Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, predicts an unprecedented level of corruption during the Trump years, related to Trump’s refusal to separate himself from his business empire. Will foreign diplomats reserve the $20,000 a night suite at the Trump hotel in D.C. to impress the President? Will governments grant permits expeditiously to build new Trump hotels, casinos and golf courses to curry favor? Will the President appoint members of the National Labor Relations Board to prevent his hotels from being unionized (there is a labor dispute at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas before the NLRB right now).
He writes,
Self-dealing will be the norm throughout this administration. America has just entered an era of unprecedented corruption at the top.
The question you need to ask is why this matters. Hint: It’s not the money, it’s the incentives.
True, we could be talking about a lot of money — think billions, not millions, to Mr. Trump alone (which is why his promise not to take his salary is a sick joke). But America is a very rich country, whose government spends more than $4 trillion a year, so even large-scale looting amounts to rounding error. What’s important is not the money that sticks to the fingers of the inner circle, but what they do to get that money, and the bad policy that results.
Normally, policy reflects some combination of practicality — what works? — and ideology — what fits my preconceptions? And our usual complaint is that ideology all too often overrules the evidence.
But now we’re going to see a third factor powerfully at work: What policies can officials, very much including the man at the top, personally monetize? And the effect will be disastrous.
Let’s start relatively small, with the choice of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Ms. DeVos has some obvious affinities with Mr. Trump: Her husband is an heir to the fortune created by Amway, a company that has been accused of being a fraudulent scheme and, in 2011, paid $150 million to settle a class-action suit. But what’s really striking is her signature issue, school vouchers, in which parents are given money rather than having their children receive a public education.
At this point there’s a lot of evidence on how well school vouchers actually work, and it’s basically damning. For example, Louisiana’s extensive voucher plan unambiguously reduced student achievement. But voucher advocates won’t take no for an answer. Part of this is ideology, but it’s also true that vouchers might eventually find their way to for-profit educational institutions.
And the track record of for-profit education is truly terrible; the Obama administration has been cracking down on the scams that infest the industry. But things will be different now: For-profit education stocks soared after the election. Two, three, many Trump Universities!
Moving on, I’ve already written about the Trump infrastructure plan, which for no obvious reason involves widespread privatization of public assets. No obvious reason, that is, except the huge opportunities for cronyism and profiteering that would be opened up.
Krugman previously wrote that Trump’s proposal to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure would privatize many of our public assets and become a goldmine for the private sector.
Buckle your seat belts. The next four years will make Teapot Dome look like a tea party.
Today’s Acronym —
GITSOCI = Government In The Service Of Corporate Interests
How about a shorter one? “WSF.”
“We’re so f*cked.”
;-(
Shouldn’t that last line end in “a so-called tea party?” 🙂
Shall we all go outside and vomit!!!!
I got your Emeticon right here …
Even if there isn’t nonstop corruption, we’re in for four years of nonstop questions about whether there is nonstop corruption, because Trump’s refusal/inability to address potential conflict-of-interest issues creates an appearance of impropriety that can never be dispelled.
They have breached the barriers (conflict of interest, procurement and and oversight, anticorruption) and now find themselves in the inner sanctum staring at a huge pile of gold previously denied to them. Time to get out the big sacks and just shovel it in.
Trump is draining the treasury, not the swamp.
Krugman’s Failure to Speak Truth to Power about Austerity
Not a voice that west coast progressives pay much attention to anymore.
Got it, Hillary is just as bad as Trump, check. Yep, of course, Hillary promoted birtherism, is big buddies with Alex Jones, she appeals to racists, bigots, KKKers and misogynists. Sigh. It’s hopeless.
Joe
Going to have to disagree with you on this one. The article was far more a well deserved swipe at Krugman
Krugman who tripped over himself to discredit Bernie on the grounds that he thought he was un electable not on the validity of the economic issues he raised . The World does not look quite as Flat at the NYT’s anymore. Fake narratives are just as bad as fake news. So how far will the liberal elites (add the neo if you like ) go to discredit any opposition to their narration.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/journalists_cry_foul_as_washington_post_publishes_20161127
Screw the Russians . I refuse to believe that anybody votes on bullshit stories on Facebook or Social media . It the do . Its time to bring back literacy tests . The above article is a far more dangerous assault on our democracy .
Yes we have Obama and Clinton to thank for the situation we find ourselves in . Yes I voted for them !!!! a total of seven times .
Worked for Obama twice . Even worked to help Hillary .
