The donors believe that Trump would be the vehicle for getting what they want and that the price would be bearable.
People drawn to authoritarians as a way to achieve and punish what/who they want.
It was not Trump’s cunning that allowed him to achieve .. it was the complicity
They got the:
- tax deal,
- reduction of environmental restrictions,
- Obamacare relief/stabotage,
- Financial Regulation dismantalment,
- Stop Financial Protection,
- Neil Gorsuch is more important to the rank and file than donor class.
It has long been a debate about who pays the corporate income tax. The rise of the stock prices shows that the market thinks the corporations will benefit most.
In the cold war, the presidency was respected and partisanship restrained.
Big Legislation: Tax Cuts and Health Care repeal were passed/attempted without hearings.
Autoimmune disorders: military leaders might be tempted to protect the country by escaping civilian control
How informative do you think the President’s Daily briefing is, knowing that the president is not very curious and gets most of his information from Fox and Friends?
John Kelly: If you have not served, you have no right to ask me questions. (Un-American)
Modern Authoritarianism is not 1933, it attempts to stop 5-6% of people to take power.
Quote: A Democracy only lasts so long as the people realize they can vote themselves benefits.
Reality: Asset holders are fearful and contemplate radicalism.
Americans don’t realize how out of date they are — the plans they have are solutions to different problems. (not inflation: 1970s). You can’t fetishize policy.
Conservatives will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy. (43 min)
Women’s suffrage was enabled by the conservative idea that the women would suppress drunkenness, etc
You address broad-based radicalism by repressing the few and making concession to address the factors which make people sympathetic. (48-49 min)
He’s taking everything you out to be working on and putting it to a dead end.
The dissolusioned young men facing declining wages need a bigger answer than they’ve got to address their privilege.
Facebook has a business model that is very sensitive to government pressure: if they were ruled to be a “publisher”, they would have to hire human editors. They have
Richard Rohr Meditation: Protecting and Also Bridging Differences
humans need concrete and particular experiences to learn the ways of love. [1] We don’t learn to love through abstract philosophy or theology. That’s why Jesus came to show God in human form, revealing a face we could recognize and relate to.
.. it must begin with somehow seeing the divine (ultimate value) in the other. If we really see someone in their fullness, we cannot help but treat them with kindness and compassion.
.. The problem is that the ego likes to assign lesser and greater value based on differences. Until all people everywhere are treated with dignity and respect, we must continue calling attention to imbalances of privilege and power. Arbitrary, artificial hierarchies and discrimination are based on a variety of differences: for example,
- gender,
- sexuality,
- class,
- skin color,
- education,
- physical or mental ability,
- attractiveness,
- accent,
- language,
- religion,
and so on.
.. “Intersectionality” is a rather new concept for most of us to help explain how these attributes overlap. You can be privileged in some areas and not in others. A poor white man has more opportunities for advancement than a poor black man. [2] A transgender woman of color has an even higher risk of being assaulted than a white heterosexual woman. [3] Someone without a disability has an easier time finding a job than an equally qualified candidate who has a disability.
.. “admitting one’s privilege can be very difficult,” especially for those who consider themselves tolerant and prefer to not use labels, “calling themselves color-blind, for instance.”
.. When we finally recognize our unearned benefits—at the expense of others—we may feel ashamed and that may lead us to make excuses for ourselves or overly identify with a less privileged aspect of our identity (for example as Jewish or female).
.. We must work to dismantle systems of oppression while at the same time honoring our differences and celebrating our oneness!
This takes a great deal of spiritual maturity. Unity, in fact, is the reconciliation of differences, not the denial of them.
Our differences must first be maintained—and then overcome by the power of love (exactly as in the three persons of the Trinity). We must distinguish and separate things before we can spiritually unite them, usually at cost to ourselves, especially if we are privileged (see Ephesians 2:14-16).
God is a mystery of relationship, and the truest relationship is love. Infinite Love preserves unique truths, protecting boundaries while simultaneously bridging them.
Heather Mac Donald: How Much More Delusional Can University Students Get?
Heather Lynn Mac Donald (born 1956) is an American political commentator, essayist, attorney and journalist. She is described as a secular conservative. She has advocated positions on numerous subjects including victimization, philanthropy, immigration reform and crime prevention. She is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow of the Manhattan Institute. In this clip, she talks about delusional university students who see a threat in anything even though they are the most privileged people. Until this victimhood complex stops, there can be no win for free speech. Full clip, quoted under fair use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2-JO…
What President Trump doesn’t understand about attorney-client privilege
Cohen said he acted on his own in paying Clifford. Trump agreed, saying he didn’t know about the payment. In this case, Cohen was not acting as Trump’s attorney in the transaction, and there is no attorney-client relationship since, according to the president, there are no communications in which he sought legal advice. Trump has essentially waived the attorney-client protection on this issue. Moreover, if any of the materials obtained were used in furtherance of a crime, they are subject to a crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.
His conviction that it was still in play, however, is probably a consequence of the way he and other affluent figures have long used attorney-client privilege as a preemptive shield. Whether they realize prosecutors have ways to navigate the attorney-client privilege, they know that getting around it is never easy.
.. This presumption of privilege can give cover to criminal actors. Well-heeled criminals often include attorneys in their illicit communications to shield their activity from discovery. Conversely, people who are familiar with the privilege often assume it’s stronger than it really is: Former White House aide Hope Hicks reportedly alarmed Mark Corallo, former spokesman for Trump’s legal team, when she made a potentially compromising statement without a lawyer present and thus — in Corallo’s view — unprotected by the attorney-client privilege. The mere presence of a lawyer would not, in practice, have made the conversation legally privileged. Nevertheless, Corallo’s assumption that it could have shielded the comment from discovery speaks to the way Trump and his ilk have attempted to take advantage of attorney-client privilege.