Peer2Politics

“I’m with her,” says one of America’s leading intelligence and special operations officials, because the GOP nominee’s views put the nation at risk.

Mark MacKinnon reports on the relationship between seemingly unconnected events across the globe

"I think Peter Thiel supports Donald Trump because he believes it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to weaken America's attachment to democratic government.
I'm not accusing Thiel of any ambitions he hasn't more or less copped to. In an often-quoted 2009 essay, Thiel declared, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."
He also wrote that his fellow libertarians were on a "fool's errand" trying to achieve their ends through political means: "In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms--from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called 'social democracy.'"
The only thing that matters, he said, is that politics never be allowed to interfere with technological progress, because it's the latter, not the former, that will be humankind's salvation. "The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism."

  by Michael Rectenwald Published simultaneously in With Sober Senses and CLG News.   There’s a basic article of faith in leftist thought,

The company’s dominance means it can easily manipulate voter behavior. Though it claims it won’t, just the possibility is a threat to democracy

The internet is exploding with conversations about the Panama Papers — the largest data dump in history of secret files about rich people hiding and hoarding money. And yet the biggest story of all is hardly getting any attention.

Where white riots come from

From The Huffington Post: ‘…Noam Chomsky, the renowned scholar and MIT professor emeritus, says that the rise of Donald Trump in American politics is, in part, fueled by deeply rooted fear and hopelessness that may be caused by an alarming spike in mortality rates for a generation of poorly educated whites. “He’s evidently appealing to

 By George Lakoff          Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why he is winning — and winning handily, and even many Republicans don't see him as a Republican…

"“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”

When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message about free trade and its victims

The Republican Party of the past at least showed itself capable of coherently responding to domestic and global issues.

While not many Transition groups will have to contend with Donald Trump walking through the door and asking to get involved, most will find themselves needing to manage people who feel disruptive, people with wide variations of self-awareness and empathy.  Managed skilfully, it can be the making of the group – and is pretty essential to our embracing of diversity.  

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to publicly denounce the political positions of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign during the keynote speech of the company’s annual F8 developer conference.

From the era of slavery to the rise of Donald Trump, wealthy elites have relied on the loyalty of poor whites. All Americans deserve better.

As awful as Donald Trump is, it will be exciting to witness the coming re-creation of the Republican Party.

Donald Trump at a campaign rally (CC BY-SA 2.0 Gage Skidmore) George Lakoff Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate

College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now these elites are being made to pay. Their duplicity has brought them—and the rest of us—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
- 2016/03/02

A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what's driving Donald Trump's ascent. What they found has implications that go well beyond 2016.