Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[Stavros]

There's absolutely no truth to this claim. Can you provide a link (or links) with credible evidence which shows beyond doubt that fox news should not be trusted or is a United States problem. Fox news reports the news as is or in favor of the Republicans but they don't lie. You simply don't like the truth.

When the President boasted to the UN about his 'historic' achievements the audience burst into laughter to the extent that he had to pause his speech, laughter that was edited out of the Fox News report, which made no mention of the incident.

There is even a book on the subject called Fox Nation -vs- Reality, admittedly short at 142 pages, you can find it here-
https://www.amazon.com/Fox-Nation-vs.../dp/B00A8PD694

There has also been a fact check on reports and opinions on Fox Channel which can be found here-
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/

Rupert Murdoch has built a career in News which has deliberately 'interpreted' facts or distorted them to promote his libertarian free market agenda, and he has a right to do that. But what his press has also done, in the UK for example is to not only print stories that hav been lies, but to pay journalists and investigators to break the law often not to report the news but to create it, for example by rifling through the rubbish of a footballer or a tv star to find out anything personal that would embarrass them in public.

For years Murdoch defended the 'Page 3 girl' spread in his 'newspaper' The Sun, including the photo of a topless 16 year old that would have been considered illegal in those US states where the age of consent is 18 and possibly landed him in prison and his name on a sex offenders register had he tried to publish it there. And don't forget that Fox News for years allowed anyone willing to claim it that Barrack Obama was not a legitimate President because he was born in Africa not the USA -along with other conspiracy theories-
https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/...s_that_tu.html

Why is Murdoch so allergic to the truth?

[filghy2]

Poor old Collin....he's probably on his way to the "funny farm" which is where most people end up who've had dealings with you fruit bats.
I just wish Trump had won the Nobel Peace prize to see you lot wetting yourselves for the next six months!

I wondered where you'd been. It looks like the doctors may have discharged you prematurely.

I was hoping that you'd been off working on your PhD thesis 'Trump/Putin/Farage: Three great statesman of the 21st century'.

[buttslinger]

Peejaye, enjoy your kegger with Squi and Bart.
Tom Collins, your reasoning is Supreme Court worthy, now.
Donald, put the diet coke on ice.
Vladimir, Nostrovia!
Drink up, Gentlemen.
This is as good as it gets.

[filghy2]

This is an interesting article by a historian on the parallels between the current situation and the rise of fascism in the 1920s.https://www.nybooks.com/articles/201...-of-democracy/

As he says, Trumpism is not Nazism - but to paraphrase Mark Twain, it certainly rhymes. The risk is not totalitarian dictatorship but, rather, a steady shift toward 'illiberal democracy' of the kind seen in countries like Hungary and Turkey. The structures of democracy remain, but with all institutions controlled by loyalists who favour the ruling regime it becomes a charade.

If Republicans retain control of Congress next month the US will certainly move in this direction. Trump will have even less reason to restrain himself, and the Republican Congress even less reason to put up any resistance, having not paid any electoral price. Luckily, that seems unlikely. Nate Silver's site is predicting a 74% chance that the Dems will get a House majority, but only a 22% chance of a Senate majority. https://fivethirtyeight.com/

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=filghy2;1855362]This is an interesting article by a historian on the parallels between the current situation and the rise of fascism in the 1920s.
As he says, Trumpism is not Nazism - but to paraphrase Mark Twain, it certainly rhymes. /QUOTE]

I am not sure the comparison works, largely because the US has a federal structure, but would argue this is where the cleavage in American politics is at its clearest.

It seems to me that what States have realised is that they retain enough control over their affairrs to extract as much as they can from the 'people's bank' -known as Congress- and amend their laws to fit their constituency. California can thus implement climate change policies that run counter to the policies advocated by the President; states can legallize marijuana in flagrant opposition to the policies advocated by the Department of Justice. But it is in those states where abortion is all but impossible, and millions of Americans denied the right to vote that you see how autonomy can become close to independence.

Even though there may be a determined effort to provide the Supreme Court with an opportunity to overturn Roe -v- Wade (I am not sure, legally how this is done), it would be more a matter of theatre as in reality Roe -v- Wade is a dead letter in those states whch now impose such severe term limits as to make an abortion all but impossible, and withdraw funding and support for Planned Parenthood.

In many states anyone with a prison record is barred from voting, just as the invention of new rules on registration has the practical effect of making it harder when it should be easier, and just as on election day in those states the authorities suddenly declare a polling station does not meet health and safety requirements and is closed -as is the next closest, and the next closest, and the next until a voter is faced with a round trip of 200 miles and several hours to exercise the most basic right in a democracy.

It is not a permanent situation, because it can be changed, but I don't see the changes required happening soon. In some ways what is being seen in the US is not so different from the resistance of the UK and Hungary to their perception of interfering government in Brussels, yet just as the Confederate states cannot survive without transferring tax payers money via Federal contracts to their states, offering corporations tax free or tax holiday deals to provide jobs, so the UK cannot survive without a close trading relationship with the EU.

