@Arizona Hot: Eh? What elections?
-IainB
You being in New Zealand, I can see why you're in denial about Clinton losing in the elections here. What other reason could you have for denying knowledge about someone as loud and blatant as Donald Trump.
-Arizona Hot
Hahaha, not quite. Obviously I was merely joking about your assumption that readers would know about the elections, in what I wrote above. I am (as usual) at a loss to comprehend American politics, but with the news feeds chokka with
"US elections!" news items, and, though I have not been following the elections
per se, how could one possibly
not know that the elections were "on"?
As it happens, I have in fact been rather
well-informed about the progress and outcome of
this particular US election process - not through the news media (which I pay little attention to anyway) but because my 15 y/o daughter is currently keenly interested in philosophy and political philosophy in particular - especially where the latter reflects democracy and freedom of thought and action (or the lack of those things) in a society. She has kept me regularly updated, whether I wanted to be or not!
Actually, she was very concerned yesterday because there was reportedly a backlash of sometimes vitriolic hate from a vociferous section of the Clinton (I'm not sure whether that's Democrat or Republican) followers, after they had learned that they were in a minority as far as the election outcome went. Apparently some of them couldn't accept this and some biased news media outlets were in outright denial/rejection and a news video showed some supporters calling for Trump voters to be outed and killed, or something, and some Trump supporters had already been beaten up for their sins, with a black American mother even posting a video online where she psychologically torments her 9 y/o son for voting for Trump in his school's dummy election.
She had been discussing this situation with her classmates at school yesterday, and came home with two complex and interesting questions:
- (a) If they were prepared to consider committing violence towards those who disagree with them, did I think the Clinton supporters might try to get/incite someone to assassinate Trump, thereby frustrating his being President?
- (b) This minority - the Clinton supporters - are "liberal progressives". That is (so she informed me), people who proclaim the most loudly that there is no reality, no objective truth, and that we all must respect our different realities and perspectives. Yet they now apparently seem to have nothing left in place of argumentation, persuasion and reason except shouts, screams, insults, pouts, tears, threats and even death threats. Did they perhaps only accept the democratic process whilst it presented a means of imposing their will/ideology onto others and do they now reject the democratic process because it has failed them in this?
You can imagine we had an interesting discussion, and I was most impressed with - and learned something from - my daughter's rather penetrating questions. (Proud father.)
