"I think Peter Thiel supports Donald Trump because he believes it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to weaken America's attachment to democratic government. I'm not accusing Thiel of any ambitions he hasn't more or less copped to. In an often-quoted 2009 essay, Thiel declared, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." He also wrote that his fellow libertarians were on a "fool's errand" trying to achieve their ends through political means: "In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms--from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called 'social democracy.'" The only thing that matters, he said, is that politics never be allowed to interfere with technological progress, because it's the latter, not the former, that will be humankind's salvation. "The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism."
The internet is exploding with conversations about the Panama Papers — the largest data dump in history of secret files about rich people hiding and hoarding money. And yet the biggest story of all is hardly getting any attention.
From The Huffington Post: ‘…Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is, in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of poorly educated whites. “He’s evidently appealing to
By George Lakoff Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why he is winning — and winning handily, and even many Republicans don't see him as a Republican…
Diagnosing the problem as fascist leads to the question of a solution. What becomes the utility of knowing Trump is fascist? For the historian of the 1930s, the answer seems clear: either the forces that could coalesce against it remain divided, vowing to eternal enmity, as happened in Germany on the eve of Hitler’s ascent to power; or they create a united front, however unwieldy, as happened with the Popular Front in France a few years later. In the former case, the left accused the center of being scarcely better than the right. In the latter case, a coalition of center and left, long at odds with each other over questions of ideology and strategy, looked at results in Germany as a salutary lesson to be avoided. They bridged their considerable differences and succeeded in staving off a domestic French fascism. Should the right in this country fail to coalesce around Trump, and he runs as an independent, then a victory for the Democratic candidate – even should that candidate be Bernie Sanders – becomes very likely. But should Trump win the GOP presidential nomination and rally the party around him, it will be incumbent upon those on the left, however “centrist” or “socialist,” to put aside their differences and once more defeat the forces of fascism.
As usual when someone commits a real act of journalism aimed at the most powerful in the U.S., those leading the charge against him are other journalists.
New media writer Clay Shirky took to Twitter Friday afternoon to dismiss white liberals' response to Donald Trump as ineffective and self-indulgent – and to rally them to defeat Trump.
"“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.” If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
While not many Transition groups will have to contend with Donald Trump walking through the door and asking to get involved, most will find themselves needing to manage people who feel disruptive, people with wide variations of self-awareness and empathy. Managed skilfully, it can be the making of the group – and is pretty essential to our embracing of diversity.
This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to publicly denounce the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference.
Donald Trump at a campaign rally (CC BY-SA 2.0 Gage Skidmore) George Lakoff Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate
College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now these elites are being made to pay. Their duplicity has brought them—and the rest of us—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. - 2016/03/02
A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what's driving Donald Trump's ascent. What they found has implications that go well beyond 2016.
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