America is now on its way to becoming a mendacious autocratic kakistocracy!

TRUMP BEYOND POLITICS:

By Gilbert Morris -

What we are witnessing - extended from the very beginning of the Republic - is a civil war.  One both within the Republican Party and one between that party as it will emerge and the Democrats.  Make not mistake, Paul Ryan and others - blind and spineless as they have been - haven't a clue about what a tiger they have latched onto.

Again, I am a free market, small government, self-help, strong military, balance-of-power realpolitik true believer; who believes in a green future, advance technology efficiencies and transparency in government.  I reject secrecy in government, love term limits, and believe in Main Street over Wall Street to use an American term.

I believe in the rule of law, and a strong well-funded police, and severe penalties for police officers who - using bias of any kind - abuses the public trust.

Above all, I believe in human value and the application of politics to secure the same; with a capacity for political ruthlessness, not because someone criticizes you, but when they employ resources seeking to undermine you and your office then prudence demands you release hell upon such vipers with unrelenting relish.

But this is not what is motivating the current political upheaval in America.

When I warned about Mr. Obama in May of 2008, many good friends - speaking kindergarten sweet sounding nonsense - told me I should "be positive".

I tell you now, Trump will not turn America around.  The economic numbers do not project it and his concept of the US economy is not merely wrong, but a 19th century concept.  Trade is NOT THE PROBLEM for America.  The problem is technology is eliminating jobs faster than they can be replaced.
It is telling that Mr. Trump has children in their 20s and 30s who should be able to speak on the impacts of technology; and yet not once have we heard from them a statement of the high tech digital future, environmental options for green energy development, sympathy for any distressed peoples or anything original or life-giving.

They seem cold and merely suckling on their father's businesses.  They are not partners with people like Elon Musk or Zuckerberg or the Google boys.  Nothing!  The central reason - I suspect - is those people I named are supremely talented, and are inventing the future, as Trump's children merely work in a business daddy created and have not between them advanced a single innovation we know of.

This does not mean they are not intelligent or even nice.  However it is telling, even if compared for instance with the young men of the same age that inherited the Fiat fortune in Italy; who by comparison are in innovation design, charities, arts and culture, breaking the mould.

What this means is there is no one to tell him differently, and one must not expect Giuliani or Gingrich - two men, whatever their talents - who live on the fringe of political lackydom and what they have not compromised in the venal personal lives, they have slaughtered in defending utter flaming bullshit for Trump.

Humans can become overwhelmed by moments and find in themselves in grace and power to make the world better.

Mr. Trump has a talent for self-promotion and to the extent that that has helped him produce nice very very shiny buildings, it always leaves a wreckage of abuse, broken contracts and cruelty behind it.

Then he uses media and the courts to muddy the situation until his victims give up.  That is his factual record.  Call it "good business" or "genius" if you like, but it is hucksterism and a hustler's ethic. Microsoft created over 1000 millionaires and a dozen billionaires, changed way of lives function; so did Google and certainly Apple.  Warren Buffet did so almost single handedly - giving $32 billion - 16 times Trump's net worth - in one go, when he began with nothing and Trump began with $40 million.

That is good business.

What you will have in a Trump administration is an ongoing Republican fight that has NOTHING to do with changing America, and people of the most divisive record and hateful deeds and language presented as managers of the levers of the American state over the very people they have demonized, vilified and marginalized.

I say, Hilary would have been awful in many ways, and many Democrats are as venal.

It does not take away that America is now on its way to becoming a mendacious autocratic kakistocracy!

From Gilbert Morris - Facebook

Is civil society becoming extinct?

By Anthony GOMES

 

THROUGHOUT the world, civil society is disappearing and being replaced by violence of all descriptions and brutality of the worst kind.   Apart from the cultural coarsening of civil society, whether they include violent street protests.  engaging the police at one end of the spectrum, or civil war fuelled by sectarian lifestyle differences, the planet again faces the possibility of world conflagration.

