The first Republican to rebuke the climate denial trend will be the first Republican I take seriously.
I'm reading the book "This Changes Everything" and it's a very compelling case for why conservatives (and conservative politicians especially) feel threatened by climate change as a problem with their ideology - because if free-rein capitalism caused such a messed up problem, we may have to look elsewhere to fix it. That would hurt a lot of rich people in their pocketbooks, and they spend millions on propaganda in conservative news sources to combat the idea that free market solutions might actually turn out to spawn free market problems, and a big problem at that.
I grew up an Ayn Rand-toting libertarian, but have gradually morphed into a socialist because I've become disillusioned with the dishonesty and fraud that plague the free market, resulting in an inequality not only of wealth but of power and influence, so that the majority of poor people in this world are getting screwed over in a million ways just to make the rich richer. What's good for 99% of the world, like strict pollution standards, can be overthrown easily by the money and power of the 1% who stand to lose money if those solutions happen. The problems that face our world today are so wide-spread that I feel like they can't be solved without government interventions, as inefficient or costly as they may be.
Mostly what I hate is that our own government seems so entrenched with moneyed interests that they're not doing what's best for the people they're supposed to represent. I don't think Bernie Sanders is going to be some kind of panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction. I disagree with many of his spending initiatives (although I appreciate that he's transparent about where the taxes will come from that will pay for those programs), but right now he seems to me to be the least corrupt of either side and the most honest in both word and action about wanting to get money out of politics.
I've walked a similar path as yours. My disillusionment is amplified by the cynical and disrespectful foreign policy of our government since WW2. At times guided by corporate interests, or simplistic ideologies, or a mix of both, foreign policy doctrines have been largely influenced by the people each President appointed to their cabinet.
As far as I can tell, the remaining Republican candidates are likely to bring back the neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and company (if you still love the neoconservatives and their philosophy - I urge you to learn about Doug Feith - the architect of DeBaathification and prison policy in Iraq - a guy who General Tommy Franks called "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet" - and when you're done reading, check back in).
The last people I want in the next administration's cabinet are neoconservatives with their
noble lies and their penchant for believing their own noble lies (look at CIA director William J. Casey and his refusal to believe the CIA when they told him there was no USSR state sponsorship of global terror - they told him *they* had created the evidence of the link in their own black ops propaganda missions, also, subsequent claims by neocons that 'The Stassi files' bore out the links is patently false. But that's for another discussion).
Whatever you believe about what our foreign policy should be, I'm wondering:
Who will each candidate choose as their most trusted advisors? Who will they pack their cabinet with? We're not electing a president, we're electing an administration. Personally I'd like a president who recruits a 'team of rivals' as Lincoln did. But I don't think we'll get that. We'll probably get echo-chambers of incestuous amplification no matter what. That said, who are the people that each candidate will recruit? And, what do you think of them?
Rubio: seems to be
down with the neoconservatives.Cruz: mixed. I'm not sure the slant of all the news outlets reporting on the issue, but he at least talks about the neocon view being simplistic. I can't believe I actually agree with words coming out of Ted Cruz's mouth here:
At a town hall Monday morning in Coralville, Cruz rejected the “binary” framing of a choice between a foreign policy philosophy where “we want to retreat from the world and be isolationist and leave everyone alone, or we’ve got to be these crazy neo-con invade-every-country-on-earth and send our kids to die in the Middle East.”
“Most people I know don’t agree with either one of those,” he said. “They think both of those are nuts.”
And he's said he'll cut out 4 cabinet agencies, + the IRS. Uh,er, k?
Bernie Sanders: he says he'll totally cut out all Wall Street advisors from places like Goldman Sachs. He will likely recruit two people I'm familiar with: Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren. I've read he may recruit economist Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, both of whom I'm unfamiliar with.
Hillary Clinton: Elizabeth Warren, Jake Sullivan, Bill Clinton?
Trump - he's said he'd recruit people like Sarah Palin.
