The Divided States of America

[topcat]

This is partly why cryptocurrency could be such a game-changer. If ordinary people like us can opt out of the current monetary system it stymies the rich to a large extent. They can't get the Central Bank to print off billions of £'s/$'s and get you and I to pay for it. There can be a real separation between everyday spending for stuff like rent/food/clothing/bills and the speculation of the Stock Market etc.
I think there isn't one solution but several together can make a huge difference.

Cryptocurrency requires even more "faith" than paper money that it's worth something. It's just "out there in the ether."

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Want answers, here are some.
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“Authoritarian Nightmare”: John Dean Helped Bring Down Nixon over Watergate. He Says Trump Is Worse
108,401 views
•Aug 27, 2020

As President Trump is set to accept the Republican Party’s formal renomination for president amid ongoing scandals and multiple crises, we speak with John Dean, who served as the White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. His new book is “Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.” “I worked for the last authoritarian president we had,” Dean says. “Trump is of a different cut than Nixon. … He’s going to make Nixon look like a choir boy before it’s all over.”

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

I've seen so much Pennsylvania state election law I think I could write the fucking bar exam!

 

[Stone_Free]

Cryptocurrency requires even more "faith" than paper money that it's worth something. It's just "out there in the ether."

Agreed, it does require faith but I don't think that's a major issue. Humans put their faith in lots of things that aren't tangible. Humans get used to new ways of doing things quite easily.

 

[Stone_Free]

I haven't thought too much about it or seen much expert opinion, it sounds interesting and I wonder if the idea will survive quantum computers... Technology could make "mining" much easier and suddenly cheaper in the future, devaluating everybody's currency overnight, it basically depends on the energy cost of computation, as efficiencies increase so does inflation.

I'm no expert but I've read that quantum computing has been 'factored in' to the idea of crypto. I think the whole mining thing is a bit misleading, it's a big issue with Bitcoin but I don't think it will be with all crypto. Some crypto can be mined by ordinary computers by individuals and the rewards work different to Bitcoin.
The whole Blockchain technology is an interesting one and I think it will offer some solutions in the future. If we can have that separation between speculation and living costs in a currency then the wealthy can play their market games while the rest of us get on with living.

 

[topcat]

Agreed, it does require faith but I don't think that's a major issue. Humans put their faith in lots of things that aren't tangible. Humans get used to new ways of doing things quite easily.

True, but this is so tentative and to me, seems likely to fall apart easily. The fucking stock market moves by emotions, this is even more fragile. Money in the ether can just easily vanish, as though it never existed and not recoverable. As I understand it, it was devised to fund illegal drug sales. That part I can see.

 

[Stone_Free]

True, but this is so tentative and to me, seems likely to fall apart easily. The fucking stock market moves by emotions, this is even more fragile. Money in the ether can just easily vanish, as though it never existed and not recoverable. As I understand it, it was devised to fund illegal drug sales. That part I can see.

I think crypto is different in that emotion has nothing to do with it. Crypto will be a lot less fragile and stable than ordinary cash. The Blockchain can't be changed, it is extremely difficult to steal crypto and new security layers are being added. Crypto wasn't devised to fund illegal drug sales, it's just that criminals used it to keep their funds under the radar. It's very early days for crypto atm but I think in 5-10 years it will be widely used. There are so many cool uses for crypto being developed that people will get enthusiastic once it's proven to be safe. I can see people starting to use it gradually, like having $10-$20 in crypto that they use to buy a coffee when they want and then gradually using it more and more.

 

[topcat]

I think crypto is different in that emotion has nothing to do with it. Crypto will be a lot less fragile and stable than ordinary cash. The Blockchain can't be changed, it is extremely difficult to steal crypto and new security layers are being added. Crypto wasn't devised to fund illegal drug sales, it's just that criminals used it to keep their funds under the radar. It's very early days for crypto atm but I think in 5-10 years it will be widely used. There are so many cool uses for crypto being developed that people will get enthusiastic once it's proven to be safe. I can see people starting to use it gradually, like having $10-$20 in crypto that they use to buy a coffee when they want and then gradually using it more and more.

