Hotspring 44
01-01-2018, 05:31 PM
I have been thinking about the term "drain the swamp" and what it would mean literally and what it means politically in this day and age; (specifically Donald Trump's usage of it), and of course what actually does and/or could likely happen...
... in a literal political sense and in a somewhat figurative sense in a way that is as comparative as I can come up with at this point in time.
What I have done is look up what swamp literally means according to the dictionary thesaurus... ... So I did a quick search here (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/swamp) and found the following:
swamp
n
1.
a. An area of low-lying land that is frequently flooded, especially one dominated by woody plants.
b. A lowland region saturated with water.
2. A situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables: a financial swamp.
v. swamped, swamp·ing, swamps
v.tr.
1. To drench in or cover with or as if with water.
2. To inundate or burden; overwhelm: She was swamped with work.
3. Nautical To fill (a ship or boat) with water to the point of sinking it.
v.intr.
To become full of water or sink.
Anyway, as far as the environment is concerned, which over time has been well documented in numerous places around the world, the who, where, why, and what regarding humans draining of swamps; and what has historically happened as a result.
Environmentally speaking, literally 'Draining the swamp' is almost always very harmful to not only the environment near the swamp, it also, of course, is destructive to 'the swamp' and has an effect on areas well beyond 'the swamp itself.
In the vast majority of if not all of the cases, draining swampland has beyond a shadow of a doubt been harmful to the well-being of (most local) people who have been depending on the swampland as a whole ecosystem and have been economically dependent on it, and of course also all the other things that the swamp actually is the primary support base which is central to maintaining the whole support system which serve to protect what exists beyond 'the swamp' itself...
... I know there are circumstances where people have developed 'real estate' in areas where there used to be swamps such as the development of vast areas of farmland in the southeastern part of the United States, whereas some people would argue that the farmland that was developed by destroying the swamp-land was a huge improvement.
I think the argument that it was a huge improvement may be a valid one in some cases, temporarily at least.
However, in the long run I think there is evidence that 'draining swamps' per se has pro's and con's which over the short term look 'good' and is capitalistically excellent when extraction economics model, such as: (1 (https://web.stanford.edu/~jsweeney/paper/SWEENEY%20Handbook%20Chapter.pdf))Page 16 in pane and Page 12 of text) is used. However, over the long term; 50, 100, 150 years into the future: (2 (https://www.uwyo.edu/aadland/research/resourcecurse.pdf))
...There is a growing amount of historical evidence regarding the draining of swamps noted under the heading: "People and swamps" in this National Geographic article (https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/swamp/) .
Politically: IE Trump's "Drain The Swamp in Washington DC" speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yWLm_mKE5Q) ... ... What did he really mean then and what does it mean now, where is America going with it?:
What I see and hear so far from Donald Trump himself and the enabling [1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling#Narcissists_and_abusers)] [2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_(psychology)#Tactics)] [3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_(psychology)#Motivation)] Congressional Republicans and others' actions.
I at this point in time, see very direct parallels to what happened to the swamplands that were drained and completely altered into becoming for the most part farmland real estate.
In other words, the monied interests, land barons, banks, political strongmen, etc. took it away from everybody they needed to in order to end up profiting from all of it etc..
They made projections and claims of vast wealth (to be had) as a result of draining and completely altering the swamp into their real estate venture scheme.
In reality, it was much more like what I call a "rip-and-run" economic model.
Today, the currently used tactics go much like what an alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/) article titled "The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth (https://www.alternet.org/economy/6-economic-facts-life-america-allow-rich-run-our-wealth)" explains.
The explanations under the 6 topics in the actual article are what I am referring to more-so than the actual titles listed below.
The 6 headers in the article are titled:
1. The super-rich are stealing our fair share of productivity.
2. Americans really want a wealth distribution more like Sweden's.
3. Everything we hear about government debt is wrong.
4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed.
