The Official Paracast Political Thread! — Part Five

[Tyger]

The economist referenced in 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America' by Nancy MacLean noted in above post -.

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America

TEXT: Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.

The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book, Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes are locked into place, there may be no going back.
​

 

[Hollywood Tomfortas]

The economist referenced in 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America' by Nancy MacLean noted in above post -.

Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America
Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America

TEXT: Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

Ask people to name the key minds that have shaped America’s burst of radical right-wing attacks on working conditions, consumer rights and public services, and they will typically mention figures like free market-champion Milton Friedman, libertarian guru Ayn Rand, and laissez-faire economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

James McGill Buchanan is a name you will rarely hear unless you’ve taken several classes in economics. And if the Tennessee-born Nobel laureate were alive today, it would suit him just fine that most well-informed journalists, liberal politicians, and even many economics students have little understanding of his work.

The reason? Duke historian Nancy MacLean contends that his philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand. (Yes, you read that correctly). If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept.

That is a dangerous blind spot, MacLean argues in a meticulously researched book, Democracy in Chains, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. While Americans grapple with Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, we may be missing the key to changes that are taking place far beyond the level of mere politics. Once these changes are locked into place, there may be no going back.
​

So it’s not the Trumpistas that are doing us in, it’s the Libertarians. Will someone please explain that to @Gene Steinberg ? He seems so fixated on Trump.

 

[Tyger]

So it’s not the Trumpistas that are doing us in, it’s the Libertarians. Will someone please explain that to @Gene Steinberg ? He seems so fixated on Trump.

So many are 'doing us in.' Trump is the cherry-on-top. The unexpected gift. He's doing plenty of damage - basically pillaging the US of its wealth, reducing the populace to rubble. Nothing will be left when they are done, if they succeed in continuing without check past this year and - god forbid - past 2020. In point of fact swaths of the world are in an upheaval: country after country has it's extremist Right - Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Germany - if not outright Dictatorship.

Basically it's a perfect storm that has complex forces coming to bear with crushing immediacy. The outcome will be nothing short of the complete transformation (even annihilation) of the American Republic we have known. Amazing times we are in.

Another valuable book to read is They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Sanford Mayer. In the early 50's Mayer went to post war Germany and interviewed ordinary Germans who had lived through Nazism and the war, asking them how did all this happen. The book is a fascinating compilation of his interviews:

They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.

​

An oft repeated quote follows from the book that is currently making the rounds. The speaker is a university professor -

“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45​

 

[Tyger]

And then there's this: Trump is a traitor to his country.

CIA Veteran (25 years), Glenn Carle: "My assessment is that Trump is actually working directly for the Russians."

As we speak global power is shifting to a Russia/China axis. Be this a good thing or a bad thing hardly matters at this point.

Basically Trump is 'Mafia'. He's a crime boss that demands personal loyalty.

We could never have dreamed we would come to this in two years.

 

[pigfarmer]

Total stuff and nonsense. There is no evidence either committed a crime.

Two-tiered?

While Comey was talking about Hillary and writing to Congress late in October, they weren't talking about Trump and the Russians so as not to appear tainted.

Comey's actions clearly elected Trump. You cannot dispute that. So how was Comey doing things against Trump — well until he was fired because he wouldn't give up on Russia.

 

[Ezechiel]

 

[pigfarmer]

Yeah .... because The Government is one large perfectly coordinated entity ... as evidenced by the shocking clarity and precision of the tunes that have been played over the past few decades.

In reality it's a million monkeys pounding away at a million typewriters. I'm still waiting for my copy of Hamlet but lately I've been getting worried about the smell from tremendous amount of monkey**** piling up all over the place

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Ben Shapiro really hits the nail on the head;

 

[Creepy Green Light]

U.S. National Guard members explain to Sen. Warren that an Apache helicopter isn't a real Indian either.

 

[Ezechiel]

I remember Watergate... Russia-gate is a quantum leap closer to hell.

The nut is about to crack, hopefully cool heads will prevail.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

When your girlfriend is more important than your wife, your politics more important than your country, and your ego more important than history....(and the balls of the Dems that stood up & cheered for this slithery scumbag)

 

[Gene Steinberg]

When your girlfriend is more important than your wife, your politics more important than your country, and your ego more important than history....(and the balls of the Dems that stood up & cheered for this slithery scumbag)

You have it all backwards. This is just about some private chats between two people. Not about a plot. Indeed the FBI’s acts before the election put Trump in office.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

You have it all backwards. This is just about some private chats between two people. Not about a plot. Indeed the FBI’s acts before the election put Trump in office.

I mean, I'd have more respect for him (a tad bit more for him) & the rest of the Dems if they just said the truth; "Yeah, I screwed up and am 100000000% biased & hate Trumps guts. I made a mistake and got busted." But to sit there and lie with that f'd up, arrogant, evil smirk that he has on? And then the nutty Dems say things like "He should receive a purple heart."???? Really??? What a slap in the face to people that have really gotten a Purple Heart.

I'm going to use Strozk's technique if I ever get busted, for say plotting to murder my next door neighbor. When the FBI gets all 50,000 of my texts and I'm being grilled in court I'll just say "I don't recall sending those texts." and/or "When I said I wanted to murder her, that's really not what I meant."

What a slap in the face his "testimony" is to every American. Guy should be in prison with the rest of the crooked Clinton Cartel.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Actually, these were private emails, between two people. There were no plots. Indeed, if there was a plot, it was never carried out, a miserable failure. Tell me that you never wrote an email or text that you would prefer not be made public?

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Actually, these were private emails, between two people. There were no plots. Indeed, if there was a plot, it was never carried out, a miserable failure. Tell me that you never wrote an email or text that you would prefer not be made public?

Always an answer and/or excuse. Never "Wow, he screwed up hard. He's going to hurt our cause." or something along those lines. Blind loyalty.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

He was removed from the Russia investigation a year ago. Give it up.

 

[Tyger]

The US was attacked. The indictments lay out the cold hard facts. The US was attacked. Trump has committed treason.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

(This Tweet was just now courtesy of James Woods. It's one I happen to agree with);

For the entire eight years Obama was in the White House, the sycophant media heralded his imaginary diplomatic prowess. Now that a real president is engaging in true diplomacy with a nuclear superpower, they all condemn the effort. Unsurprising hypocrisy.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

No, he was criticized relentlessly.

Now we see a sycophant President kowtowing towards the head of Russia. How can you not be embarrassed for this country?

 

[ALPHA ROMEO UNIFORM]

The United State of America and the Commander of US Armed Forces Mr Donald Trump has put the cat's among the pigeons. We live in interesting times and got hand it to the US President Mr Trump got friends in Russia and USA. In the end no nuclear wars is better and nobel prize on the cards ?