npr.org Priority for quality news?
#Journalism
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The Biden news, though, shows the value of regular public debates. Biden had been shielded largely from interviews even, nevermind debates with challengers, and his party controls the magority of Social Media and news. And of course the value of (real) journalism.
So now the race is back on. We don't know who will get to run or the process the Dems will use to pick.
Seeing people discuss this is not attractive though. Most the sense of glee and victory is palpable, dems and republicans and independents. Also part of this, support for Trump and things he might do for them is becomming somewhat blind. Do people, even the sharpest ones I watch on pods, not remember that Trump uses manipulation and perhaps lies to get his way? and that things he says are not promises in the sense they are when most public figures talk.
A lot of what Trump has said in the last couple months has been really strong. New and seemingly sensible ideas, a break from ‘woke’-basis decisionmaking and policies, a Western leader actually playing for their own team (America in this case). But these have only so far been stated. He has not talked about, and maybe has no learning on, human and civil rights. He did not free Assange.
What has been so popular from his statements are that he will secure the border wall with Mexico, which many want for various economic, social and cultural reasons. He will close the Department of Education (new Departments are constantly added to the Federal government). He will modify the CIA, which most Americans seem to hate and distrust, with a lot of evidence over decades to back up their position, and perhaps other agencies, which most Americans also seem to hate and distrust and generally believe have create a ‘manegerial' class, comparable perhaps to the Deep State, which tends to act in its own self interest to the detriment of American society.
He also happens to have wound up in a position where his election will probably contribute to greater free speech rights and less of the harms we're familiar with that come from Social Media giants, just because those were all owned by the other party who used them in aggressive ways and cancelled and banned him and other famous people without justification. These companies are all majorly owned by the BlackRock, and Trump uses Blackstone. Also, perhaps his torturous (I would say) exerience with unjust lawfare from the Dems will cause him to do some nice reforms or policy to inprove justice.
It seems like if he is elected, a lot will seem to be happening really fast for a while, and a lot of big changes, which America and the world have been craving and famished for for decades, a lot of things they've just seen pile up and pile up, get worse and worse and no one seems able or even willing to do anything about them.
However, exuberance and one-sided party support has well-understood consequences, and can result quickly in harms, and with everyone seemingly on one side, and it happening quick, there might not be proper checks on things. Maybe there will a period where a lot of positive changes happen and some negative, but which blindly and aggressively lead to negative consequences, ala Hitler, who also rose in an exuberant, populist fashion, and who also didn't seem to have any grounding in human rights, civil rights, humility, working together, respecting others and their differences, etc.
Another interesting point about Trump is that he really has tried and eventually succeeded at a lot of things. He has no harmful vices (people say ‘women only’ but women is not a vice, as much as detractors would like it to be). But in this thing, he won the first time, surprising everyone, on his popularity. People liked what he said and who he was, and this also was not known beforehand. Then he was overcome by the Dems who proceeded to use his policies and acted in what many Americans consider highly negative ways for 4 years, and now he's back, and I think he will have more confidence, and if he wins, he will have such great security in his position and his ideas, and in the understanding that he can do unsuspected things, new things, things people don't believe are possible given the opposition or apathy, but he's seen he can do them, and that even if he does them and his detractors say he's wrong, if they get power over him they just do his ideas too. It really is a great example of overcoming difficulty to succeed, basically a hero-leader trajectory.
Another key point is that a lot of opposition to him is false. 50% of Americans (and I've seen Canadians do the exact same thing, because they have Democratic news almost exclusively, too) hate Trump but can't really tell you why. ‘He’s a criminal. He should already be in jail,' but if you ask them criminal for what? in jail under what charge, they will get frustrated with you immediatly and say ‘everyone knows that!’ but won't actually be able to site anything at all, not one thing. They'll say he should be in jail for things which he was not even on trial for, and definiately not the thing he was charged with, because the news presents these stories in such a way as to mix their passionate charges against him with the factual ones. They think everyone thinks this, and that there are ‘lots of things' that support their statements, but it's purely because they only are exposed to one-sided party news. This is effective, obviously, but also obviously, now we see a breaking point, and perhaps all these people will quickly forget they ever had any opposition to Trump and become his supporters.
The true charged against Trump are that he's manipulative and prehaps a liar. Neither is illegal, but neither are good qualities in a leader (or anyone in society). He has no serious competition though, because even with his faults, there are only career politicians and similar people who run for leadership in the West, who are in a system that doesn't permit anyone who is not willing to compromise with the party's interests. We saw the Dems not accept RFK. He's too outside the system. It has nothing to do with his quality as a leader or decision-maker. This is funny, too, because if they took him on now, wouldn't they capture a lot of the Independent vote, and some of the Republican vote? However, he's not acceptable to the party.