What I’m Reading: The New York Times

I tend to break political thought into two camps: rational and irrational, not liberal and conservative. There are a number of voters who have said they are either going to vote for Sanders or Trump. There is no rational political position that supports both Sanders and Trump. It is an emotional impulse. I understand the impulse. It is not rational but I understand it. It is an impulse to reject the status quo as violently as possible, hoping to reset the system by wiping the slate clean with blood if necessary.

The rise of authoritarianism Brooks mentions is another symptom of the frightening, irrational, "mob" emotion rising in the U.S. and across the world. Trump has tapped into both the impulse to wipe the slate and to find a bully willing to do it. Fascism and uber nationalism were this popular most recently right before World War Two. I suppose it is something hard coded in our DNA. The human race is genetically programmed to keep population under control by whipping our "tribes" into an irrational frenzy that can only be satiated by attacking another tribe, thus ensuring we kill off enough people to reset the total population at a lower, more sustainable level.

I just wish they would wait to start the inevitable conflagration until after I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Donald Trump’s candidacy is the culmination of 30 years of antipolitics.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/the-governing-cancer-of-our-time.html