Village Idiot

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Posts by Village Idiot

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  4

  Autocracy: Rules for Survival

  by Village Idiot in

  1. social
  2. current

  pardon the cut and paste but i simply can not do better than the author.. autocracy: rules for survival by masha gessen.

  i have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about vladimir putin’s russia.

  i have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect.

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  Village Idiot

  I wonder how many people are moving to Canada. But then Canada has had its share of right wing a$$holes. No one as bad as Trump I'm sure but, since they're next door, Trumpism might, under the right circumstances, be contagious.
  
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  4

  Autocracy: Rules for Survival

  by Village Idiot in

  1. social
  2. current

  pardon the cut and paste but i simply can not do better than the author.. autocracy: rules for survival by masha gessen.

  i have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about vladimir putin’s russia.

  i have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect.

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  Village Idiot

  GrreatTeacher,
  

  I felt dark winds blowing in the US not too long after Obama was elected.
  

  He was vilified even before he took office. I remember, shortly after his becoming president a group of armed men posting themselves on a church lawn (with permission of the church) at some distance from where he was going to speak. They held signs saying that they came in peace this time.

  I'm sure his name will live on in infamy in the eyes of conservatives. Every conspiracy crackpot and his sister will say something to the effect that:

  • Obama is planning to launch a coup against Trump.
  • Obama is going to take over the U.N. and open up concentration camps for Conservatives.
    
  • Liberals are arming themselves to overthrow Conservatives.
  • Etc. ad nauseum.

  And there's no exaggeration in what I just posted. I go to rightwingwatch.org every day and they reveal crackpots, some of them influential, saying similar things. The situation is just going to get critical one of these days.
  
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  4

  Autocracy: Rules for Survival

  by Village Idiot in

  1. social
  2. current

  pardon the cut and paste but i simply can not do better than the author.. autocracy: rules for survival by masha gessen.

  i have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about vladimir putin’s russia.

  i have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect.

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  Village Idiot

  Pardon the cut and paste but I simply can not do better than the author.
  

  Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen
  

  I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:

  Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one.

  ...
  

  To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture members of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.

  Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.

  Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.

  ...

  The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information.

  ...

  Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.

  Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home.

  Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.

  Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.
  
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  49

  How do you categorise the Society - Cult or High control religion

  by UnshackleTheChains in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have often seen many categorise the organisation in different ways.

  some say cult, some say high control religion.

  cult or high control religion?.

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  Village Idiot

  I refer to it as a dictatorial religion. "Cult" is too vague when it comes to strictly defining it and can fit a wide assortment of religions like the Mormons. "Cult" is a word that fundamentalist Christians like to use to describe those religions who are doctrinally incorrect and established as an institution.
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  26

  JW requesting food assistance to Babylon the Great.

  by sp74bb in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  barcelona (spain), jan 8, 2017 at 1.30 pm.

  two publishers of the tagalog group in barcelona (public meeting at 4.30 pm) do visit an evangelical church barcelona downtown to receive free food bags.... i can confirm that the queue was long.

  the pastor in charge of this church has not allowed me to take picture of some older jw living barcelona downtown, but i was able to catch these young publishers.

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  Village Idiot

  Yes, I've heard of a neighborhood Witness who gets food from a local Catholic church. When she hears about me - a df'd apostate - she gets hysterical. I'm sure she'd keep that quiet if I were the one handing out the food.
  
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  11

  Trump names son-in-law as Chief White House advisor.

  by AFRIKANMAN in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  donald trump on monday named son-in-law jared kushner as senior white house advisor, rewarding the man widely credited as the brains behind his election but courting serious legal and ethical concerns..

  the baby-faced real estate developer and magazine publisher who turns 36 on tuesday, will be the youngest top member of the administration, working closely with chief of staff reince priebus and chief strategist steve bannon..

  "jared has been a tremendous asset and trusted advisor throughout the campaign and transition and i am proud to have him in a key leadership role in my administration," announced the republican president-elect..

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  Village Idiot

  Wasanelder Once,

  Why do you have to be so critical of comrade Trump?
  

  I like that one.
  
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  13

  Do You Believe in Fairies?

  by pale.emperor in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  before you start, i don't!!.

  http://www.healyourlife.com/do-you-believe-in-fairies.

  but i stumbled upon this article.

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  Village Idiot

  Yes indeed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. He wrote a book titled The Coming of the Fairies. I downloaded it and it was ridiculous. As "proof" that fairies were real he presented photographs in his book of what were supposed to be fairies dancing around a young teenage girl. They were paper cutouts.

  He would have made a great Witness. Sad.
  
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  29

  Watchtower Annulled My Baptism

  by RICHT in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  contrary to popular belief you can have your baptism annulled as i did by my local elders after my judicial hearing.. the watchtower of 1964 page 126 first paragraph clearly states that anyone that was committing a gross sin before, during and after their baptism is void.

  in order to get right with the lord you would need to be re-baptised.

  err no thanks, i'm not a believer!!!!.

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  Village Idiot

  I had a mind before, during, and after my baptism. Please annul me Jehovah.
  
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  17

  Just a dumb question. A minor was df in our cong 15 yrs old

  by poopie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the question is can her mother and father who are witnesses greet her in the morning only or would they be a sharer in her wicked deeds and thus also be df for saying a greeting?.

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  Village Idiot

  No, like Saethydd said, they won't get disfellowshipped according to an old Witchtower that I once read. It stated that parents were obligated to take care of minors under the law (secular) but they were not to have any "spiritual" associations with their minor children. I guess no family worship for them!
  
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  14

  elders are leaving me alone. what to make of this?

  by nowwhat? in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i am a born in that goes back to the 1960's i am in a very zealous congregation with super dub elders.

  i have been inactive for 3 years and only go to about 2 meetings a month.

  i made my displeasure known about the overlapping generation b.s.

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  Village Idiot

  Since then the elders neither harass me or encourage me. Am I just lucky?
  

  You are. Now forget about it unless you want to trim down your attendance to once a month followed by the once a year Memorial.