They will not pay the price for their failures we will. Obama’s legacy will not be TPP . He promised hope and change he had an earth shattering moment in 2008 .He delivered a Republican congress , Republican state houses and Trump.
pnwarriorwoman: you must be ecstatic that Hillary lost. Now we have Trump, whoopee. We are so much better off (sarcasm alert).
Stop Joe! You are making too much sense. There’s no room for clear thinking in today’s political discourse.
Oh, yes, Joe always makes perfect sense. Anyone who criticizes Hillary is obviously a Trump supporter. Very sensible.
C’mon, Greg, you’re better than that.
Warrior woman…Wm Black called it correctly when he spoke here of the neoliberal Dems following austerity rather than stimulus. Obama kidded us along after 2008 when he called it “stimulus” and handed over our public tax money to the banksters to save the ‘too big to fail’ banks (following up on Bush and Paulson), and then when he had the FDIC insurance, again our tax money, cover all the banksters risks. It was a form of theft from We the People to the banksters who were never indicted for their thefts from us. Reverse Robin Hood.
Black is often the most insightful and informed of the economists. Thanks for this post…and I am a west coast progressive who agrees with you and with Black. Real stimulus, as in starting a CCC and a WPA would have repaired infrastructure while increasing money flow, and we would probably not have Trump today, since the poverty stricken would have had jobs and been in a far better position and would not have voted for him.
Trump’s idea of infrastructure is to turn billions over to the private sector and let them own what they build–with our money.
Agree Diane…that seems to be his plan. His DC fancy hotel on govt. land, in a govt, building, is not infrastructure but is hugely profitable to him, evidently illegally…it should either be closed of appropriated by the govt.
Trump’s taxes continue to be audited, cough, cough.
He is counting on the public and the media having a short memory. We will never see those tax returns.
Betsy DeVos & The Mackinac Center in Michigan
The DeVos Mackinac Center for Public Policy is the birthplace of the Overton Window.
The Overton Window is a way of describing what the public is currently ready to accept on any issue, so you can decide how best to move them toward what you want.
When The Overton Window is applied to education policy, it looks like this.
Least Government Intervention = Most Freedom
No government schools
Parents pay for ONLY the education they choose
Private and home schools monitored but not regulated
Tuition Tax Credits
Tuition Vouchers
Private and home schooling moderately regulated
Charter Schools
Public School Choice
State Mandated Curricula
Private and home schooling highly regulated and parents pay twice
Home schooling illegal
Private schools illegal
Compulsory indoctrination in government schools
Most Government Intervention = Least Freedom
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-betsy-devos-overton-window
It’s remarkable that the future head of the US Department of Education has not one word to say about public schools:
“And there’s even a blurb about founding the West Michigan Aviation Academy, a charter high school.
But not a positive word to say about traditional public schools.
Not. A. Word.”
Read anything she’s written. There’s this giant, glaring omission: 90% of schools.
I know her Senate confirmation hearings will be a joke, but perhaps one of the Senators could ask her if she’s aware that there are public schools in the United States?
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2016/11/devos-removes-controversial-twitter.html
If by “indoctrination” we mean teaching the facts about science and an understanding of and appreciation for American democracy, I am for it. If we’re to have a unified country, some level of common knowledge “indoctrination” must be undertaken. This was understood by Horace Mann and 19th C. American educators –they made a conscious effort to use the schools to build a unified American identity. Then Dewey happened and all of that gradually unraveled over the course of the 20th C.. With De Vos about to give the death knell to common schools, we are at risk of total fragmentation. Unfortunately, Dewey’s progressive education, which is the prevailing orthodoxy in American public schools, has undermined the project of knitting us together with common knowledge. Progressive ed dispensed with the idea of common content in favor of teaching reading, writing and thinking “skills”. Thus liberals, who tend to be the biggest fans of progressive-style ed, have helped lay the foundation for our current disunity –and the mass ignorance that enables crazy falsehoods to gain currency. Teachers, to save our country we need to renounce progressive ed and embrace the teaching of a common core of knowledge (Common Core, as it’s widely interpreted, has nothing to do with knowledge; it’s all about spurious skills). Insanely, our schools are actively fostering ignorance by being dismissive of the importance of knowledge. Decades of teaching “critical thinking skills” in lieu of robust knowledge has been a huge fail, as perfectly evidenced by the election of Trump. This is all explained very well in E.D. Hirsch’s new book “Why Knowledge Matters”.
