There's the Hierarchical Christians, and Then Not So Much

The Most Rev. Justin Welby, England's top religious authority, the archbishop of Canterbury, said that he "really genuinely" can't comprehend why fundamentalists in the United States have provided such a strong base for Trump.

Must be that he hasn't comprehended just what U.S. versions of hierarchical religions are based upon – not "man" made in the image of God, but God made in the image of a man on top of a hierarchy (quote from Clueless at the Top).

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/archbishop-canterbury-baffled-christians-who-back-trump-n824001

Excuse: Men Just Can't Control Themselves

One way to keep the top not accountable is to assume that the control tactics they use are inate, and can not be helped. Such is the approach of Stephen Marche in the New York Times article, "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido."

Of course he ignores the power that men have on top of the hierarchy that has allowed them to control women for centuries.

Marche: "How are we supposed to create an equal world when male mechanisms of desire are inherently brutal?" 

Oh are we supposed to agree that the poor men just can't be held accountable on top of the hierarchy, because they can't help their behavior, it is born to males?

Marche: "Acknowledging the brutality of male libido is not, of course, some kind of excuse. Sigmund Freud recognized the id, and knew it as “a chaos, a caldron full of seething excitations.” But the point of Freud was not that boys will be boys. Rather the opposite: The idea of the Oedipus complex contained an implicit case for the requirements of strenuous repression: If you let boys be boys, they will murder their fathers and sleep with their mothers."

Marche: "What if there is no possible reconciliation between the bright clean ideals of gender equality and the mechanisms of human desire?"  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/sunday/harassment-men-libido-masculinity.html?emc=eta1

Republicans: Let's Keep the Lower Groups Down, Particularly Children

In The New York Times, in discussing the GOP tax bill: "This time around, much more clearly than before, the goal seems to be to favor wealth, especially inherited wealth, over work. And buried in the legislation are multiple measures that would make it much harder for the children of the middle and working classes to work their way up."

"It selectively raises taxes on families with children. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in...systematic attempt to lavish benefits on the children of the ultra-wealthy while making it harder for less fortunate young people to achieve upward social mobility."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/republican-taxes-next-generation.html

The Top of Our HIerarchies Obviously Can Never Have Enough - Class War

 Ryan Cooper in The Week:

"The Republican donor class and their employees in Congress are barely even attempting to hide the fact that this tax 'reform' is about transferring as much income and wealth to the ultra-rich as possible, on their direct orders.

"The tax benefits for ultra-wealthy children in particular would be stupendous.

"The only possible conclusion is that the plutocracy is no longer satisfied with taking almost all the income growth. They now want to diminish everyone else's share; as George Carlin once said, "they want more for themselves, and less for everybody else.

"We now know there shall be no quarter from the ultra-rich in their quest to take as much of the national income and wealth for themselves as possible."

http://theweek.com/articles/738111/republican-tax-bill-class-war

Even Conservative Commentators Are Getting It

Jennifer Rubin writes the "Right Turn" blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. But even she says that change is needed among conservative men.

When describing Trump stumpers on Sunday shows, she said, "At times the conversation was hilarious — or maddening, if you prefer — as these men showed that being a loyal Republican these days means suspending any moral or religious code one might have."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/11/20/republican-men-need-new-talking-points/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na&utm_term=.803055e2cad4

Fractal, A Great Model for Hierarchy Building on Hierarchy

In "The GOP's Fractal Incompetency Problem," published in The Week, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains that Republican dysfunction is fractal. Every problem is caused by an even deeper problem. We will use Gobry's levels to demonstrate hierarchies.

Going down level after level, we see, to use our terminology and theory, levels of hierarchy seeping into the Republican core. Republicans aren't making choices - they support hierarchies with every decision they make. They don't have a leader weighing the pros and cons - they decide in favor of hierarchies virtually every time.

At another level down, nobody knows or agrees what the Republican Party is for. Yes, they are so clueless at the top, and have accumulated the most clueless in their midst, that they have no idea what reality is at this point.

http://theweek.com/articles/735567/gops-fractal-incompetence-problem

Discuss Trump with Children - A Choice for Parents as in the Former Soviet Union

Mikhail Iossel in The New Yorker brings us to the time of the late Soviet Union, when parents were very cautious about discussing politics with their children in fear that they would tell a teacher or another adult what their parents said.  The same is taking place in Russia now, too—at least, in intelligentsia families: What’s the point of discussing Putin? Putin is as Putin does.

En his article entitled, "Welcome to the World of Soviet Feelings," Iossel equates the Russian situation to the present United States, where parents in the face a choice whether or not to honestly discuss Trump.

 "Trump is a distinctly ugly thread in the narrative of the American Presidency, a human disaster unto itself. What are responsible American parents supposed to say to their children about Trump? 'Sorry, kids, America has screwed up bigly this time around'? This sort of national calamity wasn’t supposed to happen in America. This is the Soviet kind of narrative, if you will: the rulership of the worst sort of people—the reckless, the ignorant, the avaricious, the lethally indifferent. That danger presented by Trump, the precariousness of U.S. democracy—that’s something, possibly, to tell one’s children. And to tell them, also, that it might be best not to talk about any of that with strangers. This is the end of American-bound innocence for the new generation of America’s children—and for their parents, too. Welcome to the world of 'Soviet' feelings."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/welcome-to-the-world-of-soviet-feelings?mbid=social_facebook_aud_dev_kw_paid-welcome-to-the-world-of-soviet-feelings&kwp_0=563002

White Republicans Lead in NRA Funding, Democrats are Way Behind

The New York Times has released the list of the most funded congressional representatives in receiving money from the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.). The article, entitled "Thoughts and Prayers for Texas. NRA Funding for Washington" lists with pictures the top 10.

All of the top ten Senators and Representatives are white Republicans. Eighteen of the twenty are men. 

The highest ranked Democrat in the House is Sanford Bishop, who ranks 41st in career donations from the N.R.A. Among the top 100 House recipients, 95 are Republican. In the Senate, the top two Democrats are Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who rank 52nd and 53rd — behind every Republican but Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/nra-funding-prayers-texas.html

White Men - Key to Why We Have So Many Mass Shootings

According to Newsweek, white men have committed mass shootings more than any other group. However, in our society, we have been slow to identify them as a group.

In hierarchies, top groups are given the "isolated incident" pass. When members of their group do something that is undesirable, it is assigned to a reason other than entitlement, as the Newsweek article suggests is at the root of the anger in white men.

If Muslim men or black women had committed a disproportionate number of mass shootings, then we would notice them as a group. Instead we say white males are mentally ill, but mentally ill women are not shooting hundreds of people they don't know.

 http://www.newsweek.com/white-men-have-committed-more-mass-shootings-any-other-group-675602?amp=1