The 'Most Ominous' Inauguration in American History
- Thread starter signalmankenneth
- Start date
Two months ago, Hillary was the best thing going. I see how quickly you throw her under the bus when she loses.
You don't see anything..You're to blinded by hate............
I see how those that would have considered the best thing going had she won, as that is how she was considered before she lost, suddenly say that her loss is the best thing that could have happened to the party.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
With Trump's arrival, American global exceptionalism is dead.
The sort of foreboding that pervades Washington on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration is not unprecedented, but it hasn't been felt so strongly in a long time.
Indignation about the usurping of democracy erupted when President George Bush was inaugurated in 2001. But the protest at the swearing-in of a lightweight dynast appointed by Supreme Court decision was not fearful. At the time, Bush was seen as a pretender, not the incompetent menace he proved to be. His inauguration was not boycotted like Trump’s [3] has been.
Richard Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969 when the country was riven by rioting, assassination and a deeply unpopular war, but no one could doubt Nixon was the man most Americans wanted in the office. He was known as Tricky Dick, but he was more trusted than Trump.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated at a moment when the country’s economy had collapsed and the ruling class was in in disarray. But FDR was both popular and had the confidence of the economic elite of which he was a scion. Even his enemies extended FDR goodwill as he came to office. Trump gets little goodwill from his defeated rivals because he extends none.
Today's fears are not nearly so ominous as they were in March 1861. Faced with the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, an anti-slavery Republican, the southern state prepared to secede. Lincoln felt obliged to say, “there will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the Government,” a caveat some doubted he would enforce.
Historically speaking, the fear and loathing that accompanies Trump’s ascendancy in 2017 most resembles the mood of Washington in 1829. Then as now, the capital’s political recoiled at the inauguration of a brash outsider contemptuous of the educated and financial elites. As the inauguration of Andrew Jackson approached, the political class in the nation’s capital—lawyers, lobbyists, clerks (now called bureaucrats), and newspapermen (the media)—feared and mistrusted the incoming president. Like Trump, Jackson was seen by many in Washington as an aberration and as incipient tyrant. Jackson, a war hero and slave owner, lauded common (white) men as the key to American greatness and excoriated the East Coast elite as their nemesis, thus coining two enduring themes of American politics that Trump tapped with demagogic skill.
Of course, the parallels are not exact. Jackson was genuinely popular, while Trump is genuinely unpopular. Jackson gained the presidency by winning the popular vote handily. Trump lost the popular vote and was only elected by the archaic mechanism of the Electoral College. The Jacksonian insurgency had a popular legitimacy; a democratic character, at least in the white male electorate, that Trump does not have in multiracial America.
So while Trump’s inauguration is not prelude to civil war, it likely portends an epic struggle over the nature of the American government. Like the Jacksonian insurgency, the Trump ascendancy is a threat to the country’s ruling elite. Like secessionist south, the Trump ascendancy is a threat to democratic and constitutional government.
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne calls it the "most ominous [4]" inauguration in modern history, citing Trump’s hostility to democratic norms. Yahoo News’ Matt Bai sees the "end of the American century [5]," citing Trump’s repudiation of the structures of American power since World War II such as NATO, the United Nations, and the global regime of free trade.
But Trump’s capture of the White House was made possible by the very weakness of those norms (which didn’t quite extend to the Bernie Sanders campaign or voters disenfranchised by the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act) and the evident failure of those power structures (which in recent decades have delivered growing inequality and unsuccessful wars, not economic security, to most Americans).
Exceptionally Exhausted
Behind the democratic deficit and economic dysfunction—and Trump’s triumph—is the exhaustion of American exceptionalism, that enduring civic creed that holds the United States is, or should aspire to be, a light unto the world, a "shining city on a hill.” In American politics, the term American exceptionalism (let’s call it AE) often has conservative connotations. But the notion that America is destined and entitled to extend its dominion over the world has deep roots in American history.
In 1942, Time magazine publisher Henry Luce coined the term the "American Century” in retailing the idea that only America deserved to be the world’s pre-eminent power. After World War II, liberal intellectuals played a leading role in building the national and international institutions that enforced American domination. Since the election of Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has mostly deferred to this corporate order rather than reform or restructure it.
A conservative version of AE was popularized by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Reagan never tired of invoking the “shining city on a hill” even as his administration funded CIA dirty wars in Central America and subverted Congress with the Iran-Contra scheme. A neoconservative version of AE helped propel President George W. Bush into Iraq, believing that U.S. military force would remove Saddam Hussein and the grateful Iraqi people would adopt our politics and emulate our institutions. The neoconservative version of AE proved to be the gift wrapping on a package of folly, war crimes and defeat.
Barack Obama was denounced by John Bolton [6] and other right-wing critics for not believing in AE. Obama’s heresy was to note that other peoples and countries think of themselves as exceptional—and so they do. But Obama avowed he believed in AE "with every fiber of my being [7]." He just had a different version of AE.
While Reagan and Bush’s AE tended to be nationalist, militaristic and implicitly Christian, Obama offered a more internationalist, diplomatic and multicultural variation. It was America’s evolution as a multiracial democracy (culminating in his own rise to power) and liberal post-war leadership (ditto) that made the USA a light unto the world, he said.
Obama’s AE was relatively attractive, at least to the college-educated. His personal story offered hope that the country had transcended its racial heritage and in some ways it had. But while Obama orchestrated stabilized and regulated the U.S. and global economy, he relied on the national and international economic elites to lead the country out of the Great Recession. He did not attempt any restructuring of the institutions that embodied and powered America’s exceptionally ambitious role in the world since 1945. He advocated progressive tax and health care policies, but he left job creation to the corporations who had every incentive to outsource.