And today we see that Choi, the far Right wife of McConnell, has been appointed to the Cabinet as head of Transportation…more conflict of interest. And also, the top Obamacare critic, Tom Price is probably going to be head of Health and Human Services…so goodbye to health care for all or even most, goodbye to Medicare…and we will look like India with droves of people dying in the streets.
This America is created for the 1%…the rest of be damned. It is a cataclysm of globe proportions in terms of the retrogressives who will be in charge…who do not believe in climate change, but do believe in creationism.
typo…meant Chao is now head of Transportation.
Sooooooooo, you seem to be saying transparency uncovers potential corruption. Does that lead you to conclude that no transparency leads to less corruption; it might even be a virtue? Interesting! I’ll start changing my assumptions.
What you wrote was disingenuous at best. Nowhere did I say “Dems are good and Repubs are evil.” I was referring to transparency and accountability, which, as I understand it, are essential to having a functioning democratic republic.
What you “said was rather straightforward” if you choose, as I believe you have, to look at the world through political blinders. If you go back to the comments that predominate this blog over the election cycle, you will find as much accountability demanded of Clinton as anywhere. But given the choices we ultimately had, we had to decide between that and a completely unaccountable candidate who does not understand the concept of transparency.
When I see your “analysis” of these issues with the incoming Trump administration–of how Draining the Swamp is becoming a special interest orgy–then I might be able to take you seriously. Or maybe that’s just the Wonderland you live in. As for DAPL, scroll back a little on this blog and others and you’ll see that there is no Democratic monolithic view. Again, I can start to take you somewhat seriously if you can produce some evidence where your hallowed corporate Republicans are on this. As with privatization of education, if you break this down as a Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other, then there is little that can be done to help you.
“Again, I can start to take you somewhat seriously if you can produce some evidence where your hallowed corporate Republicans are on this.”
This is what is so utterly frustrating about this blog and so many of the people who comment here (and why I disappeared for a while and may do so permanently). Nowhere did Allen say he is a Republican. Nowhere did he say anything remotely supportive of Republicans. In fact, he specifically says that the Rs and Ds are all part of the same system designed to eliminate the possibility of democracy while maintaining the illusion thereof (okay, I paraphrased). But all you can get out of his comment is “hallowed corporate Republicans”. Sheesh. Please, folks, learn to listen or we really are doomed. If you can’t understand Allen’s simple point (which I’ve been making for months now), you are going to continue to be taken in by the corporatists (both Rs and Ds) who control our world. The only way to break the cycle is to see through it and unite against the two-party system, not keep buying into it.
I agree that the “hallowed…” comment was inappropriate on my part. That’s the frustration of not having the ability to edit and correct remarks.
I should have written more clearly that, if you are going to use one standard or example on one side, you should do for the other side as well. I was one of you up until the middle of the summer. But as Diane and others taught me, in our system we have binary choices in general elections. Harping on coulda, shoulda, woulda ignores the reality of our world and system. Bitching about corporate Dems with the absence of critiques of the alternative in our system borders on sophistry, not pragmatic political debate.
Dienne, you can rage all you want about “both sides.” Lord knows I have. But claim that Clinton is the same or worse than what we now have in Trump is delusional (I’m sure you’ll respond to that soon). Clinton was not perfect, but I’m sure you and I would have been allies in doing all we could to make her accountable. We should do the same with Trump instead of kicking the proverbial dead horse of a failed Clinton campaign and speculating how she was no different.
I’m coming at this as one who was raised and is a German Social Democrat. I prefer a parliamentary system because there is room for more nuanced representation and, if that is not achieved, it forces opposing sides to form Grand Coalitions to govern, not to campaign continuously. Gingrich’s success in 1994 have, for the most part, taken the national Republican Party out of the governing equation. Why do choose to join them?
“…but I’m sure you and I would have been allies in doing all we could to make her accountable….”
I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe there would have been very much effort to hold Clinton accountable. There might have been some lone nuts like me hollering in the wilderness, but the vast majority of left-leaners would have breathed a sigh of relief – thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster – and would have gone back to their comfortable middle class existence. Sure, people might have b—-ed and moaned once in a while like we’ve done with Obama, but, y’know, what can she do? Republican obstructionism!
But in some ways Trump’s election was a good thing. (And, sigh, please no one twist that to try to prove that I am a Trump supporter – my record on that front is very clearly documented.) Now people aren’t going to have much of a choice. What do you stand for? What are you willing to do about it? The ugliness will be (already is) out in the open. There is no choice any more to turn a blind eye and pretend you don’t see it. If you’re upset about Trump’s assault on everything decent (and you should be), then get out and do something about it, as you should have (but wouldn’t have) done had Hillary been elected.
