195. RECKONING WITH THE ELECTION - Reflections on a Soul-Crushing Week
Read More“Either I’d got Trump wrong, or I’d got the morality of my fellow citizens wrong? And neither explanation was particularly comforting.“
Read More“Either I’d got Trump wrong, or I’d got the morality of my fellow citizens wrong? And neither explanation was particularly comforting.“
Read More“Sometimes, when given a completely free choice, to choose any other way but one can be so self-sabotaging that there really is no choice at all. The 2024 US election is one such case. Whoever wins, we lose, but if Trump wins, what we lose is so significant we may never be able to win again.“
Read More“It is because I am an anarchist, that I will still be voting within a system I don’t believe in for whatever limited, but vital, changes I can bring within that system, to make life better for those it oppresses the most…“
Read More“If I told a colleague or friend that I have never watched Breaking Bad or watched The Godfather, they might be surprised, even incredulous, but they could not call me irresponsible. If I told them I didn’t watch the news, however, it would be a different order of outrage.“
Read More“Because if this government falls - and it should - it should be for their far more egregious moral wrongs than this purely selfish complaint: how come they got to have a party last year when we couldn’t have one ourselves?“
Read More“the arguments for democracy are independent from the mechanics of voting and, too frequently, true, authentic, democracy is impeded by those unfit mechanics, not aided by it“
Read More“The Trump virus found the ultimate weaknesses in organised human life: 1) we have such shaky foundations at the best of times for what constitutes as real “knowledge” that if you repeat an untruth enough times, from enough “sources”, it can seem just as “true” as any legitimate truth; and 2) that the notion of external authority on which our political systems are based is entirely illusory. As any criminal can tell you: that there are laws against doing certain things impose no actual limitation on doing that which is against the law. Criminals, by definition, break laws all the time. And the only differences between those who break laws who we call “criminals” and those who break laws that we don’t, are either that they have been caught or that we don’t really enforce the law.“
Read More“since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the US has gone from perceived leader of the free world and centre of cooperation to a nation which continues to pull out of global organisations which ensure global security, health and sustainability, hence damaging the capability of all nations to respond to aggressive nations, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic“