Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Krystal Ball: Was I Wrong About Trump?" video.

Yeah I hated my high school teachers who made me study Orwell. We did both Animal Farm and 1984. It was difficult and borderline a cruel thing to do to teenagers. Then Trump came along and justified it. Here's some more quotes I have collected in recent months. Enjoy “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov, News Week, 1980. And few more: "When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent." ― Isaac Asimov “Logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.” ― Rod Sterling in his introduction to the Twilight episode “The Obsolete Man” originally aired on June 2, 1961 on CBS. “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ― Voltaire “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” ― Aldous Huxley “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” ― Mark Twain “Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche “I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done” ― Donald Trump answering the NY Times on his 2nd term agenda. August 2020. And a classic I recently re-discovered. “Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don’t know what it is. I keep myself in a state of utter confusion.” ― Colonel Flagg of the CIA From the TV Show MASH sometime in the 1970s.
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@knackyknack I kind of know that having studied both. What most people really don't get is that when any of these political "isms" go too far the concepts of left and right don't matter as much. If your the person being shot by the henchman of a dictator it doesn't really matter if its an AK47 made in a leftist workers nightmare or if its an AR15 made in a Western capitalist factory. You're still getting shot and if the bullet hits a vital organ you're going to die. Go have a look at major environmental disasters and you will find out pretty quickly that the greed and stupidity of the Western Capitalists is equaled by the greed and stupidity of the Leftist/Communist/Socialist/Marxist world. You can look at the insanity of the Californian Aquifer or the insanity of the Aral Sea or Yong Ding or 3 Gorges and its the same brainless stupidity again and again. Once any society lets its "ism" of the leash its almost inevitable that like letting a rabid pit bull lose - you'll get bit.
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@knackyknack I'm actually an Australian who went to college in America (U. Illinois) on a sports scholarship. I really love America, mainly because I got to see Americans at their best. It simply infuriates me to see what the Dems and Repubs have done. Its not one or the other ITS BOTH. The proof in that is that Trump had Steve Mnuchin (of Goldman Sachs fame) and Biden just hired 2 more Goldman Sachs plus a Blackrock and a McKinsey. WTF Where is the difference other than the raging twitter storms we wont be getting. that's the same Goldman Sachs who were caught red handed selling dud financial packages during the GFC. SO how the F are any of them being trusted to run America's finances. McKinsey have made billions in consulting fees sending jobs to Mexico, China and anywhere else there were no unions and cheap labor. Your right the issues go back way further than Trump. He's more like the inevitable conclusion of decades of abuse by the elite. I've watched a lot of Mark Blyth this last year and he has as good of a handle on this stuff as anyone. He's also been pointing out that ITS NOT JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM. All the stuff I first recognized 30 years ago I have watched Australia slowly adopt and go down a similar path. Just as America has a group of bankers running Wall St and the Treasury, we have similar and from what I know so does Britain and Europe.
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@Wolfsheim23 I'm Australian but went to college in America. I did engineering but a bunch of my frat brothers were pre-law and loved arguing the amendments with me because I came form a different background with different views. The 1st and free speech around the world is a hot topic and has been long before social media. The question is one of "where do you draw the line and make someone accountable for what they say" For Americans there is that question that most never have to ask. And that is WHY was it so important that free speech was the 1st. Why wasn't a fair trial the 1st or anything else. The answer is actually in American history which almost no other modern country has. Americans had to fight for their independence and one thing the British officers did to the colonials was try and shut them up. If they spoke out against an injustice the British officers used Sedition and Treason laws and simply hanged people. The film last of the Mohicans with Daniel Day Lewis has a good example of it. Because of the American Revolution Australia, Canada and others never had to fight for independence and we never had to deal with that and we never really have. Most Australians don't know that we actually have much tighter restrictions on what we can say. We have many freedoms but they are not in our constitution as a basic right like America does. I actually think the US Constitution is one of the great achievements of human history. But it has 1 major flaw. The founding fathers never considered or predicted that people like Mitch McConnell would undermine 1 of the basic functions (checks and balances). They never expected groups like the Federalist Society would seek to influence and control ALL Federal Court appointees. The problem now is that America has all these "special interest groups" who twist the gift the founding fathers left to suit what they want without caring about consequences to others. Its basic selfishness mostly.
