https://youtu.be/dtsklgeCw9A
That long drawn out “nooooo!” encapsulates the left’s total rejection of Donald Trump’s presidency, both in it’s legitimacy and aims.
Yet the sound and fury of the anti-Trump riots hide the fact that the street theater is fundamentally a defensive tactic, designed to keep a demoralized base together rather than attract new adherents. The riots are not intended to appeal to the undecideds, rather they are aimed at holding together what progressives still have. The Guardian solemnly concludes that the inauguration of Donald Trump is nothing less than a declaration of war on the progressive project and all that it signifies.
But wars do not begin without a plan. Shouting “nooo!”, burning cars and smashing windows are not strategy but what stands for the lack of one. Where any such will come from is the question. The progressives have no clear successor leadership following their spectacular collapse. All it has are the wrecks of political dynasties which perform no other function than obstruct a reboot of the progressive cause.
Hopes that Barack Obama will lead the resistance make about as much sense as relying on Ed Milband to lead the recovery of the British Labor party he destroyed. Obama would represent the continuation of failure. Yet the alternatives to Obama are thin on the ground, unless one counts the Clintons, Gores and Pelosis who like so many twisted girders left over from a structural collapse, will linger as hazards to political navigation until time and rust remove them from the weedy bottoms.
The more fundamental unsolved problem is why the progressive project collapsed in the first place. How could something at the seeming height of its power; in control of the EU, the US Federal government, the UN, the press, the academe and industry collapse in one fatal year? The globalist conference in Davos still doesn’t know. In that ignorance lurks a peril far greater than DJT.
In past years, this annual gathering of leaders, CEOs and bankers in the Swiss Alps has had a glum undertone to it because of the succession of crises, mainly of a financial nature, rocking the globe.
But this year there was a sense that something far bigger is going on, a shifting of the tectonic plates of global politics that is breeding deep uncertainty and may herald a return to a rougher, tougher world defined by national self interest.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump has “destabilized” the system. But Trump did not cause Brexit, nor did he cause the American unrest, even though he rode its wave to power. What blaming Trump ignores, both in Europe and in Washington, is that much of the instability must have come from the collapse of the progressive project itself. The elites having created a Walmart economy were somehow faced by a revolt of Walmart greeters of which DJT is just one effect.
“The ides of March are come, aye Caesar; but not gone.”
The situation is volatile because the old balances have imploded. There is a political vacuum in the heart of the West that cannot easily be filled by the debris, riots, or noooo! What Donald Trump has come into possession of is probably a mystery to him as well. His instinct is to circle the wagons around America. Perhaps that is not as silly as progressives think. You consolidate on general principles precisely when no one knows what is next and only huge shadows are seen moving beyond the campfire.
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Books:
Code Warriors: NSA’s Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union, Author Stephen Budiansky – a longtime expert in cryptology – tells the fascinating story of how the NSA came to be, from its roots in World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall. With access to new documents, Budiansky shows where the agency succeeded and failed during the Cold War and a series of appendixes explain the technical details of Soviet codes and how they were broken. An essential and timely read for all who seek to understand the origins of the modern NSA.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. A well-researched examination of human moral impulses that gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts.
The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Author Christopher Lasch asks the question: Can a society survive when a significant portion of its elite have forsaken its founding principles? He blames America’s current problems on a default by its educated elite – their loss of moral values, and their abandonment of the middle class and the poor – and calls for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality.
The Punic Wars, by Adrian Goldsworthy. An account of the struggle for supremacy between Rome and Carthage (264-241 B.C., 149-146 B.C.) whose outcome had far-reaching consequences for the Western world. Follow the fighting on land and sea; the terrible pitched battles; and such generals as Hannibal, Fabius Maximus, and Scipio Aemilianus, who finally drove Carthage into the ground.
For a list of books most frequently purchased by readers, visit my homepage.
Did you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with your friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.
The War of the Words, Understanding the crisis of the early 21st century in terms of information corruption in the financial, security and political spheres
Rebranding Christianity, or why the truth shall make you free
The Three Conjectures, reflections on terrorism and the nuclear age
Storming the Castle, why government should get small
No Way In at Amazon Kindle. Fiction. A flight into peril, flashbacks to underground action.
Storm Over the South China Sea, how China is restarting history in the Pacific
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