counter_violent
Legendary member
- Messages
- 12,669
- Likes
- 3,787
I don't know, even 4 years is a long time to dodge a bullet in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
I don't know, even 4 years is a long time to dodge a bullet in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots
Wikipedia
............But if this is really that people want - why then should hinder this some rule?
I am hoping that that is a sarcastic remark. Have you honestly forgotten about the 22nd amendment.
Pat494
Legendary member
- Messages
- 14,614
- Likes
- 1,588
One startling feature of the latest race to become the next president of the US - which begins in earnest with next week's Iowa caucuses - is the runaway success in the opinion polls of the outspoken billionaire, Donald Trump. But this should not be so surprising, says Michael Goldfarb, as Trump is just the latest example of a tendency in American politics that goes back a very long way.
Fear.
The simple four-letter word that works if you want to get elected. Political professionals know that playing on people's fears - going negative - is the way to win.
Paranoia.
A somewhat fancier word that is used to describe excessive, irrational fear and distrust. It, too, works from time to time - in American politics, at least.
This current presidential season is one of those times. Donald Trump has surged to the front of the pack competing for the Republican Presidential nomination by giving voice to outsized fears many in America have - of illegal immigrants, of Islamic terrorists, of free trade agreements shipping American jobs to China.
Trump promises to make America Great Again - as if the US somehow was no longer the most powerful country in the world - by simple solutions: deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the US, and forcing the Chinese government to back down through tough talk.
The phrase "paranoid style in American politics" was coined by the late historian Richard Hofstadter. He defined the Paranoid Style, "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent."
In a country that at its best radiates an infectious optimism, it is interesting how often fear has stalked the American landscape.
Richard Parker, who lectures on religion in the early days of America at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government, traces paranoia in American public life back to the Salem Witch Trials in the late 17th Century and even before that, to the religious politics of the Mother Country.
It's easy to forget how closely tied the first colonies were to England, particularly in Massachusetts. The Pilgrims were dissenting Protestants who sided closely with Cromwell in the English Civil War. When the Commonwealth was overthrown and the Stuarts restored to the British throne, there was renewed struggle with Catholicism - and the religious suspicions surrounding the court of James II were magnified out of all proportion on the other side of the Atlantic.
Add in the daily struggles with nature, fighting with native Americans, and millennial religious practice that thought the end times were approaching and you have, Parker points out, "a community primed to be fearful".
And so in the town of Salem, people turned on their more free-thinking neighbours, and accused them of being witches. At this time, the idea of witchcraft was not something from fiction. People really did believe, in Parker's words, "dark spirits could inhabit souls and bodies. It was the basis for primitive psychology and physiology."
He adds that it's no surprise that in 1953, playwright Arthur Miller set his classic drama, The Crucible, in Salem during the witch trials.
The early 1950s was a time of another outbreak of fear in America, this time of communists in high places everywhere including the entertainment industry. There were blacklists of suspected communists and former communists in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee, initially led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, summoned the famous to Washington to testify against artistic colleagues. Careers were ruined. Miller, summoned by the committee in 1957, refused to name names and had his passport revoked.
Another source of fear that recurs in American history is of the secret society in league with foreign powers. Many of America's first presidents were Freemasons and masonry was closely associated with the French Revolution. Later on the concern was cabals of foreign bankers trying to destroy the American working man's livelihood.
But religion is the playing field for most of these fears.
In the early days of the Republic, Roman Catholics were suspected of being the vanguard of a Papist plot to take over the country. The fact that in the first census, of four million citizens only 25,000 were Catholic didn't matter. In the late 1840s, a huge wave of Catholics fleeing the famine in Ireland only inflamed suspicions.
A new political party was formed, called the Know Nothing party. It grew out of a secret society, whose main creed was anti-Irish immigration. Its members were told to say, if asked about it, "I know nothing." Hence the name.
The next group to be suspect was the Jews, whose great immigration wave came at the turn of the 20th Century. The entire Jewish immigrant population, some of whom were socialists, many of whom came from Russia, became conflated with the Russian Revolution.
By the 1930s, in his weekly radio broadcast, a Catholic priest, Father Charles Coughlin, an Irish Catholic, was whipping up fear about Jews and their "communising the factories and the fields and the mines".
Following World War Two the fear shifted to the Soviet Union. Leaders of the far-right vied with each other to see who could turn up the most Communists. This led Robert Welch, the founder of the ultra-right John Birch Society, to claim that President Dwight D Eisenhower was "a tool of the communists".
Welch was disowned by American conservatives for that assertion, yet his organisation became the foundation of a grassroots political movement that has dominated American politics for the last four decades. In her book, Suburban Warriors, Harvard history professor Lisa McGirr charts the rise of "movement conservatism" in the new suburbs of Orange County California, just south of Los Angeles.
Fear.
The simple four-letter word that works if you want to get elected. Political professionals know that playing on people's fears - going negative - is the way to win.
Paranoia.
A somewhat fancier word that is used to describe excessive, irrational fear and distrust. It, too, works from time to time - in American politics, at least.
