Andrew O'Hehir, Salon - Feb 1, 2016: Why I'm supporting Sanders over Clinton: This could be the moment to reclaim the Democratic Party and reshape history
"...........Is this a moment for realpolitik, as Amanda suggests? Is it a moment to stand outside the tides of populist fervor that threaten to give us Trump vs. Sanders, which would definitely be fun but would also be the weirdest and scariest general-election matchup since at least the middle of the 19th century? Is it a moment to soberly weigh the good with the bad, to embrace the long-delayed promise of a female president and to stand with competence and experience and the withered husk of the party of FDR and JFK?
Or is this, in the words of French philosopher Alain Badiou, a moment that demands a "politics of emancipation," a politics that imagines a world founded on social justice and an equality that goes beyond consumerism, "a world that has been freed from the law of profit and private interest"? Because "if we accept the inevitability of the unbridled capitalist economy and the parliamentary politics that supports it" - and that is precisely the position of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party - and if we do not put an end to the "linguistic terrorism" of the neoliberal age, which has forbidden words and ideas like "socialism," we cannot imagine such a world, let alone create it. But I don't know whether this is that moment. I don't think anyone could possibly know that."
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Matthews is right that Donald Trump's relatively gracious Iowa speech on Tuesday night, after losing a caucus he expected to win (but had previously expected to lose), made the billionaire populist appear more human than at any time in recent memory. If that was a gratifying moment in dramatic terms, it was also a dangerous crack in the Trumpian facade, a glitch in the software package driving his idiot-Nietzschean persona.
Persona: the way you behave, talk, etc., with other people that causes them to see you as a particular kind of person : the image or personality that a person presents to other people
[Nietzsche's place in contemporary ethical theory]....Sometimes Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what he regards as moral or as immoral. Note, however, that one can explain Nietzsche's moral opinions without attributing to him the claim of their truth. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn't disregard a statement merely because it expresses something false. On the contrary, he depicts falsehood as essential for "life".
Interestingly enough, he mentions a "dishonest lie", (discussing Wagner in The Case of Wagner) as opposed to an "honest" one, recommending further to consult Plato with regard to the latter, which should give some idea of the layers of paradox in his work."
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[In his 1987 book Art of the Deal, Donald Trump put it bluntly: "I play to people's fantasies. ... I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration - and a very effective form of promotion."]
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Game Theory: Persona 4, Nietzsche, the Self and its relation to the game's ending
[SNIP]
"...............Again returning to [John] Adams, he predicted this:
The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
And he even provides a description as to how it would happen, which, again, is eerily similar to Sanders's proposed policies that have his flock so incredibly excited: Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavily on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. [emphasis added]
The question is not whether the outcomes Adams predicts will come to pass if Bernie Sanders is elected president. The question, rather, is how much of what he predicts has already come to pass, for we have long ago admitted and accepted as law the notion that "the right to property is not as sacred as the laws of God." Furthermore, what might further infringements upon property rights, much less Sanders' suggestion that we abolish them, mean for our culture and our country?
Just as any reasonable person might understand why a home loan poses less risk for a lender than a student loan, any reasonable person should also recognize the danger in a government with the power to rob successful individuals in order to provide for a preferred class of idle, entitled, and envious grumblers."
So now we are posting articles from Salon? What there were no Trump hating articles at DU? Stay classy CW.
http://www.decisiondeskhq.com/
Interestingly, the Democrats stopped counting with Hillary ahead by 0.2%, and they still have not finished counting the last 3.1% of votes. The Democrats are as corrupt in their own voting as they are in national elections.
Why bother to analyze their rhetoric and find their weaknesses?
Wilful ignorance of what the left is up to only got us 8 years of Barack Obama.
George Neumayr - 2-3-16 "...............I found the wet-blanket editorials in Republican media organs on Tuesday morning amusing in their delusion. They at once avoided praising or backing Cruz, chortled over Trump's loss, and treated Rubio's bronze like a gold medal. Never mind that Rubio won that meager award by running as a fervent Christian and an opponent of the amnesty he once supported. In other words, the top three finishers all ran as Tea Party, Christian-friendly conservatives. Clogging the establishment lane to nowhere were Republicans from Jeb Bush to John Kasich to Chris Christie who long ago embraced the supposedly winning formula of "progressive," PC-friendly politics.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, whom the Yacht Club Republicans claim is so impressive and unbeatable (unless we conservatives, they counsel, accept a "reasonable type" as the nominee), found herself, as the pathetic headlines on Tuesday morning blared, in a "virtual tie" with a Marxist eccentric from Vermont. Her only hope at this point is that Republicans sabotage Trump and Cruz and give the nomination to Rubio, who would prove an underwhelming candidate. He has his good points but he still seems like an inexperienced and philosophically shallow fortysomething who can't pay his credit card bills. He is the kind of plastic "conservative" who thinks absurdly, as he put it in one of the early debates, that America needs fewer "philosophers" and more "plumbers." I am pro-plumbers. In fact, I would be thrilled if more underperforming high school students entered that worthy profession rather than waste government money on four years of "higher learning" that just ends up warping their minds with PC propaganda. But no serious conservative would badmouth philosophy. At the core of America's founding documents is serious theistic philosophy, from which we grasp our freedoms under God.
Cruz's success on Monday night stemmed in large part from his willingness to stand up for those perennial principles in the forgotten counties of Iowa while "moderate" Republicans like Christie campaigned on MSNBC's Morning Joe and other idiotic chattering-class shows before holding their sad fundraisers on yachts and at country clubs. In the end, conservative substance wins. Is Trump listening?"
If you had to settle a vote with a coin toss, you cannot claim ‘the will of the people’ to getting the nomination.
If you needed SIX coin tosses all going your way to claim victory then you didn’t have any sort of a popular vote.
Al Gore Junior was a professional asshat as well. He and his supporters claimed he won because he had the popular vote in 2000. His margin was 0.51% (half a percent). There was no “mandate” for Al Gore. It was well within any margin of error and we would still be recounting the votes in counties from coast to coast. It was as close to a coin toss landing on neither heads or tails (the edge) that you can get.