so much when a country is deteriorating as fast as the US is.
A lyrical Gen-X tale of hope in the dawn of the post Cold War era which seems lost at the moment. My children are the same age but had no Eastern euro experience to give it voice. As a cold/hot war Army veteran, I am less surprised at the recent devolution. In 1989, I was very hopeful. We did not win, they just collapsed. There were naive thoughts among US elite that democracy would be ascendant and global trade would bind us so tightly that war became impossible. In effect, it was our victory.
This was wildly optimistic since is the opposition of national states had been operating for 2 centuries and had often lead to war. Adding a religious dimension, in 2001, to the ethnic and national struggles apparent already in Yugoslavia in 1994 should have been a clue. History was not over, it was merely reset.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was engineered by Ronald Reagan. He attacked their weakness, their economy, by (among other things) demanding hard currency for grain. The Soviet military build up created a huge weakness that Reagan exploited.
Democracy has pre-requisites. It takes a moral and educated people and some trust. Some places in the world don't have those.
Another rambling, emoting article from Common Sense. Where's the editor? Is there one? Its thesis, that we're now in a new order, goes completely unsupported. Apparently we're just supposed to accept it. Tell the Russians hit by U.S.-led sanctions that we live in a new order now. They might differ.
I would love to read an article that doesn't feel the need to denigrate Trump in some fashion. Saying Trump "made things worse" is to miss completely what happened. He is an outsider who had the temerity to challenge the assumptions of our so called leaders. Almost everything got better under Trump. No new wars, a peace treaty in the middle east, low inflation, high employment, low gas prices etc. The left and RINO's were so threatened by his policies that they declared all out war internally by fabricating the Russia hoax, the Charlottesville fine people hoax, drinking bleach hoax, military people are stupid hoax etc. and unleashing riots in 2020 where Dem governors and mayors decided to do nothing to protect their own people.
I do not think Trump is perfect by any stretch of the imagination but he is the best president of my lifetime and I include Reagan in that assessment so the apparent necessity of writers to slam him when it is undeserved is quite annoying.
Wow! I need to read this again and again.
There's just so much wonderful information included in your commentary. I add, Bari, that your global perspective and overview offer an insightful way to look at our recent past history. Indeed, as you correctly point out, the world has changed, and the transformation has been dramatic.
The slow, steady creep of socialistic/left-wing thinking, which has been demonstrably proven again and again to be a failure, has become pervasive in our media, our universities, and our political life.
Unless we can stop giving away everything for nothing in return (see the coming Iranian agreement debacle), and start demanding responsibility and accountability for our actions, in effect, establishing a pay-as-you-go foundation, our "uncivilization" will crumble.
Like you, Bari, I grew up believing that liberalism could solve every problem. Unfortunately, I got mugged by a reality where personal gain, a selfish desire to put oneself before others, and a collective moral compass that did not point north toward the betterment of all.
I'm an old man now, but I am encouraged by your writing and insight to help us navigate a new path out of this morass.
Bari, I heard your conversation with Jordan Petersen. I subscribed to facilitate your success Best of luck to you!
"“It’s not your sunny disposition. It’s your frame of reference. Your frame of reference is America. But Russia does not want to be America. Russia exists in a parallel universe.”
Mic drop!
A bunch of gibberish. He seems to be trying to be philosophical but I can’t see what point he is making rather than a long-winded way of saying the post-cold war order is broken. Still sounds pretty much an America-centric view of the world by saying American dominance brought world peace. Plenty of other countries do not think so. There probably would have been peace in Ukraine if the US had not led NATO to push close to the Russian border. America does very little self examination.
First there was Q, now we have Z!
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen what I might call a disinformation false-flag operation,”
https://www.propublica.org/article/in-the-ukraine-conflict-fake-fact-checks-are-being-used-to-spread-disinformation?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature
Brilliantly engaging essay about the rise (and fall?) of the post-Cold War era.
