THE MORE THINGS CHANGE………..Don McMahon
We faithful Arsenal supporters over the Pond are currently being subjected to the most abject and distressing barrage of BS, narcissism, xenophobic and misogynistic offal ever conceived by the mind of man, as the ¨Donald¨, resplendent in his blond wig and chauvinism, holds court before the American public.
The court jester has also become the wannabe King, with the approval of a faction of crazy, racist, right wing fundamentalist nut cases and aaa type characters, more at home in a Disney cartoon than the real world.
This confirms my conviction that a minority of Yanks have become so gullible, pessimistic, and desperate, and of questionable mental stability that they will believe anything anyone says, IF it promises to makes things ¨better¨! Sound familiar? Tony’s recent excellent article about the Sports ministry ¨ threatening¨ to withhold £££ from the sweet FA IF they don’t reform themselves, has led me to consider the following.
In the case of the UK minister- this is all a ¨son et lumiere¨ or dog & pony show to distract your average UK citizen and football supporter, who these politicians regard as;
1) Too stupid to really understand anything past key stage 1 level, single sentences so simple a chimpanzee could understand them,
2) Ensure that the politician is ¨on the record¨ as opposing the inefficient, bumbling, corrupt and narcissistic FA, so that in the eventuality that it all blows up, their ass is covered,
3) Promise what you have no intention of delivering (truly a political art), and when it isn’t delivered, blame everything and everyone but NEVER take responsibility,
4) Gain brownie points from the media and your party hierarchy since any news is good news, and media coverage ¨enhances¨ the veneer of caring and decisiveness – always good for re-election,
5) ¨Prove¨ that you are tough and dedicated to rooting out ¨incompetence, indecision and mediocrity¨ in Football, even while displaying the same in your professional standards, and in your actions,
6) Take a ¨side¨ in the inevitable political debate that will spring up temporarily and subside equally rapidly as the next mini-crisis rears its welcome head,
7) All the while having a laugh at the imbeciles who voted for you and will take you at your word once again, despite countless prior disappointments, like a beaten and abused spouse returning to her abuser out of a mistaken belief that things will improve if ONLY she was nicer to him!
Trump was incorrectly reporting as having said (1998 interview) that IF he was ever to run for the presidency, he would choose the Republican party as their constituents are so stupid that they will believe anything you tell them, without any critical thought or dissent.
While this may in fact be the case, he most certainly is testing the waters to see what he can make people believe and having a jolly laugh as well. The UK sports minister is testing the waters as well. Once it becomes unarguably apparent that the sweet FA will not embark on a serious review and renovation of their bloated bureaucracy and that, in fact, as in the past, they will batten down the hatches and ride out the storm, confident in the knowledge that nothing will ever be done to change things, then all will return to the status quo, as it has so many times in the past.
Why should any of us hope that things will change when we see?
- FIFA being driven onto the rocks once again by a corrupt leadership,
- The politicians who got the Brexit vote passed, floundering on their promises,
- The repetitive comedy of errors and pantomime previous UK bigwigs have engendered when trying to get the FA to change its miscreant ways,
- The PIGMOB ceaselessly and invariably making a mockery of the Laws,
- The media turning a blind eye to real Football issues whilst reporting avidly on the luxurious ride the Arsenal players took to go to the US,
- The FA’s persistent myopic approach to coaching development, despite endless proof that foreigners don’t affect the quality of the English team but poor and limited coaches do,
- The assault on the messenger (anti-doping association) and the cop-out by the OEC on the Russian athletes ban and
- The mindless slavishness and wilful ignorance of the aaa to a perennial, blinkered meme about the Arsenal, Wenger, Gazidis, Kroenke and the Board!
Thank God Wenger and the Arsenal have standards that privilege integrity, sound financial management, sustainable player and youth development, excellent stewardship of our beloved Club, rational and carefully considered investment of our resources and a dignified view of football!
- Crisis already: all central defenders out, nobody to play anmore… or do we?
- Why are people so negative about Arsenal? The first answers.
