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Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: August 7th, 2018, 5:22 am
by Georgeanna
http://uk.businessinsider.com/obama-glo ... ?r=US&IR=T
'We're going through a bumpy phase in global politics'.
How long is a 'phase' and how are the qualifications below being met?
'...But as long as we stay true to our democratic principles. As long as elections have integrity, as long as we respect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, as long as there are checks and balances in our government. ... Then I have confidence that over the long term, progress will continue."
Wonder what he's thinking now...and what, if anything, he and intelligent politicians can do about what seems to be a planned global takeover by...who exactly ?
' The president also speculated about the roots of economic and racial anxieties in Western nations which have manifested themselves in major political shakeups like President-elect Donald Trump's upset victory and the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union.
"People are feeling less certain about their identity, less certain about security. They're looking for some means of control," Obama said.'
From this, I take it that:
We need to look at what we have in common and not that which separates us. Crude bigotry and specific targeting is taking place amidst a generalised anxiety, perhaps a global existential crisis, resulting in increasing conflict. The cycle of fear and violence runs on and on. Not a phase or a fashion. But a human sickness.
Will we never learn ?
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: August 9th, 2018, 11:05 am
by Fooloso4
Obama:
We are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an 'us' and a 'them
Some see globalism as the threat and nationalism as the solution. We are past the point where we can choose. Like it or not we live in a global economy. Trump’s America first policy is going to serve as an economic lesson, although it is a lesson many of his followers may not learn. Just as Trump’s wall would be paid for by the American taxpayer, his tariffs against China will largely be paid for by American consumers.
The term “made in America” has become meaningless since parts and materials may have been sourced from around the world. Foreign owned corporations have manufacturing and corporate sites in the U.S. that have created American jobs. On the other side, many American manufacturers have facilities abroad. His tariffs hurt them as well. Foreigners invest in the U.S. and Americans invest abroad.
The way past ‘us’ and ‘them’ may be via an extension of ‘us’ that is not defined by nation or ethnicity but by economic partnership. I think most people would prefer to see everyone prosper rather than ‘us’ not to. If they can see how attempts to hurt ‘them’ hurts ‘us’ they will be less likely to do so.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: August 10th, 2018, 1:35 am
by Steve3007
I think the question of whether this is just a phase depends largely on the question of whether democracies can ever really bring themselves to think of the longer term and the bigger picture. I think part of the definition of the term "populist politician" is a politician who is eager to gain short-term popularity at the expense of long-term well-being. One of the more obvious ways in which we can see this playing out is in the scrapping of various efforts to protect the environment. But we can also see it in the desire to supercharge the economy for a short-term boom and the appeal to nationalism and protectionism.
I don't think we, the voting public, can be relied on to think of the long-term in large enough numbers because we've been increasingly conditioned to be cynical and un-trusting of all external sources of information, so we naturally and logically fall back on our immediate experiences. We vote for politicians based on how they promise to change our lives right now in ways that we can measure directly without having to rely on the "fake news". Never mind such esoteric, far-off and probably fake-news issues like Climate Change, we think. That makes short term populism ... popular. It makes it more likely to work as a method of gaining political power.
Can we ever hope to have leaders who lead; who set out the arguments for long-term gain? The likes of Trump, Erdogan and Putin mean I'm really not sure any more. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: August 10th, 2018, 3:48 am
by Eduk
I see no way that a democracy can be anything other than a popularity contest. Even if long term gain became popular one day.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: August 12th, 2018, 6:43 am
by Steve3007
Eduk wrote:I see no way that a democracy can be anything other than a popularity contest. Even if long term gain became popular one day.
