November 2016 - the world of Brazil is real now
In America, anyways.
Expect President Trump to victimize countless Harry Buttles.
If you must blink, do it now.
In America, anyways.
Expect President Trump to victimize countless Harry Buttles.
If you must blink, do it now.
So true. I'm American and a huge sci-fi fan. The worst thing about that combination has been watching my reality turn into a dystopian future from various science fiction works. People do not heed warnings. Or learn from history.
BRAZIL still stands as one of the best films of all time, though.
Exactly. I was watching the 1980s Max Headroom show--itself very similar to Brazil--and it takes place in a world where the president is elected based on who has the highest TV ratings.
The worst worlds of 80s cyberpunk are real now.
If you must blink, do it now.
once body banks make their official appearance, we will know for certain...
Epic cash grabs made for the lowest common denominator, the rest need not apply...share
Now the country of Brazil is like the movie Brazil.
shareHow about a list of some of those Harry Buttles Trump victimized?
Oh, wait, that's right, that never happened.
Bureaucracy victimizes Harry Buttleses all the time; it inevitably happened under Trump. Trump was a jerk and very self-involved, and I would be surprised if he cared about any Harry Buttles-types. Of course, it also happened under Obama, Bush, and Clinton - just as it is happening under Biden and around the world. Republicans, Democrats, they all have these problems.
shareYes, they all have these problems. The OP tried to make it sound like something that would be unique to Trump, or at least, worse under Trump.
And what's most irritating about this is that if this sort of thing is likely to get worse under any administration, it's almost certain to be a Democrat one, because Democrats are far, far more the party of big, intrusive, all-encompassing, nanny-state government. It's Democrats who want to regulate the internal combustion engine cars everyone drives right off the road in a few years, that wants to come up with a way to tax you based on your mileage driven, and who just started moving to go after gas stoves.
The main problem with Republicans is that they get elected promising to reign in big government, but they get inside the DC beltway, and become part of the establishment, and next thing you know, they are full-fledged DC swamp creatures, more interested in preserving the establishment than they are in doing what voters sent them to Washington to do.
I doubt it was worse under Trump, but we also have no data to analyze this at all. For starters, we're talking about "Harry Buttles" situations as though we've defined it (we haven't) so we couldn't even look up stats if we wanted to.
Yes, I agree that the Democrats (and other Left Wing parties around the world) are more likely to wallow in paperwork or create more regulation and bureaucracy. I also am with you that the Republicans (and other Right Wing parties around the world) do a better job of talking "small government" than actually creating it. I don't think that's the biggest problem with the Republicans right now, though. Although the Dems have their own flavour of this problem, I'd say that the GOP's biggest problem is something like pride in ignorance. They stick their heads in the sand on a LOT of issues. I'd point to pollution and corporatism as two of the biggest.
I'd say that their party should look to guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger for a positive role model. He's a conservative, believes in the Rep party, but when somebody said, "Hey, that Hum-V isn't good for the environment," he said, "You're right," and stopped driving it (so I've heard). He keeps his political compass oriented to his values but he's open to new ideas. Also, anybody who isn't just box-checking.
A lot of this applies to the Dems, too, of course.
In-general, the US political system has a big flaw, which is that there are only two viable parties, which results in a crazy amount of polarization compared to other systems, as well as making both of them largely homogeneous where it counts. Who's anti Free Speech? In the '90s, it's the Republicans, these days, the Democrats. Both champion speech when they like it (failing to recognize the true value of freedom of speech is that it protects unpopular opinions).
I don't think voting is futile or one guy wouldn't be worse than the other - just that there's a lot of problems with similarities as well as differences.