Showing posts with label political hegemony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political hegemony. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Interesting links again

How to lose your job at Google. Write a memo about how Google is mishandling diversity issues and has an intolerant leftist bias. While the author did make some blanket statements that I consider erroneous and patronizing, he emphasized evaluating people as individuals, and was against group discrimination. He seems to have lost his job because views he expressed outraged too many within the company. Simply put, his views didn't line up with a dogma of many, and he lost his job because of it.

Signs of war in Korea. The military choices in Korea aren't great. If the US decides on a military offensive against N. Korea, typically there would be a build-up of military resources and a withdrawal of civilians. Of course, that signals a military step to N. Korea, and they might strike because of it. It seems to me that an unannounced, substantial attack would be more effective. However, a deadly response from N. Korea has to be expected. I don't see any military response with minimal casualties. A write-up of the possibilities and their disadvantages.

Rational approach to Russia. I'm suspicious of most American opinions about Russia. Political blogs are awash with Russian shills and bots commenting. Partisan politics has overshadowed clear thinking. So I wondered what the Germany policies toward Russia are. Here's a summary.

New strategy in Afghanistan. Actually, somewhat the same strategy, but with some more troops and maybe stronger tactics. Afghanistan will not be fit to defend itself anytime in the foreseeable future, so it makes sense to try to minimize the terrorists Afghanistan would harbor. Trump talked of winning and peace, but reality is that the military mission is successful with much less than that--such as the avoidance of Afghanistan becoming a major terrorist training and safe zone.

An archive of Trump's lies. This might be handy. However, I wonder whether the Washington Post would be archiving the lies of Hillary Clinton as carefully.

Image: washingtonpost.com

Late additions. List of Arpaio outrages in honor of his pardon by President Trump. This is only a partial list. I visit my parents in Phoenix, and remember Arpaio having a peaceful speaker arrested at an evening meeting because he didn't like her viewpoint. Arbitrary arrests didn't even make the outrage list.

Description of Hurricane Harvey. The aspects that caused it to flood so much of east Texas.

Monday, January 20, 2014

The nightmare future vision of the GOP

"American liberal strategists know that in five to eight years the post-1968 culture and its stances which they have long championed will attain absolute majority among American adults and voters. Very simply, the Silent Generationers and Boomers who form the bulk of the resistance to this in the electorate are dying off. Around 2020 the country will have tipped and begin to change very greatly." -- comment in The American Conservative
This explains why the establishment in the GOP (the GOPe) wants to stop with the culture wars and pass an emigration bill. They want to have some hope of pulling away some of the more conservative voters among Latinos and gay-friendly voters.

If they can't, they will be overwhelmed by rote Democratic voters. Elections will be decided by the smaller, hard-core primary voters, so the Democrats might become even more leftist. This certainly holds no appeal for me--I've depended on competition and obstruction to prevent the worst on both sides.

However, if this change is inevitable, does it matter what the GOP does now or in the next few years? Perhaps they can only hold off the Dem surge and all the changes it entails for a couple years, but that's only a delay. The ultimate outcome will be the same.

This catastrophic outlook assumes that American voters won't be able to see if or when the Democratic agenda starts doing real harm. I worry about this myself. Our electorate is pretty stupid, uninformed, and unquestioning. When swing voters no longer matter, politicians won't have to craft the best policies based on good analysis. Instead, they can follow the party line, which unfortunately so many are doing already. What happens when there are no independent voices, only partisan ones? Maybe we become just another banana republic. This isn't just a nightmare for the GOP. It should be a nightmare for all of us.

Welfare (party) line
Image: thekitchencabinet.us