Is it the system? Do individuals have the ability to change it?
Read about Steve Bannon: He Runs America Now
He says he wants to bring the system down and replace it with an economic system related to jobs and rebuilding the infrastructure. Sounds a bit like Bernie to me.
His criticism of the establishment also echoes Bernie's in many ways. This is no accident. He criticizes the establishment for not listening to Trump's speeches and we could say the same about their ignoring Bernie's real message.
Bernie was clearly listening because he knew it would be either he or Trump who would be elected.
He did not base this on the power either he or Trump has as a political leader. He based it on his knowledge of the system.
Things seem a bit chaotic now but that is no surprise. The point is that the system had reached a crisis point. No one had the perfect analysis of the crisis but it sure was obvious.
The major, and very important, difference between the two contenders was that Bernie is his own man and Trump belongs to Bannon in ways that are very disturbing.
Not unlike the global climate system, everything in this system is tied together and it is impossible to tweak one part without influencing the entire system.
I don't think either Bannon nor Bernie fully understand this. Much attention is being focused on the details this last week but no one seems to have caught the systems level changes that are beginning to unfold. These are in the realm of "unintended consequences" for you do not just tear the components of a system apart and destroy them without such consequences.
Bernie's approach may have relied too heavily on the existing system's way of getting things done, Bannon seems to have too little sense of what he is doing.
As in the old Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times" we are in for some big jolts. The real problem is that no one among the players really understands what is happening. Flying blind using loosely formulated ideology is not going to be fun, even for those in control.
Lenin, who Bannon claims to be like, learned very quickly that responses to his actions were not only unpredictable, but also devastating.
What our system has never had provision for is a mechanism for smoothly bringing about real change. That will become so very clear now. Bannon has a lot to learn at our expense. Hold on. It is going to get very rough very quickly.
Comments
Maybe not one individual,
but it will be changed by the many. No way the "System" beats 200 Million of us.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
I like your spirit but you totally missed my point
who will determine what we will do?
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
@don mikulecky Good question.
Good question.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
My dog IS a Toto dog. She has been barking all day.
My doors are locked to both bears and flying monkeys. Am I supposed to go with the flow now? Or continue to plant and plan my garden?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
... plan first,
plant later. A good blueprint for gardens, politics, or life.
I personally stopped "planning" gardens (this always represents a hopeful choice; never a done deal) after the fourth hailstorm in two years wiped out my third garden. Can't do much w/lettuce, kale, tomatoes, etc. hammered into pulp. This happens sometimes in Colorado (highly-variable weather along the Colorado Front Range); but I attribute the more-frequent occurrence of devastating storms (including hailstorms, and our recent trend toward very dry, very cold winters) to global climate disruption -- and I am a hydrologist (i.e., "... this guy makes his living by examining what is going on, locally & globally, with water & how humans are affecting water availability & its global distribution ...").
'course, WHO CARES what I think??!
When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.
Based on his origins, I don't trust Bannon. I think
this is just more faux populism from the right. It keeps people whose interests are really lie with progressives siding with the will of the 1%.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
@Lily O Lady he is beyond trust
he is beyond trust
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Bannon has Trump focused on exactly the right issues.
Tax cuts, one trillion in infrastructure spending, bring back the money the corporations stashed off-shore, stop TPP, ... If he can get the economy moving, the Dems are toast in 2018 & 2020. The people that elected Trump will not be moved by the liberal elites' PC rants. They want jobs!
I also think that Trump and the R's will crash the economy when all that money starts funding unstable financial bubbles. The question will be how long will that take? And will the Dem's have learned anything for this debacle by then?
We will see.
chuck utzman
TULSI 2020
Would like to see a more detailed sentence
or two on your statement about "the system had reached a crisis point." How do you see this taking place from your systems perspective? And then, the nature of that state of things and what changes might or could have what effects?
@Creosote. The obvious crisis point
The obvious crisis point is actually a collection of them all rolled together. We have not been governed for a long time. The unchecked inequality, racial oppression, planet rape and overall lack of justice have made stability impossible. Something has to give. The present coup seems to be a part of the response.
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Thank you DM
Your identification of what may spark meaningful change - or otherwise - will be valuable. Meanwhile, I still see young women wheeling infants about as if these new lives had a future.
There are a lot of assumptions in your essay
that you are treating like fact.
