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Billy_TParticipantThe scary thing for me . . . well, there are a host of them . . . but one in particular:
We have a pathological liar as president. The worst in our history, and it’s not close. He’s fast approaching 20,000 lies just since he took office. And, again, this is on top of the normal, every day, baked-in lies that our government has always told, that our corporations have always told, that leftists (and others) have always known about. Trump lies about the usual stuff too. The wars, the coups, the renditions, the environmental damage, the oppression of minorities, our carceral system, etc. etc., either via omission or commission. But he adds to the pile of lies in an unprecedented way, and we know this because his own staff constantly has to walk back things he says, once caught/called on it. They either walk it back or try to spin it into non-existence.
Just today, for instance, Google had to deny Trump’s claim that it was developing a site for everyone to check to see if they had the virus. He claimed 1700 engineers were working on this, when it’s just a San Fran pilot program in beta. He does this endlessly. He lies, claims credit for things that aren’t happening, or happened years ago before he took office, and then others have to rebut this nonsense. Too often, however, the damage is done, especially for his supporters who believe he’s a god emperor. Then the other dominoes fall: “Fake news!!” “Deep state!!” blah blah blah.
It’s never a good thing to be led by a lying, bullying, deeply insecure conman who sells, sells, sells!!! his snake oil endlessly. But right now may be the worst time in living memory for this perfect storm of the grotesque.
Billy_TParticipantRobinson captures the difference so well, IMO. It’s the main reason why I’m a leftist and not a liberal. There are other reasons too. But that’s probably the main one for me.
The horrors of capitalism. No economic system comes close to it for body count, destruction of ecosystems, extinction levels for wildlife, or the creation of mass inequality. And it’s the first economic system in history to control the entire globe. It’s also the first to be fundamentally “imperialistic” all on its own, via its own internal logic and Prime Directive: Grow or Die.
Capitalism is perhaps modernity’s first “pandemic.”
. . .
And another hat tip to Zooey. I’m currently reading (in E-book form) a book by two authors he mentioned here. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
by Raj Patel (Author), Jason W. Moore (Author)
July 2018Really good so far.
Billy_TParticipantHope all is well, Mac.
. . . .
I think the future for leftists may well be the DSA, if they can grow, get stronger and run candidates under their own banner. For me, unless I misread the Greens, the DSA comes closer to my views, cuz they want an end to capitalism and the Greens really don’t. Again, I could be wrong, but the Greens strike me as mend it don’t end it progressives, with strong antiwar and save the planet views. The latter two aspects are golden. I stand with them 100% on both. But I also want to replace economic apartheid with economic democracy.
Not sure if that’s the Greens’ agenda.
I bumped into this article today, which I think Zooey may have posted here before. It was a part of a review of a book by Malcolm Harris that I definitely want to read. If I post both links, however, I’ll probably go into Purgatory, so I’ll just do the Nathan Robinson one. The Harris book was reviewed in the New Republic, which surprises me every now and then.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-difference-between-liberalism-and-leftism
Excerpt:
The core divergence in these worldviews is in their beliefs about the nature of contemporary political and economic institutions. The difference here is not “how quickly these institutions should change,” but whether changes to them should be fundamental structural changes or not. The leftist sees capitalism as a horror, and believes that so long as money and profit rule the earth, human beings will be made miserable and will destroy themselves. The liberal does not actually believe this. Rather, the liberal believes that while there are problems with capitalism, it can be salvaged if given a few tweaks here and there. As Nancy Pelosi said of the present Democratic party: “We’re capitalist.” When Bernie Sanders is asked if he is a capitalist, he answers flatly: “No.” Sanders is a socialist, and socialism is not capitalism, and there is no possibility of healing the ideological rift between the two. Liberals believe that the economic and political system is a machine that has broken down and needs fixing. Leftists believe that the machine is not “broken.” Rather, it is working perfectly well; the problem is that it is a death machine designed to chew up human lives. You don’t fix the death machine, you smash it to bits.
