Showing posts with label citizens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label citizens. Show all posts

Saturday, November 16, 2024

How Trump’s America Lacks the Respect of One Ancient Empire

How Trump’s America, how his MaGA (those fooled into following him and his sad orientation) Lacks the Respect of One Ancient Empire:
America, Falling Short of Ancient Rome.

For those who continue to disparage fellow Americans with terms juvenile Trump- like terms such as, "DemocRats", or "RepubliCants" (or worse) over political or lifestyle differences, consider why a more respectful approach is useful and even desired. 


I fell into this myself during the initial POTUS45 years (but I'm not falling for it in the POTUS47 years, no matter how bizarre and embarrassing it will be), as I’ve come to realize how divisive and counterproductive it is. I will not aid Donald Trump in his dividing America for his power and pleasures. 
However, we were being seriously abused during POTUS45 administration and we were greatly disrespected by the holder of our highest office. A man who grifts Americans at every opportunity and has done so for much of his life.
Trump, and those like him, often choose to malign those who disagree with them in the most juvenile of ways, much to the delight of MaGA followers. This kind of rhetoric merely deepens our divides and does us no good. 
Yes, we should always refer to our POTUS as Mr. Whomeever or Pres. Whomever. However Donald Trump has already had one term where he abused and disrespected OUR White House, the Oval Office, and the Office of President. I'm not sure he really does deserve respect anymore with his 34 felony convictions and enough of America deluded into thinking anything about him is a good idea. That being said...
Now more than ever, we really do need to come together, despite our differences, and build a stronger, united country. Regardless how much power in divisions gives Donald Trump ever more power.

Roman society had a complex relationship with respect, honor, and decorum, especially among the upper classes. While public discourse was often heated and could be quite blunt, Romans valued dignitas (personal dignity) and auctoritas (personal authority), especially in public settings. Disparaging fellow citizens with crude or immature language would have reflected poorly on the speaker, rather than on those being insulted. 



For example:
Social Disapproval: 
In Roman society, acting without respect for others' dignity could diminish one’s social standing and respectability. A person engaging in petty insults or crude behavior would likely face social disapproval, especially from peers and people of higher status. Romans prided themselves on their ability to argue logically and forcefully, so insults were generally seen as a loss of self-control and dignity.
Public Shame: 
In some cases, public shaming was used to correct behaviors deemed unbecoming. If a citizen publicly insulted another without just cause or if they acted out of line with Roman values, they could be openly criticized in assemblies or by fellow citizens. Roman senators, for instance, were known to verbally reprimand others for behavior that reflected poorly on Roman ideals.
Political and Legal Repercussions: 
Romans also had laws against actions deemed harmful to public harmony, such as seditio (incitement of discord). In extreme cases, if a person’s behavior caused public disorder or was seen as damaging to the state's stability, they could face legal consequences, even exile.
The Roman emphasis on civility in public debate underscores that, although they were no strangers to strong rhetoric, they saw petty insults as unworthy of serious citizens, especially leaders. While insults and invective were part of Roman oratory, the quality of argumentation often distinguished the respectable from the crass, as Romans held their public figures to high standards of composure and respect.

Compiled with the aid of ChatGPT

Monday, August 14, 2017

Crippled America, Trump Presidency

Never forget who voted for Trump as president. Those who elected him. They are dangerous.

We should never give the ignorant, the greedy or the immature the vote. No matter their age. Yes, we do that. We did that in giving everyone the vote. But that's not even the problem. And not everyone has the vote.

Regarding the travesty in Charlottesville. No Mr. "President", you have NOT calmed our fears. But, nothing new there. Not when your calming message to us also is calming to those we all see as, or we should all see as, the enemy. As in this:

David Duke (American white nationalist, politician, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, convicted felon, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.):
"We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That's what we believed in, that's what we voted for in Donald Trump. Yes he said we're going to take our country back. And that's what we're going to do."

Uh, no, dumbass. It's like John Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight (you can watch it yourself here) recently about Neo Nazis and Trump and how Nazi types are like cats, "If cat's like you, it's probably because you're feeding them."

In deciding to be a Nazi type, a white supremacist, your rights end in your beliefs being contrary to America. We are a melting pot, not a separatist society. The rich and powerful have indeed divided us. We're working, fighting back, against all that. We don't need you making it even more confused and difficult to do what is right.

