Hollywood_Guy wrote:
Democrats now have too much power. Power is not limited just to what we think of as "the government". Regardless of how that power is used (i.e. policy differences), this concentration of power is extremely dangerous, and we are witnessing the results.
[...]
Trump didn’t actually have very much power. He never controlled the propaganda organs (a.k.a. large news organizations with global reach or the controllers of social media); he never controlled the universities;
No President "controls" these things. That would be contrary to the First Amendment.
In any case there are
some "large news organizations," e.g. Fox, that did support Trump during at least most of his time in office.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
he never controlled the primary education system; he never controlled the bureaucracy.
No President completely "controls" the bureaucracy either, or should, although the President does determine its overall direction (hopefully within legal limits) by appointing the people in charge.
By the way, the bureaucracy is not, by any means, completely controlled by Democrats. See
There Are More Republicans in Federal Government Than You Might Think. And the military has been Republican-dominated for a long time, and still is, although quite a few people in the military have been alienated by Trump. See
Military Veterans of All Ages Tend to Be More Republican.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
In fact he is loathed by all four. Even more importantly, he is loathed by leadership in the “intelligence community”, which is a group that has far too much real power, seemingly completely unchecked.
Note that they loathe Trump
personally, not because he is a Republican. In the past, the intelligence agencies have been viewed more favorably by Republicans/conservatives than by Democrats/liberals/progressives. See
Democrats Now Give the CIA Higher Marks than Republicans Do. That's a Really Big Shift. And they hate Trump
not because he is a serious reformer of any kind, but because he is an arrogant know-it-all who refuses to listen to them and refuses to respect their professional expertise.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
Corporate leadership leans more against him than for him.
In general, corporate leadership leans Republican. See
A new study measured just how strongly CEOs lean Republican: "Though many leaders in corporate America have gone out of their way to distance themselves from US president Donald Trump, a new working paper shows that public company CEOs still heavily favor Republicans."
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
As a result, Trump has always been fighting for existential political survival. He has faced multiple overt attempts to unseat him from all of those power sources, channeled through the House of Representatives. Most of his energy was devoted to fending off these attacks against him. For that reason, we had - to a first order approximation anyway - a great deal of gridlock for the past four years as his opponents wasted energy attacking him and he wasted energy defending himself from political annihilation. This is hardly the picture of the “dictator” portrayed. He's able to dictate very little. He has never had the real power to do so.
That is fortunate.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
Significant portions of the attacks against him, meanwhile, were and are explicit lies. I like Glenn Greenwald’s summation that while Trump is certainly a liar, he is simultaneously the most lied-about president we have ever seen. Please note that Glenn Greenwald is far more left than right in his policy positions. When attacked, Trump was attacked for the wrong reasons. While there are lots and lots of legitimate attacks against Trump, rarely were those the avenues used. Instead, his followers were branded as “racists” and this was the painting of his character. The evidence against this one particular attack, however, is overwhelming, particularly in the most recent election, where he gained a much greater percentage of the minority vote than any Republican has for decades. It seems fewer people with black/brown skin think he hates them or find the positions he takes or the things he says “hateful” than they thought of other prior Republicans, none of whom was accused of being racist. Are there some racists who support Trump? I'm sure there are, but that is not what he is about, and it does not remotely explain the broad quality of his support among many many different regions and groups.
Actually, ever since the 1960's, Republican presidential candidates generally have been known to embrace the "Southern strategy," i.e. covert appeals to Southern white racism. (Before the 1960's, the Democrats had been the more racist of the two parties. See
Encyclopedia and
Wikipedia entries on the Southern Strategy.) Trump not only continued the Southern Strategy but made it more overt, e.g. attacking Obama on "birther" grounds, and then, during his campaign, occasionally re-tweeting propaganda from out-and-out white nationalists.
Some Black people may nevertheless support the Republican party and/or Trump because they agree on other issues.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
I am deeply concerned that, assuming Biden and the Democrats gain control, they are not nearly so constrained. They now wield the power of all institutions. They control the universities and primary school teachers, without a doubt, and the universities are the feeders of the bureaucracy which is where direct exercise of power over citizens occurs.
Perhaps Trump and his anti-intellectual attitudes are one of the reasons
why the Republican Party has become even less intellectually respectable than it was before? (Another, longer-standing reason is the Republican Party's several-decades old welcoming of science deniers of various kinds, including anti-evolutionists, climate change deniers, and, most recently and most deadly, COVID deniers.)
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
The large-scale press has lied and obscured for Biden and the Democrats more times than I can count. Even Fox - owned by Murdoch - has turned and betrayed Trump. Corporate power senses which way the wind is blowing, and corporations are falling over themselves to be perceived as following the liberal agenda being birthed in the Democratic strategy sessions.
The "liberal agenda" is not "birthed in the Democratic strategy sessions." More about this later, in another post.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
International organizations and governments are explicitly anti-Trump.
Well, of course they are, because Trump has been messing up the U.S.A.'s relations with its allies.
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
Another fascinating group - demonstrating the almost-completion of the Democratic takeover - is the group who call themselves Republicans, but who view the establishment power - defended by the Democratic core constituency - as equally sacred as do the Democrats themselves.
It's not a question of viewing the "establishment power" as "sacred." It's more a question of not wanting to be ruled by an incompetent, unqualified, narcissistic jerk with a long history of getting away with various crimes. (As a New Yorker, I can tell you that Trump has always had a very sleazy reputation around here, long before he decided to enter politics.)
Hollywood_Guy wrote:
It's not clear to me what they think distinguishes their views from those of the prior Democratic administration when they are fighting so hard for the re-establishment of what that administration stood for in opposition to the majority of the constituents of "their" party.
If you're thinking of the Lincoln Project (of which my boyfriend, a former Republican, is a big fan): They are temporarily putting their policy differences with the Democratic Party aside in favor of electing a moderate and getting rid of Trump and his enablers.
As for the remainder of your post: If I understand what you are saying, you basically seem to favor Trump as a defense against what you perceive as a growing tyranny of "political correctness." Is that what you mean to say?
If so, I urge you to take a look at the following article:
Why 14 Critics of “Social Justice” Think You Shouldn’t Vote Trump.
The point isn't just about Trump and Republicans. This had to do with the subtle, incremental, creeping influence of socialism in various aspects of society. Political correctness is a more leftist idea. And Republicans aren't necessarily the same thing as Conservatives or Libertarians.
20 Nov 2020, 1:30 pm
