This philosopher predicted Trump's rise in 1998

**vy65** · 02-10-2017

Click bait-y le, but interesting read nonetheless

Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers – themselves desperately afraid of being downsized – are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for – someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...ld-trump-obama

**Reck** · 02-10-2017

The electoral College is still not going to go away though. It should, but it still wont.

**boutons_deux** · 02-10-2017

Don the Con is a fraud, a bogus "strong man".

He's had nearly a month to at least announce help for his voters in financial distress, and he's done nothing but "reality TV" like the Carrier charade.

**baseline bum** · 02-10-2017

You know, Quadimodo predicted all this.

**Chinook** · 02-10-2017

Vox put up a Youtube video of Ezra Klein chastising Americans for "almost" electing Trump on 11/7. How arrogant is that?

**boutons_deux** · 02-10-2017

My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it's not Orwell, he warned, it's Brave New World

The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about it

Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book written by my late father, Neil Postman, which anticipated back in 1985 so much about what has become of our current public discourse.

the dystopia my father believed we should have been watching out for. He wrote:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture."

My father’s book warned of what was coming, but others have seen and feared aspects of it, too (Norbert Wiener, Sinclair Lewis, Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, David Foster Wallace, Sherry Turkle, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Edward Snowden, to name a few).

Our public discourse has become so trivialized, it’s astounding that we still cling to the word “debates” for what our presidential candidates do onstage when facing each other. Really? Who can be shocked by the rise of a reality TV star, a man given to loud, inflammatory statements, many of which are spectacularly untrue but virtually all of which make for what used to be called “good television”?

Who can be appalled when the coin of the realm in public discourse is not experience, thoughtfulness or diplomacy but the ability to amuse – no matter how maddening or revolting the amusement?

Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, is cited for remarking in his 1980 acceptance speech that that era was notable for “a refusal to remember”;

my father notes Miłosz referencing “the shattering fact that there are now more than one hundred books in print that deny that the Holocaust ever took place”.

“An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan,” my father wrote.

“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us … [but] who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?”

The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_camp aign=pockethits

**Mitch** · 02-10-2017

Scott Adams was 2 steps ahead of this dude, tbh

**Thread** · 02-10-2017

Trump mopped the in' floor with HillaryPERIOD

**DMC** · 02-10-2017

Originally Posted by Thread

Trump mopped the in' floor with HillaryPERIOD

They were selling her .

**Thread** · 02-10-2017

Originally Posted by DMC

They were selling her .

Damn right.

**baseline bum** · 02-10-2017

Originally Posted by Thread

Trump mopped the in' floor with HillaryPERIOD

It was more like 6: Clinton missed her free throws and head just squeaked out a W as a result.

**SnakeBoy** · 02-11-2017

Originally Posted by boutons_deux

My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it's not Orwell, he warned, it's Brave New World

The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about it

Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book written by my late father, Neil Postman, which anticipated back in 1985 so much about what has become of our current public discourse.

the dystopia my father believed we should have been watching out for. He wrote:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture."

My father’s book warned of what was coming, but others have seen and feared aspects of it, too (Norbert Wiener, Sinclair Lewis, Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, David Foster Wallace, Sherry Turkle, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Edward Snowden, to name a few).

Our public discourse has become so trivialized, it’s astounding that we still cling to the word “debates” for what our presidential candidates do onstage when facing each other. Really? Who can be shocked by the rise of a reality TV star, a man given to loud, inflammatory statements, many of which are spectacularly untrue but virtually all of which make for what used to be called “good television”?

Who can be appalled when the coin of the realm in public discourse is not experience, thoughtfulness or diplomacy but the ability to amuse – no matter how maddening or revolting the amusement?

Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, is cited for remarking in his 1980 acceptance speech that that era was notable for “a refusal to remember”;

my father notes Miłosz referencing “the shattering fact that there are now more than one hundred books in print that deny that the Holocaust ever took place”.

“An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan,” my father wrote.

“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us … [but] who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?”

The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_camp aign=pockethits

Not that I agree with it but that is the first decent article you've ever posted. President Trump is making you a better poster already.