March 13, 2020 at 10:31 pm in reply to: notes from expert panel on the virus & other expert views #112260Billy_TParticipantInvader,
I’ve heard experts say it’s anywhere between 10 times and 40 times worse than regular influenza. The latter kills tens of thousands of Americans per year, and we have vaccines and decades of immunity build-up for that. We have nothing whatsoever on either front for Covid-19.
Seems to me officials and the media would be criminally negligent if they didn’t make a huge deal about this.
Experts have also said we might reach 50% infected rate, or worse. Which means, even at under 1% mortality, more than a million Americans would die.
This is serious, especially for us old fogies with underlying health issues.
Billy_TParticipantReally good segment from your fiance, Zooey.
I concur with all of it.
Posted on a forum earlier today about Sanders, defended him, his agenda, his supporters, etc. The Biden folks were out in force, attacking Bernie and his supporters. It’s amazing how tone deaf they are, and lacking in self-awareness. While throwing out endless strawmen and zombie memes like “Bernie Bros,” they were generally the rude and obnoxious ones, not his supporters . . . and if I can borrow one of their terms, “meanies.”
And, yeah, they’re gonna blame “the left” if Biden loses. They still blame “the left” for HRC. Hell, more than a few played the Zombie Nadar card.
They strike me, in the aggregate, as impervious to reason. No amount of evidence that they’re wrong about stuff sinks in. They have that in common with all too many “conservatives.”
Oh, well.
Billy_TParticipantZN,
Thanks for rescuing my post from Purgatory.
;>)
Hope everyone is healthy and safe.
Wash your hands, people!!
Billy_TParticipantWV,
On the criticism of the criticism thingy, and about those givens:
For me, it’s a given that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not all that important which team gets the brunt of that rage you speak of. Blue or red. Doesn’t much matter, given their histories. Though, in general, I think it makes more sense to go after both, not just one or the other. And timing matters. Context matters.
I’d have a much easier time with the critiques in question, if the objects of said critiques were in power, held the White House, Congress, the Courts, etc. If it was their time in the barrel, as we used to say in Tech Support. If public figures want to direct their rage at just one team, it makes a hell of a lot more sense (to me) if it’s the team calling the shots. Again, I’d rather see both teams included, at least. Better still, zoom out and critique the economic system itself, the insane rationale for that system, its obscene effects, etc.
But if it’s gotta be just one, it should be the one with the keys and the hands on the wheel, to mix too many metaphors for one post.
Billy_TParticipantI do believe Sanders would beat Trump and all the polls back it.
For a thousand reasons, I don’t think Biden has ANY chance of beating Trump.
My only response to that is in the last primaries, including Super Tuesday, and most recently, last week, including the state that gave Trump the Presidency-Michigan-the voters overwhelmingly disagreed with you and apparently the polls you referenced. Why?
And why-if you are so SURE Sanders would be the one who could beat Trump- would Yang, Bloomberg, Amy, Pete, Tim, all endorse Biden? And why would Warren not endorse Sanders ?
Obviously, I can’t speak for ZN. But I can answer that one easily, from my own POV:
The Dems see Sanders as a bigger threat to their own status/status quo than Trump and the GOP. They’d rather Trump and the GOP win than Sanders or any leftist. And this is what happens when two governing parties are owned by the super rich, run by and for the super rich, and owe their allegiance, not to us, but to the super rich.
And the really sad part about this? Sanders is proposing FDR-like programs. Nothing “radical.” In fact, from my POV, he’s waaaay shy of going anywhere close to far enough. As in, we don’t need Denmark on the Potomac to fix what ails this world — though it would be a huge improvement over our current situation. We need a wholesale, uber-radical shift away from the obscene immorality of capitalism and its entire rationale for being . . . We need to end the very idea of an economy based on private profit for the few. We need to shift, instead, to fully sustainable and citizen-centric model that meets our needs, leaves no one behind, and has no profit incentive whatsoever. Cuz that motive set free is what’s killing the earth and has always been the major cause of wars.
No more exchange-value. It needs to be use-value instead. Extend democracy to include the economy, democratize the workplace, and we the people, not “the state,” not political parties, not any private power, own the means of production, with equal say and equal shares.
To me, that’s our only hope of surviving as a species into the 22nd century.
Billy_TParticipantWell, I gotta tweak that last part.
