Thursday, June 14, 2018

180614 Readings & Comments



1. I suspect that the number of mocking parodies of the Trump movie trailer tailor-made for Kim Jun Un. But if you haven't watched it, do. Here's a considered take on it.





David Brooks

2. Dave Brooks captures the essence of what Trump & other authoritarians (listed) are up to and their effect. Take away quote (and I like wolves on the whole more than those humans who channel their ferocious instincts): 


Those who lost faith in this order began to elect wolves in order to destroy it. The wolves — whether Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or any of the others — don’t so much have shared ideology as a shared mentality.
It begins with 1, some monumental sense of historic betrayal. This leads to 2, a general outlook that says the world is a nasty place, and 3, a scarcity mind-set that says politics is a zero-sum game in which groups must viciously scramble to survive. This causes 4, a pervasive sense of distrust and suspicion, and 5, the rupture of any relationship built on friendship or affection, and finally 6, the loss of any sense that there is such a thing as the common good.
Wolves perceive the world as a war of all against all and seek to create the world in which wolves thrive, which is a world without agreed-upon rules, without restraining institutions, norms and etiquette.
. . . . 
[T]he core divide in our politics is no longer the conventional left-right divide. The core issue in our politics is over how we establish relationship. You can either organize relationship at a high level — based on friendship, shared values, loyalty and affection — or you can organize relationship at a low level, based on mutual selfish interest and a brutal, ends-justify-the-means mentality.



Frank Bruni

3. Sound advice from Frank Bruni: don't vent your anger or try to get even. Get ahead. Take only constructive steps. Don't make your opponent's MO yours. Rise above, don't fall down to that level. Bring together, don't further the divide.