Runner,

Not sure how you come to that conclusion - and then leap to an extreme. I would have thought that the dems, incompetent as they may be, are at least as democratically-minded as the GOP. How many of them in the House have been accused of crimes and misdemeanours against the US state, for instance ?

Joe

loudmouth2

the democrats have never accepted the deplorables verdict. From the day Trump was elected they spoke of impeachment. They lied, made up a Russian collusion scandal and even with egg all over their faces they dug in deeper. The democrats supported and encouraged the lying feminist making up fake rape claims against Kavaunagh simply because they saw him as a threat to them killing babies. Facism might not be the right word but its every bit as bad. Trump has exposed how totally bereft of any morals and decency the democrats are. I know you hate Trump. He certainly has tons of fault. However compared to the lying, undemocratic, cheating democrats he is a breath of fresh air.

Well, there you have it Joe and straight from the horse's (runner's) mouth. Some may well suggest the other end? And the secret source of runner's brains?

And a waste of time relying on evidence-based debate. Given runner's vastly superior personal knowledge of what goes on behind closed Dem. doors! Or from anything slightly left of the hard religious right, all of who are kiddy fiddling commies in the ( here comes de Judge) runner's eyes?

It as to be such a comfort to the runner, to know he s always right?
Cheers, Alan B.

great thoughts about this one. A man with first-hand knowledge of fascism and Nazism, Primo Levi, once said that "21st century fascism will be different from the 20th century fascism we know." The three foremost places where old fascism and Nazism came to forth were Italy, Germany and Spain (a mixture of Catholicism and Fascism). Franco's dictadura franquista are a somewhat milder version of German and Italian fascism.

The bigger the public service, the more fascism !

Hi Gus,

Well, apart from the Soviets' wars against Poland and the Baltic countries (1918-1921) and Japan (1938) and Finland (1939), and their invasions of the Caucasus and 'Eastern Turkestan', and their gulags, and the execution of millions, yes, they probably had a smidgin of good intentions.

But my point was that any system which forgoes democracy, which installs a system of total control by a Party or dictator, even if it tarts it up with goals of Utopia and other magical and religious frameworks, and even if it is comparatively efficient, is bound to degenerate into totalitarianism and fascism by any other name.

Late Enlightenment writers such as Isaiah Berlin, Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek wrote about the openness/indeterminacy of society and history, that Utopias always hark back to some reactionary past of supposed sweetness and light and harmony, which of course never existed. Blueprints have to assume that there is only The One Way, from which any who deviate must regrettably be 'subtracted'.

The problem with that is that, eventually that's all of us. Even the framers of the Utopia themselves: witness the assassinations (Kirov, Trotsky) and executions (Bela Kun, Bukharin, etc.) of so many of Stalin's erstwhile colleagues and Mao's murder of Lin Piao. Not to mention the tens of millions in gulags: doubters should read just the Introduction to Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' to get the drift of 'subtraction'.

Democracy is messy, forever incomplete, uncertain, inefficient. A bit like life really. But it's the best system so far devised.

Joe