I don’t think that’s the ethos of MOST Americans. Most of us are fine with sharing stuff and we don’t want to be Napoleon or Caesar. It’s just the underlying message sent down to us from Above, cuz that’s basically the only way to keep the capitalist ball rolling, or avoid mass unrest. It’s a kinda philosophical cover for the essentially sociopathic nature of economic conquest, which is really about the only thing “America” can claim for itself. Our “exceptionalism” stems from that, more than anything else.
That so many Americans buy into being used and abused by the ruling class, and seem okay with sociopaths . . . electing them more often than not . . .
I may be wrong, but I’d bet we’re “exceptional” in celebrating and romanticizing the people who oppress us to this degree, and we don’t want to even think how different they are from we the people.
We’re in for a very bumpy ride, folks. Perhaps us old fogies, especially, in an immediate sense.
Billy_TParticipantWorst possible president at potentially the worst possible time.
Merkel recently told Germans that 70% of their country could catch the virus. Its lethality rate hasn’t been determined yet, but the usual estimates are somewhere between 1-4% of those who contract it. If just a quarter of Americans catch it, we could be looking at well over a million fatalities here.
Trump has lied about all of this from Day One, seeing it as a crisis for himself, his reelection, Wall Street and Corporate America, not as a public health crisis. He isn’t even trying to hide this, except in his scripted speeches, and even in those, he keeps lying about the science.
At this point, I almost don’t care who the Dem nominee is. They could run a ham sandwich and the nation would be better off, if the ham sandwich beats Trump. We won’t be proactively better off, of course. It’s a matter of “less damage.” But I prefer that to more damage.
Regardless, this is really one of those proverbial “chickens coming home to roost” moments. The deadly combo of capitalism and right-wing ideology, weaponized by both major parties, has left us largely without the tools we need to cope with this. Centuries of gaslighting about its supposed wonders, while it’s worked to destroy our capacity to act collectively to solve the crises it (capitalism and wingnuttery) creates.
We’re hollowed out. We’re gutted. Our Commons is in tatters. But our ethos remains “I got mine, go fuck yourself!!”
At a moment when we need to do a 180° on that ethos, etc. etc.
Billy_TParticipantDeeds not words. As George (GOT) Martin says, words are wind.
If Carlson could point to actual anti-corporate actions by Trump and the GOP, he could at least begin to make an argument that the GOP is the antidote. But he can’t. They slashed corporate taxes from 35% to 21%; radically deregulated business even more than it was already deregulated; and sped up privatization — including public lands for fossil fuel companies. They’ve been a thousand fold better for corporate America than the Dems, and the Dems have been berry berry good to them.
Any leftist pissed off at the Dems’ neoliberalism should be absolutely furious at the GOP’s version. It’s soft neoliberalism versus high test. Hell, the GOP recently blocked a Dem bill trying to prevent price gouging by Big Pharma in the wake of the coronavirus. The list is endless when it comes to GOP support for the worst of the worst corporate America practices. Yeah, the Dems are complicit, and they suck, but the GOP is outright aggressively proactive on their behalf.
Aspirational versus reality: We live in a binary political world, tragically. There is no aspect of American life in which the GOP is the better choice. None. No how. No way. Carlson’s gaslighting is all too obvious.
Billy_TParticipantIt’s amazing to me that Carlson can say what he says without bursting into endless laughter. I’m betting he does when he goes home and reviews his own shows.
Yes, he is correct that the Dem establishment is corporatist. Obviously. No question. But he wants Americans to believe that the GOP isn’t? that Republicans like him are some kind of antidote to that? that Trump himself is the antidote? Come on. Stop with the gaslighting already.
His assertion that Dems control every lever of power in America is beyond absurd, as the GOP controls the Executive, the Senate, most states, and the Judiciary, and even when the Dems have nominal control over these things, they tend toward complicity with the American right, which includes the GOP.
Intel, the military, the police, the border, and our economy, our trade policies, our environmental policies . . . have forever and a day been under the thumb of the political right (via both parties), which Carlson pimps for and represents. Sheebus, but he’s such a baldfaced liar. It’s amazing to me that he’s managed to paint Trump as the victim here of a deep state power play, when that deep state, if it exists at all, is decidedly on Carlson’s side of the political aisle.
