Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016
Stephan: I consider Donald Trump not from the prospective of political partisanship, but because I see him as the personification of two major trends. First, the American culture's fearful response to becoming a majority minority nation in which being born White will no longer confer privilege, and second as society's reaction to the corruption of our democracy and the rise of the oligarchy which is itself part of a third trend, the ascent of the Neo-feudalism. The rise of multinational corporate states as the real power centers in the 21st century.
The fact that Trump is probably a Narcissistic Sociopath, is incapable of telling the truth, and a grifter as a business person makes his real significance even clearer. He is all those things yet still the adored choice of millions of American voters. This is telling us something important not about Trump but about ourselves as a society.
Jim Williams, of Calvi Electric, lowers the ‘M’ letter from the signage of Trump Plaza Casino to his co-workers Tony Demidio and Steven Nordaby in Atlantic City, New Jersey October 6, 2014.
Credit: Mark Makela/Reuters
Donald Trump was thundering about a minority group, linking its members to murderers and what he predicted would be an epic crime wave in America. His opponents raged in response—some slamming him as a racist—but Trump dismissed them as blind, ignorant of the real world.
No, this is not a scene from a recent rally in which the Republican nominee for president stoked fears of violence from immigrants or Muslims. The year was 1993, and his target was Native Americans, particularly those running casinos who, Trump was telling a congressional hearing, were sucking up to criminals.
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Trump, who at the […]
Stephan, Your intro to this piece notes the trend of net-feudalism. But I have read almost nothing about that in your excellent report. Sean McFate, author of the Modern Mercenary notes that, along with facts that ‘privateers’ outnumber our troops in Afghanistan. He also fleshes out the consequences of the current trend of ‘outsourcing’ military muscle. Namely the situation became ungovernable with roving armies for hire, and America is creating all over the world. The ‘cure’ to that plague of mercenary armies was: The Crusades. Ta Duh.
In short our mix of corruption and penny pinching will create a ‘clash of civilizations’ which has begun. The real motivator for it, is the masses all over the world of educated young men with not good place to apply thier skills. The crusades were a pressure relief for that. Better would be a focus on the non-commercial…’good works’. After all Michelangelo did not do his magnificance for the dollar. I am leaping here, but stay with me. If we cannot economically digest that we have invented the sourcer’s apprentice (recall in Disney)… the robot, we are bound to recapitulate both WWI and the feudal era.
I repeat, I have not seen what Neo Feudalism means, what its consequences are, in these pages….. or anywhere, except in Sean McFates writings, and from my reading of history.
Please do a search in the SR archives and you will find 21 stories that address and define what I mean by Neo-feudalism. I have been talking about this for several years since I first picked up this trend. I coined the term.