[FRIAM] Hope or Despair

[Jochen Fromm]

Yes, I am not criticizing the CEOs, I just wonder what the next four years will bring, Owen mentioned Brenners "three choices" for the US
1 - Indispensable America
2 - Moneyball America
3 - Independent America
Interesting from a political perspective. From a complex systems viewpoint it is also interesting if one of the oldest democracies of the world finally slides into some kind of *-ism (fascism, cronyism, totalitarianism), how it occurs, and if we can prevent it somehow. 
In their attenpt for perfection the Germans have experienced all this already before. Hitler's movement was based on the outrage of the common people, on the desire of the "ordinary Joe" to be great again. There we are, Godwin's law strikes again. Many ordinary people were indeed happy to find new jobs through the Nazi party. Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler were among them, both had low-paying jobs or no jobs at all before they got a job in the Nazi party.
Currently for many members of the Republican party the hunger for power and government positions seems to be greater than their conscience and their moral integrity. Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel if the Republicans eventually give up their desire for power. If they can impeach Bill Clinton, maybe they can do it with Trump do. It shouldn't be difficult to find reasons.
There is hope as long as democratic institutions continue to work. Where the alarm bells should ring and what must be avoided is:
-  the creation of a new party or movement at the far right focussed solely on the president, protected by some kind of homeland security organization- a complete seizure of power which leads to a dictatorship, for instance after a terrible terror attack - concentration camps of any kind for political opponents, illegal immigrants, Muslims or whoever the new president declares as the new enemy- any kind of creation of a registry or database or list of people based on immigration status or religion
It is nice to see that the big IT companies signed a pledge for the last point already http://neveragain.tech
-J.

-------- Original message --------From: John Dobson <jmdobson9 at gmail.com> Date: 1/7/17  19:41  (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hope or Despair 
My son who works for Google explained why the tech CEOs met with Trump.  The general rule out there is that you always "take the meeting."  Taking the meeting in no way obligates you to do anything as a result of the meeting, but it does give you more information about the topics discussed at the meeting.  In his view, this was a smart thing to do for the techies, but it is hardly surprising that they were not overly gruntled about the conclave.  So your comment about them resembling Ring-wraiths is spot on.  But it certainly does not mean that the meeting represented any sort of endorsement of the Donald.
On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 7:18 AM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
Many scientists and journalists feel desperate now that Mr. T-Rump will rule the world, especially climate scientists like Eric Holthaushttps://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/817503888500633600
What are we going to do, hope or despair, resist or surrender? I'm not sure if we are heading towards climate hell, criminal abyss or nuclear apocalypse, or if America is just turning into Trumpistan...https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/opinion/america-becomes-a-stan.amp.html
Do you remember this odd meeting where Trump met the bosses of the big IT-companies? None of them looked happy, but they all came. It felt like Sauron is going to meet the Ring-wraiths. Each of the Ringwraiths already owns a ring of power. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have enormous power, some say a single one of them is worth more than all corporations at the Russian stockmarkets together. In Tolkien's epic story Sauron is beaten by the Hobbit Frodo who destroys the ring of power in the mountain of doom. Frodo seems to stand for the ordinary Joe, i.e. the ordinary people, who eventually give up the desire for power. Now if everyone would give up using Twitter and Facebook, Mr. T-Rump who lose his social media power there immediately, he would become bored of politics and quit. Too good to be true.
Likewise if the ordinary Joe would give up his desire to become great, rich and famous, then Trump wouldn't have been elected in the first place. Isn't it remarkable how Tolkien has observed that totalitarian dictatorships rest on the shoulders of the ordinary people? In Russia it is similar, the dictatorship here rests on the few shoulders of the small people, who depend on the welfare state that feeds them and tells them lies.
-Jochen



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