Personally, I think we have a loose cannon in office. He is not a man of principle or of conviction. He will flow with the wind, which is why his advisors are so concerning. Why you assume Bannon will be the most prominent voice is unclear in your essay. Can you please elucidate?
@gustogirl are you watching the
are you watching the reports?
An idea is not responsible for who happens to be carrying it at the time. It stands or it falls on its own merits.
Sources are important.
So I must ask you to which reports you would refer.
I trust few of them, and they are mostly referred to here.
Perhaps you are over-estimating your audience; I might be clueless or uninformed or even stupid, but your oblique message did not improve me in any way.
Violent upheaval, mass starvation
Hi Don, I looked up your homepage again, and downloaded the PDF Even more than life itself: beyond complexity. Thanks for writing. I don't understand the math but still try to grasp the concept.
So here's what I think; Bannon as one single entity that has already created violent upheaval, like what just happened in Canada with the Mosque murders by gun. How he did it was by triggering a group of organisms attached elsewhere, with the bully pulpit. To keep it at the level I can comprehend; bolstering nationalistic tendencies of collective organisms, not high level math.
Violent upheavals are occurring everywhere, or on the brink. In my neighborhood there are way too many angry twenty-somethings. They are acting out, like getting drunk and smashing windows and punching their girlfriends. The tension is palpable and showing up in the police logs.
Duterte finally suspended his run on violence for a minute.
That is how I feel about Bannon having such a large role affecting too many organisms, he is way over his head. Hope I'm wrong. My local veggie farmer thinks mass starvation is coming (in California!). I don't know about that. Hope he's wrong. 50,000 Iraqis in besieged Fallujah face starvation. What happened to them I don't know that either.
Bannon biosphere background:
Trump's chief strategist Bannon spent tumultuous time at Biosphere 2 in southern Arizona
There is an actual real live bully on the pulpit now, it will be rough. Not good for peace loving organisms. Oh but this headline made me LOL "blends visitors with science", way to go azcentral.
Biosphere 2 blends visitors with science
Edit: because I could not resist the funny (freudian?) typo in their article path:
http://www.azcentral.com/story/travel/road-trips/2015/04/06/biosphere-two-blinds-visitors-science/70856690/
Palpable tension here
One of my hard-wired/battery backup smoke alarms is beeping. Batteries. Unfortunately, unless my son-in-law appears today that means lugging a ladder from the basement to two house levels above. Effin A.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Be careful on the ladder
I hope some one can help you instead, but watch out up there if you go alone. I know a guy who fell on his head and lay for hours until his son got home from school. TBI, you know what I'm talking about. It seems you're pretty well covered by friends here but there is only so much c99 can do virtually, you know?
I know that beeping, it drives me nuts. Some kind of hardwired system here, with sprinklers. I don't know why the batteries run down so fast, I finally got a pair of rechargeable 9Vs and swap immediately upon beep. At least I know with smoke it will wake me up for sure, burnt toast test.
May peace arrive soon.
If individuals didn't have the ability to change the system
we wouldn't have had the many variants of societies and governance that we have collectively experienced throughout the ages. I know your question was rhetorical, and maybe it's more about when and how and why enough individuals finally come together and force a change upon their existing society.
My answer would be that change comes when things suck so badly for large enough numbers of people that they believe change is worth fighting and even suffering for, usually for the sake of generations that come after, if not their own.
I would have to say we're pretty close to that point. Americans are not used to seeing their quality of life and standards of living in decline as is happening now where too many can simply not afford the bare necessities of life even when fully or over-employed and see more and more slipping out of their fingers every day.Fully half of America if not more is one paycheck away from becoming homeless or jobless if their car breaks down, they go to the emergency room,etc.
Democrats failed so completely at every level, that a hopeless nihilistic public turned to the orange madman. Obama and the Democrats can take all the credit for Trump when their Hope and Change marketing slogan was revealed to be the fraud it ultimately was.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
@Phoebe Loosinhouse Do you really think their
Do you really think their choice was nihilistic? I'm kind of thinking the opposite. Ill-advised, desperate, selfish (as in, "OK, the system won't let me choose that guy who wants EVERYBODY to have a seat in the lifeboat, so I'll take the guy who's letting just white conservatives like me in the lifeboat, cause I'm sure as shit not gonna choose the gal who's setting charges in all the lifeboats while assuring me she's on my side...)
