[FRIAM] Up and Out vs Down and in

[Prof David West]

Nick,

May I make a simple suggestion?

Chill.

I recall the conversations at FRIAM the months after mr. T was elected — Apocalypse NOW! is a pretty accurate depiction. (And the same list of "safe havens was presented then.)

There is no conceivable path whereby the donald could become a dictator.

The only way that any president could do so is if the electoral college were eliminated and some parallel of the circumstances around the FDR era were in place. The constitution could be quickly amended to allow more than two terms, and off we go. I guarantee, if that were to happen it would be a dictatorship of the left, not the right.

I used to worry about an American Theocracy, but trump pretty much destroyed the likelihood of that.

As to how *"we use our considerable talent, skill, knowledge, resources, and technical knowhow to do everything in our power to reverse the authoritarian pandemic that is sweeping the world."* First, recognize that "there is no pandemic; then figure out why almost half the electorate voted the way they did. (It was not FOR trump.)

it would not hurt to understand the difference between finite and infinite games and apply that knowledge to an analysis of US politics since, circa, 1900.

davew



On Sun, Feb 9, 2020, at 6:04 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> All,

> 

> I have a friend who reads a lot of history and thinks HARD about what he reads. For months he has been reassuring me about the state of American democracy because, as he said, Trump wasn’t a well focused dictator like Hitler. But I saw him last Monday and he asked me, with an air of genuine panic, “What do I do?” The reason for his new panic was his realization that Hitler had not always been a focused dictator, but had been entrained, over his career, to play just those themes that would rouse the German people to War. The impeachment process had convinced him that Trump was gradually developing the focus of a proper Hitler. 

> 

> So I passed the question he asked me onto the group on Friday. “What do we do?” What struck me was that many of us took the question to be, “where do we best escape to?” Options included New Zealand, Costa Rica, Bermuda, Canada, Italy, etc. These answers startled me, because, of course, the question I meant to be asking was, how do we use our considerable talent, skill, knowledge, resources, and technical knowhow to do everything in our power to reverse the authoritarian pandemic that is sweeping the world. 

> 

> Now some of you, perhaps many, that we in any kind of an emergency, or even if we are, that there is anything we might do about it, or even that there is any particular reason to save American democracy. I am happy to have that discussion, too. However, from those of you who share my panic, I would love to hear suggestions about what I (and others) might do in the next year .

> 

> All the best,

> 

> Nick 

> 

> 

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 

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