About the only thing he got right was to say that Academia was dominated by the left. No other aspect of American life is. Just Academia. “Scary leftists” exist, with few exceptions, there and nowhere else.
Carlson is a fraud on steroids.
Billy_TParticipantWell that didn’t go the way I wanted.
Not despairing though.
Yeah, it’s not looking good for Sanders.
The Morning Joe crowd seems absolutely giddy today, though they all admitted they were shocked by the results. Couldn’t handle their joy and had to shut off the Teebee.
Glad it’s sunny. Need to get out soon and walk this all off.
A very bad night for lefty hopes and dreams.
Billy_TParticipantPersonally, I’m all for smoke filled rooms with deals being made. Tends to eliminate ideology purists who are not likely to get anything accomplished. Lincoln is an example. He was not a total abolitionist like many of his Republican colleagues. But rather than focus on that one issue after the war he made compromises with the south in order to preserve the Union.
Allowing for some fluidity in definitions/semantics . . . “abolitionists” were rare (and heavily persecuted) at the time, regardless of party. Yes, the GOP had a strong “anti-slavery” contingent, but this meant “free the slaves, but ship them overseas.” Lincoln was in this camp until his last two years of life, give or take. He had his personal epiphany while meeting with black soldiers during the war, basically. Prior to that, he actively worked to find potential overseas colonies for emancipated slaves, including South America and Africa.
(Abolitionists favored full emancipation and full civil rights for free slaves here, in the USA.)
The historian Eric Foner is excellent on the subject.
It’s also interesting to note that Lincoln, while not a socialist himself, appointed one (Dana) to his cabinet, exchanged letters with Marx, and was friends with several leftists from the European revolutions of 1848. He would have gotten the Red Scare treatment from Republicans if he were alive today. No way on earth would Lincoln even want to be a Republican at the moment.
Billy_TParticipantHave never seen anything like that before. And, yeah, the comments were really good and really funny. Pretty cool.
Usually, I ignore Youtube music threads, cuz they’re mostly just people being hysterically judgmental about people they don’t know. But this was different.
. . .
My people, the Celts, once dominated most of Europe, and then, little by little, were driven back to smaller bases, in France, Portugal, Wales, and Ireland, especially. But then the Vikings started their raiding, and terrorized them for centuries, burning up most of their written records . . . which some scholars say amounted to a mass destruction of European culture overall. Cuz, Dark Ages.
It’s interesting to me that once feared warriors were in turn overwhelmed by even more fearsome enemies . . . for a host of reasons, most of them boiling down to “We can’t be awesome savage beasts forever. It’s too hard! I like my comfy shoes and my warm hearth and I’m allergic to severed heads now!!”
You can still hear the influence of the Vikings in Celtic music, though. The diffusion of culture interests me greatly too.
Btw, Netflix has an excellent series about the Vikings/Britain in the days of Alfred the Great: The Last Kingdom. Well worth watching.
March 2, 2020 at 9:27 am in reply to: Washington Post: Sanders a risk… the media hates Bernie thread #111821Billy_TParticipantZn,
I watched the Dore video above and it made me sad. I know that he’s just one comedian, with four sidekicks (including a Republican rep), and a relatively small audience, so it’s absurd to say “This is why the left has so much trouble getting its message through.” But it is indicative, IMO, of a rather grotesque missing the forest for the trees scenario, or something along those lines.
First off, I have no idea why he directed his (highly personalized) rage on Green. Yeah, what he said was wrong. Ball had a great response to the ludicrous idea that the guy with the most votes shouldn’t get the nomination. But I would have left it there and moved on to more important matters. In the grand scheme of things, who really cares about an obscure director of an obscure “progressive” think tank, with zero power even within the Democratic party. He can’t order us into war, or lock up migrants in cages, or roll back EPA standards, or open up public lands to more drilling, or foment coups in Venezuela, or do renditions, cut taxes for the super-rich and deregulate their businesses, etc. etc. He has no power, whatsoever, to make public policy. So, I’m at a loss why an entire program was spent tearing him a new one, and especially in that junior high locker room way that most of us grew out of at 13 or so — if we were ever even into that sort of thing to begin with.