- The Absolute Arsenal Transfer Index: 86 players we are signing, 21 players we are losing.
Untold Arsenal has published five books on Arsenal – all are available as paperback and three are now available on Kindle. The books are
- The Arsenal Yankee by Danny Karbassiyoon with a foreword by Arsene Wenger.
- Arsenal: the long sleep 1953 – 1970; a view from the terrace. By John Sowman with an introduction by Bob Wilson.
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football. By Tony Attwood, Andy Kelly and Mark Andrews.
- Making the Arsenal: a novel by Tony Attwood.
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal by Mark Andrews.
You can find details of all five on our new Arsenal Books page
You have my deepest sympathy.
We had the likes of Johnson and Farage in the UK (and we all know the number of promises they backtracked on). My mother always taught me though that there is always someone worse off than yourself…………..and that’s the US with Trump. I find it difficult to describe people who support him and it must be sheer purgatory for vast numbers of Americans having to listen to that garbage day in day out knowing full well that his campaign is based on lies and, if elected, the real threat he would be to world peace.
Agreed.
Don
While no one should ever underestimate the stupidity of an average American voter, Trump’s ascendancy through the Republican primaries had more to do with how incredibly lame the rest of the field was, and less to do with anything Trump himself might represent.
Once getting through the primaries any Republican candidate is bound to get at least 40% of vote , regardless how crazy or unfit for Presidency he might be.
Trump could take to the stage of his next speaking engagement with his dick hanging out and it would not cost him any Republican votes.
It’s all up to the 20% of the independent or undecided voters most presidential elections come down to, to eliminate this clown from taking the most powerful office in the land and the world itself.
The undecided voter is a strange phenomenon in itself seeing as there could not be a greater distance between the two platforms.
From the climate change, minority and women’s rights,education and student loans, energy policy, curtailing big farma and banks, citizens United ruling, taxation and spending.
Anyone who’s still an undecided voter , should probably have his or her head examined by one of the psychologists on the UA staff. 🙂
If anyone wants to have more confusion,check this out.Imagine him and Chomsky scrapping it out-Don can you verify any of this,Im pretty ignorant about US politics? Is this pure bs or any thing substantial in what hes saying? Some of the dialectics are poor, and the rest confusing from what Im seeing.Seems an exercise in how any argument can be twisted anyway?
Remember that quote in Platoon,” politics man,f*cking politics”.No wonder we all get stuck into bread and sports.The world seems a nightmare at the moment.
https://youtu.be/Gw8c2Cq-vpg
Don,
I have nothing left for Trump. The one positive, so far, is that he has spared us the ‘lord-almighty-thank-you-for-giving-me-to-the-world-who-needs-me-so-desperately-until-the-second-coming-of-christ’ attitude that most other GOP hopefuls had. On this regards, so far, I think he is far less a hypocrit than all the others – which does not mean I agree with his ‘messages’
As for the future, well, democracy is at work. Hitler needed 33 % of the votes to grab power and all germans were held collectively responsible for all the horrors that ensued.
The ‘funny’ or politically incorrect thought I do have is that middle class whites must be starting to feel a little like the native indians 200 years ago when (white) migrants were ‘eating’ up their lifestyle, country, etc. Strange (small) reversal of fortunes, don’t you think ?
Well UA is just not your regular football blog…great !
Here I am out west (NE British Columbia), on the edge of the oil patch, which is a bastion of red necks. And in the news in the last week or so, was that a local city councilor turned up for a city hall meeting wearing a Trump baseball hat.
I hope the English government at the next “feeding” just forgets about the FA. No allocation for them, no mention of them in the speaches or text.
According to TheRegister, there is an ostrich on the loose in Scotland.
I wonder if it can shoot? Might make a good winger, and take some of the pressure off OG.
🙂
At first I thought Trump was just in it for publicity and it was a joke, nobody will take him seriously. Then his popularity was moving up and then I started to think surely the Americans can’t be this crazy, once it’s confirm that he was the nominee, I thought are you f’ing serious, they are crazy in America. Now, if he does become President, let’s hope he doesn’t go through with some of his policies and it was just noise. Didn’t Nostradamus predicted WW3 in this millennium? Surely, it can’t be true.