This current presidential season is one of those times. Donald Trump has surged to the front of the pack competing for the Republican Presidential nomination by giving voice to outsized fears many in America have - of illegal immigrants, of Islamic terrorists, of free trade agreements shipping American jobs to China.
Trump promises to make America Great Again - as if the US somehow was no longer the most powerful country in the world - by simple solutions: deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the US, and forcing the Chinese government to back down through tough talk.
The phrase "paranoid style in American politics" was coined by the late historian Richard Hofstadter. He defined the Paranoid Style, "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent."
In a country that at its best radiates an infectious optimism, it is interesting how often fear has stalked the American landscape.
Richard Parker, who lectures on religion in the early days of America at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government, traces paranoia in American public life back to the Salem Witch Trials in the late 17th Century and even before that, to the religious politics of the Mother Country.
It's easy to forget how closely tied the first colonies were to England, particularly in Massachusetts. The Pilgrims were dissenting Protestants who sided closely with Cromwell in the English Civil War. When the Commonwealth was overthrown and the Stuarts restored to the British throne, there was renewed struggle with Catholicism - and the religious suspicions surrounding the court of James II were magnified out of all proportion on the other side of the Atlantic.
Add in the daily struggles with nature, fighting with native Americans, and millennial religious practice that thought the end times were approaching and you have, Parker points out, "a community primed to be fearful".
And so in the town of Salem, people turned on their more free-thinking neighbours, and accused them of being witches. At this time, the idea of witchcraft was not something from fiction. People really did believe, in Parker's words, "dark spirits could inhabit souls and bodies. It was the basis for primitive psychology and physiology."
He adds that it's no surprise that in 1953, playwright Arthur Miller set his classic drama, The Crucible, in Salem during the witch trials.
The early 1950s was a time of another outbreak of fear in America, this time of communists in high places everywhere including the entertainment industry. There were blacklists of suspected communists and former communists in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee, initially led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, summoned the famous to Washington to testify against artistic colleagues. Careers were ruined. Miller, summoned by the committee in 1957, refused to name names and had his passport revoked.
Another source of fear that recurs in American history is of the secret society in league with foreign powers. Many of America's first presidents were Freemasons and masonry was closely associated with the French Revolution. Later on the concern was cabals of foreign bankers trying to destroy the American working man's livelihood.
But religion is the playing field for most of these fears.
In the early days of the Republic, Roman Catholics were suspected of being the vanguard of a Papist plot to take over the country. The fact that in the first census, of four million citizens only 25,000 were Catholic didn't matter. In the late 1840s, a huge wave of Catholics fleeing the famine in Ireland only inflamed suspicions.
A new political party was formed, called the Know Nothing party. It grew out of a secret society, whose main creed was anti-Irish immigration. Its members were told to say, if asked about it, "I know nothing." Hence the name.
The next group to be suspect was the Jews, whose great immigration wave came at the turn of the 20th Century. The entire Jewish immigrant population, some of whom were socialists, many of whom came from Russia, became conflated with the Russian Revolution.
By the 1930s, in his weekly radio broadcast, a Catholic priest, Father Charles Coughlin, an Irish Catholic, was whipping up fear about Jews and their "communising the factories and the fields and the mines".
Following World War Two the fear shifted to the Soviet Union. Leaders of the far-right vied with each other to see who could turn up the most Communists. This led Robert Welch, the founder of the ultra-right John Birch Society, to claim that President Dwight D Eisenhower was "a tool of the communists".
Welch was disowned by American conservatives for that assertion, yet his organisation became the foundation of a grassroots political movement that has dominated American politics for the last four decades. In her book, Suburban Warriors, Harvard history professor Lisa McGirr charts the rise of "movement conservatism" in the new suburbs of Orange County California, just south of Los Angeles.
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
OMG Nightmare scenario.
Should be great entertainment though
You betcha'ya...
Intelligence has left the room. Huzzah.
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
Here is a paradox for you. If someone is dumb, it will be more difficult to make smarter decisions, which leads to undesired results. If someone is intelligent, they tend to have the resources to make better decisions, which leads to better, more desirable results.
If everyone is so clueless here, how is it that they made the most powerful country on Earth? Usually the dumb are taken advantage of by the intelligent. Surely, if everyone was so intelligent in the UK, they should have been able to become a superpower. What does that say about the UK, when a whole bunch of supposedly clueless people in the US have made the richest, most powerful country on the planet?
An inventor cannot create something more intelligent than he/she is, otherwise he would be just as intelligent for doing so.
Quod erat demonstrandum
They must be intelligent for doing so.
Pat494
Legendary member
- Messages
- 14,614
- Likes
- 1,588
The US had a huge advantage in natural resources. It is about 50 times the size of the UK. One can't help noticing that it didn't take China very long to nearly catch up. With better leadership the US should be a lot further ahead. Wasting money, lives and resources has been their policy for decades.
Nothing to crow about. Handed to them on a plate really. Even with poor leadership still number one. But really Vietnam showed them up and how inadequate they have been. Take their balls-up in The Middle East and you can clearly see what I am talking about.