Just my take. But one of the things I admire most about the best leftist critiques is the pinpoint understanding of Power Dynamics. To put it all too generously, that video lacked that understanding.
Billy_TParticipant“Marxist Professor Explains Why Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign Is Failing. Richard Wolff”
Wolff is amazingly good at making difficult (economic, material, democratic) concepts accessible. He’s a “democratic socialist” and a Marxian economist. That combination, IMO, is among the very best possible in assessing present day circumstances, as well as pointing to the aspirational.
In short, if America could ever evolve enough to put such folks in charge of our economic policies . . . instead of the Kudlows, Mnuchins, Cohns, Geitners, Summers, et al . . . we might actually have a chance.
Billy_TParticipantLooking at the CNN data boards it seems to reflect what I’ve always worried about young voters. They rally behind “movements”, they protest, they march, they party, but they simply lose interest in voting when they believe someone (Biden) appears to be ahead. They are young, ideology driven, but have yet to face the toughness of marriage, children, working, aging, parental deaths, etc. Simply stated, they ain’t yet “tough”. They are in a “dreamworld” of a better life-but to get there you have to be tough. This entire election (Presidential) will be decided -much like 2018-in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Are they tough enough to face the results of So Carolina with a stiff jaw heading to California? We shall see. The “Polls” show a 2-1 for Sanders in Cal-as of now.
W,
In my view, this isn’t about the “toughness” of the young. It’s not about their “ideology,” either. It’s about the fact that they will bear the brunt of our inaction regarding the climate, inequality, health care, education and a host of other crises, especially the first on that list.
We will likely be dead before “the shit gets real,” though it’s already killing large swaths of humanity and the animal kingdom. Nearly 9 million humans die each year from pollution, all of which is preventable. More than half of all wildlife has reached extinction since the 1970s. More than 90% of our fish stocks are gone from our oceans.
The young face a world that will be unlike anything we ever witnessed, with most island nations underwater, most coastal cities swamped, a radically shrunken arable land potential, a radically expanded tropical disease zone, and a fire season that lasts most of the year. The latter has expanded in the USA by nearly four months just since 1970.
No moderate or centrist, much less any conservative, has an answer to the above. No moderate, centrist or conservative has an answer to the trillions upon trillions of dollars that future generations will need to spend to clean up the mess we Boomers, Gen Xers and first-wave Millenials left them.
The Bidens, Klobuchars, Bloombergs and Buddhajegs of this world won’t help them in the slightest. Far, far from it. The only person willing to take even modest steps to alleviate these crises, at least on the Dem side, is Sanders. I think young people “get” that. We should respect their assessments of their future prospects.
Billy_TParticipant— Johnny Akzam (@JohnnyAkzam)
Excellent ad, ZN. Thanks for posting that. In this time of rampant cynicism, I can admit to thinking it’s “inspiring.”
___
Also: Zooey and WV, you guys are absolutely correct. Sanders should run against the MSM. Stridently. Tell the truth about it. That it all too often pimps for the status quo, against the interests of the 99%, and tries its best to keep Americans in a permanent, impossible state: simultaneously docile and riled up.
The Dems have long made a huge mistake by not doing so, ceding that ground to the right, which lies endlessly about why the media are so bad. The right actually tries to peddle the myth that the MSM is somehow in cahoots with “the left” and against Mom, Apple Pie, Capitalism and “real mericans,” etc. etc. The reason why the MSM is corrupt is quite the opposite, obviously.
Ripe for the plucking is a critique against media-as-shills for oligarchs. The right can’t match this, evah, as it actually loves oligarchy, inequality, injustice . . . and has always done everything in its power to support, expand and deepen hierarchies and those inequalities.
The abject stupidity and cowardice of the DNC in NOT going after the media on those grounds is . . . . well, to be all too polite . . . infinitely revealing.
Billy_TParticipantVan Gogh is my favorite artist too.
