{"id":2391,"date":"2016-11-09T21:24:11","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T21:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/?p=2391"},"modified":"2016-11-09T21:24:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T21:24:11","slug":"november-09-2016-at-0424pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/?p=2391","title":{"rendered":"November 09, 2016 at 04:24PM"},"content":{"rendered":"

“All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump\u2019s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.
\nIn the coming days, commentators will attempt to normalize this event. They will try to soothe their readers and viewers with thoughts about the \u201cinnate wisdom\u201d and \u201cessential decency\u201d of the American people. They will downplay the virulence of the nationalism displayed, the cruel decision to elevate a man who rides in a gold-plated airliner but who has staked his claim with the populist rhetoric of blood and soil. George Orwell, the most fearless of commentators, was right to point out that public opinion is no more innately wise than humans are innately kind. People can behave foolishly, recklessly, self-destructively in the aggregate just as they can individually. Sometimes all they require is a leader of cunning, a demagogue who reads the waves of resentment and rides them to a popular victory. \u201cThe point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion,\u201d Orwell wrote in his essay \u201cFreedom of the Park.\u201d \u201cThe law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.\u201d” via Facebook
\nvia IFTTT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2392,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions\/2392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifestream.hausderluege.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}