Well, I'm too old (and stuck in my beliefs) to adopt that shit. I'm going to start stuffing my mattress with Benjamins.

 

[Fogdog]

I'm no expert but I've read that quantum computing has been 'factored in' to the idea of crypto. I think the whole mining thing is a bit misleading, it's a big issue with Bitcoin but I don't think it will be with all crypto. Some crypto can be mined by ordinary computers by individuals and the rewards work different to Bitcoin.
The whole Blockchain technology is an interesting one and I think it will offer some solutions in the future. If we can have that separation between speculation and living costs in a currency then the wealthy can play their market games while the rest of us get on with living.

I don't get how that ends rich people gaining extra influence through big contributions. What difference does it make if it's a deposit into their cryptocurrency account or in dollars?

The rest of it doesn't seem to make much difference to me regarding how people spend or make a living. Governments need to be fed too, they are going to regulate it so that they can fund their various programs, be it military or education.

 

[Fogdog]

Want answers, here are some.
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“Authoritarian Nightmare”: John Dean Helped Bring Down Nixon over Watergate. He Says Trump Is Worse
108,401 views
•Aug 27, 2020

As President Trump is set to accept the Republican Party’s formal renomination for president amid ongoing scandals and multiple crises, we speak with John Dean, who served as the White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. His new book is “Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.” “I worked for the last authoritarian president we had,” Dean says. “Trump is of a different cut than Nixon. … He’s going to make Nixon look like a choir boy before it’s all over.”

It was interesting and what he said made sense.

In that interview, Dean merely affirmed what I already believed about the radical right but didn't answer my question about what to do. Trump's Republicans are not conservatives, they are radical authoritarians. I still don't know how we are going to get the work of this country done with so many radical right wingers/authoritarian voters aligned against us. What Dean clearly said is they aren't concerned about the constitution at all and consider it something to ignore if it gets in Trump's way. From Trump's many unlawful actions and their lack of concern over them, we know this is true.

The book is in my public library. It's already checked out and I put a hold on it so that I can take a look at it when it comes back in. Dean said they cover "ways to deal with them". If I can get some understanding of that, then I'll owe you a big thank you.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Many Americans and others want answers to WTF just happened and what do people see in Trump, he's such an obvious POS. I thought I'd post some more about John Dean's book and he has been studying the phenomena among republicans for some time now. I think this work and the academic work it is based on would be very useful to Joe's team and I'm sure there are folks who know this shit inside out working for him.

To solve a problem, you must first understand it and mitigate it's causes, reduce stress for instance and you will go a long way to reducing the problem, as minds clarify and become more objective. Reducing stress gets ya to the start line only though, underlying issues and needs must be addressed. Draw the line on bigotry and racism, but tolerate most everything else that's liberal and legal. Lying has gone to a new level though and that will be an issue moving forward along with alternative realties generated by propaganda networks who also do righthand spun news. Fox serves the owners, not the viewers, they are suckers to titillate and control for the purposes of political power.

John Dean's Authoritarian Nightmare

John W. Dean, of Watergate fame, makes startling assertions about the psychology of Trump's base in his new book and also shares Senator Goldwater's thoughts on analysis from afar.

www.psychologytoday.com

John Dean's Authoritarian Nightmare
Nixon's former attorney talks Trump, authoritarianism, and the Goldwater Rule.

There are some startling statements in John W. Dean's new book, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers, but the former White House counsel who famously testified against President Nixon about the Watergate scandal is adamant about them all. He backs up his conclusions with 40 years of research by his writing partner, psychology professor Bob Altemeyer, and the survey they conducted on the psychological make-up of President Trump's base.

Among their conclusions:

• President Trump is an authoritarian leader.
• Authoritarianism is deeply embedded in America today.
• Trump's base is compromised of personality types that include social dominators, authoritarian followers, as well as "double highs" who combine the worst traits of the two.
• Prejudice is the glue that holds this coalition together.
• Religious beliefs are not really that important to those who identify as religious fundamentalist or evangelical; not compared with the power that fear and prejudice have over them.