One of the great moments in my life was a visit to Arles in 2007. The entire trip to France was amazing, but I especially loved that connection to Van Gogh. I walked the same streets he walked, saw his “yellow house,” the asylum he stayed in, and the night cafe itself. Positioned myself just so to get the same angle he painted.
Such a tragedy-riddled life, cut all too short. But oh the paintings he made!!
Nice break down of the painting in question.
All of his letters have been translated and are in book form and online now:
(http://vangoghletters.org/vg/)
And the main museum (in Holland, I believe) is fantastic as well:
Billy_TParticipant“That aside…W’s central point is to encourage us to vote blue no matter who because…Trump.”
Of course that is my point ! Can’t see how that was missed. Once the Democrats pick a nominee ideology becomes irrelevant in my mind. It could be Bernie, Ho Chi Minh, or Mr. Magoo for all I care. That is how dangerous I see Trump. My problem is that Trump sees Bernie as an easy target. Less so for the others. And I think he is right. If he’s the nominee I pray I’m wrong.
========================
Nah, I wont vote for a pro-one-percent-Dem, if he is the nominee because the pro-one-percent-DNC cheats Bernie, AGAIN. I’m sure a lot of progressives will go ahead and hold their noses and vote for a pro-corporate-dem, but a lot of progressives will just stay home, vote Green Party or….move to Thailand.
w
vAnd by doing so you are actually equating any democrat except Sanders to Trump ! That’s just being silly. (“if you can’t play by my rules I’m taking the ball and going home”). You simply do not see how dangerous Trump is and will continue to be when it comes to the protection of the environment, the plight of the less fortunate, the health and safety of minorities and disabled, the continued destruction of our judicial system, the widening of the economic inequality,etc. You simply do not appear to care about these things.
Not trying to speak for WV, but if he votes for a Dem, it’s gonna be cancelled out anyway. His vote won’t have any impact on the election.
West Virginia is going to go overwhelmingly for Trump. As long as we have the EC, voting for the “losing” candidate in that particular state is basically like not voting at all.
Billy_TParticipantCal,
Good post.
I paid a few hundred a semester during my first go round in college back in the 1970s. I went back two more times, in two separate decades, and the price skyrocketed.
This was a direct consequence of state and federal governments retreating on their support for Higher Ed. The wave of tax cut fever forced them to choose what to fund and what to de-fund, and education was all too often one of the main victims — that and programs for the poor, especially.
This isn’t rocket science. We can reverse what we did and add a bit of support on top of that. And this is a must. Most of Europe offers free college tuition to its citizens, and a few of its countries will even cover costs overseas.
We’re the richest nation on earth and we can’t at least do the same?
Billy_TParticipant“… Two hats, perhaps. Or more. Aspirational versus realistic, etc. …”
==============Exactly. And there’s a lot of conversation-paths that could branch off from that notion.
What counts as ‘realistic’ and what counts as actual ‘reform’ etc? Hillary? Biden?
Etc, etc.And then you have the always-present problem on the left of the “purists” vs “reformers”. Left Politics is a long long long dynamic of fracturing and fracturing and fracturing from within. I mean, have you ever read some of the history of the American socialist movement around the time of the Russian Revolution — It was comical. I bet They couldnt agree on what kind of bullets to use to shoot robber-barons….
Ironically, Sanders is the moderate candidate, IMO. He’s the reform guy. Again, two hats, but we need to go much further, etc. etc.
As for that time period and subject. It’s a gap in my self-education. If you have a good book in mind, please let me know. I did read China Mieville’s excellent history of the Russian Revolution, October, and loved it. But I don’t know much about American Socialism around that time.
Of indirect interest . . . is this article in Jacobin. I hadn’t heard about this guy (August Bebel) before:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/02/socialism-feminism-august-bebel-germany-social-democratic-party
February 29, 2020 at 11:23 am in reply to: just some “no thread for em” various political tweets … 2/25 thru ? #111743Billy_TParticipantZN,
I responded to WV’s Van Gogh thread, to no avail. I think the spam blocker got me for adding links to his letters and museum.
Um, just in case: That would be Van Gogh’s letters and museum. WV probably has those as well, but I didn’t ask Alexa about them yet.