Greg…agree that a Parliamentary system had many advantages…and also agree that Clinton would have been far less damaging to our democratic republic than Trump…who would prefer a Monarchy, but is settling for a Fascistic Oligarchy.
My last comment:
For the first time in our history we will have a bona-fide fascist as president.
His cabinet will pursue policies which will monetize our most vulnerable citizens so that corporate and old monied interests will profit off them and create an “everybody’s on their own” society.
He has a Congress that will give him everything he wants while doing their best to minimize and ignore real conflicts of interest that will fundamentally transform and institutionalize the presidency into a legal kleptocracy that would make the South American and African dictators of old envious.
And yes, Bernie would have been better and, as I have consistently argued, would have had real coattails to bring in a friendly Congress.
That didn’t happen and now we are where we are.
But people like Allen and Dienne, who I assume would consider themselves to be liberals, seem to think it is a higher priority to re-litigate the Democratic Primary process.
We are splitting ourselves apart and losing sight of the goal. And it has never been clearer that it is now. The nation has not faced a crisis like this since the Civil War. The difference now is that the system, however imperfect and ugly it was, sustained the nation. Can our system survive four years of elitist fascism?
Clinton is not as bad as Trump by light years. Until there is a viable workers’ party, I will follow Chomsky’s advice.
Must add here, that, as a Democratic Socialist myself, I do agree with Allan and Dienne on the issue of both parties being at fault. Dems are as Wall Street dependent and curry favor with the free marketeers as much as Repubs. We have seen this clearly since Jan. 20, 2008 when our overwhelming choice, Obama, was elected and immediately surrounded himself with the worst deregulators Wall Street can offer, many were fallbacks to the Bill Clinton era. We see the 1999 Clinton putsch to deregulate and kill Glass Steagal…and the many failures of both sides. And we do see, though I did vote for her, Hillary, who was two faced in her talking the talk to Wall Street, but walking the walk for who???
So now, what to do. The entire system needs overhauling. But how can that happen when the Dems are fighting to retain the old leadership and put down the new faces. Schumer, Pelosi, et al, need to give it a rest. I am already hearing from insiders that prominent challengers to these old timers are “drunks and womaniziers” and other unproven allegations.
i go on the premise that human nature is no damn good…but I hope for the emergence of more and younger Bernie and Elizabeth types to assume a powerful role in DC. They are there, if they are not beaten to the ground by their over the hill colleagues.
We must start by getting rid of the Electoral College (which embarrassingly, Garamendi of California kept calling the Electorial College in his Sunday interview).
“We must start by getting rid of the Electoral College”
Ellen, if we have to start by getting rid of the Electoral College, then we’re not going to get started for a long, long time.
Ellen Lubic
“We must start by getting rid of the Electoral College”
I think there is more chance of a meteor strike , I am still praying for. I decided Tunguska might be a little to broad in scale.
“Democrats and the Republicans should not be examined as distinct entities- they are part of a larger system and on all major issues such as Wall Street handouts and EVERY foreign policy issue of magnitude they come down together on the same side of the big business interests who they represent. To think otherwise is beyond naive and avoids the facts of who funds these parties and who determines the direction of policy that BOTH parties rubber stamp.”
From a big enough distance, everything is part of a larger system and nothing is distinct. Gary Johnson has argued that climate change is not a serious problem because ultimately, the sun will explode and engulf the Earth. It’s just a matter of timing to them. In the interim, people down here on planet Earth will sweat and die while superintelligent, disembodied entities like you “visualize, understand, and intelligently discuss the situation.”
Hate to differ with friends, but you are both wrong. Even Al Gore came out today to say the Electoral College must go. It may take a few years, but with public impetus, at maybe Dem and progressive pushing and shouting….it will come to pass…no more Electoral College…no more stolen elections…just a popular vote for all.
Why would a state vote to relinquish disproportionate power that it holds over presidential elections? Because progressives are shouting at them? Remember, to amend the Constitution you need two-thirds of both the Senate and the House, and on top of that you need the approval of 75% of the states. Don’t hold your breath.
The Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a much more realistic route.
Speaking of conflicts, The 74 is funded by the DeVos lobbying arm, so Campbell Brown has a conflict covering DeVos and Trump:
s://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/another-news-site-wrestles-with-a-potential-trump-conflict-of-interest/2016/11/26/26cdd1e0-b345-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html
Expect them to add a voucher cheerleading team to along with the charter cheerleading team.