Sorry if this is nitpicky; I agree with your comment on the whole. But while the result (Trump) could be sufficiently destructive that one could imagine nihilism was the motivating force, I think it might be more a desire to survive.
Hillary was trying to tell the people that the Titanic wasn't sinking, while she helped it sink. Trump admitted there was a problem and said he and his chosen people would take the lifeboats to a grand new destiny. Not really surprising that Trump won, even with all his manifold and obvious bad qualities.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
CSTS, I use the word nihilism in the sense of
"extreme skepticism", and also in the the sense of someone who has come to believe that absolutely nothing is worth retaining, because nothing seems to be working. I really believe a lot of Americans are at that point. They empower someone like Trump, because every traditional vehicle has failed them.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
And her exclusive yacht was sailing nearby.
Close Enough
I was going to add in a line about say her flying above in a helicopter, but her own yacht works great here too.
That's the thing. You have a 1% individual who helped sink the Titanic tell everyone who is still on board the collapsing ship that Titanic is already great, while she is shouting on the deck of her yacht.
Those in Steerage are simply Disposable
What is it called when an analogy becomes isomorphic to the subject? The transition from an analogy to an isomorphism, hum, sounds almost cartoon like.
@PriceRip I remember what
I remember what actually happened to those in steerage.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
When I was in High School. Might Be Best to Not Read.
I was always poor, so I worked odd jobs in the school system most years. As a high school student one of my teachers got me a job working as a janitor for one of the Junior High Science Teachers. Most of the time (after hours) I just organized the lab equipment, tended the animals, and seldom interacted with the teacher. Then one evening I arrived to see a note taped to the classroom door · · ·
The note describe my task for the evening with an explicit set of instructions as to how to kill the rats so as to render them suitable for dissection. I actually made it through drowning one rat · · ·
Have you ever experienced the terror of death? What the Teacher didn't know was that I had (many years earlier) seen the face of death. So, he honestly had no idea of what that experience might do to me. I managed to leave a message that made it clear to him, at least I think I left a note, that I would not continue with this assignment. We never spoke of the incident, and he didn't report my failure to complete the task.
In all the political rhetoric (particularly in this media) it is sometimes difficult for me to detect the humanity behind the comments. There is so much hyperbole that it is truly striking when someone writes: "I remember what actually happened to those in steerage."
Thank you,
RIP
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Personally, I had the impression that a lot of Trump votes were likely made specifically to try to keep Mad Bomber Clinton out of the War Room, probably only because so many people on here were posting about taking this tactic - rather than voting for Greens which would, at this point, almost certainly never be allowed to win, even if enough people knew to vote Jill rather than for one half or the other of the corporate Party...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Southern Poverty Law Center Petition on Bannon
Stephen Bannon Has No Business in the White House: https://www.splcenter.org/stephen-bannon-has-no-business-white-house
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
This weekend was a Shock Event.
Don't fall for it. More on the way. The US (and all other countries) should not have to deal with it. Extra emotion. Orchestrated.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Supposedly, Bannon's position has changed.
Your source, an article written by Grant Stern, puts Bannon's remark about Lenin at August 2016, but provides no link. Without ever looking up from my laptop, I heard someone say last night that Bennon had made that comment in, IIRC, 2013. I believe it was Lawrence O'Donnell's show.
After the inauguration of Trump, however, Bannon was asked if he still stood behind wanting to blow up government like Lenin, and Bannon said no. I also think that, less than two weeks after the inauguration, it's a bit early to decide Bannon is running the country now. Certainly, he seems to be among a small number of people trusted by Trump, but that doesn't mean he will be running the country.
Actually, I don't know if it matters what Bannon said. It's not as though anyone can take his word (or Trump's to the bank. I'm not trying to put lipstick on either Bannon or Trump. I have no use from either of them and both repulse me. However, I also have become nauseous from the smell of hair on fire and the double standards and hypocrisy from Democrats and establishment media. All that got old very quickly after election night.
Supposedly Rove ran the country, even though he never attended a single meeting of the Security Council; now it's Bannon. However, AFAIK, no one ever made that comment about Axelrod, who also attended the Council meetings. The difference is that Obama never said anything about the head of the joint chiefs not attending. I can't get hysterical over that differenc. A Muslim ban is much more serious, IMO.