-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Maybe its time for a right wing military style dictatorship
- Thread starter dfnj
- Start date
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Democrats are very good for whining.
See there is a useful function for the party.
Democrats do it so well too.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
More on par,. I don't see extremes spanning socialism through communism or conservatives through fascism particularly appealing either way.
When you think of it, a massive military ruling class applies with both ends of the spectrum.
When you think of it, a massive military ruling class applies with both ends of the spectrum.
Many of us think Obama was the best president of US of recent decades.
Britain is doing scarcely better with Brexit.
Why do Republicans continue to bat for increasing military spending? Surely developing internal human resource is a more better use of taxpayers dollars yes?
Link to the study please.
Srivijaya
Active Member
Who knows how all that's going to end. Clueless seems to sum it up.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I don't disagree, but it's important to be realistic about the rest of the world. It should be pretty clear it's not very safe out there beyond our borders and I would think a number of people would love to see our country fall. On one hand you don't want to see an arms race, and the other hand you don't want to be invaded either.
Please provide a realistic scenario for invasion of US? Who is going to invade America, how?? Not Mexico or Canada surely? Russia is going to launch an invasion of Alaska?? Really? For what? Salmon and brown bears? America is geopolitically the safest country in the World.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
And the reason why is because we have a powerful military. Therein lies the reasoning behind military build-ups that we see today. Bear in mind that we aren't the only country that's doing this.
No, you will be safe with only 10% of the military you currently possess. America has gone without any significant military for long stretches of late 19th to early 20th century and have been quite safe. The degree of difficulty of a successful amphibian invasion has hardly changed. The only reason US has such a bloated military is it seeks to project power globally. If US simply wanted local military superiority in Western Pacific and Eastern Atlantic, it would require only a fraction of the military it has now. The Cold War is over. Tell Western Europe and Japan and South Korea to look after their own defense, dismantle millitary bases outside Western Pacific and Atlantic, and get out of this world power business. Very little profit in it.
Sha'irullah
رسول الآلهة
For us right wingers the notion of the military is that is is an allegiance to country and not a man. This is why you have varying political ideologies in the military and vastly varying believes about everything. Look up the personal accounts of soldiers and it becomes obvious a lot of soldiers hate OTHER soldiers.
A right wing military style dictatorship would imply an allegiance to a leader by the military and also a core standing ideology founded upon a sense of unification. We simply have not an inkling of the latter two for it to be remotely possible. The closest we got was John F Kennedy and his push for the special forces but that is not nearly enough. After his death and the deaths of all those original members involved in the Green Berets and so forth that pretty much ended.
Blood and soil is just not something that is viable for America yet alone practical. Now I am very found of monarchies and the power that resides in the steady yet procedural legal ability emanating from such a system but that would be a bit to gaudy for Americantaste mabe.
A right wing military style dictatorship would imply an allegiance to a leader by the military and also a core standing ideology founded upon a sense of unification. We simply have not an inkling of the latter two for it to be remotely possible. The closest we got was John F Kennedy and his push for the special forces but that is not nearly enough. After his death and the deaths of all those original members involved in the Green Berets and so forth that pretty much ended.
Blood and soil is just not something that is viable for America yet alone practical. Now I am very found of monarchies and the power that resides in the steady yet procedural legal ability emanating from such a system but that would be a bit to gaudy for Americantaste mabe.
Meh...we're considering it. We're keeping all six of our soldiers on standby, just in case they drop their guard.
Seems the only realistic path to getting access to a full and complete Netflix library.
Kuzcotopia
If you can read this, you are as lucky as I am.
The US has surprising rates of gun violence within its borders, compared to most countries. A proportion of its citizens are so paranoid they think they can't go outside safely without packing some kind of gun under their clothes. That's insane, given our resources.
Having a massive military is about subsidizing an industry. . . nothing more. It's actually quite a liberal thing to do. But this liberal would prefer that money be spent on infrastructure and additional welfare programs to help the staggering number of poor children in the US who go to bed hungry every night. We're far too rich of a country to have this many destitute people.
The only authority I would like to see imposed is more regulation in business, and a protection of the rights of everyone who lives here. Businesses can develop sophisticated algorithms to determine what kind of toothpaste Amazon should recommend I buy, yet we can't figure out the logistics to feed and shelter the citizens who live here?
Morality matters. . . and the United States, above all other countries, has tremendous wealth. That means as citizens, we are afforded more choices in how our society is structured. . . If we want a dictatorship, we can do it. If we want freedom, we can do it.
Not all countries have the kinds of resources we have. . . And to squander them in ways that don't serve the poorest anong, is to turn a blind eye to the human race. It's not authoritarian. . . It's just morally bankrupt. And the only way members of a morally bankrupt political party might help itself sleep at night is to turn the opposing party into an evil boogeyman. Liberals are "bad guys" and "whiners."
If "stopping liberals" is anyone's motivation to vote or to support a specific form of government, then you have to consider how vacuous that really is.
Having a massive military is about subsidizing an industry. . . nothing more. It's actually quite a liberal thing to do. But this liberal would prefer that money be spent on infrastructure and additional welfare programs to help the staggering number of poor children in the US who go to bed hungry every night. We're far too rich of a country to have this many destitute people.