Germany, their hero's fatherland (in Hitler, and Germany...Germany who despise Nazism of any time), doesn't want you either. They at least matured into humanity. Try Iran, some country run by religion. You (and they) won't like it either though. Just consider yourselves outcasts find an island where you can vote yourselves off. Tear yourselves apart. Because we, don't want you. And it would seem in your ignorance, neither do you.

A Canadian friend and writer this weekend said America is misguided in thinking that hate speech is free speech. And she may have a point. We have gotten carried away with exactly what free speech is or should be. But we have to be very careful. Still, our extremism on freedom and free speech has indeed led us to allowing things that should be disallowed and has led to a segment of America who voted for someone like Donald J. Trump. And the Republican party, who have deluded themselves into their current dysfunctional and dissociative form.

Giving everyone the vote wasn't the Founding Fathers original intention. They gauged their intentions upon industry and land ownership, indications of an investment in America. That was the climate of their times leading into the industrial age. They also had an entirely different consideration of corporations. They had built in checks and balances for our government but did they fall down on protecting us from the future weight of modern economics? Or did we simply cripple their original intentions?

They understood the need for education and intelligence. When capitalism, greed, when big money of the size it is now, a size which they could have never imagined, supplants intellect and morality; when something they could imagine in religion subverting our morals and ethics, then you are in serious trouble.

We, are in serious trouble.

From:
Elements of Economic Theory in the Founding

For the Founders, government has an extensive set of responsibilities that it must fulfill in order to enable people to exercise their right to acquire and possess property. There are three main Founding-era economic policy principles that make possible sufficient production, for rich and poor alike, of the goods that are needed for life and the pursuit of happiness.
  • The first principle is private ownership. Government must define who owns what, allow property to be used as each owner deems best, encourage widespread ownership among citizens, and protect property against infringements by others, including unjust infringement by government itself.
  • The second principle of sound policy is market freedom. With some exceptions, everyone must be free to sell anything to anyone at any time or place at any mutually agreeable price. Government must define and enforce contracts. Means of transportation must be available to all on the same terms.
  • The third principle is reliable money. To facilitate market transactions, there must be a medium of exchange whose value is reasonably constant and certain.
The Founding Fathers never wanted much of what we now have now to happen. According to Brian Murphy, a history professor at Baruch College in New York:

Early Americans had a far more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of corporations than the Court gives them credit for. They were much more comfortable with retaining pre-Revolutionary city or school charters than with creating new corporations that would concentrate economic and political power in potentially unaccountable institutions. When you read Madison in particular, you see that he wasn’t blindly hostile to banks during his fight with Alexander Hamilton over the Bank of the United States. Instead, he’s worried about the unchecked power of accumulations of capital that come with creating a class of bankers.

We got ourselves here and we continually shoot ourselves in the feet, making it hard to walk far enough to correct the disabling actions by those who benefit from them and do not want corrected. It is like we handed prisoners the keys to the prison and then allow them to lock us up, expecting them to do good by us. Many of which, do not have the right to vote, by the way.

It ain't gonna happen, it never does. Just like free markets without regulation do not function well and are harmful to far too many people. If we don't fix these things ourselves, if we don't take corrective actions, we will continue to see America heading as it is into a world built only for the wealthy and oligarchs.

That was not why America was founded, nor was it how it was set up to run. We can make it work. If we can just wrest it away from those who control our money, who hoard it from us, and who manage our government to run for them and not those who it was originally set up to support.

This isn't the end. Unless we want it to be.

A brief word on a very current topic. I know this is offensive to some but...

We should teach evolution in schools. If you want the disingenuous belief so inappropriately balled "intelligent design" taught then it should be in an appropriate class, which would have a social or eschatological and not a scientific orientation and has nothing to do with science, other than as a counter to scientific thinking. We should teach science as the best form of thinking that we have because we should teach the best forms of human thought, not the worst and not just second rate forms as primary.

We should not remove memorials showing who we were and who we have been, we should simply place additions to them to explain and place them in context. If it is humiliating to some, reality should always trump ignorance, stupidity and mere belief whenever and wherever they go against it.

We are a heterogeneous country, not a homogeneous one.

It is sad and ironic that white supremest types love homogeneity in only some areas but celebrate heterogeneity in others. Especially since it seems quite obvious where the homogeneous ones are for them even in their being hidden and yet so reviled by them.