5. Government jobs are just as good as private sector jobs.
6. Wall Street needs to be shrunk (until we can drown it in a bathtub).
Also worth noting regarding narcissistic people in power and the tactics of manipulation etc., (historically speaking):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule#Historical_examples
... in a literal political sense and in a somewhat figurative sense in a way that is as comparative as I can come up with at this point in time.
What I have done is look up what swamp literally means according to the dictionary thesaurus... ... So I did a quick search here (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/swamp) and found the following:
swamp
n
1.
a. An area of low-lying land that is frequently flooded, especially one dominated by woody plants.
b. A lowland region saturated with water.
2. A situation or place fraught with difficulties and imponderables: a financial swamp.
v. swamped, swamp·ing, swamps
v.tr.
1. To drench in or cover with or as if with water.
2. To inundate or burden; overwhelm: She was swamped with work.
3. Nautical To fill (a ship or boat) with water to the point of sinking it.
v.intr.
To become full of water or sink.
Anyway, as far as the environment is concerned, which over time has been well documented in numerous places around the world, the who, where, why, and what regarding humans draining of swamps; and what has historically happened as a result.
Environmentally speaking, literally 'Draining the swamp' is almost always very harmful to not only the environment near the swamp, it also, of course, is destructive to 'the swamp' and has an effect on areas well beyond 'the swamp itself.
In the vast majority of if not all of the cases, draining swampland has beyond a shadow of a doubt been harmful to the well-being of (most local) people who have been depending on the swampland as a whole ecosystem and have been economically dependent on it, and of course also all the other things that the swamp actually is the primary support base which is central to maintaining the whole support system which serve to protect what exists beyond 'the swamp' itself...
... I know there are circumstances where people have developed 'real estate' in areas where there used to be swamps such as the development of vast areas of farmland in the southeastern part of the United States, whereas some people would argue that the farmland that was developed by destroying the swamp-land was a huge improvement.
I think the argument that it was a huge improvement may be a valid one in some cases, temporarily at least.
However, in the long run I think there is evidence that 'draining swamps' per se has pro's and con's which over the short term look 'good' and is capitalistically excellent when extraction economics model, such as: (1 (https://web.stanford.edu/~jsweeney/paper/SWEENEY%20Handbook%20Chapter.pdf))Page 16 in pane and Page 12 of text) is used. However, over the long term; 50, 100, 150 years into the future: (2 (https://www.uwyo.edu/aadland/research/resourcecurse.pdf))
...There is a growing amount of historical evidence regarding the draining of swamps noted under the heading: "People and swamps" in this National Geographic article (https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/swamp/) .
Politically: IE Trump's "Drain The Swamp in Washington DC" speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yWLm_mKE5Q) ... ... What did he really mean then and what does it mean now, where is America going with it?:
What I see and hear so far from Donald Trump himself and the enabling [1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling#Narcissists_and_abusers)] [2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_(psychology)#Tactics)] [3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_monkeys_(psychology)#Motivation)] Congressional Republicans and others' actions.
I at this point in time, see very direct parallels to what happened to the swamplands that were drained and completely altered into becoming for the most part farmland real estate.
In other words, the monied interests, land barons, banks, political strongmen, etc. took it away from everybody they needed to in order to end up profiting from all of it etc..
They made projections and claims of vast wealth (to be had) as a result of draining and completely altering the swamp into their real estate venture scheme.
In reality, it was much more like what I call a "rip-and-run" economic model.
Today, the currently used tactics go much like what an alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/) article titled "The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth (https://www.alternet.org/economy/6-economic-facts-life-america-allow-rich-run-our-wealth)" explains.
The explanations under the 6 topics in the actual article are what I am referring to more-so than the actual titles listed below.
The 6 headers in the article are titled:
1. The super-rich are stealing our fair share of productivity.
2. Americans really want a wealth distribution more like Sweden's.
3. Everything we hear about government debt is wrong.
4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed.
5. Government jobs are just as good as private sector jobs.
6. Wall Street needs to be shrunk (until we can drown it in a bathtub).
Also worth noting regarding narcissistic people in power and the tactics of manipulation etc., (historically speaking):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule#Historical_examples