Sorry- here’s the link on how The 74 is funded by the DeVos family fortune:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/another-news-site-wrestles-with-a-potential-trump-conflict-of-interest/2016/11/26/26cdd1e0-b345-11e6-be1c-8cec35b1ad25_story.html
Add North Carolina to the list of states with bad ed reform:
“NC charter schools are increasingly segregated by race and they perform no better than district schools on average”
This list gets longer and longer. It’s a huge swathe of the country.
“Our findings indicate that charter schools in North Carolina are increasingly serving the interests of relatively able white students in racially imbalanced schools and that despite improvements in the charter school sector over time, charter schools are still no more effective on average than traditional public schools.”
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/EDFP_a_00226#.WD3X2uArLnA
Many communities seem to be setting up selective white charters, and the cheap charters are for the black and brown children. This is a major product of “choice.” People go where there are others that look and act like them.
Notice that Krugman, whom I typically admire for his knowledge of the economy, did not criticize DeVos for her support of charter schools. He can’t be ignorant to the effects privatized charter chains have on the public ed system. It’s disingenuous to criticize one toxic element of privatized system but ignore the toxic effects of another, much larger element. New Orleans is the blueprint for a charterized system that is no less a hot mess than cities with voucher systems.
I think we can all agree (whether we are R’s or D’s) is that we oppose privatization of our public school system. Our focus should be to force the ideal of public education into the discussion, stop privatization & we’ll need everyone united to join the resistance movement.
Trying again…some hours later. This article reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s book, Hegemony.
November 29, 2016
Regime Change Abroad, Fascism at Home: How US Interventions Paved the Way for Trump
by Rebecca Gould
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/regime-change-abroad-fascism-at-home-how-us-interventions-paved-the-way-for-trump/print/
“People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.” These words, from James Baldwin’s No Name in the Street (1972), his book-length essay about race in America, were quoted as the epigraph to Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), a now classic novel about the demographic often referred to colloquially as “white trash”: the poor, disenfranchised white working class.
With his theory that justice is made manifest in and through the lives we lead, Baldwin was referencing the entanglement of race politics within the American dream, and facing forthrightly all the contradictions this legacy has generated. Allison was thinking about the poverty of the white working class, their systematic disempowerment, and the exclusions they face, that far outlast the moment of their occurrence. Although they tell their stories in different ways, Baldwin and Allison are making the same point: crimes have consequences. When we cause others to suffer, we end by suffering ourselves.
At no moment in history has the boomerang effect of everyday ethics been expressed more thoroughly or remorselessly than in the outcome of the elections for the forty-fifth President of the United States. America has made countless other peoples around the world suffer. It has turned democracies into dictatorships with a systematicity that far outpaces any other country. The only legitimation for its actions has been the agenda of “regime change” in the interests of “global democracy” that neither the Republican nor the Democratic party ever questioned publicly. On 8 November 2016, that agenda was suddenly exposed for what it was: rank hypocrisy that has contributed the impoverishment of the majority of Americans, while enriching the ruling class.
In Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Chile, the US has replaced popularly elected leaders with obedient puppets who are incentivised to reject the will of their people they govern. I learned more about these obscure chapters of my own country’s history in an Iranian hotel room, watching a state television announcer flip through slides of more than sixty countries where the US had, covertly or forcibly, instituted regime change, than in any US high school or university classroom.
During most of the regime changes it has coercively organised around the world, the US has largely succeeded in suppressing freedom abroad while upholding freedom at home. Citizens from the affected countries have long ago learned to suspect US claims to serve the interest of world peace, as the Iranian TV show demonstrated. Outside the US, few believe the country’s claims to moral superiority. Yet before 2016 most of its citizens saw the US as a force for good in the world.
In the aftermath of 8 November 2016, the façade of democracy promotion around the world no longer holds in the center that espouses this ideology. Citizens of the USA are getting a taste of their own medicine. The authoritarianism they have exported since the beginning of the Cold War has suddenly, and unprecedentedly, been transported home. It is now exploding in our face, through racist attacks on school children, the proliferation of swastikas around the country, name-calling, death threats, and a general atmosphere of hate. It can no longer be denied that what we do abroad shapes what we experience at home.
When I first realized the catastrophe that had befallen the world on 8 November 2016, I apologised to everyone I knew. To all my friends in Iran, who may suffer yet further sanctions as a result of a business tycoon’s mendacity. To all my British colleagues, who will have to endure many more years of stupid sound bytes and the gradual cheapening of the free press. I apologised to the world, for my country, for its electorate, and for my complicity with a corrupt system that arguably coincides with the birth of the American Republic.