At the end of WWII, the US was the dominant economic power of the globe. The US accounted for 1/3rd of global GDP. Roughly 50% of global manufacturing and much more than 50% of global oil and gas production. The US also controlled that global banking system, the global telecommunication system, the global airline system, the global energy system, etc.
None of those things are true anymore. Now the US is just another large country, in a world with many large countries (China's GDP is now larger than the US).
The US just does not have the power to shape global events in a way that it did before. We live in a different world. Somewhat predictably, the world is now acting like it did, before the rise of the USA.
Great article --- but I'd trace most of today's problems including Russia to a profound mistake by mid-20th century intellectuals to recognize that communism and fascism are the exact same thing.
Western liberals rightly condemned fascism, but not communism. they contorted themselves into non sequitor pretzels of "left / right political spectrum" where one somehow ended up at the extreme opposite end from the other. This was patently wrong: life under communism, and the regime's crimes, were indistinguishable from fascism, and communism should have been rejected utterly, unequivocally.
If the recognition that fascism and communism are the same became internalized in 1945, many of our problems today would not exist. Would America and Allies have traded with Hitler? Would they have bought his oil, or transferred technology to companies he controlled? The answer is plainly no. It should have been just as plain when asked about China (still communist) or Russia (never took responsibility for tens of millions dead and purged).
Can't trade with communists. Can't wink and nod, or construct moral equivalencies, or draw up "spectrums" that indulge the pretense that communism is any less brutal, or authoritarian, or deadly than fascism. Acknowledge this, and many of today's seemingly incomprehensible or unexpected developments begin to make perfect sense.
There's a good deal of truth in this. If one disregards ideology and looks at the functional systems of National Socialist Germany and Stalinist Russia, they had a lot in common. It's no coincidence, for instance, that both Hitler and Stalin distrusted and feared their military leaders. Both correctly judged that in a totalitarian state, the military was one of two institutions—the other was the security services—that possessed the power to overthrow the regime. Thus both dictators conducted purges of the military leadership and took measures severely to limit the autonomy of the armed forces.
Of course, the two regimes came to power by different means and superficially there appeared to be many differences between them. One lasted seven decades, the other a mere twelve years. I believe, however, that if Nazi Germany had not been defeated, it would have developed in such a way as to greatly resemble the post-Stalinist USSR, with a collective leadership replacing one-man dictatorship, a more or less centralized economy, and a great conspiracy of silence regarding certain parts of the past.
Unfathomable to imagine, but if Hitler had stopped at Poland in 1939, carving it up with Stalin, and cut a deal with both France and Britain not to fight (who didn't want a war anyway) - Nazi Germany would have turned into a military behemoth (probably with nuclear weapons), and lasting far longer than twelve years. Hitler was only 56 when he committed suicide in 1945. Without WW2 he might have been in power for another twenty years. A very frightening what if.
You write that Western liberals did not condemn communism. Who do you mean? Take the four Democratic Presidents from 1945 until 1991 - from Truman, through Kennedy, Johnson (who fought a war in Viet Nam over it), and Carter - all condemned Communism and recognized it for what it was - sheer totalitarianism hiding under an ideological face, with all the terrors therein.
And respectfully, if you are using today's Russia as an example of Communism, I think you are mistaken. Under Putin it has become a mafia run autocracy attempting to run a capitalist society, complete with profits, corporations, banks, credit cards, stock market, property rights and a (struggling) middle class. Hardly Communist. Putin in his delusions of grandeur wants to have the Empire as it existed under the Soviet Union, without the messy ideology, just the nationalism thank you very much, with all the billions in his and his oligarchs' pockets.
Marx would be turning in his grave.
You're right that plenty in the West did condemn communism, but it wasn't rejected utterly by intellectuals in the West in the same way as fascism. If it had, no U.S. company would do business with the CPP.
As for Russia, if it ever acknowledged the barbarity and atrocity of its communist years, it might also have ended many of the trappings of the old regime -- like corruption, propaganda, and the collective lies that have allowed Putin & cronies to thrive.
