Of All People: Andrew Sullivan

[Kathianne]

Yeah, sort of makes me sick. He is writing of what I've been observing, the problem of actually having read Plato and much of what the Founder's wrote. While Trump is the villain in the piece, it's easy enough to see he's really not, he's just the result of what has been happening. Yes, I think he's accelerating the process, but it was in motion long before:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

Democracies end
when they are too democratic.

And right now, America is a breeding ground for tyranny.

As this dystopian election campaign has unfolded, my mind keeps being tugged by a passage in Plato’s Republic. It has unsettled — even surprised — me from the moment I first read it in graduate school. The passage is from the part of the dialogue where Socrates and his friends are talking about the nature of different political systems, how they change over time, and how one can slowly evolve into another. And Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.”

This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
The very rich come under attack, as inequality becomes increasingly intolerable. Patriarchy is also dismantled: “We almost forgot to mention the extent of the law of equality and of freedom in the relations of women with men and men with women.” Family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents.” In classrooms, “as the teacher ... is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students make light of their teachers.” Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The foreigner is equal to the citizen.

And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

...

[fj1200]

To say he's biased against the right is an understatement...

His proposition is a simple one. Remember James Carville’s core question in the 1992 election: Change versus more of the same? That sentiment once elected Clinton’s husband; it could also elect her opponent this fall. If you like America as it is, vote Clinton. After all, she has been a member of the American political elite for a quarter-century.

if he doesn't see the same issues with either Clinton or Sanders.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

Yeah, sort of makes me sick. He is writing of what I've been observing, the problem of actually having read Plato and much of what the Founder's wrote. While Trump is the villain in the piece, it's easy enough to see he's really not, he's just the result of what has been happening. Yes, I think he's accelerating the process, but it was in motion long before:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

The guy is way, way off base.
We are , (well we once were) a Representative Republic not a pure democracy as is discussed by Plato and friends.
Our founders put in safeguards against what we are now experiencing, one party and its allies have led us to this brink my friend.
The dem party ceased being American at least two decades BACK , -CLOSER TO THREE.
When the dem party was not reigned in and was not vigorously or (even violently) opposed with the election of obama all this was bound to happen, simply because they installed a damn pure bred , American hating socialist tyrant.. yes--simple as that--not shots were fired but war was made upon This Republic by the dem party unopposed!! AND STILL UNOPPOSED IN ANY TRUE MEANINGFUL, CORRECTIVE WAY!!!

And to use his blather to vilify Trump when if anybody should have been vilified it should have been CLINTON, SANDERS , DEM PARTY AND THEIR STINKING ILK!
IF THAT DUDE SPAT THAT CRAP AT ME I'D SLAP HIM QUICKER THAN A CAT CAN LICK ITS WHISKERS.
I do not suffer fools gladly... nor even calmly.. -TYR