"You say, 'Goodbye' and I say, 'Hello, hello, hello.'I don't know why you say, 'Goodbye', I say, 'Hello, hello, hello.'" Paul McCartney and John Lennon, "Hello Goodbye," 1967
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| In respect to Jimmy Carter |
Democrats expect a corrupt, authoritarian era of crony-oligarchy. It is a very real possibility that Americans will be okay with exactly that, as long as our president says clearly and loudly enough that he is making America stronger and safer and richer. Events don't explain themselves. Events need a narrator to put things into an understandable framework. Trump is narrating the American story. The institutions of communication, both mass media and social media, are falling into step to help him with his narration.
There is a lesson in the behavior of media companies in the aftermath of the November election. Trillion-dollar businesses are not "too big to scare." Quite the opposite. They are too big to risk. They fall into line.
For four years Donald Trump called TikTok a threat to American security. They might be agents of propaganda, he said. Then, a billionaire investor in TikTok made a giant contribution to Trump and the GOP. Trump switched sides. He now supports keeping TikTok. But Congress had passed a law demanding it be shut down as of Saturday night. This screen replaced TikTok that night. But TikTok had hope. Trump might overrule the law:
On Sunday normal programming resumed, along with this notice:
Biden is simply unable to be America's narrator. Trump does that. Moreover, since the election Trump acts like the real president. President Biden did not override the law that shut down TikTok. Any president's legal authority to do so is questionable at best, since the exceptions that would justify it legally are not in place. That was a constraint for Biden. Not for Trump. The law shutting down TikTok is broadly unpopular, at least among the 170 million motivated TikTok customers, and Trump is going to forge ahead and give Americans what they want.
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6 comments:
What a bizarre way to be celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day! Republicans like to pretend that racism isn’t an issue in the U.S. As if to highlight the absurdity of their denial, today they’re making the biggest blowhard in the racist birther movement president of the United States – again – after having him declared above the law. It’s a shame that White nationalists are too ignorant to appreciate the irony. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” ― Martin Luther King Jr
The far-White have coopted a sentence from one of MLK Jr’s many speeches that supposedly justifies their opposition to addressing all the ongoing social injustice, about judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. The racist criminal they’re inaugurating today shows how much they really care about character. Just to set the record straight, here are a few MLK, Jr quotes that are more representative than the one they’ve latched onto:
“Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?”
“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.”
“There must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is.”
I saw two interesting headlines about accomplishments under President Biden.
The economy has recovered from the pandemic, and the US created a recovery blueprint to be followed in the future.
Crime in major cities is at record lows.
Of course, that news was never mentioned on conservative coporate media.
Anyone here who thinks the US will do better with more corporate control of government is a fool.
We be lots of fools, always hoping for the best. Do you suppose the new president will order the chickens in Georgia to get back to work?
The power is America’s; Trump is just the current leader who gets to focus and direct it.
this will be the end of our democracy and will likely lead to unnecessary wars and death. this is not a new chapter. it's a rotting corpse.
Sounds like he's planning to direct it off the same cliff taken by the Weimar Republic. I'm sure he especially appreciated Elon's "Sieg Heil" salute.
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