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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Trump's Mind, Antonio Gramsci, After I'm Gone, Hacking and "Repercussions"

Trump's Mind


I thought you would be interested in this story from the Atlantic.  It’s title, “Trump is Losing His Mind,” should be enough to convince you to CLICK HERE and read the story.   If that doesn't work, you can find it at  http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BB1c5sBK?ocid=se .

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Repercussions? 

In an article in the Palm Beach Post (Dec. 15) regarding an unsuccessful lawsuit to get Governor DeSantis to close the State’s beaches due to Covid19, the Governor’s lawyers described an appeal of the court’s decision as an axiomatic example of abuse of the justice system.  Appellant’s empty political posturing warrants repercussions.” 

Of course, that is equally true of the far more severe abuse of the justice system by seventeen Attorneys-general, including Florida’s, 126 Congressional representatives and of course, President Trump. “Repercussions” to those acts, bordering on sedition, would be a much more serious matter, and though well deserved, won’t happen. Lawyers will say anything to put their client in a more favorable light.  Most are well trained in the empty posturing they mention, political or otherwise. There are courses devoted to it in some law schools.

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Hacking Reaching Home 

The recently discovered Russian hacking of our systems even reached down to this humble level. It was not just limited to commercial and government sites.  The other day, emails which I sent to relatives at email addresses I've used for years got bounced back to me with "this email address doesn't exist" messages. My son, who understands this stuff better than I do, explained that Google was hit with an outage which affected Gmail for a short time, probably in some way related to the hacking. I cannot recall that happening before. I’ve retaliated by changing some of my passwords.  You should too.  "Ask not for whom the bells toll, they toll for you."


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Agenda for the Future 

Unless something miraculous happens, I will not be alive thirty years from now.  But looking ahead, here is what I think the country’s agenda should include over that period. 

1.       We must get rid of the electoral college as it is now constituted.  There are several alternatives on the table right now.

2.       We must get rid of “gerrymandering” so that Congressional representatives represent geographically logical districts, and not ones tailored to give one party an advantage.

3.       We must be certain that high quality health care is provided for all Americans, regardless of what State they live in.  Health care at all levels must be removed from the private sector and managed at the Federal, not the State, level.  All medical education should be free, with the recipient obligated to work for the government for a stated period.

4.      All undergraduate colleges should be tuition free, but equivalent education in trades and technology should also be provided as well. More advanced degrees in the STEM areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) should be heavily subsidized by the government, academic and business entities for which people with such degrees will work.

5.      We must clean up our environment at all levels and promote practices which will preserve the planet’s health.

The increased role of government in this thirty-year agenda should be accompanied by financial and monetary regulations which assure that private enterprise will have access to capital, so that jobs in manufacturing and service areas might be created and financial marketplaces flourish on a domestic and international basis.  With health care and education clearly falling under government programs, the private sector can concentrate on what it does best, making money, something which should not be the object of institutions devoted to health care and education.

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 Antonio Gramsci Wrote About the Hegemony of "Ideological Illusions." We call it "Trumpism"

Antonio Gramsci was the co-founder of the Italian Communist Party.  He did much of his writing during his 20 year imprisonment by Mussolini’s fascist regime.  Gramsci went further in his writings on Communism than the usual Marxist arguments regarding the ruling class controlling the economic base and thereby controlling the masses of workers. Gramsci argued that control really occurs through ‘ideological illusions’ produced by the ruling class, coercion alone being insufficient to keep them in power.  He called this complex process ‘hegemony’, which simply put, is a means of class domination through persuading people that the ruling class’s ideas are just “common sense.” Gramsci argued that hegemony is an invisible mechanism and the ruling class’s ideas permeate the whole of society, are unquestioned and become normalized through constant exposure. particularly for the working class.

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And this is what Trump did to the uneducated portion of our working class, using the internet, tweets and FoxNews!  It's what the Nazis did in Germany.  If you want to read a little more about Antonio Gramsci,  CLICK HERE or if that doesn't work, just visit  https://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/reference/sociologist-in-focus-antonio-gramsci

 JL

 

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