The point of having a President

CrystalGeezer

My secret's my enzyme.
Morrissey asked this last night in Tucson. I'll take a crack at it.



The President, the Prime Minister, leaders in general create a sense of order for people who are, generally, not that smart and cooperate more productively as a society if they sense someone is in charge. It is essential to have someone in charge, Anarchy would never work, look at riot situations, it becomes a chaotic all man for themselves and people become very selfish without order. Having said that and not giving people credit and PERHAPS what Morrissey is sensing is that the people in control seem to be manipulating situations not in the favor of the flock who they are elected to represent. This could be due to a number of factors, one conspiratorial theory I've heard is that there is an old boy's club controlling all leaders to maintain a dictinctive two class system: extremely rich and extremely poor. America operates under the illusion we have a healthy middle class but if you look at the statistics the gap between the very rich and very poor is widening at an alarming rate. The great dupe facilitated by the old boy's that maintain control of the leaders. One aspect of that theory is that there is no two party system except for on television. Republican and Democratic candidates (substiture Whig and Tory for UK) graduate from the same secret school of power and pretend to lean one way or another when in reality the main goal is to protect the interests of the secret old boy's club. This either happen literally where Barack and Mittens are tipping glasses afterhours in some secret Eli hideaway applauding their acting job at a recent debate...or it's more of a cosmic thing where the old boy's use...well, it's hard to go into. The point is, the interests of the people in system seems to be on the back burner. This does not mean that the system itself is flawed. The constitution is a f***ing brilliant document. The system of checks and balances is extremely fair and studied, the system works, it;s the participants that are suspect. I honestly don't believe Obama is a willing participant in the greatest dupe, but i see where Morrissey is coming from. Something is off. There is major imbalance, look at the economies crapping out. I don't have the education to comment on financial balance, but it seems to be a BIG sign that shit is f***ed up and corrupt in order for a few to win. I firmly believe in a saying I bought on a bumper sticker at the Farmer's Market, "If the people lead, eventially the leaders willl follow." It struck me as profound truth, but it has to be a truth that seeps into existence like a viral video and take over, but it has to be based on compassion, empathy, firmness, resolute. But order has to remain, we need presidents and Prime Ministers. We just need them to think differently.
 
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PS. I am a direct descendant of Benjamin Rush. :o (and a push and the land is ours...:p)
 
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And not having an sniper assasin around when you make a speech!

*kicks sniper under bed*
 
Don't you remember guys Morrissey wearing Obama t-shirt?

Like a lot of leftists, he was sick of the Bush regime and bought into Obama's Hope hype. It was probably wishful thinking, as it was for many people. At any rate it all turned out to be bullshit. What a surprise.

The bottom line is that post 2008, I think a lot of people are replacing their specific disappointment in Obama with a baser, more complete emotion; that of disgust and apathy and disillusionment with the entire process. I think it's starting to dawn on people that the idea of a "president" in the classic sense of the word is totally gone, and that everything is just based on securing more money and power for the select few; and suppressing the rights and voices of the people.

If America, as America is cartoonized and imagined to be, ever really existed at all, then it is surely on its last legs.

The president is a puppet; a veneer. Nothing more. He is a carnival barker.
 
Like a lot of leftists, he was sick of the Bush regime and bought into Obama's Hope hype. It was probably wishful thinking, as it was for many people. At any rate it all turned out to be bullshit. What a surprise.

The bottom line is that post 2008, I think a lot of people are replacing their specific disappointment in Obama with a baser, more complete emotion; that of disgust and apathy and disillusionment with the entire process. I think it's starting to dawn on people that the idea of a "president" in the classic sense of the word is totally gone, and that everything is just based on securing more money and power for the select few; and suppressing the rights and voices of the people.

If America, as America is cartoonized and imagined to be, ever really existed at all, then it is surely on its last legs.

The president is a puppet; a veneer. Nothing more. He is a carnival barker.


I don't know that all of Obama's "Hope Hype" was bullshit. I thought the effort to introduce a comprehensive public-health system was genuinely admirable but, yes, it did end up devolving into a voucher-type system ... I think ?


I do agree, though, that for the most part, presidents/prime ministers tend to be unnecessary figureheads. Here, in Australia, the executive powers of the PM (although I'm not wholly sure) consist only of the right to form cabinet whereas the US president's ability to, as I understand it, individually veto bills strikes me as a unwholesome concentration of rule. Trivial in the first instance , faintly ominous in the next...




So where is Ralph Nader these days .. ?
 
hey CG, the Demos and Reps can still be in a kind of grand conspiracy against "us" and be at each other's mortal enemies
think Julius Caesar and his rivals in the Roman Senate
one need to look no further than the ancient Roman "Republic"* to find the state of most current nation's governments
economics moves on, science moves on, but the mass manipulation of people remains the same as it ever was, same as it ever was...


