Saturday, February 25, 2017
The New Founding Fathers - Mk. 2
Americans love their Constitution and they revere their "founding fathers" which makes it all the more curious that some even devoutly, unquestionably, blindly support the ultimate charlatan who wants to relieve them of both.
Day by day they're working to unravel everything that has gone on before - the founding fathers, the Constitution, judicial independence, freedom of the press and the mechanism of checks and balances. They're doing an end run on everybody - the courts, Congress, the media - and insinuating themselves and their nihilistic ideology between the government and the voting public. They intend to be the new "founding fathers."
I guess that's what has disturbed me most for the past 20-years or so. As a people you've stopped challenging power, often regardless of the facts that you suspected or even knew to be untrue, if you thought there was also enough in it for you and the kin.
What can I say? If revisiting my admitted respect and affection for the Roosevelts can revive my once fairly fond feelings for America, even if it had somewhat gone astray, what might Ken Burns Roosevelt series do to reconnect Americans - as a citizenry, a tribe? Isn't that what today's media and cultural propaganda works to achieve - a diminishment, a diminution of the public so they won't insist on facts, or evidence or proof, in the presence of enough fear, precarity. A sufficiently fanciful and pleasing narrative, sometimes remarkably divorced from fact or evidence, sprinkled with a generous serving of xenophobia, paranoia, fear and anger, will suffice for reality. That's fatally corrosive of any possible social cohesion.,
Okay, I'm done. Watch this series, at home or somewhere else. Leave your own political bias at the door. Ask yourself if you wouldn't have been happier back then than you are now.
BTW, as you have figured out, the text of this is an email I sent to a close friend (nearly 40 years) and his delightful wife. I fear they're willing to just give up, go along to get along or get left alone. I think Americans need something to rally around and I think two Roosevelts have blazed that trail.
interesting post ... a different perspective. tRump's is the new Pope in the " Church of America the Redeemer" (yer friends - all of us - are in real trouble.)
ReplyDelete"Praying at the Altar of American Greatness
In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but to the Church of America the Redeemer. This is a virtual congregation, albeit one possessing many of the attributes of a more traditional religion. The Church has its own Holy Scripture, authenticated on July 4, 1776, at a gathering of 56 prophets. And it has its own saints, prominent among them the Good Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the sacred text (not the Bad Thomas Jefferson who owned and impregnated slaves); Abraham Lincoln, who freed said slaves and thereby suffered martyrdom (on Good Friday no less); and, of course, the duly canonized figures most credited with saving the world itself from evil: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, their status akin to that of saints Peter and Paul in Christianity. The Church of America the Redeemer even has its own Jerusalem, located on the banks of the Potomac, and its own hierarchy, its members situated nearby in High Temples of varying architectural distinction.
This ecumenical enterprise does not prize theological rigor. When it comes to shalts and shalt nots, it tends to be flexible, if not altogether squishy. It demands of the faithful just one thing: a fervent belief in America’s mission to remake the world in its own image. Although in times of crisis Brooks has occasionally gone a bit wobbly, he remains at heart a true believer. "
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176246/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_at_the_altar_of_american_greatness/#more
"Day by day they're working to unravel everything that has gone on before - the founding fathers, the Constitution, judicial independence, freedom of the press and the mechanism of checks and balances. They're doing an end run on everybody - the courts, Congress, the media - and insinuating themselves and their nihilistic ideology between the government and the voting public."
ReplyDeleteWhat hysterical drivel. Certainly Trump — or any New Deal Democratic — will have to challenge America's CAPTURED government, courts, central bank, economy and fake news media to get anything done. Just like FDR. It's called 'change' from intolerable corruption run amok.
These hammy histrionic empty-values 'new liberals' actually stand for establishment capture of our democratic institutions and neocolonialist geopolitical corruption in IA black ops and military interventions to secure corporate assets for insatiably greedy robber barons.
Trump is simply a reality TV host who sees America's broken-down economy as another Wollman Rink: i.e., the product of corruption and incompetence. He thinks he can turn things around with the "art of the deal": i.e., running America like a business.
Establishment oligarchs called Trump Hitler because he plans on bringing back GDP and jobs by reversing their outsourcing looting schemes. He wants to make room for tax cuts by reducing military spending on deep-state black ops, interventions and arms races.
Who is the people's real enemy and who is the people's enemy of their enemy? You can't sort this one out with polarizing partisan rhetoric, that's for sure.
Just wow. Off your meds again.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteTrump keeps showing himself an empty vessel, a signature over Steve Bannon's script. He's not even on the same page as his traditionally key aides. Trump says one thing (Mexico, Asia), Tillerson says another. Trump says this (NATO), Pence assures everyone that's not true. Trump proclaims thus and so (Israel, Two State) and Ambassador Niki corrects him. Same, same for Mattis and McMaster. These people are directly contradicting their president and they're keeping their jobs. They're calling bullshit on the president of the United States.
That is weird.
NPoV, I read the Bacevich piece. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteAnon, back to deliver another bucket of assholery. Of course. Trump isn't going to "drain the swamp." That's loose talk for silly buggers like you.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who wants to reverse legislative and regulatory "capture" in Washington only needs to push through campaign finance reform. That stops lobbyists buying Congress (and the White House) with massive campaign cheques.
You claim to embrace New Deal (and I assume the predecessor Square Deal) politics of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and see that somehow in Trump? Sorry but that's unhinged, as the Donald would say, "bigly."
Now, run along. I'm sure you've got other places to troll.
Anon @ 5:34 a.m. is not on meds and "That is not weird."
ReplyDeleteTrump might want to "to challenge America's CAPTURED government, courts, central bank, economy and fake news media" but he will not be permitted to do so.
Control of establishment oligarchs a.k.a. banksters over democrats and republicans (they are not stupid to side with just one party) runs very deep.
A friendly reminder: those who control the money, control the power.
A..non
Yes, A..non. Read today's piece on those who are "controlling the money" and using it to "control the power."
ReplyDeletehttp://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.ca/2017/02/the-big-chill.html