Dean spends the first four chapters analyzing Donald Trump, leading to his label of authoritarian, or as stated on page 24, "a wannabe dictator conspicuously displaying his inchoate authoritarian rule." As you can tell, the book minces no words. When asked about the concern of analyzing a public figure from afar, Dean gave the kind of context that only someone in the inner circle of Presidential politics for so many decades could provide:

"We [in the book] relied very, very much on available evidence and overwhelming conclusions by clinical and other psychologists about, for example, the influence of parents on their children," Dean says.
"But to analyze somebody from afar, psychology and psychiatry have the Goldwater Rule, with which I’m very familiar; I’ve had long conversations with Senator Goldwater about it," Dean continues, stating that he'd known Barry Goldwater since he was 13 years old. "I’m very familiar with the lawsuit from which that emanated, and it has always been striking to me how the psychological and psychiatric associations misinterpreted the rule. What the abuse was, what Ginzburg, the editor of Fact magazine, did in polling psychiatrists, many of whom did make very legitimate analysis—even the Senator said, 'Right on'—but what [Ginzburg] did is he went through and selectively took information from his polling and his solicitations from these people, and he skewed it and he came up with a distorted result."
"The Goldwater Rule said these people shouldn’t even be making the analysis… well, I think they can make an analysis from a distance and if somebody walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, he’s probably a duck."

It was Goldwater's public brawl with Jerry Falwell, Sr. and his Moral Majority, in fact, that first interested Dean in the body of research about authoritarianism.

"When I went looking for research, I ended up finding Bob Altemeyer and his work. He's one of a small group of scientists who really kept alive studies that started in the aftermath of World War II, when a group of German-Jewish scientists emigrated to Berkeley and started studying the authoritarian personality, wondering if what had happened in Italy and Germany under Mussolini and Hitler could happen in the United States. And these people have been writing that, yes, it could happen here, but we had plenty of time.
Well, given the last three years, we don't have any time. And that's why I did this book with him."

Dean and Altemeyer estimate a faithful Trump base of 50 million people. In the book, they state most of them have one of two scientifically established authoritarian personality traits or are members of a unique group that combines both. These people score highly as:

Social Dominators: People who believe in inequality between groups and think their own should control others, collectively and even individually on a person-to-person basis. Donald Trump, they assert, appears to be an extreme example of a social dominator. These traits are based on the Social Dominance Orientation Scale developed by Pratto, Sidanius, et al in 1994.

Authoritarian Followers: People who are submissive, fearful, and longing for a mighty leader who will protect them from life's threats. Their ethnocentrism is often based on religious training and they have been found to exhibit self-righteousness. These people score highly on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) Scale that Altemeyer developed in 1981. (The "right" in the title does not refer to conservatism but to the Olde English word meaning lawful or proper.) The RWA Scale measures submission to established authority, aggression in the name of that authority, and conventionalism.


Double Highs: People who score highly as both a Social Dominator and an Authoritarian Follower, which, as Dean and Altemeyer state, at first seems confusing because that would make them dominating submissives. They offer two examples of how this can happen: a dominating person can strongly believe in other people submitting to authorities if they themselves are the authorities (they say Donald Trump himself would be a good example of this type of Double High); another example is submissive people who endorse their group's superiority over others as an extra level of protection.

Dean says all three categories show marked ethnocentrism and prejudice, which was echoed in the poll he and Altemeyer conducted in conjunction with Monmouth University specifically for this book.

"The glue that holds all these people and his coalition together, the underlying feeling, is prejudice. That was the thing that jumped out also in the Monmouth poll is how deep and strong the prejudice is in these people. They are anti-'the other' on so many issues. They get reinforced feelings when they go to Trump rallies, for example, and they see people who are thinking and feeling like they do, they find a comfort level in all this."

The authors cite a 1996 paper by the University of Western Kentucky's Sam McFarland and his collaborator Sherman Adelson, as "one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of social sciences that you never heard about" as crucial to understanding these phenomena. McFarland and Adelson researched 18 different personality tests to determine which could best predict prejudice against Black people, women, and homosexual people. Two of the 18 had a strong correlation: the Social Dominance Orientation Scale and the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale.