*=to be fair though, we have really been in the "Empire" phase of our history for at least a century now
so its best to think of Obama's election as like when Rome first got an Emperor from one of the "provinces" rather than from Rome itself, but still one of their kind, all of the power hungry are of a kind, regardless of race, color, sex, creed, etc, etc
 
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It's rare that I agree wholeheartedly with everything in a Morrissey statement in this day and age, but he is completely right. The "new way", in my opinion, is not a new way at all, and it isn't a form of anarchism either. It's something called direct democracy, a form of government where the people vote for initiatives in referendums, instead of voting for representatives who carry out initiatives based on their own ideology and external factors affecting them (such as the desires of powerful donors, and the financial elite). In representative democracy, there's nothing to stop elected officials from acting on their own will, reneging on campaign promises, and making decisions behind the curtain of public scrutiny, whether because they genuinely believe that they're acting in the best interests of the country, or because more powerful forces than themselves are pulling them into their direction. Direct democracy, a fully transparent form of government, would remove these corrupting influences and truly "give power back to the people."
 
It's rare that I agree wholeheartedly with everything in a Morrissey statement in this day and age, but he is completely right. The "new way", in my opinion, is not a new way at all, and it isn't a form of anarchism either. It's something called direct democracy, a form of government where the people vote for initiatives in referendums, instead of voting for representatives who carry out initiatives based on their own ideology and external factors affecting them (such as the desires of powerful donors, and the financial elite). In representative democracy, there's nothing to stop elected officials from acting on their own will, reneging on campaign promises, and making decisions behind the curtain of public scrutiny, whether because they genuinely believe that they're acting in the best interests of the country, or because more powerful forces than themselves are pulling them into their direction. Direct democracy, a fully transparent form of government, would remove these corrupting influences and truly "give power back to the people."

Two things. Firstly, the "direct" in "direct democracy" is redundant since "democracy", translated from Greek, means "rule of the citizens" and, secondly, given citizens' lamentable apathy toward anything vaguely "political", under contemporary conditions, it's hard to see how any transition to democracy would/could work.
 
It's rare that I agree wholeheartedly with everything in a Morrissey statement in this day and age, but he is completely right. The "new way", in my opinion, is not a new way at all, and it isn't a form of anarchism either. It's something called direct democracy, a form of government where the people vote for initiatives in referendums, instead of voting for representatives who carry out initiatives based on their own ideology and external factors affecting them (such as the desires of powerful donors, and the financial elite). In representative democracy, there's nothing to stop elected officials from acting on their own will, reneging on campaign promises, and making decisions behind the curtain of public scrutiny, whether because they genuinely believe that they're acting in the best interests of the country, or because more powerful forces than themselves are pulling them into their direction. Direct democracy, a fully transparent form of government, would remove these corrupting influences and truly "give power back to the people."

Kaz , weren't there problems in California (for example) with this type of "Citizen Initiated Referendum " ? In that wealthy lobbyists were able to "astroturf" an issue sufficiently to drum up the number of votes needed to repeal some specific legislation ( regardless of the legitimacy of doing so ) ? I suppose I think that in a community consisting of both citizens and corporations , I know whose voice will be loudest...
 
Morrissey asked this last night in Tucson. I'll take a crack at it.



The President, the Prime Minister, leaders in general create a sense of order for people who are, generally, not that smart and cooperate more productively as a society if they sense someone is in charge. It is essential to have someone in charge, Anarchy would never work, look at riot situations, it becomes a chaotic all man for themselves and people become very selfish without order. Having said that and not giving people credit and PERHAPS what Morrissey is sensing is that the people in control seem to be manipulating situations not in the favor of the flock who they are elected to represent. This could be due to a number of factors, one conspiratorial theory I've heard is that there is an old boy's club controlling all leaders to maintain a dictinctive two class system: extremely rich and extremely poor. America operates under the illusion we have a healthy middle class but if you look at the statistics the gap between the very rich and very poor is widening at an alarming rate. The great dupe facilitated by the old boy's that maintain control of the leaders. One aspect of that theory is that there is no two party system except for on television. Republican and Democratic candidates (substiture Whig and Tory for UK) graduate from the same secret school of power and pretend to lean one way or another when in reality the main goal is to protect the interests of the secret old boy's club. This either happen literally where Barack and Mittens are tipping glasses afterhours in some secret Eli hideaway applauding their acting job at a recent debate...or it's more of a cosmic thing where the old boy's use...well, it's hard to go into. The point is, the interests of the people in system seems to be on the back burner. This does not mean that the system itself is flawed. The constitution is a f***ing brilliant document. The system of checks and balances is extremely fair and studied, the system works, it;s the participants that are suspect. I honestly don't believe Obama is a willing participant in the greatest dupe, but i see where Morrissey is coming from. Something is off. There is major imbalance, look at the economies crapping out. I don't have the education to comment on financial balance, but it seems to be a BIG sign that shit is f***ed up and corrupt in order for a few to win. I firmly believe in a saying I bought on a bumper sticker at the Farmer's Market, "If the people lead, eventially the leaders willl follow." It struck me as profound truth, but it has to be a truth that seeps into existence like a viral video and take over, but it has to be based on compassion, empathy, firmness, resolute. But order has to remain, we need presidents and Prime Ministers. We just need them to think differently.


people still listen to what he has to say? after he said that stuff about the troops..i kinda had a sudden realization...he just needs to shut up most of the time.
 
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