So ... does anyone else feel that they are living a dystopian near-future novel? Perhaps one of the mildly-absurdist ones popular in the science fiction of the late 1950's through 1970's
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I read through this post from top to bottom thinking that what you were describing was remarkably like late Republic Rome, which is probably the historical period (other than the 20th century, which I studied at Oxford) that I'm most familiar with.
I don't see Obama as a Julius Caesar figure, but he certainly could be Tiberius Gracchus.
I'd not heard about the 1974 considered anti-Nixon military coup before. That's very interesting, because there was supposedly similar plot against the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the late 60s. (Not a very serious one perhaps, although supposedly Earl Mountbatten* was asked if he would head an emergency government to restore order.) Over the years, many people have suspected Wilson of being a Soviet sympathiser and apparently MI5 had kept a file on him since the 1940s.
Nothing has ever been proven. However, the largest financial backer of the Labour Party at that time was the Transport and General Workers' Union. A 1977 poll showed that more than half of British people questioned thought that the most powerful man in the country wasn't Wilson, it was the TGWU leader Jack Jones. And when KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky defected to the west in 1987, he identified Jones as a KGB spy. (Jones denied this.)
* Uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Southeast Asia in WW2, last Viceroy of India before independence, former head of the Royal Navy, former Chairman of NATO Military Committee and Chief of the Defence Staff. He was assassinated by the IRA in 1979.
Obama is not our Caesar -- he's far too incompetent. He has mostly gotten as far as he did because of our immense guilt over slavery and racial discrimination. This is ironic, because he is half white American and roughly a quarter Arab -- he is descended more from cultures which enslaved black Africans than he is from black Africans. He is of course not at all descended from black Americans, nor was he ever significantly part of the black American culture he claims to represent.
The military coup in 1974 would have been a counter-coup, to be launched only if Nixon launched a coup-from-above. The military was getting ready if necessary to obey their oaths of office and defend the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands.
At the risk of being pilloried by some readers, the seeming majority of Americans don't care what things actually are, only what they seem to be or what they are told they are. For all the guilt and other intents and purposes of most involved, Obama is "black enough" -- both to make some feel better about themselves and the nation and some have an easier time sociopolitically manipulating others. Smoke and mirrors signifying "security" for many.
And yes, the Executive Orders he is throwing about set a *very* bad precedent.
the seeming majority of Americans don't care what things actually are, only what they seem to be or what they are told they are.
Yes ... which may doom our democracy. Because if the electorate no longer cares about something as simple and basic as their chosen leaders being competent or even loyal, then they can no longer be trusted with choosing the leadership -- which means that in time the leadership will be either be chosen by other means, or the country will collapse.
I don't see Obama as a Julius Caesar figure, but he certainly could be Tiberius Gracchus.
I'd not heard about the 1974 considered anti-Nixon military coup before. That's very interesting, because there was supposedly similar plot against the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the late 60s. (Not a very serious one perhaps, although supposedly Earl Mountbatten* was asked if he would head an emergency government to restore order.) Over the years, many people have suspected Wilson of being a Soviet sympathiser and apparently MI5 had kept a file on him since the 1940s.
Nothing has ever been proven. However, the largest financial backer of the Labour Party at that time was the Transport and General Workers' Union. A 1977 poll showed that more than half of British people questioned thought that the most powerful man in the country wasn't Wilson, it was the TGWU leader Jack Jones. And when KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky defected to the west in 1987, he identified Jones as a KGB spy. (Jones denied this.)
* Uncle of the Duke of Edinburgh, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Southeast Asia in WW2, last Viceroy of India before independence, former head of the Royal Navy, former Chairman of NATO Military Committee and Chief of the Defence Staff. He was assassinated by the IRA in 1979.
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The military coup in 1974 would have been a counter-coup, to be launched only if Nixon launched a coup-from-above. The military was getting ready if necessary to obey their oaths of office and defend the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands.
Reply
And yes, the Executive Orders he is throwing about set a *very* bad precedent.
Reply
Yes ... which may doom our democracy. Because if the electorate no longer cares about something as simple and basic as their chosen leaders being competent or even loyal, then they can no longer be trusted with choosing the leadership -- which means that in time the leadership will be either be chosen by other means, or the country will collapse.
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