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I really do hope we get the votes in the Primary.
I recently read “On Tyranny” and it’s an amazing short read. I highly suggest everyone read this, it’s super cheap on Amazon: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804190119/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ArplBb6PACS88
Point is, Trump is following directly in the footsteps of many fascist leaders of the past and I expect one or many of the following to happen:
Suspension of voting due to “outside” vote manipulation
Terrorist attack that emboldens his base and allows him to take State of Emergency control of the government
The firing of Muller and taking the law into his own hands
You might say “That’s crazy” but look how far we’ve come. Compared to previous candidates and presidents Trump is becoming untouchable. Things that would have destroyed the career of other presidents haven’t done jack to him.
Insert Hoppe and his argument about monarchy, that politicians have "i need to loot now, during my term" mindset, while king doesn't since he's permanent. https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684
>In Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, measures are being floated to the press, grinding their way through the legislature, or being mishandled in ways that would restrict access to the ballot or otherwise make voting more difficult.
>Not coincidentally, these large, populous, varying-degrees-of-purple states will be essential in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.
>“It’s a contagion,” Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California Irvine who runs the Election Law Blog, told TPM. “What’s so shocking about it is that it’s spreading. It’s not just that one legislature is out of control, it’s that it’s a changing of the norms towards using maximal political power even in the face of a political rejection.”
This is what creeping fascism looks like.
I highly recommend reading Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny" for more information on spotting and dealing with authoritarianism. It's a fast read, and inexpensive.
The book <em>On Tyranny</em> goes into this. Every day becomes a new normal. What we tolerate today is drastically different from what we would have tolerated 6 months ago.
Edit: if you haven't read this book, you should. It's only 6 bucks on Amazon, and you can finish it in a few hours. It is incredibly insightful.
people's history of the united states by howard zinn
Not about nazism, but very relevant if you're an american trying to make sense of this country.
you make it sound as if I personally take some EU funds. And you have a really condescending attitude. "You take our money, we helped you, so you must listen as we tell you". From my perspective (I am Czech), it was Germany and Russia who fucked my country up 80 years ago. One side Nazis killing slavic people because they were untermenschen, on the other side fucking USSR. If it were not for these two countries, communism would not have decimated eastern Europe. You need some history lessons
https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471
and nowadays we see history repeating itself. Gemany is no more nazistic and imperialistic, but it is spineless and enabling another fascist Regime, which is current Russia. Russia is again threatening other countries
Thoroughly debunked
A committed party that, you know, likes Democracy and upholds the values of Liberalism (that's large L not small l). This book does a good job of outlining the issues with the R party: https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465096204.
One can also do a thought experiment if instead of Trump this was a D President doing the actions. What would the R party be doing?
Please also know that what you see on Twitter or hear about happening on a college campus isn't also the D party's platform. There are lots of shades of grey when it comes to Free Speech and such a right is not absolute.
However, I do agree with Haidt that Speech does not also equal physical violence which is what the folks on College Campus seem to be equating: https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224897.
With Due Process you need to be specific. Different actions have different Due Process steps. Some of which are in need of reform.
Thanks! Snyder is a great writer. Bloodlands is definitely worth the read -- it's a look at the mass killings under the Hitler and Stalin regimes. If that sounds like both-sides-ism or something, it's more like 'political mass murder' is itself the center of the story, often told from the point of view of its victims.
If I may make a recommendation, read The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols. It explains why a yahoo with a computer who’s been in Florida a few days thinks he knows better than a multi billion dollar company, its suppliers and a veritable army of engineers and (actual) experts.
The degree thing is interesting... I just recently read a book (The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols; https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412) which, among many topics, touches on the subject of how with the massive explosion of degrees and the fact that as college degrees have become more and more widespread, the value of the degrees diminishes. The author postulates that college was not necessarily meant to be the egalitarian thing that it has become and... honestly, I can't disagree with him.
And the downside of it all is that you have many who enter degree programs that are not well positioned to the modern workforce or (worse) folks who enter college when perhaps college was not the best course of action for them. We need to start encouraging more younger folks to look at the trades and other forms of employment... I think they often get overlooked and I know they were even 10 or so years ago go when I graduated high school.
Wanna have yourself a laugh? Look at the amazon reviews...
" was going to read this book.....I really was. But just as I got started, I found myself under sniper fire, passed out, and fell and hit my head. After that I got double vision and had to wear glasses that were so damn thick I couldn't even see to read. Then I had an allergic reaction to something and started coughing so hard I spit out what looked like a couple of lizard's eyeballs, my limbs locked up, and I passed out and fell down again, waking up only to find out I had been diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days earlier. It's a good thing I was able to make a small fortune making this random small trade in the commodities market (cattle futures or some such thing) and then, miracle of all miracles, a few banks offered me a few million to just talk to their employees for a few minutes - and all that really helped out because I swear I was dead broke and couldn't figure out how I was gonna come up with the 6 bucks to pay for this book, let alone pay the $1,500 for my health insurance this month. I still want to read it, but, hell, what difference at this point does it make? I hear it sucks anyway."
Don't want to make anyone feel old, but here's some quick math for the lazy: That's 1980s to the present
Anyway, It's Even Worse Than It Looks is a good primer on how the hyperpartisanship of today generally began with Newt's Republican Revolution
Well, work, make things better. Optimize system.
give my best to make something useful to other people(in my case, through my software company(I'm entrepreneur), mostly) optimize systems (such as this one). I love this things.
Right here.