Billy_TParticipantReally good video, WV.
Finally saw who you had mentioned, over on the side of the website, and wanted to give it a listen.
Had never heard of him before, but I agree with the vast majority of what he said. Capitalism is the problem. As long as it exists as the legal economic mode of production, we can’t have democracy. It will always own the government. In my view, it’s just impossible. Capitalism is, in fact, economic apartheid. It’s easily the most immoral and destructive economic system in world history, and the first to take over the entire globe — which makes it all the more deadly.
I liked that the Finnish guy called socialism “economic democracy,” which is my take as well. It’s what I argue with others on and offline when I defend it . . . especially when they play the Stalin card. If we go to socialism, that means we replace economic apartheid with economic democracy. But few Americans will ever get this. Too many generations of gaslighting have fogged them up too much.
Do you agree with him about Dore overall, and his calling him a “liberal”? You know Dore. I really don’t, outside some of the videos you’ve posted here. It surprised me initially when he said that. But I think he makes a pretty good case for it, while complimenting Dore for being among the most “woke” liberals. Woke, in this case, meaning class-conscious.
Would enjoy reading your take on it.
=======================
I think he ‘may’ be right about Dore, but I dunno. My take on Dore is more like he’s not easy to label. I mean how many critical-thinkers can really be ‘reduced’ down to this or that single word, like ‘socialist’ or whatever. I mean so much of what we support just depends on the context. Like, if someone asked me would i support a tax-increase on the rich, or a bigger tax on corporations, I’d say, “Yes, I support that”. Does that make me a ‘liberal’? Am i always supposed to say “Well i really support the dismantling of corporate-personhood, and corporate capitalism, and raising-taxes on corporations is just useless reformism and doesnt get to the root of the problem…blah blah blah…”
It gets tricky. I think Dore supports decent reforms. But that doesnt mean hes a liberal. He ‘might’ be. But maybe he just supports liberal reforms for strategic reasons, etc.
I’d vote for Bernie. But that doesnt make me a liberal-capitalist. In my case it just means, I dont believe in a “Revolution or Nothing” approach.
w
vAll of that makes a lot of sense. It’s a common problem, I’m betting, for all leftists. When we engage in discussion, it’s almost a dynamic of double-consciousness — if that’s the correct or useful term. Two hats, perhaps. Or more. Aspirational versus realistic, etc.
As in, most of us want society and the planet to be a certain way, ultimately, and we’re passionate about this. For me, that would be fully democratic, egalitarian, cooperative, radically decentralized, class-free, non-hierarchical to the degree humanly possible, etc. At the same time, we also live fully in the here and now, which means under the thumb of capitalism and oligarchy, for lack of more nuanced terminology. So we may say Yes to certain reforms for the system as it exists, but it can be tedious to always qualify this with “But we need to go a thousand fold further” every time.
Yes to much higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Yes to an end to corporate personhood. Yes to an end to money in politics, etc. etc. But, ultimately, these things really amount to using buckets to bailout the water in a sinking ship. It would be much smarter to abandon the ship altogether and find one that doesn’t and can’t leak.
Or, as I’ve mentioned before: Instead of choosing a dog for your kids that will always require a leash and constant supervision, choose one that doesn’t, one that is naturally gentle and loving and doesn’t require any supervision at all.
Choose a system that really does manage itself, because there is no concentration of power or wealth, and everyone has an equal say. It’s all on us, together. It’s all up to us, the who, what, when, where and why, instead on one person or a small group of execs.
I think the Finn was saying kinda sorta the same thing. At least pointing to this . . .
Billy_TParticipantReally good video, WV.
Finally saw who you had mentioned, over on the side of the website, and wanted to give it a listen.
Had never heard of him before, but I agree with the vast majority of what he said. Capitalism is the problem. As long as it exists as the legal economic mode of production, we can’t have democracy. It will always own the government. In my view, it’s just impossible. Capitalism is, in fact, economic apartheid. It’s easily the most immoral and destructive economic system in world history, and the first to take over the entire globe — which makes it all the more deadly.
