R.I.P. In Memoriam........

Rabinowitz composed the score for The Sign of Four, a score that I utterly love and that - as far as I know - has never been released on CD.

Volker

Next stop: Trump?

And Spain looks to get 'joint sovereignty' for Gibraltar too.

Well, yes; the likes of Wilders and Le Pen will be pleased as punch with this result.

You think the raise of radicalism and nationalism is only lack of education, illiteracy and things like that? I think it's a deeper problem hinting at the fact that major establishment has fucked up for quite a few years. It's really a very deep issue, that has to be seriously considered in terms of the future of the world.

There's also racism and xenophobia, but essentially, yes. Or at least largely.

For example, I think we look at Trump the wrong way. We have to consider a couple of things when we analyze his rise to popularity, which may be telling quite a bit.

At first, before the candidates for nomination started to appear, Americans were responding in polls in a quite interesting way. At first, the preferred president would be Frank Underwood, a quick reminder, a fictional character. Then when a student or even high-schooler made a parody site, there was a huge rise in popularity of a certain Deez Nuts, which also added a bit of hilarity, but wasn't properly considered at the time.

Trump is colorful. He himself admits that his racist and xenophobic remarks are there mostly to spice up the debate and, basically, have him in the news. I think what really works in his case is that he doesn't discuss numbers, statistics. He just delivers on the promise-giving department. His basic argument is the most juvenile, but the most necessary one: "I'll do it, don't worry. Believe me, I'll do it". How? Does it even matter at this point? He SAYS he will do something. Does Hillary or even Bernie, or Cruz, or Kasich, or anyone for that matter do that? No. There is no "Believe me, I'm there for you" in these cases. Sanders is the closest to that.

I think the problems we've been facing for at least 10 years now is that politicians lost tune with their respective constituencies. We are living in times where the most important thing for a ruling party is to keep the power and the opposition doesn't define itself by any ideas (except essentially election promises, which are usually out of this world) other than voting against whatever the ruling party proposes. Debate quality went quickly downhill, as we could say in Polish "flushed itself in the toilet".

Sure, the right and left differences are huge, never been bigger before. I want to think that it was more than the Cold War that made the post-war world at least agree to disagree and not, for example, publicly destroy the foreign policy in public debate. An American Congressman pointing at Obama and yelling "YOU LIE!" during, of all things, the State of the Union address a few years ago would be unheard of even in G. W. Bush's time, let alone, say Bush sr., Reagan or even Carter times, from what I understand.

The rise in conservative thought comes from another place, too, I think. We are living in a more and more liberal and globalized world. For right-wing people this, especially the fact that the notion of nation has been waning due to globalization, is, for them, a real threat to their own sense of, I think, even, identity, or at least sense of security. Add to it that public discourse which also took a left turn, is ridiculing these people at every possible moment. Of course, we may ridicule 'Muricans, as Demetris and many others (including some Americans themselves!) calls them, but they aren't so stupid NOT to see that the joke is on them and they want to participate and be a valid part of the discussion rather than the point of ridicule. We may think what we want. But this large wall between us, the more or less liberal public majority, is larger than the wall proposed by Trump, really.

The rise of xenophobia, Brexit, rise of Trump, violence among and towards refugees, is proof of Europe, US, the whole world standing for more liberal values, the majority of international public discourse, is a warning sign that we should try and reach out to people who feel completely ignored, ridiculed and hurt by the said discourse.

Politicians should tune in to ears of their constituents and not think that you can simply throw people some basic ideas and keep your parliament seat anymore. The best politician of recent years, to me, is Barack Obama who managed to act on some of his major promises, despite a largely opposing Congress. Obamacare is a huge political move. Not an act of promise, not a populist act. It's acting on severe self-conviction and getting an important program done. On the other hand in the UK we had Gordon Brown and David Cameron who make Tony Blair as charismatic as a 1980s action film hero (which is an achievement in and of itself, though not sure either of the two should be overtly proud of that), in Poland the now-President of the European Council at least exerted an atmosphere of calmness, but wasn't a huge personality himself. We need personalities (Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn), someone who can tune in with the population. And they have to start delivering on promises. People want things to happen. And they want to be listened to. No matter whether they have a shitload of guns at home, drink beer and whatever else. They want to be a voice. And so, through racism, xenophobia, UKIP, Le Penisms... they are GETTING that voice.

Unless we get our shit together, I'm afraid that this IS getting worse.

I think we all agree on that here. But there is a large number of people in this world that just spoke up. And we can't simply ignore it as if nothing happened. It's a warning sign.

True, that.

Well, let's get this Trump thing cleared up.

Number 1: While Trump has the majority of votes (and now the plurality of delegates) of all the candidates (even ones before they dropped out), he still has a low, low number. He's not as popular as people outside the U.S. think. A lot of the polling is damning and behind the scenes we are hearing the Republicans know he's crap and want to dump him at the convention (no, this isn't a radical or aytipical idea -- it's been done before a few times).

Number 2: And it doesn't matter what Trump thinks about this or that, or says about this or that, he always contradicts himself later, in many cases the next day and in one case he did two interviews back-to-back and in the span of five minutes he said one thing and then lied about it in the ext interview.

And finally Number 3: Trump's voters I have noted, are the stupid retards I heard in the news, TV, radio, with previous Presidential candidates: Ron Paul, Obama, George W. Bush a second time, and most of the Libritarian party members like the bat-shit crazy Gary Johnson; Gary isn't just coo coo for Coco Puffs, he's fucking injecting it with needles while smokin' pot. They're cult of personality people: "Obama! Obama! Obama!" no matter what lies are told; "Trump! Trump! Trump!" no matter what lies are told.
Nothing you say matters; the truth doesn't matter, facts don't matter, they're drones.


Oh ... and:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LhNjWoBZck

Deez Nuts had local voting fame because his name was "Deez Nuts".

Oh yes. Truth for Truth. Sometimes being overly-pc doesn't help seeing things for what they are.

Watch it, people leaning towards populism don't have to necessarily be illiterate. It may have to do with a huge disappointment about the state of political affairs both locally and globally. You're NOT gonna tell me that the populist rise in the 1930s was all done by complete idiots.

Exactly. There was an intellectual ideological agenda that didn't come from some idiots. One of the most important philosophers of the 20th century was more or less a part of it!

Anyway, I think we are looking at a wider problem here and that's what I am trying to make people notice. It's not just a bunch of idiots that stand for the rise of Trump and so on. The economics is to look at as well. We're living, in other words, in a similar time. And what's ALSO similar is that the large organizations like EU or even UN fail to notice the threat at this point. However, maybe Brexit will be a turning point in the discussion.