I certainly agree that in the '30's through the '40's there was admiration for the Soviet Union from many of America's academic elite, quite prevalent before its atrocities came to light. Its ideology was attractive, as was the Republicans in Spain at the advent of their civil war with Franco. In my opinion, the dichotomy between fascism and communism, at least in American eyes, started in Spain in 1936.
Your last paragraph is right on. Of course, we can never expect Putin to acknowledge anything that might tarnish Russia (I'm not sure Yeltsin did either), either from the past or recognition of the blatant corruption of the present. He will only double down.
Who would have thought that Joe Biden would become the most responsible person to boost Profits for the fossil fuel industry? While the Dow/ Naz drop 10%. the Oil/Gas co. worth go UP 15/20%...so funny!
There's no explanation of how Trump "made things worse" beyond the hand wave that he was "bumbling and polarizing." That’s the equivalent of leaving the proof to the student as an exercise. While in no way perfect, Trump was a big improvement.
Trump's energy policy encouraged an expansion of US oil and natural gas production that led to energy independence. Biden killed US energy independence on day one of his term, with a flurry of anti-energy executive orders. High oil and natural gas prices gave Putin the cash to invade Ukraine.
Trump's foreign policy was talk nicely, but strike hard. Trump changed the rules of engagement so that the US could ignore the possible presence of human shields, and bomb ISIS anywhere, wiping most of them out. Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's terrorist Quds Force, with a drone strike, showing himself willing to use force against our enemies. When over a hundred Russian mercenaries attacked a US Special Forces Camp in Syria, Trump ordered an air strike that wiped them out. Near the end of Trump's term, Trump's son in law Jared Kushner negotiated the Abraham Accords, peace between Israel and several Gulf Arab states.
Economically, Trump's tax cuts and deregulation lead to job growth and real wage growth for the working class.
Biden is such a big disaster compared to Trump that Trump beats Biden in rematch polls.
Trump ain't a role model. He didn't run on his record, but instead picked petty fights. Some of his appointments, like Jeff Sessions as AG and Chris Wray as head of the FBI, were disastrous. However, he was attacked with the Russia Hoax attempted coup throughout his term, and two impeachments without any admissible evidence, and still got a lot done. Biden is protected constantly by an army of Democrats who identify as journalists, and still manages to do badly and look worse.
So no, you can't say Trump "made things worse." Trump overcame great obstacles to make things noticeably better, then fell victim to a combination of his enemies and his own flaws.
I really like this platform and forum. I can always expect to learn a lot here. However, there seems to be an irresistible urge by most writers (maybe all of them?) to include, as a sort of disclaimer, an offhand swipe at Donald Trump. "He made things worse." Really? Hard to see how. Wanna see "made things worse"? Just look at the last thirteen months.
I'm sure I will be told that Trump was polarizing. Not true. To the extent that we are deeply divided in some ways -- I don't dispute that -- we were already there by November 2016. I am tempted to say that the legacy media are a far more polarizing influence, but their own influence is much diminished and has been waning for a long time now.
But that's another topic.
Though I'm no Trump fan, I mostly agree.
What made Trump's political rise possible was precisely the polarization of American politics that he came to symbolize. It was not exactly a radical split between Democrats and Republicans or even between liberals and conservatives. Trump is only nominally a Republican, and he's certainly no conservative. What facilitated Trump's rise was the alienation of American elites—who, so to speak, lost spiritual contact with the America outside a handful of major urban areas. Yes, I know, this is a generalization and exceptions can be cited, but in the large I believe that it's valid.
Trump was shrewd enough to spot this sense of alienation and exploit it politically, but once in office his indiscipline, egomania and mendacity did him in. I will not say that everything he did as president was bad. But his behavior cost him the 2020 election, and his behavior post-election demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is unfit to be president.
However, Trump's defeat did nothing to change the underlying political dynamic, as Joe Biden has learned to his discomfiture. And if anyone doubts my diagnosis of elite alienation, I refer them to the debacle of the pandemic now ending, which showed us just what various elite groups really think of ordinary American citizens. That thinking can be summed up in one word: contempt.