"If you want to know what aspect of personality psychologically connects to social prejudice, discrimination, ethnic cleansings and Holocausts—and that is one hell of a question—the answer is, more than anything else, authoritarianism!" they write.

more...

 

[printer]

The allure of Trump. He is winning against the liberals. Anything that he does wrong that gets liberals (or RINO'S) in a tiff is something to cheer about.

Well, that is on top of his bigoted behavior.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

The allure of Trump. He is winning against the liberals. Anything that he does wrong that gets liberals (or RINO'S) in a tiff is something to cheer about.

A look at the map should also give some clues, it's not red state vs blue state, it's urban vs rural, the paradigm is wrong to begin with. Why do people in rural and small towns feel this way, why do they and the uneducated feel left out of the future? Cities thrive but small towns and rural areas wither and die and are in a state of decay.

Rightwing policies cut education and discouraged it with high costs to deliberately create a base of ignorance, economic disadvantage and political power. They stoke social fear and stress and that aids their cause and increases their numbers, guns and violence help with this. Lack of social services and faith in government institutions drives people to religion, they know this too. The people who do this shit and dream up these nefarious schemes in the think tanks of the rich are well trained in the social sciences and these methods are old, tried and true.

 

[VILEPLUME]

 

[Jimdamick]

My kid just turned me onto this

 

[Jimdamick]

 

[Fogdog]

A look at the map should also give some clues, it's not red state vs blue state, it's urban vs rural, the paradigm is wrong to begin with. Why do people in rural and small towns feel this way, why do they and the uneducated feel left out of the future? Cities thrive but small towns and rural areas wither and die and are in a state of decay.

Rightwing policies cut education and discouraged it with high costs to deliberately create a base of ignorance, economic disadvantage and political power. They stoke social fear and stress and that aids their cause and increases their numbers, guns and violence help with this. Lack of social services and faith in government institutions drives people to religion, they know this too. The people who do this shit and dream up these nefarious schemes in the think tanks of the rich are well trained in the social sciences and these methods are old, tried and true.

Good questions. One's viewpoints are challenged more often in the city than in the country. More diversity, faster pace of change, the arts are more vital. I've seen studies that show people are less likely to hold racist beliefs if they travel more. The theory was that people who are exposed to more diverse and different people learn to look at the person rather than their skin color or appearance.

 

[Jimdamick]

Trump is, not was, (He's imbeded in the American psyche) emblematic of fucking EVERYTHING that is wrong with American Society/Values.
Biden wins & becomes the POTUS.
Big fucking deal/so what?
Trump & his attitude/polices, which I find too be crude/abrasive/cruel/inhumane, are embraced, nay, lauded by almost 1/2 of this once great Nation's populace.
What the fuck does that tell you?
Personally, it tells me that this Nation is in deep shit.
So yea, you'll see Trump flags now probably for the next 100 years, replacing the Stars & Bars as a symbol of racism & division.
That's simply the way we are/have been & always will be seemingly.
Fucking fools.
Wear a mask/stay safe/peace out

 

[hanimmal]

Trump has shown us how powerful the executive branch is. The thing is, there have been plenty of monarchs, kings, queens, emperors and others who inherited their office, could not be removed without violence and were worse than even Trump was.

I have to disagree with you that the British "dealt" with King George better than we did with Trump. We only had Trump for four years. King George's reign lasted almost 70 years and he held executive power for at least half of his reign. We followed our laws and constitution pretty much down to the last letter. I'm proud to say that the rule of law was upheld, even when the Senate refused to remove Trump, it was their legal right to do so. I'm not proud of what happened but I can say that I'm proud of how we handled the situation.

I think Trump is a symptom of our division, and not the cause of it. We are a divided country with many people who are slavering to tear down our democracy, both from within and without. Our political system is still sound and we can rely on it so long as we observe and protect it.

