{"id":245915,"date":"2016-05-25T18:38:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T18:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blaming-too-much-democracy-for-trump\/"},"modified":"2016-05-25T18:38:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-25T18:38:42","slug":"blaming-too-much-democracy-for-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/blaming-too-much-democracy-for-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming \u2018Too Much Democracy\u2019 for Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"588.32422106825\">\n<p>The latest\u00a0lament of the neocon establishment is that America is suffering from too much democracy \u2013 leading to Donald Trump \u2013 but the opposite is more to the point, how elite manipulation set this stage, explains Mike Lofgren.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-19580\"\/>By Mike Lofgren<\/p>\n<p>British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2016\/04\/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html\"><u>a piece<\/u><\/a> that has aroused considerable comment, some of it\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/05\/07\/the_elites_brought_this_on_themselves_what_andrew_sullivan_will_never_understand_partner\/\"><u>reasonably on point<\/u><\/a>, and some <a href=\"http:\/\/journalofamericangreatness.blogspot.com\/2016\/05\/trump-sullivan-and-caesarism.html?m=1\"><u>bloviatingly incoherent<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What is all the fuss about? Sullivan, in critiquing the Donald Trump phenomenon and the political factors that gave rise to it, makes a few good points, but buries them under a ridiculous premise: The culprit responsible for Trump is too much democracy, and the cure is more elite control of the political process.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_19582\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-19582\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"Writer Andrew Sullivan\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-1028x683.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-160x106.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-19582\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"Writer Andrew Sullivan\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-1028x683.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Andrew-Sullivan-cred-Stuck-In-Customs-flickr-160x106.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Writer Andrew Sullivan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sullivan gets everything backward. It is as if a safety inspector had gone aboard\u00a0<em>RMS Titanic<\/em>, minutely examined her watertight hatches, boiler and steam turbine, and then declared her safe because he judged that the lack of lifeboats reduced the chances of capsizing from too much top weight.<\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell, Sullivan attributes Trump\u2019s nomination for the presidency by one of our two major parties to the rise of what he calls \u201chyperdemocracy.\u201d Accompanying this alleged excess of democracy is a mania for equality that leads to all manner of pointless leveling of social classes along with an undermining of authority.<\/p>\n<p>As chief witness for the prosecution, he calls to the stand no less than Plato, who argued that the ripening of democracy births manifold horrors like gender equality, the treatment of foreigners as equals, an abatement of cruelty to animals, and the rich mingling freely with the poor.<\/p>\n<p>One wonders if Sullivan could have cited a more relevant critic of the contemporary political system of a continent-sized nation with 320 million people than a metaphysician dwelling in a tiny city-state more than 2,400 years ago. And a rather implausible critic at that: the bedrock of Plato\u2019s philosophy was his belief that physical objects and events are mere shadows of their ideal forms, which exist only insofar as they crudely simulate the perfect idealizations of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/05\/25\/blaming-too-much-democracy-for-trump\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest\u00a0lament of the neocon establishment is that America is suffering from too much democracy \u2013 leading to Donald Trump \u2013 but the opposite is more to the point, how elite manipulation set this stage, explains Mike Lofgren. By Mike Lofgren British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with\u00a0a piece that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-245915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}