Obama's 2016 warning
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Obama's 2016 warning
'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 ?
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.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
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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
- LuckyR
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
- LuckyR
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
Some are Ends driven and others are Means driven.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
...a little too simplistic. Whereas there is an element of truth the story is in fact much more complicated.
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Re: Obama's 2016 warning
2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
2023 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023