I liked that the Finnish guy called socialism “economic democracy,” which is my take as well. It’s what I argue with others on and offline when I defend it . . . especially when they play the Stalin card. If we go to socialism, that means we replace economic apartheid with economic democracy. But few Americans will ever get this. Too many generations of gaslighting have fogged them up too much.
Do you agree with him about Dore overall, and his calling him a “liberal”? You know Dore. I really don’t, outside some of the videos you’ve posted here. It surprised me initially when he said that. But I think he makes a pretty good case for it, while complimenting Dore for being among the most “woke” liberals. Woke, in this case, meaning class-conscious.
Would enjoy reading your take on it.
February 26, 2020 at 10:35 am in reply to: signing Littleton, free-agent MLB, McVay said is a priority #111652Billy_TParticipantIf I’m GM, I tag Fowler and try to trade him. I re-sign Littleton, and try hard to re-sign Brockers — a seriously underrated and valuable Ram.
But I’m guessing they won’t do the above, and likely can’t keep all three. It might actually be impossible under the cap, without a major “home team discount,” especially from Brockers. That sort of thing is pretty rare these days.
Likely reality: They re-sign Littleton and the other FAs walk, despite best efforts from the Rams.
February 26, 2020 at 9:54 am in reply to: just some “no thread for em” various political tweets … 2/25 thru ? #111650Billy_TParticipantIt’s another example of how our media help the Republicans, consciously or unconsciously:
They (Republicans) get to trash America every which way, but somehow retain ownership of the flag, Mom and Apple Pie. Trump won largely by painting a picture of America as a hellhole, eternally victimized, weak, beset from all sides by far more powerful forces only he could stop.
For decades, Republican preachers have been saying their god just punished Americans for their sins, whenever some catastrophe hits us.
But let a left of center figure denounce our actual “sins,” our history of racism, genocide, slavery, our oppression of migrants, our endless wars and coups, etc. etc. . . . and they get slammed for being “anti-American,” or worse.
And, to make this asymmetry even more absurd: Republicans are virtually non-stop lying in their critique, or flat out hysterical. The leftist critique is slam dunk truth.
Only in America.
February 25, 2020 at 7:08 pm in reply to: Washington Post: Sanders a risk… the media hates Bernie thread #111633Billy_TParticipantWell, i dont disagree with any of that.
When i say they ‘know they went too far,’ I am talking about ‘strategy.’
MSNBC is hiring some pro-bernie people because they are now taking too much flak.
They know their previous strategy went a little too far. They are correcting course, strategically. And they know Bernie might become Prez.
Of course they still WANT a corporate-centrist, blah blah blah.w
vMakes sense.
About my earlier comments: On second and third thought, it doesn’t matter what we call the networks, really, or which party they favor. There are far more important things than that, long and short term. I have no idea why I took the time to argue the point. Your labels are as good as any, and your rationale for it all may well be correct across the board, A to Z. My own take may be off by a thousand miles. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I think I’m just trying to find a way to cut through the fog, and it seems to be getting thicker all the time. I’m always going to believe that the ultimate source of that is economic apartheid (capitalism), and I think our only way out is through economic democracy (socialism). It’s also, in my view, the only way we save the planet for future generations and most wildlife.
Apparently, rats will be fine. That’s what the climate science books I’ve been reading suggest. Rats don’t need our help. Viruses and diseases like malaria will be in pretty good shape, too. But Homo Sapiens and most life-forms? Not so much.
Dem-Media, GOP-Media, corporate America and the capitalist system, they all gotta go.
February 25, 2020 at 6:54 pm in reply to: Washington Post: Sanders a risk… the media hates Bernie thread #111632Billy_TParticipantAre you still thinking of immigrating, Zooey?
Yeah. I don’t remember what all I said, but basically I can’t afford to stay in California anyway on my pension, so as long as I’m moving, I may as well go somewhere I find more interesting. At least until I feel the call to return home. But, yes, that’s the plan. I think I want to spend at least a couple of years in Mallorca, Malta, Portugal, Italy…somewhere like that. Then…we’ll see. I liked SE Asia a lot. Lots of variables, though.
Best of luck to you and yours with those plans, Zooey. They sound really, really good.
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