I'm reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of The US". https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655 It's eye-opening how little has changed since revolutionary times. He details how our government has always been set up to benefit the rich, by somewhat supporting a middle class, as a way to keep the poor at bay. I highly recommend.
Leftist rich citygoers vote against their own objective economic interest too, don't be so surprised! Voting is about social signalling, not securing optimal outputs for yourself
Related, the book On Tyranny: twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder is worth the $6 and a read through.
I'm glad you linked to this again—looks like some good reviews have been added in the last couple of days! Check out the main page...
>I bought this thinking it would be a how-to book. I wanted "How to set up your own Foundation for fun and profit." Also, would like to have seen a chapter on "Ten easy steps to setting up your own secure server in a bathroom." I do hear there's going to be a sequel, tentatively called "The Art of the Shakedown." Should be interesting.
And 318 people like this:
>This could be the first "book" in history to have more reviews on amazon the actual sales bwwwwaaaahAAHA lol
This feigned, arbitrary concern about sources only exists because I didn't sing the praises of your hero and makes me even less inclined to do so. He isn't an expert. Get over it.
An actual international relations professor, excerpted from their book on the subject of expertise itself:
>The expert community is full of such examples. The most famous, at least if measured by impact on the global public, is the MIT professor Noam Chomsky, a figure revered by millions of readers around the world. Chomsky, by some counts, is the most widely cited living American intellectual, having written a stack of books on politics and foreign policy. His post at MIT, however, was actually as a professor of linguistics. Chomsky is regarded as a pioneer, even a giant, in his own field, but he is no more an expert in foreign policy than, say, the late George Kennan was in the origins of human language. Nonetheless, he is more famous among the general public for his writings on politics than in his area of expertise; indeed, I have often encountered college students over the years who are familiar with Chomsky but who had no idea he was actually a linguistics professor. > > Like Pauling and Caldicott, however, Chomsky answered a need in the public square. Laypeople often feel at a disadvantage challenging traditional science or socially dominant ideas, and they will rally to outspoken figures whose views carry a patina of expert assurance. It might well be that doctors should look closely at the role of vitamins in the human diet. It is certain that the public should be involved in an ongoing reconsideration of the role of nuclear weapons. But a degree in chemistry or a residency in paediatrics does not make advocates of those positions more credible than any other autodidact in those esoteric subjects.
Gotta admit I read this in a few hours and it's a great book that is really simple to read, but is packed with history which enables us to see that it's our responsibility to speak and act in a way to create a better society, rather than allow narratives and debates to be overtaken by totalitarian or fascist agendas.
> Perhaps the greatest contribution in Snyder’s clarifying and unnerving work is buried in its epilogue, and it shows the slippery intellectual path from freedom to tyranny. After the Cold War, he writes, we were enthralled by the politics of inevitability, the notion that history moved inexorably toward liberal democracy. So we lowered our defenses. Now, instead, we are careening toward the politics of eternity, in which a leader rewrites our past as “a vast misty courtyard of illegible monuments to national victimhood.” Inevitability was like a coma; eternity is like hypnosis.
> “The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy,” Snyder concludes. “The path of least resistance leads directly from inevitability to eternity.”
> A possible detour from that path may be found in “On Tyranny,” a memorable work that is grounded in history yet imbued with the fierce urgency of what now.
A good book, and practical on what to do. Available for under $10 at Amazon
man I remember the GATE program. Although I was part of it mostly in elementary 4~5th grade then I think it got dissolved or something. It was strange because the classwork they gave us just consisted of mostly English related topics and nothing else was really taught to us since the teacher had to manage two lessons.
It was... "here's a work sheet/reading you have to analyze" but honestly it didn't really teach that much. I honestly think AP classes are eh as well. Would rather be some electives we can take like maybe introduction to programming or something else. In AP US History it wasn't until many years later that the books taught to us were very fucking strange now that I think about what I read. This one: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655
we need to build the ancapistain all governments gets in a totalitarian regime, eventually. It's the God that failed
Critical thinking did.
I know you refuse to believe it, but at least listen to the argument. I am taking inspiration from Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny". He's a historian on Nazism and Stalinism... I think we both can agree that he knows what he's talking about.
Here's a list of thing that can be connected to Snyder's warning signs:
Trump refuses to accept universally accepted (by international monitors, journalists, courts, observers etc.) democratic process.
Trump does not seek a bilateral international policy but prefers to view American hegemony as the most important goal to which he is willing to break international laws (i.e assassinating Solemeini).
Trump seeks to display military power when he has a opportunity to display his presidency.
Trump think that society should be ruled along a strict hierarchy with women and minorities having their assigned place.
He ignores rule of law and political tradition habitually.
He lambasts free press.
He encourages paramilitary militia ("Stand back, Stand by").
He abuses language and it's meaning ("Alternative Facts").
He identifies foreign threats and uses them to consolidate his political position ("The Caravan")
I could go on, but if you refuse to accept all of these arguments then there's nothing I can do to make you reconsider.
Pretty deplorable reviews, just check it out on amazon:
Feel free to leave your input!
This shameless bitch actually gave plugs for her book yesterday too, said she won't explain what she's running for, but to buy her book, it will tell you everything.
Omfg the reviews and customer pictures are fucking amazing on Amazon for her book. Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America's Future https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501161733/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pdJ6xb1ZG9KVE
>The greatest ideas, voice and actions rise to the top. Regardless of race.
This is pretty naive and shows a lack of critical thinking about the subject. History is inextricable from our own bias and prejudice. It's not just some rote transcript. This is a fantastic read that really shows you how much it is true.