Obama was successful, especially in comparison to his successor. But his economics results were, at best, unevenly distributed. The free-trade deals that Obama touted offered little and delivered less for American workers without college degrees. Poverty didn’t begin to decline until his last year in office, and even that is disputed [8]. To a lot of voters, Obama’s multicultural AE looked like the gift-wrapping on economic abandonment.
Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” may sound like an AE slogan, but it isn’t. Trump does not want to be America to be an example to the world any more than he aspires to be an example to your teenage son. He doesn’t trust the globalized economic regime because it has abandoned the working-class white voters who admire him most. Trump doesn’t want America to be exceptional—as in unique, just and inspiring. He wants America to be great, as in powerful, pre-eminent and independent.
So the opposition gathering in Washington to protest Trump’s inauguration has a double challenge: to resist Trump’s government of generals and billionaires while offering a vision of American government that doesn’t rely on the idea that America and its institutions are exceptional.
It won’t be easy. Trump’s opponents are united in opposition to the man, but still divided on tactics [9]. While the battle cry "Not My President" voices a visceral feeling, it is hardly inspiring to those who want a president who cares about delivering jobs to Americans. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton campaigned on the certainty that Trump’s sexual misbehavior would discredit his anti-elitist message. She assumed liberal AE would trump reactionary #MAGA. She was wrong and here we are, filled with foreboding.
By Jefferson Morley
Poor bill....first he loses an election then his grip on reality...
Althea
Althea told me...
Given trump's 'burn the place down' approach to being POTUS, can we at least acknowledge that Obama attempted to govern via compromise with his staunch enemies? If we get that far, can we accept that even though it was a gross failure, it's the way the country ought to be run?
I don't see Obama as the evil corporatist that you do. Sure...Wall St backed him the first time, opting for Romney the second.
He tried to give insurers the chance to do the right thing, before burning down the private/for profit industry. Does that make him a corporatist, or just a man that wanted to exact change slowly?
Dodd/Frank pissed off a lot of banks, and investors in same. Trump is about to remove all restrictions to the corporate world, and let them have free rein across this country.
That's more like what I perceive a corporatist to be.
Althea
Althea told me...
If Clinton won, Dems would now have a majority in the Senate, and less of a minority in the House.
We'd still have had 8 years of gridlock, so there would indeed be a mess in Congress as a whole.
Had you been paying attention, or not banned for hate filled racist comments, you would know I neither supported her nor voted for her........... I have never been a fan....
You enjoy your day of rest........
That's what you say now. Sorry liar.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Much love for you Sister .. but Obama was a corporatist through and through .. first and foremost.
Obama's Policies Have Helped Wall St. Fat Cats
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...ed_wall_st_fat_cats_120768.html#ixzz4WtmeeEnc
Obama attacks banks while raking in Wall Street dough
Despite his rhetorical attacks on Wall Street, a study by the Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project shows that President Barack Obama has received more money from Wall Street than any other politician over the past 20 years, including former President George W. Bush.
http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/10/o...le-raking-in-wall-street-dough/#ixzz4WtiiFgFn
Obama biggest recipient of BP cash
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/05/obama-biggest-recipient-of-bp-cash-036783
Pharma Election Money Backs Obama
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pharma-election-money-backs-obama/
Obama's collaboration with Big Pharma exposed
http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/954883/obama's_collaboration_with_big_pharma_exposed
Obama's ties to BigPharma is why Americans got Obamacare, a complicated scheme designed by the uber-right-wing Heritage Foundation, instead of a better plan like Medicare for All .. which republicans would have had a much harder time trying to repeal..
Obama is and always will be a corporatist.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Trump's inauguration was a joke, a farce, and a vivid demonstration of how much this man is hated.
Like the thin-skinned petulant child that he is .. he has since spent all the following days crying about crowd size and non-existent illegals voting.
This clown is a disaster in the making, and it won't be long before republicans abandon him. Like most of planet earth, republicans never liked him in the first place.
Like the thin-skinned petulant child that he is .. he has since spent all the following days crying about crowd size and non-existent illegals voting.
This clown is a disaster in the making, and it won't be long before republicans abandon him. Like most of planet earth, republicans never liked him in the first place.
They may not like him but they are putting up the money, my bad, they are putting up our money to build his fence as he looks to find someone else to pay for it...
He is going to run it like he does his business-on others....
So the spin now, isn't they will pay for it, it's they will eventually pay for it
He is going to run it like he does his business-on others....
So the spin now, isn't they will pay for it, it's they will eventually pay for it
Nomad
Every trumper is a N4T.
The Republicans could have nominated a tree stump and you would have cheered it on and bowed to it as your new leader.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
They may not like him but they are putting up the money, my bad, they are putting up our money to build his fence as he looks to find someone else to pay for it...
He is going to run it like he does his business-on others....
So the spin now, isn't they will pay for it, it's they will eventually pay for it
Republicans are weak as shit .. now. Intimidated by Trump's cult following .. but that won't last as Trump's failures beging to mount.
If he runs the wall proposal like he runs his businesses, then we can expect the wall to go bankrupt.
Buckly J. Ewer
Racism Whistleblower
Trumps honeymoon with congress will soon be over...
When republicans turn against him, and they will, I expect his enormous ego will make him want to resign...
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
ABSOLUTELY .. and they WILL turn against him.
OK, prove me wrong..
It's what you say now. I responded to a post you made at that time.
Prove you didn't vote for her. You made the claim you didn't.
Are you worth as many billions as he is?
Since the answer is no, that means the best you can do compared to him is shine shoes like a good little boy.