Yes, this is true. But there are various different ways to sell a product (i.e. a politician) in order to make it popular. Selling based on long term gain is generally harder than selling based on immediate gain, especially in a world where people don't trust the sources of information that elucidate those long term gains. I was just wondering whether there will ever be politicians who believe enough in those long term gains to think it worth the effort of trying to use them as selling points.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 25th, 2019, 12:04 pm
by Jan Sand
Within the USA as with many thinkers from early times to the present, suspicions as to the will of a government controlled by a real democracy have always been prevalent. The founding fathers restricted voting in elections to property owners and the senators were originally not elected but appointed to keep popular choice of the governors away from the general population.. Towards the present, as the vote gradually was gained by all citizens, other methods, as witnessed in the 2016 presidential election, kept a true democracy from directing popular outcomes. Huge sums of money are now necessary to elect a candidate which places government control directly in the hands of those who supply the funds. Internationally the Monroe Doctrine set the tone of USA international attitude towards democracy as it overturned democratic elections of leaders in Guatamala, Chile, Iran, and other places and replaced them with brutal dictators more favorable to US agendas.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 28th, 2019, 12:16 pm
by LuckyR
Jan Sand wrote: ↑February 25th, 2019, 12:04 pm
Within the USA as with many thinkers from early times to the present, suspicions as to the will of a government controlled by a real democracy have always been prevalent. The founding fathers restricted voting in elections to property owners and the senators were originally not elected but appointed to keep popular choice of the governors away from the general population.. Towards the present, as the vote gradually was gained by all citizens, other methods, as witnessed in the 2016 presidential election, kept a true democracy from directing popular outcomes. Huge sums of money are now necessary to elect a candidate which places government control directly in the hands of those who supply the funds. Internationally the Monroe Doctrine set the tone of USA international attitude towards democracy as it overturned democratic elections of leaders in Guatamala, Chile, Iran, and other places and replaced them with brutal dictators more favorable to US agendas.
While an accurate summation, it is not illogical for a government of a particular stripe to rank it's own interests over those of another country who happens to have a similar structure.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 28th, 2019, 1:17 pm
by Jan Sand
The point, of course, is not a matter of logic but a conflict of proclaimed ideals. if hipocracy is considered as accepted behavior I cannot demand a different dynamic.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 28th, 2019, 4:56 pm
by LuckyR
Jan Sand wrote: ↑February 28th, 2019, 1:17 pm
The point, of course, is not a matter of logic but a conflict of proclaimed ideals. if hipocracy is considered as accepted behavior I cannot demand a different dynamic.
Some are Ends driven and others are Means driven.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 28th, 2019, 7:58 pm
by Sy Borg
I am not sure that democracy works after populations reach a certain size. When the numbers of people go beyond certain thresholds emergent qualities appear to appear that are seemingly not much noticed or understood in themselves, just culturally contextualised, eg. Just as a crowd has emergent properties not seen in small groups, the same appears to be the case at larger scales.
Democracy is increasingly looking to me like a system that works for medium population economies. The US is by far the world's most populous democracy and, more than most, is nudging towards autocracy - the genies that Trump is releasing can't be put back in the bottle.
Another factor is the US's ceding of global leadership to China, with its history of repression. As observed by John Basil Barnhill over a century ago,
"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty" it seems we are tending towards the former situation.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: February 28th, 2019, 9:23 pm
by Jan Sand
US democracy was always pretty much of a case of money over the people with concessions towards democrace accompanied by less obvious means taking over when concessions on voting etc. were extended but he current era when popular needs and even necessary infrastructure have been ignored by open thievery and corruption is the nadir of popular government. Fear has always been a major element of control and when the USSR vanished the open government panic that there was no major fear on the horizon gave the government an exercise in wild panic until the idiotic terrorist monster was manufactured. Obama exulted in random murders of kids herding goats, wedding parties and funeral processions and there was little objection to this nonsensical horror.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: March 8th, 2019, 1:59 am
by Jklint
Greta wrote: ↑February 28th, 2019, 7:58 pm
As observed by John Basil Barnhill over a century ago,
"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty" it seems we are tending towards the former situation.
That may be true up to a point until until collective fear turns into a collective rage when it begins to be the government's time to fear. Among the main players it seems the U.S. is becoming the third most sinister country in the world after Russia and China.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: March 8th, 2019, 2:13 am
by Jan Sand
The USA was developed out of genecide of the native population and prospered immensely using slavery and early on the Monroe Doctrine declsred its dominion over the entire Western Hemisphere. There is nothing new here.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: March 8th, 2019, 5:45 pm
by Jklint
Jan Sand wrote: ↑March 8th, 2019, 2:13 am
The USA was developed out of genecide of the native population and prospered immensely using slavery and early on the Monroe Doctrine declsred its dominion over the entire Western Hemisphere. There is nothing new here.
...a little too simplistic. Whereas there is an element of truth the story is in fact much more complicated.
Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Posted: March 8th, 2019, 10:46 pm
by Jan Sand
No doubt there are other factors involved but the obvious facts are undeniable. The USA is not unique in this pattern. It is clearly being repeated today by Israel and all the nations that reached out to the world to dominate and more or less enslave other cultures such as Spain, Holland, England, Portugual, France, etc., engaged in the same behavior and covered their thievery by the idiotic excuse that they possessed a superior culture and were raising what they characterized as savages into a higher level of civilization. The world is now reaching a climate crisis and a crisis where a nuclear war is civilizartion's suicide and world leadership is too stupid tp react properly.