The humanitarian tragedy of Syria, the Boko Haram Islamic uprising in Nigeria, the sabre-rattling aggression of North Korea, the unwinnable Afghanistan campaign, the neutralising of al-Qaeda in Yemen, the intense cultural differences between Sunni and Shea in Iraq, the interventions by Iran in Iraq and Lebanon by Hezbollah, and incursions by al-Qaeda in Mali, Algeria and Libya all began with inaccurate Western intelligence regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that were never found.  Theey were recently believed to be stored in Syria, mainly consisting of chemical weapons, and used, according to France and the EU, against the Syrian rebel cohorts.  Let us also not forget the struggle in Pakistan against the al-Qaeda Taliban.   Being a nuclear power with a well-stocked atomic arsenal, Pakistan is of serious concern to the Western powers, lest atomic weapons were to fall into the hands of the Taliban.

As described above, there is no denying that the deadly plague of terrorism is spreading beyond all borders, in the name of Islam.   In recent years al-Qaeda has suffered heavy losses resulting from drone strikes that regrettably have a high rate of collateral damage, which has made them a very unpopular offensive weapon.  The al-Qaeda magazine Inspire has revealed their newly devised strategy that calls for home-grown individual jihadists, who have been radicalised to carry out attacks, mostly on "soft" targets; similar to the Boston bombings, the murder of the young Fusilier in London, and the latest shootings with the resemblance of an al-Qaeda operation in Santa Monica, US, that is yet to be confirmed.  The Western Christian powers are still considering how to deal with this new offensive self-sacrificing run of events.

Since the end of WW II, the faith and morals of the Christian West have undergone serious diminution in the cause of social freedom, sovereignty, and fuelled by secularism that has given new intepretation to what is right or wrong.   Traditions and other cultural norms have been tested in the legal and ecclesiastical domains, widening the meaning of "truth" to embrace influential factors of human rights, gender and race, all of which have spawned pernicious arguments, which may be termed "modern" jurisprudence.   In colloquial language: "One can do no wrong," if you can afford a skilled defender.

These liberalised modern statutes represent a departure from what was considered normal or accepted, or regarded as right.  This new-founded attitude has given rise to open disobedience that challenges all the rules of the historic social establishment which, in too many cases, ends up in tragedy.  The sinister characteristics can be seen in the murder of innocents, the aged, decapitations, abortion, and euthanasia, to list some of the more common acts that stalk the "land we love".   The defenders of human rights from abroad find it difficult to grasp the multiple and brutal murders that occupy the pages and waves of our media.  They find it difficult to understand why capital punishment is appropriate in such indescribable assaults on human kind.  This mindset is due, in part, to the landmark case of Ruth Ellis, which changed the previously held attitude to capital punishment in the UK.

In 1955, in Britain, the practice of capital punishment encountered a major challenge which resulted in the mandatory requirement for the death penalty in capital cases being removed.  Until then, there was strong support for the application of the death penalty, dictated by the law at that time.  However, with the landmark case of Ruth Ellis, a 28-year-old young woman born in North Wales on 9th October 1925, who was the last woman to be hanged on 13th July 1955 at Her Majesty's woman's prison, Holloway, in London.  Her case was one of premeditated murder to which she confessed, and, according to public opinion, would have been classified in this century as a "crime passionelle" that warranted life imprisonment.  She was executed by Albert Pierrepoint, a member of the historically famous family of executioners.   The event caused a fundamental change in public opinion that has reshaped contemporary jurisdiction in the UK.

Since then, Western societies have witnessed a raft of dramatic liberalisations which have changed the current social lifestyles across the Western hemisphere from same-sex unions to rampant multiple shootings of innocent civilians and schoolchildren, due to the easy possession of powerful military-type firearms which, in the case of the US, is enshrined in the Second Amendment of their constitution and relentlessly upheld by the powerful National Rifle Association.

The cost of maintaining the new-found liberalised lifestyle comes at a high price, with many deserving malevolent souls walking free, given the present complex system of proving guilt due to the monumental earnings in circulation from the drugs trade, and the threatened reprisals against the families of witnesses that form the themes of the nightly television stories that are becoming more realistic as time goes by.

May we be guided to calmer waters by the prayers of the faithful.

June 12, 2013

Jamaica Observer