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Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#702It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…
> It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend.
No, you'd be extremely naive to believe this is an isolated event:
* Greece, SYRIZA and minor parties on the surge since 2014
* UK, votes for brexit in 2016, I'm not sure if UKIP is gaining votes or not though.
* France, FN (LePen) is leading the polls at least for the first round.
* Italy, M5S is awfully close to lead the polls in Italy
* In Germany AfD is on the raise
* FPO is leading the pools in Austria
Keep in mind that the mainstream media, often downplays the possibility of an alternative surging - I believe on purpose: In Greece the polls were nearly 15% off in the referendum. It's staggering! Now, Brexit and the US pollsters got-it all wrong. In Greece many people lie to pollsters on purpose.
I don't see any sort of isolation, I see a very clear and predictable pattern.
> There is no genuine leftist alternative.
Wait a minute there. I have this strong sense that if the democrats had gone with the other candidate, they'd be celebrating today. Hillary, was the only candidate that was susceptible to a loss (emails, wall street money, legacy, the surname, etc.). Hillary == Establishment in every possible way. Sanders on the other hand was possibly the most scandal-free candidate of the last 20 years at least. I wouldn't say that the leftist is the problem.
However, at least in Europe, the ones who'd screwed up everyone were the Socialist parties by pushing a Brussels-based liberal agenda for a decade or so, so in a sense, at least in the EU the left or mild left at least, is rather dead in the water.
UPDATE: I think part of T. Frank's article in the Guardian describe my feelings in a detailed manner:
Start at the top. Why, oh why, did it have to be Hillary Clinton? Yes, she has an impressive resume; yes, she worked hard on the campaign trail. But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.
She was the Democratic candidate because it was her turn and because a Clinton victory would have moved every Democrat in Washington up a notch. Whether or not she would win was always a secondary matter, something that was taken for granted. Had winning been the party’s number one concern, several more suitable candidates were ready to go. There was Joe Biden, with his powerful plainspoken style, and there was Bernie Sanders, an inspiring and largely scandal-free figure. Each of them would probably have beaten Trump, but neither of them would really have served the interests of the party insiders.
And so Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest. They chose Hillary even though they knew about her private email server. They chose her even though some of those who studied the Clinton Foundation suspected it was a sketchy proposition.
Article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald...
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#703It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…
Something I've been wondering about: We're seeing this pattern where the coasts of many countries are cosmopolitan and well-integrated into the world economy, but the interiors are very conservative and nationalistic. Scotland & London vs. Wales & the rest of Britain. The U.S. West Coast & Northeast vs. the Farm Belt, Rust Belt, and Mountain states. Croatia & Slovenia vs. the rest of Yugoslavia. The Baltic Republics…
>Here in California, some of the proposals about sending all the immigrants back to where they came from seem absurd. The economy would cease to function. On one of my teams of 10 people at Google, we had immigrants from Iceland, England, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and India, and I was the only native-born American citizen. California would sooner secede than deport all of its immigrants.
>What if it actually came to that? If push came to shove and the interior decided to push a nativist, nationalist agenda, what if the coastal regions that benefit significantly from trade were to say "Okay, you guys can play with yourself, we're going to play with the rest of the world." Scotland has threatened to do exactly that, and is planning on holding another referendum on independence if Britain actually follows through on Brexit.
It's a decent idea for large parts of America to be devolved into separate nation-states. Texas, California, and Massachusetts are looking not to be governable as a unified country.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#704Bernie Sanders could have been the president, but Hillary cheated in the primaries.
Nah, he had no chance of building a coalition outside of the white urban liberal types. anyway, he's a socialist.
> anyway, he's a socialist.
That's not a bad thing. I'm not sure why people use socialist in a pejorative manner.
It reminds me of the 80s, except then the term was communist. At least then there was the cold war and in some ways communist made sense as they were the enemy, but using socialist today the same way makes no sense.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#705Between all-purpose generic islamic terrorism (from Thailand to Phillipines to India to Middle-East to Paris to Belgium to London to USA), and black lives matter terrorism, the US needs a reboot. This is that reboot. Another brown indian dude here. I love western culture and society. I love the innovation, the science and the secularism. I'm sick of the left trying to convert it into a faux third world. For example:…
> This semester, there's a woman walking around campus in a burka. In the freaking US of A, a woman is walking around with a burka. WTF is wrong with these people? Would you have the same issue if a nun walks around in her robe?
I would have an even bigger issue if a nun walks around in her robe on a university campus.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#706It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…
You make an assumption that globalisation is a man-made thing. That we could say "no" and it would stop. But this is not so. Globalisation stems from very primal human and commercial needs that have been enabled by the internet.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#707It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…
You make an assumption that globalisation is a man-made thing. That we could say "no" and it would stop. But this is not so. Globalisation stems from very primal human and commercial needs that have been enabled by the internet.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#708Honestly Brexit and Trump both tell me that democracy doesn't work, because the majority of the population is undereducated, bigoted, and has absolutely no idea about how to run an economy - it makes no sense for the working class who don't understand the most basic of economic concepts to influence how the economy is run. I hope he doesn't screw America's economy by preventing skilled immigrants coming in and helpin…
No one is really for democracy. Everyone wants a dictator who reflects their views.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#709Trump is not an isolated event. Populism is growing everywhere - Italy: Silvio Berlusconi era (- 2011) - Philippines: Rodrigo Duterte - Hungary: right wing populist party in charge - Poland: populist Law and Justice party in charge - Britain: Brexit, Boris Johnson - Turkey: Erogan
"Populism" is sort of a weasel word, but Law and Justice (in Poland) is arguably less populist than the party they replaced at power (Civic Platform), and certainly much less corrupt, whether you like their conservative outlook or not.
Ah, the ultimate PO vs PiS discussion ;) I would disagree. They keep coming up with ideas and not implement them later because despite having enough resources to pass any law they please. It just shows that their ideas cannot actually be translated into legislation. PO, the previous party didn't have a clear vision either, but I don't recall as much "breakthrough" changes being announced back then.
As for being corrupt, keep in mind they're completely bought by the church. This by itself is a huge red flag of corruption for me.
Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
#710Honestly Brexit and Trump both tell me that democracy doesn't work, because the majority of the population is undereducated, bigoted, and has absolutely no idea about how to run an economy - it makes no sense for the working class who don't understand the most basic of economic concepts to influence how the economy is run. I hope he doesn't screw America's economy by preventing skilled immigrants coming in and helpin…
Well the whole reason that we have a representative democracy is that the average citizen has no idea how to run the country, so they elect more competent officials that represent their interests to do so. Obviously the flaw is that those same (on average) incompetent people are the ones who elect the leadership. But as far as I know we haven't come up with a better alternative. What do you propose then? A dictatorsh…
Of course. The only downside of dictatorship is the transfer of power on the inevitable death of the dictator. Now that machines are rapidly approaching the point of being smart enough to rule humans, that downside will soon disappear.