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Matteo he's another good quote for you: “The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the world. No first world country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent” ― Gore Vidal
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@theprimevegan5410 You forgot to add that the documentary "Oufoxed" should become compulsory viewing for everyone who wants to have an understanding of how America got to this point.
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“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov, News Week, 1980. And few more: "When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent." ― Isaac Asimov “Logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.” ― Rod Sterling in his introduction to the Twilight episode “The Obsolete Man” originally aired on June 2, 1961 on CBS. “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ― Voltaire “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” ― Aldous Huxley “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” ― Mark Twain “Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche “I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done” ― Donald Trump answering the NY Times on his 2nd term agenda. August 2020. And a classic I recently re-discovered. “Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don’t know what it is. I keep myself in a state of utter confusion.” ― Colonel Flagg of the CIA From the TV Show MASH sometime in the 1970s.
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No next he can actually quote what Michael Moore warned "Trump has a plan." He warned more than anything else that America was not ready for what Trump would dream up. He suggested a few things, some practical and others impractical but his main warning was that Trump would do almost anything to stay in power. And in basic concept he was a shit load more accurate than Saagar and a lot of others were, and still are.
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@Wolfsheim23 Please just take your ignorance and go bother someone else.
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@alanpaulsen6174 You'll love this one then, it was said 2 years before Trump was even born and at a time when Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were all in power. Look at what it says about method and patriots. Try not to fall off your chair. Henry A. Wallace, Vice President of the United States in the New York Times, April 9, 1944 “The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
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Don't forget MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, OAN, Newsmax and all the rest of corporate/private hyper-political media.
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@Lord_technofascist_nepobaby Correct in many ways, but another way to consider it is that sometimes you can refurbish what's worn out, or repair what's broken but sometimes you have to completely replace something because its beyond being refurbished or repaired.
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@extraslipperywhenwet In what way are you claiming CNN profit from racism? Not disagreeing, I don't like CNN and there coverage of news is mostly crap at best. I just want you to explain how CNN profits from racism.
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@knackyknack Sorry but 1984 was about totalitarianism, which can easily occur from any absolutist state. Orwell hated (and rightly so) the radical left wing states of Eastern Europe. But you can also get totalitarian states from the right almost as easily from right wing states. Just look at how many right wing revolutions that America sponsored that ended up as disasters with totalitarian regimes. Go look them up you'll fid plenty of examples across the world from Central & South America to Africa, Asia and the middle East, but arguably one of the best examples is Iran. Your part right Trump was a dick more than a dictator, but he was dictatorial (as in how he behaved). He might not have had them shot but the revolving door at the White House saw just as much action as the death camps many dictators have had. Maybe that's why he cozied up to some of the worst on the planet - he wanted to find out how to get it done. If there's one thing no American has mentioned yet (or maybe they have) what these last few weeks have shown is that the American system has survived. Its been challenged in a way nobody ever expected it to be and its still there or at least its still there so far. Many other countries and empires have not survived this sort of challenge - the Russian Monarchy didn't, the Soviet Empire didn't, the French Monarchy didn't. The Chinese did but they used tanks on unarmed civilians.
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@knackyknack Your second quote is one I haven't heard and its right in line with what I keep trying to tell Americans. They scream and rant about socialism but have no idea what it means. There definition of socialism comes form one thing USSR where that second S is for Socialist. By the same notion East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic and North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea should have made us all hate these things call Democratic Republics because they were/are horrible places where basic human rights and freedoms meant nothing. I'm an engineer and when we label or define something it has meaning and it has to be consistent. In politics labels and definitions mean nothing other than the current context. Thanks for that Orwell Quote, that's ben copied to my collection.
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