I think of Trump as the inheritor of our division. And he did stoke it for decades, he has been running for POTUS as long as Biden has been, and as soon as he started the Obama birth certificate con, he absorbed the hate mongering role that Palin was fomenting.

In some respects neither the US nor UK have democracy. The rich and the media control how a lot of people think...and a lot of those people don't even know it. Sure we get to vote, but the choices put in front of us are there because certain people approve of them. The rich don't spend billions on politicians without getting what they want in return.

The rich were the ones that set up the laws for all of human history. We are finally getting to the point that one major party is represented more by the 100% of the population than the Rich white guys that have always been in charge in America.

Luckily Rich people now are competing with one another. You have the Koch's, but on the other side you have the rich PC guy binging medicine to the world.

And we are waking up to the online manipulation of 'media' and the scams the right wing hate mongers have done on the television news stations and hate radio. I have hope this too will pass.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union

The words in the preamble to the constitution are "more perfect union". Nobody has ever said perfect. Well maybe Trump did. He says stuff.

We have much to make more perfect. I'm puzzling over why so many voted fascist this time around. Trump was blatantly fascist and I believe he planned to make himself and his family permanent fixtures in our government. Not a single person who voted for him could claim ignorance over this. So, why?

Studies have shown that Trump's racist and misogynistic rhetoric resonated strongly with his voters, much more so than other presidential candidates in the modern era. Also too, looking at the news we can see how strongly authoritarian Trump's supporters are. I hear them say things like "we can't tax corporations (or the wealthy) or they will leave the country" and of course, the way they respond to protests against police brutality is shockingly fascist. They rallied behind that kid who went hunting Antifa during the civil unrest in Kenosha Wisconsin, for example. I don't know what this all means but I'm listening and trying to put it together in order to understand.

Brianwashing. They get spammed images of everything burning down, which gets tied to 'the scary left', and all of a sudden Trump's fascism seems like a viable option to keep them safe. These are people who got tricked into thinking shit like Obama was selling weapons to gangs in South Africa to murder white farmers.

Same with the selling of 'socialism' to the minority communities that remember that boogey man from the dictators that they fled to our nation from.

Same with their branding of 'Liberals murdering babies', and all their education trolls to scare them to keep their kids unexposed to the wider world.

Over the last 5 decades of the right wing telephone game the Republicans created (Hate radio, Fox, Sinclair, Evangelicals, internet trolls) and you get generational brainwashing.

Agree that campaign finance reform is needed. Necessary, even. To get there, we have to figure out how to gain cooperation from the people who just tried to install a fascist monarchy in the White House. The Supreme Court ruled that money is speech, therefore laws regulating campaign spending are for the most part unconstitutional. Also corporations have the same rights that people do. Another insane idea. Couple that with money being the same as speech and we have corporations able to give money to candidates. Talk about a system rife with legal corruption. This is stupid but it's the law of the land right now.

So, I think we need to pass an amendment that defines speech as something people say, not what they possess. Also an amendment to define people as human beings and take that status away from immortal, non-sentient corporations (multinational ones too) that do not have children or any notion of humanity. But in order to do that, we need cooperation from a decent portion of the same people who voted for Trump. I don't know how we are going to do that right now.

This is why I think we need to fix the propaganda before we can do anything well.

I don't get how that ends rich people gaining extra influence through big contributions. What difference does it make if it's a deposit into their cryptocurrency account or in dollars?

The rest of it doesn't seem to make much difference to me regarding how people spend or make a living. Governments need to be fed too, they are going to regulate it so that they can fund their various programs, be it military or education.

I am not a fan at all of crypto currency.

I still think the combination of click farms and small dollar donations is a big scam that with the help of cryptocurrencies is a way for foreign influence in our elections and needs to be re-evaluated.

 

[Fogdog]

Trump & his attitude/polices, which I find too be crude/abrasive/cruel/inhumane, are embraced, nay, lauded by almost 1/2 of this once great Nation's populace.
What the fuck does that tell you?

It tells me that more than half don't support Trump. Trump's coalition isn't monolithic. I see opportunity in that.