Believing one's own rhetoric is always a mistake. Makes the sheeple feel good but gets poor decisions implemented.
Pat494
Legendary member
- Messages
- 14,614
- Likes
- 1,588
The US politicians are desperate for votes. They all emphasize how great the US is. Well they won't get elected with a more moderate and truthful stance, would they.
Half wits like hhiusa want to believe their BS. So all is well until it comes to the real world and doing real things. Then the whole flakey machine falls apart. If the US thinks they can cozy up to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, they must be dreaming.
Half wits like hhiusa want to believe their BS. So all is well until it comes to the real world and doing real things. Then the whole flakey machine falls apart. If the US thinks they can cozy up to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, they must be dreaming.
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
Boo hoo, cry me a river. Your argument about space does not hold water. Look at Japan. It is a tiny country and yet it has a GDP of $4.2 trillion. That is about 60% higher than the GDP in the UK. Apparently natural resources or any other bogus reason you want to come up with didn't have a bearing on Japan's ability to reach great successes.
As for China, people defect from China they do not try to become citizens in China
Russia is almost twice the size of the US and yet they're quite poor.
Denmark has a size of 16,000 mi.². That is a small fraction of the size of the UK. Their GDP per capita is much higher than in the UK. That means that when you divide the amount of money that the country makes and divide it by the number of citizens that number is higher than in the UK. That sounds like the Scandinavians and the Japanese are way more industrious than you guys.
counter_violent
Legendary member
- Messages
- 12,669
- Likes
- 3,787
We've been there and done all that. You lot are just playing at it
The British essentially made the modern world. British institutions of representative democracy inspired French Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu to devise theories of modern government that influenced other modern European states. The main characteristics of the United States— a commitment to liberalism, the rule of law, civil rights, and trade— were inherited from the British and spread throughout the world. Most of these characteristics evolved organically throughout the long history of England, rather than being the result of some master plan.
These characteristics were also instrumental in helping the British Empire grow, thrive and hold whatever territory it controlled. Moreover, its example was widely emulated, whether for its financial prowess or its naval strength. At its peak in the early 20th century, the British Empire stretched across almost a quarter of the world— the largest of any empire in history. This feat was made possible more because of England’s organizational feats and financial prowess rather than through a huge army. For example, the British conquest of India was mostly undertaken by Indian troops in British pay who choose to serve the British because of the regular salaries and benefits offered by them. London also demonstrated a remarkable ability to handle multiple wars at once. And while they sometimes lost battles the British rarely lost wars.
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
We've been there and done all that. You lot are just playing at it
The British essentially made the modern world. British institutions of representative democracy inspired French Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu to devise theories of modern government that influenced other modern European states. The main characteristics of the United States— a commitment to liberalism, the rule of law, civil rights, and trade— were inherited from the British and spread throughout the world. Most of these characteristics evolved organically throughout the long history of England, rather than being the result of some master plan.
These characteristics were also instrumental in helping the British Empire grow, thrive and hold whatever territory it controlled. Moreover, its example was widely emulated, whether for its financial prowess or its naval strength. At its peak in the early 20th century, the British Empire stretched across almost a quarter of the world— the largest of any empire in history. This feat was made possible more because of England’s organizational feats and financial prowess rather than through a huge army. For example, the British conquest of India was mostly undertaken by Indian troops in British pay who choose to serve the British because of the regular salaries and benefits offered by them. London also demonstrated a remarkable ability to handle multiple wars at once. And while they sometimes lost battles the British rarely lost wars.
What a copout answer. What you mean to say is that you had it and then let it slip through your fingers. Do not act so nonchalant. Every nation seeks power and they wouldn't give it up willingly which means that you lost your power. The height of the British Empire is long since over.
That must be why you have the expression God save the Queen. It certainly would take nothing less than an act of God to save it from its current state. And thatcher was in office the pound was worth more than two dollars. Look at it now!
Last edited:
Atilla
Legendary member
- Messages
- 20,845
- Likes
- 4,027
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
As always, you behave exactly as I would expect you to. :smart:
Atilla
Legendary member
- Messages
- 20,845
- Likes
- 4,027
Fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals
This guy Trump is a real sick puppy.
Talking about bleeding from where ever on national TV and claiming Megyn Kelly has not treated him nice is delusional.
Donald Trump is vile to say the least.
After Bush all America needs now is a lil ol trump to make it Greater than Great!!!
Megalomaniac indeed!
This guy Trump is a real sick puppy.
Talking about bleeding from where ever on national TV and claiming Megyn Kelly has not treated him nice is delusional.
Donald Trump is vile to say the least.
After Bush all America needs now is a lil ol trump to make it Greater than Great!!!
Megalomaniac indeed!
hhiusa
Senior member
- Messages
- 2,687
- Likes
- 140
This guy Trump is a real sick puppy.
The only megalomaniac that I see here is you. You never post arguments. You just post juvenile videos and pictures. I will buy you a dictionary as a belated Christmas present.