Despicable US foreign policy is as old as the idea of manifest destiny that drove US expansion in the American West. The Mexican American War (1846-1848) was yet another land grab. The purpose of the Spanish-American War (1898) was to annex the Philippines, land that never rightfully belonged to the USA. This violent annexation led to the Philippine-American War, which lasted from 1899-1902. During this same period, in 1898, Hawaii was incorporated into the American Empire, without the consent of its people. The US has always behaved like a colonial power, while within its borders, treating its white citizens differently.
When US history is taught in public schools, its contradictions are often packaged into a narrative that reflects the country’s variegated makeup and multicultural history. Because of my lopsided education, it took some time before I was able to recognise that the real horror of 8 November 2016 was not what it meant for America on the world stage, but what it meant at home. For the first time in modern US history, the greatest impact of American foreign policy would be experienced within the US, in the domestic sphere that for so many generations has been sheltered and isolated from the suffering it inflicts on the world.
For once, the most direct and immediate victims of American stupidity and prejudice are the American people themselves. Minorities and people of colour have long been targets of discriminatory policies within the USA. Following the vote of 8 November, these forms of discrimination have been legitimated for use against everyone, from women to Latinos to the disabled and gay.
This state of affairs marks a turning point in world history. For many generations, US voters have elected politicians of a wide range of political persuasions while closing their eyes to the overturning of democracies, forcibly installed dictatorships, the punitive taxes, sanctions, and other penalties that have been extracted unilaterally as the world looked on in obedient silence, or turned the other way.
Although these disasters nagged at the conscience of the more internationally minded among the US electorate, voters did not have to face the consequences of our actions abroad. Voters could afford to be blind to the suffering of Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, and the citizens of Honduras, because it does not occur on US territory.
The very same political system that brought the first African-American President to power elected a racist and misogynist bigot to the same office eight years later. In fact, in many of the swing states that determine the election’s outcome, the very same people who voted for Obama voted for Trump. It was as though there is no real difference, from the point of view of a disenfranchised American electorate, between a racist bigot and an African-American promising change, so long as they both promise to overhaul the status quo.
To say that these voters are right not to discern any difference would mean defending racism. But to fail to learn from their decision to put every ethical consideration aside when faced with economic suffocation would mean hiding from reality. “One good thing that may come from this election,” an Egyptian colleague, Mona Baker, said to me. A Professor at the University of Manchester, Baker has made her reputation as a scholar of Translation Studies, most recently by studying activists’ contribution to the Arab spring. Baker sees no difference between Clinton and Trump, and regards both as likely architects of global atrocity. “The system is broken,” she concluded our discussion, “It cannot be fixed by an election. The status quo needs to end.”
Will a Trump presidency help to bring an end to the status quo? Whatever happens, it is a certainty that Americans will soon have a great deal more in common with Iranians, Russians, and other peoples living live in authoritarian regimes than they used to. For once, the common ground between the US and the rest of the world will not be founded solely on what we have done to others, or on our on-going complicity in sustaining their oppressive governments; it will be based on what we have done to ourselves.
We can now start learning lessons in democracy from the many countries where the US government has orchestrated coups, rather than exporting US ideologies abroad in the form of guns and arms. This is not the lesson I would have liked to take home from Election Day, but it is a lesson nonetheless. Precisely because it is humiliating and humbling, 8 November 2016 will prove to be a salutary education in the limits of American democracy.
Respectfully, as opposed to the last twelve years of conflicts of interest? I’m starting to think the only way out is to create a third alternative.
Self dealing in government?
Breaking rules?
Cronies paid off to help private deals and weave them through public funds and public projects?
The line between self interests and public interests totally blurred?
This is no big deal.
Welome to Peru. Welcome to Central and South America. North America is joining you.
Do you think N.F….that now that the US is a Banana Republic and a Fascistic Oligarchy, Norway would take old retired educators in as refugees?
It’s worth a try. You will only pay about 12% more in taxes there, but you will get SO much more bang for your tax buck than here.
“Welcome to Peru”
Hey now NF, don’t go badmouthing mi patria chica!
Allen says to forget about elections. It looks like a lot of Americans agree with him, the ones who don’t vote.
None of those interests are constitutionally illegal, but you must be behind in the news regarding those interests which causes you consternation…Trump is ….go look it up yourself