The only authority I would like to see imposed is more regulation in business, and a protection of the rights of everyone who lives here. Businesses can develop sophisticated algorithms to determine what kind of toothpaste Amazon should recommend I buy, yet we can't figure out the logistics to feed and shelter the citizens who live here?
Morality matters. . . and the United States, above all other countries, has tremendous wealth. That means as citizens, we are afforded more choices in how our society is structured. . . If we want a dictatorship, we can do it. If we want freedom, we can do it.
Not all countries have the kinds of resources we have. . . And to squander them in ways that don't serve the poorest anong, is to turn a blind eye to the human race. It's not authoritarian. . . It's just morally bankrupt. And the only way members of a morally bankrupt political party might help itself sleep at night is to turn the opposing party into an evil boogeyman. Liberals are "bad guys" and "whiners."
If "stopping liberals" is anyone's motivation to vote or to support a specific form of government, then you have to consider how vacuous that really is.
I don't like regulation in business. I would prefer more of it on banking though.
The opposition exists, so there could be a winner(Everyone wants to win), there can be someone to blame(You can only be right if someone is wrong) and there can be false choice(People need to feel like they have a choice).
Here’s the thing about dictatorships: you don’t get to choose their style or political leanings.
We need multiple parties to curb the possible excesses if only a single party always getting its way.
Achieving a useful balance is known as The 3 Stooges Syndrome.
This brief allegorical documentary will explain....
Well, we might be headed in the direction of a military style dictatorship anyway, as politics has become more polarized and more people inch closer to the extremes. I think about this when I look around and see a lot of narcissism, nihilism, hedonism, consumerism, greed - even among liberals and Democrats. The upper classes are more and more trying to barricade themselves in their gated communities, since they've already got theirs and screw everyone else.
At one time, liberals and Democrats (such as FDR) were a hedge against extremism, favoring moderate policies which gave consideration to the working classes while still keeping the basic elements of liberty and a free-market economy still intact. Their policies enabled us to prevail in the Second World War and led to the greatest period of economic boom and prosperity we've ever seen.
Unfortunately, in the aftermath, this was coupled by extreme paranoia and irrational fear which led to the second Red Scare and the Cold War, which brought us to the brink on more than one occasion. That, along with the unmitigated greed of Corporate America and their fellow travelers in organized crime, led to our support of numerous right-wing military dictatorships around the world. Liberals and progressives were aware of this and spoke out against it, but they too became easily distracted by consumerism, hedonism, and their own individualistic greed that they started to care less and less about these things. By the time of the Reagan era, they had all but completely sold out.
It's been nearly 3 decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, yet we squandered that peace dividend as well. We've been locked in a state of permanent war around the world, as we have found it necessary to maintain a huge military establishment which has a presence in nearly 150 countries (U.S. military personnel by country). It might seem as if we already have a right-wing military dictatorship, although the trouble with trying to overtly impose such a thing within America is that it would entail having to withdraw much of the military from around the world in order to maintain power within America. That's the trap that the right-wing hawks have found themselves in.
The only basis of support the ruling class has is economic, since the old ideals of America-centered patriotism once held by paleo-conservatives and liberals alike have also fallen by the wayside. The flag-wavers and faux patriots on the conservative side are engaging in empty gestures, focusing on image alone without much substance. They, too, have sold out and compromised their ideals. At this point, they're in too deep, and they really can't support a right-wing military dictatorship in America because it would alienate too many of our "allies" upon whom they depend for their bread and butter.
That's why they need the support of the liberals and Democrats, and that's the only real purpose they serve at this point. They absolutely need people to believe in these ideals, even if it amounts to image without substance. They need people to continue to have faith in our institutions of power, even if they're weakened, empty shells on the verge of cracking. Trump's election and all the post-election moaning and groaning about it would indicate that there's trouble in paradise in those ivory towers.
At this point, a military dictatorship would be counterproductive to the interests of the ruling class. The country overall has gotten too soft, weak, fat, and dumb. There are other countries whose populations are sharper, smarter, hungrier, and full of smoldering anger towards America and what we've done around this world. The barbarians are at the gates, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it, other than pass another tax bill and bomb much weaker countries with our waning military might.
The political divide between so-called "red states" and "blue states" has become wider, while our infrastructure crumbles and our industrial base falls apart. The economic divide between rich and poor has turned into an impassable chasm. We have an untold number of people out there with automatic weapons, a few of whom decide to screw it all and go out and shoot people indiscriminately, just because they're miserable and want to spread that misery far and wide.
America as we know it is finished, and a right-wing military dictatorship would only hasten our demise, since it would start out compromised and corrupted from the outset. A better solution, if we truly wish to save some semblance of America, would be a left-wing dictatorship of the proletariat. We need to crush the Wall Street capitalists, the petty bourgeois liberal hedonists, the soft, fat, luxury-driven consumerists - and make America leaner, meaner, and tougher than it currently is. It's extremely unlikely that that will ever happen, at least not anytime soon. But perhaps an attempt at pushing the country more right-wing might actually wake up a lot of people and push them more to the left. We can only hope.