Putin and Trump in power OMG.
In my country of origin, there was many years ago a band that released an album titled “The Country Wants You to Be Stupid”. Looks like it’s more universal than at first thought.
Kenneth………Noam Chomsky is the doyen of anti-establishment, anti-conservative, progressive in the US. He did debate Trump a few times but gave up, because he realized very quickly that Trump was a populist and would say anything, regardless of its incongruity and outright spuriousness, AND defend it to the hilt…just as he said he did when dealing with the media.
In the US, the populists flirt with a segment (often very large)of the political extremes (in his case the right wing neo-con fundamentalist Christians AND the lower middle class who are aggrieved)gun-toting, semi-racist poor whites. He parrots the ¨popular thinking¨ of these minorities and dares to say what they believe: big government is ruining their lives and threatening their constitutional rights, free-trade is inherently bad, the country is over-regulated, them darn foreigners are taking our jobs, crime is rampant(particularly among and by visible minorities like Hispanics and Blacks), women have too much power (choice,liberty,influence, etc.), IF the rich get richer the poor will benefit(????) and so on. ALL of these have been proven totally false and misleading BUT there are enough desperate,suffering, angry whites to make Trump look like a saviour. He has alienated most minorities and most women, but that may not translate into significant votes against him. The reality is that the Democrats already have about 256 electoral votes (if the voting patterns for the last two decades remain true)and need only 18 more to win the presidency. Thus Clinton (who is not at all liked by most) was smart to name Tim Kane (governor of virginia, whose state has 13 electoral votes. Getting 5 more votes will be a very small challenge.
this all seems so deja vu (FIFA elections, FA media manipulation) thus the motive for this article!
We in the UK were very close to having a Trump contemporary in charge of our country, but he stepped down when he realised the massive political error he’d made. Those two together as joint leaders of the western world would have been the beginning of Armageddon.
Thanks OMG, and apologies-my lack of clarity, what I meant was more is it possible to verify what Stefan Molyneux is saying in the vid link?
He seems to be offering a lot of evidence and showing how Trump plays the media,he says one thing and the press go on a wild goose chase of whispers and re-whispers and Trump gets misquoted and can just show them up.Of course it works on both sides, but it seemed pretty scary to see that “evidence” being pulled out.
I was interested in Molyneux and Chomsky scrapping it out-could be interesting! I would like to see Thurman talking with Moylneux too.
I like Chomksy, although I think he has a few blind spots and is often caught up in too much 20th C thinking(imo) even though I think he doesnt mean to be.But hes a great voice in a world thats often too scared to speak out.
I saw Moylneux demolish a “Flat Earther” which was interesting, but some other things I think he argues on thin ice,and adds too much of his own corner which he could be better suited to just showing his “evidence”.In fact many things on the vid he could be pulled up on-ie he commentary on things I thought were irrelevant.
What concerned me in the vid link was the way Trump understands the media and plays it along.
It often feels like Trump “in” will mean a division the likes of which havent been seen in the US before?
I still think we seem trapped in 20th Century politics and thinking, and as I argued in my post with the Nuclear explosions link, Im not sure where the Modernist thinking can go, ironically it seems a bit regressive in politics(imo).
Trump is many things but he is not stupid. Given the way the electoral college is set up (there is no Presidential election but rather 50 – one for each state), he only has to hold what Mitt Romney took in 2012 and swing 4 rust belt states and he is even with Ms. Clinton. Hence, his anti-trade, anti-globalization rhetoric is aimed specifically at these states. His speeches are very reminiscent of the Leave campaigns words in the areas that lost coal mines and steel works.
Looking for news about Per, Google popped up an article from Football Insider. They started their headline with “Reliable Journalist”. Sorry, I wasn’t looking for fairy tales.
“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.
Money is so noble a medium that does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged