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US elections in 2016: how things stand?

     

    Lenin disputed the world can be perceived through a puddle, but who knows?

 

Some reflection about the US elections in Nov. 2016 (11.10.2016)

The latest CNN article points out that Trump is about to go on a rampage against the Republican Party, especially after Ryan distanced himself from him. (See http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/11/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-tweets/)

Predictions are that he will wreck the Republican Party by pitting his followers against the established party machine. Trump claims now that the shackles of the Republican Party are off, he can go full out.

We have not really exchanged many viewpoints, or else only sporadically, so time to take stock before the November presidential election is being held, but my first advise to Hillary Clinton would be since in the campaign is made up of mud slinging, it is best to head for the showers and wash off all that dirt.

By the way, the Austrian writer Hermann Broch wrote about the romantic demise of workers who initiated once unemployed not a fight for social justice, but turned to a new money game by pitting women against women in a ring filled with mud. I think this false Romanticism is a spirit which has propelled also Trump to revel whenever he can get really dirty in all sorts of involvement with women. Gone is the moral respect for the other since everything is a matter of being not merely 'down to earth', but simply following the wish to become really dirty. Many of the American songs lead up to that kind of sensation of wishing to be in touch with that hard ground claimed to be reality even if met only in jail e.g. Jonny Cash.

One will have to study not only why the Republican Party as an established machine has not been able to prevent the upsurge of Trump, but also perceive a much wider phenomenon. It has to include the role of the media versus the new communication channels Trump uses.

However, I suppose the tea party prepared the ground, and Trump's use of the media (Twitter) made it possible to take everything a notch higher up. His tactics are very similar to what Brexit affirmer and now British foreign minister Johnson did when he worked as a mediocre journalist in Brussels, insofar Boris invented stories which confirmed what people wanted to believe to be the case all along. It comes close to having conspiracy theories being established as facts.

Once this is the case, fact and image converge as we now identify it as info-tainment. Trump knows his lies are really cherished by his followers who want to believe what he says is not only true, but authentic. They feel this must be 'authentic' given all the power by which Trump conveys his always most obvious messages. Since authenticity has to be questioned as criterion of truth, it might be useful to take a glance as to what the philosopher Bart Verschaffel stated on this criterion distorts the discussion about and the design of architecture. (See http://poieinkaiprattein.org/beyond-images/architecture/position-papers-3/architecture-is-as-a-gesture---on-authenticity-as-an-architectural-criterion-by-bart-verschaffel/)

Trump went even further in the second debate with Hillary but he does not seem to realise the ramification. For instance, he claimed when President, that he will order the state prosecutor to arrest Hillary and put her in jail. He declares this as if he has already determined her guilt and now per executive order, he can transcend any judicial and due process since the fact of being guilty has been established all along by him alone. Likewise Erdogan proceeds with his cleansing of ranks in university, press and military in Turkey. It is the demise of civil society and of the balance of power between the different organs which function only if these institutions are respected independently. You have the same development in Poland where the government wants to oust the judges on the constitutional court or else Urban wishing to secure a Racist paragraph to be a part of the Hungarian constitution. How ridiculous can one get in this modern age as if these human principles do not matter?

I attended last evening a philosophical discussion with an author of a book called 'serious games'. He follows in the path of Lohmann and is completely totalitarian in his use of the concept of game being played not by individuals with known faces, but as a general system of game theory replacing the concept of system itself, in order to gain, so his claim, a more differentiated viewpoint. It never struck him that inequality is as well the result of many people being outplayed by being enticed to play in a game they can never win. But most telling was that the author and a fellow professor were dumbfounded and did not understand when I quoted the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert who answered my question why he was not arrested after martial law was declared in Poland, that "he does not play any games!" In short, the government could not accuse him of what others did when they were in and out of the Communist party themselves, and who took their revenge once on the outside. That is by the way the same case with many who joined the AfD here in Germany. Many of them were former members of the CDU, Merkel's party, and who is now in the opinion polls below 30% for the first time. I expect quite a change in the political landscape of Germany come next year's federal elections.

So what will be the take of US citizens as to the upcoming election, and why are there so many 'failures' in not being able to counter such an assertion that the authentic can only be muddling in dirt? Naturally, there are many who believe that it is the lived reality in the United States of today. There exists as well the popular saying, if you wish to get to know reality, you need to get your hands dirty (as if fixing political machines is the same as repairing a motor cycle).

The reference to such a demise of politics can also be understood as an outrage not only against the establishment but also an expression of anti politics altogether as if communities need not to come together and decide about the use of common resources!

I wonder where has gone all the moral integrity of American people when they accept such a landslide of mud? Lets hope this landslide does not translate into votes in favour of Trump who plays his role as underdog in a most clever and callous way. He uses seductive reasoning and legitimises like no one else what it means to cheat the system and get away with it by being so clever that you can use the media to claim success alone by attracting a lot of attention, whether now the wrong or the right one. Even my letter attests to this fact that he can dominate the agenda and no other policy issues in need to secure America's future are being discussed. For everything is reduced to seeming moral issues as if he is the only guy with a clean vest because he is not abashed to do the outrageous. Others will feel the urge to do likewise, and that is the real danger that they will follow him without questioning his real motives.


Hatto Fischer

 

    

     Voters on election day in the USA: 8th of November 2016

 

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