I myself hold no brief for that puerile abstraction, "the American people." But in a republic like ours the people cannot be treated—must not be treated—as irresponsible idiots who have to be managed and cajoled and even lied to in the service of some greater good. How can we take seriously talk of "our democracy" when that's the attitude of those who govern us? Indeed, I don't take such talk seriously when it emanates from the fever swamps of Woke progressivism. To people like that, "democracy" only exists when it appears to be serving their purposes. Otherwise, "fascism" prevails.
Considering the damage that Trump did to the Republican Party, it's very telling indeed that all signs point to red wave election in November. That shows you just how disgusted people have become with elite institutions. And note that the disgust is to some extent bipartisan. In Virginia, San Francisco and other places, people who describe themselves as Democrats and liberals have turned on the progressive elites who mostly control the Democratic Party. And it loos to me as though the party has no idea what to do about it.
Richard, can you give me an example of another president with this kind of reputation?
A white man in 2016 who threatened his black neighbor with a knife told police officers, “Donald Trump will fix them.”
Or how about when a Tampa, Florida man threatened to burn down a house in his neighborhood simply because it was being bought by a Muslim family, claiming that Trump’s Muslim ban made it a reason for “concern.”
Here’s another example, 16 pipe bombs mailed to Democratic leaders by Cesar Sayoc; he attended Trump’s rallies and wrote, “You met people from all walks life … color, etc.,” “It was fun, it became like a new found drug.” and referred to Trump as a “surrogate father”;
Another example wherein a mass shooting over 20 people died in El Paso, Texas, where the shooter’s manifesto parroted Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants.
“…54 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults.”
https://www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/tampa-man-sentenced-threatening-burn-down-home-being-purchased-muslim-family
https://abcnews.go.com/US/mail-bomber-cesar-sayoc-obsessed-trump-fox-news/story?id=64500598
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/04/whats-inside-hate-filled-manifesto-linked-el-paso-shooter/ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889
Good piece but written by someone whose moral compass is somewhat dislodged. There are such things as good values, but humans only exhibit them for relatively short periods of history. We have left a remarkable era, likely gone for a long time. The timeless human values of relative decency and relative justice will be relearned when we are long dead. So few understand human history or human nature.
Trump was a very messy character, but his accomplishments are legion. His Abraham Accords, allowing small business to thrive, bringing back manufacturing of essentials to within safe borders, reducing minority unemployment, and finally he was someone who stood up to China and Russia, and began enforcing the very rich Germany to pay for the defense the US provided them. Oh, and he made us energy independent - a crushing blow to Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
But for so many his lack of good manners was the deal-breaker. Good manners can be demanded when a country is on the rise, not so much when a country is deteriorating as fast as the US is.
Agreed.
A lyrical Gen-X tale of hope in the dawn of the post Cold War era which seems lost at the moment. My children are the same age but had no Eastern euro experience to give it voice. As a cold/hot war Army veteran, I am less surprised at the recent devolution. In 1989, I was very hopeful. We did not win, they just collapsed. There were naive thoughts among US elite that democracy would be ascendant and global trade would bind us so tightly that war became impossible. In effect, it was our victory.
This was wildly optimistic since is the opposition of national states had been operating for 2 centuries and had often lead to war. Adding a religious dimension, in 2001, to the ethnic and national struggles apparent already in Yugoslavia in 1994 should have been a clue. History was not over, it was merely reset.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was engineered by Ronald Reagan. He attacked their weakness, their economy, by (among other things) demanding hard currency for grain. The Soviet military build up created a huge weakness that Reagan exploited.
Democracy has pre-requisites. It takes a moral and educated people and some trust. Some places in the world don't have those.
My abject apology, forgot Regan was the evil genius who felled the USSR and led us, inevitably, to the current moment.
Oh yeah. Events are unfolding just as Reagan planned them 40 years ago :-).