General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"United States under Trump is dark, aggressive, and lawless", "a predator nation"
A few days later, in an interview with the Times, Trump was asked if there were any limits on his global powers. Yeah, there is one thing, Trump said. My own morality. My own mind. Its the only thing that can stop me.
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The second reason Trumps statement is worrisome is that he has changed the United States in fundamental ways. He has not only pried America apart from its ideals; he has inverted them. For a decade, he has been the overwhelmingly dominant figure in American life, and he has reshaped how hundreds of millions of Americansincluding the great majority of Republicans and evangelical Christiansthink about right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice.
Many of the same people who once fiercely supported Reagan and opposed moral relativism and nihilism have come to embody the ethic of Thrasymachus, the cynical Sophist in Platos Republic who insists that justice has no intrinsic meaning. All that matters is the interests of the strongest party. Injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and more masterly than justice, he argued.
The United States under Trump is dark, aggressive, and lawless. It has become, in the words of Representative Ogles, a predator nation. This period of our history will eventually be judged, and the verdict will be unforgivingbecause Thrasymachus was wrong. Justice matters more than injustice. And I have a strong intuition and a settled hope that the moral arc of the universe will eventually bend that way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trump-mistake-venezuela-injustice/685560/
James48
(5,095 posts)You like being punished.
Personal Hell is where you seem to be most comfortable.
Most others dont live like that, which is why we believe the arc will return.
femmedem
(8,539 posts)Maybe his skin is thicker than mine, but I'd feel attacked and hurt if a member of this community responded to one of my posts like that.
NJCher
(42,510 posts)I will find my pictures from a recent Indivisible meeting where we had a person speak to us who has studied strategies of the right. One of their tactics is planting discouragement. It is an effective strategy when you've plenty of money and not enough people.
The talk she gave was accompanied by illustrations. I took pictures.
I've been following this for a long time. This post is not what it appears to be.