Thus, whereas the Nazis consolidated power by drawing the whole of Germany into a single, monolithic structure ruled by 'one people, one leader, one state' what we seem to be seeing in the UK and the US is a retreat from the centre and a revival of the local, with the longer term prospect that both the UK in its present form (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; with Gibraltar as an as yet undecided factor in Brexit) and the US could break up into constituent parts, even as they find ways of trading together.

Ultimately, rather than using a warning from the 1930s as an example, the US and the UK can best be judged in reference to their own histories, there is enough material there to provide useful comparisons and a lot of food for thought, chemical free we hope.

[buttslinger]

I recall a story about a blind man looking at an Elephant, the United States is as big as Europe, but I think the story of The Hour now is the arrow in the shoulder, before you ask who shot the arrow or why, job #1 is to remove the arrow from your flesh. Preliminary Surgery is scheduled for Nov 6th.
Hopefully Donald Trump is just a loophole in the Law, a fly in the ointment, or what happens to a World where War is no longer an option. Two thousand years after we were taught to love our neighbor, our neighbors are still stealing our stuff. The fault is always our neighbor's. Donald Trump is as American as Apple Pie, J R Ewing, P T Barnum. People were sick of another Bush V. Clinton bout, two boring candidates. Nothing will be more entertaining than watching the cuffs placed on Trump's little hands. Live in Hope, Die in despair. The Republicans are petrified that Trump may signal their Death Knell, and they're coming up with the kitchen sink to prevent it. Kavanaugh is an Ace up their sleeve. So many Laws...…….

[filghy2]

I am not sure the comparison works, largely because the US has a federal structure, but would argue this is where the cleavage in American politics is at its clearest.

Germany also has a federal system with significant powers reserved to the states, and did so at the time of the Nazi takeover. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism_in_Germany I'm sure there are plenty of ways that an unscrupulous and ruthless federal government can put pressure on states.

[filghy2]

I think the story of The Hour now is the arrow in the shoulder, before you ask who shot the arrow or why, job #1 is to remove the arrow from your flesh. Preliminary Surgery is scheduled for Nov 6th.

I think you are over-optimistic. The best we can expect is that the patient will be stabilised and the arrow prevented from going any deeper. All indications are that the Dems will take back the House but not the Senate. That means they can block legislation and launch investigations, but they can't pass legislation or block appointments and they won't be able to impeach Trump.

If you haven't figured yet that most Republicans don't want to see or hear any evil about Trump then you haven't been paying attention. Mueller is unlikely to find a tape of Trump making a deal with the Russians, so whatever he comes up with will be an accumulation of lots of pieces of evidence, which they'll find reasons to discredit. I doubt that most of them care whether he colluded anyway - all they care about is that their tribe wins by any means possible. This isn't the Republican party of the 1970s - Nixon would not have been forced to resign today.

I think it's going to be more like World War I. The enemy advance may be halted, but there'll be many years of trench warfare ahead with no decisive victory. A full cure probably requires the sort of landslide that FDR achieved in the 1930s. But who knows? Maybe Trump will eventually drag us into another Great Depression and history can repeat.

[buttslinger]

You may very well be right but I think Democrats are being born every day. Teenagers. With soft warm breasts. And they will be on our side. Thanks Trump!

[Stavros]

Germany also has a federal system with significant powers reserved to the states, and did so at the time of the Nazi takeover. I'm sure there are plenty of ways that an unscrupulous and ruthless federal government can put pressure on states.

I understand the parallels, there is even an article on it, albeit one written from the perspective of an active Christian (not, I think of the 'Evangelical' trend) whih relates the absence of faith to its replacement with identity politics attempting to fill a gap that might also be created by unemployment, or fractured family life-
https://swarajyamag.com/world/drawin...weimar-america

There has been a profusion of books and articles on the origins of the Third Reich which argue either that it was a crisis of modernity in the sense that by the 1930s Germany had failed to develop the liberal institutions that existed in, say the UK, and which acted to prevent the dictatorship that emerged there (as was also the case with Italy), or that the Nazis were a product of modernity itself but a modernizing process that had failed to deliver the degree of prosperity before the First World War that generated so much social distress and dislocation after it. Geoff Eley and David Blakbourn have been proponents of the first idea, Detlev Peukert of the second, and perhaps the more persuasive.

For an overview of the Blakbourn/Eley thesis try this link-
https://douglasibell.com/2012/03/17/...erman-history/

The Peukert view is in this very, very long Wikipedia article on him, some of poorly written, but he was a fascinating historian whose book, in English -Inside the Third Reich- is worth reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detlev_Peukert

I think the differences are too great for the comparison to go far, not least the fact that a unified Germany had only existed for 63 years when Hitler became Chancellor. Maybe the parallel should be with the US civil war?