Billy_T wrote:

Silicon Valley has long done its best, covertly, overtly, subtly, or brazenly, to suppress leftist ideas.

I noticed early on that if you want to find courses on Marx and socialism in, say, Apple’s university, you’re going to find them as taught by far-right sources like mises.org.

And if you sign up to one of those customized news aggregators, and choose “socialism,” the most prevalent articles will also come from right-wing sites — condemnation of leftist philosophy, etc. That’s not going to be what happens when you choose your other categories. You’re not going to get anti-travel articles for travel, or anti-sports articles for sports, or anticapitalist articles for capitalism or economics.

Marx, socialism, the left in general — that stuff usually generates negative articles.

It’s, well, rigged.

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Making a different, and ridiculous point — when i was on computer-dating sites, (and I’ve been on half-a-dozen), I used to type in “socialist” or “anarchist” or Marx or Chomsky, etc in my dating-site-search-engine — and these sites have thousands of people on them — in my area, i used to find maybe four or five profiles at most that had that kind of wording in the profile. I had to expand my searches outside WV and past Pittsburgh and into NY City before i found single female socialists.

I dunno what that means, but i took it to mean that WV is a patriotic and holy place to live and NY is full of loose and evil women who are on the hellbound train.

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

I think his “base” is a lot smaller than most people think, and it’s shrinking.

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Who knows what things will look like to voters in three years,
but if the election were this week, I’d guess any Mainstream-pro-corporate-democrat-not-named-Hillary, would eek out a win over Trump.

And after four years of Trump one would ‘guess’ that a lot of working-class voters wont be any better off and they might not be so prone to drink the Trump koolaid next time around.

But who knows.

w
v

It all gets curiouser and curiouser:

Hersh:http://markcrispinmiller.com/2017/08/seymour-hersh-is-scared-to-tell-us-what-he-knows-about-seth-rich/

link:https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/seymour-hersh-owes-the-world-an-explanation-for-his-seth-rich-comments-f9b2756123d3

link2:http://bigleaguepolitics.com/emails-ed-butowsky-pleads-sy-hersh-go-public-knows-seth-rich/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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• This reply was modified 9 years ago by wv.

“…A few days earlier, Assange had told CNN that WikiLeaks likes “to create maximum ambiguity as to who our sources are.” Still, Assange’s words stoked stories that Rich was the source of the DNC emails and had been targeted by Democratic loyalists in retaliation. There is no proof of this claim…”

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Except Sy Hersh in the little 6 minute video up above flat out sez he READ the FBI report that flat out sez Seth Rich contacted Wiki and wanted money to sell them DNC emails. Why would Sy Hersh put his entire career at stake by lying about
that FBI report?

w
v

Billy_T wrote:

wv wrote:

“….But I also reject and detest and find despicable right-wing efforts to demonize opponents, and the escalation of those efforts that increasingly seem more and more unhinged. The bogus Seth Rich story is a part of that…”

Except Sy Hersh is hardly a rightwing nutjob pushing a rightwing conspiracy theory.

w
v

This issue . . . It’s one of those “no dog in this race” kinds of things for me. I don’t take it personally. I don’t feel any personal animosity toward anyone with a different view. It’s okay. As the young kids used to say, whatever.

That said, yeah. I think Hersch is falling hook, line and sinker for a far-right fake news conspiracy, straight out of the Alex Jones school of trumped up idiocy. He should know better. And I know he’s not a RWNJ. But, IMO, he’s fallen for a RWNJ fake news story.

Anyway, hope we can just agree to disagree, etc. And with that, I’m bowing out of this one.

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Sure we can agree to disagree. No big thing. I just dont think Hersh is that naive, BT. I dont think he’s on the same planet as Alex Jones.

w
v

“….But I also reject and detest and find despicable right-wing efforts to demonize opponents, and the escalation of those efforts that increasingly seem more and more unhinged. The bogus Seth Rich story is a part of that…”

Except Sy Hersh is hardly a rightwing nutjob pushing a rightwing conspiracy theory.

w
v

Noam on health care:http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41488-noam-chomsky-on-how-the-united-states-developed-such-a-scandalous-health-system

“….All of this is part of the background for the US departure in health care from the norm of the OECD, and even less privileged societies. But there are deeper reasons why the US is an “outlier” in health care and social justice generally. These trace back to unusual features of American history. Unlike other developed state capitalist industrial democracies, the political economy and social structure of the United States developed in a kind of tabula rasa. The expulsion or mass killing of Indigenous nations cleared the ground for the invading settlers, who had enormous resources and ample fertile lands at their disposal, and extraordinary security for reasons of geography and power. That led to the rise of a society of individual farmers, and also, thanks to slavery, substantial control of the product that fueled the industrial revolution: cotton, the foundation of manufacturing, banking, commerce, retail for both the United States and Britain, and less directly, other European societies. Also relevant is the fact that the country has actually been at war for 500 years with little respite, a history that has created “the richest, most powerful and ultimately most militarized nation in world history,” as scholar Walter Hixson has documented.

For similar reasons, American society lacked the traditional social stratification and autocratic political structure of Europe, and the various measures of social support that developed unevenly and erratically. There has been ample state intervention in the economy from the outset — dramatically in recent years — but without general support systems.

As a result, US society is, to an unusual extent, business-run, with a highly class-conscious business community dedicated to “the everlasting battle for the minds of men.” The business community is also set on containing or demolishing the “political power of the masses,” which it deems as a serious “hazard to industrialists” (to sample some of the rhetoric of the business press during the New Deal years, when the threat to the overwhelming dominance of business power seemed real)….

….

…..Why aren’t Americans demanding — not simply expressing a preference for in survey polls — access to a universal health care system?

They are indeed expressing a preference, over a long period. Just to give one telling illustration, in the late Reagan years 70 percent of the adult population thought that health care should be a constitutional guarantee, and 40 percent thought it already was in the Constitution since it is such an obviously legitimate right. Poll results depend on wording and nuance, but they have quite consistently, over the years, shown strong and often large majority support for universal health care — often called “Canadian-style,” not because Canada necessarily has the best system, but because it is close by and observable. The early ACA proposals called for a “public option.” It was supported by almost two-thirds of the population, but was dropped without serious consideration, presumably as part of a compact with financial institutions. The legislative bar to government negotiation of drug prices was opposed by 85 percent, also disregarded — again, presumably, to prevent opposition by the pharmaceutical giants. The preference for universal health care is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that there is almost no support or advocacy in sources that reach the general public and virtually no discussion in the public domain.

The facts about public support for universal health care receive occasional comment, in an interesting way. When running for president in 2004, Democrat John Kerry, the New York Times reported, “took pains… to say that his plan for expanding access to health insurance would not create a new government program,” because “there is so little political support for government intervention in the health care market in the United States.” At the same time, polls in the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, the Washington Post and other media found overwhelming public support for government guarantees to everyone of “the best and most advanced health care that technology can supply.”

But that is only public support. The press reported correctly that there was little “political support” and that what the public wants is “politically impossible” — a polite way of saying that the financial and pharmaceutical industries will not tolerate it, and in American democracy, that’s what counts.

Returning to your question, it raises a crucial question about American democracy: Why isn’t the population “demanding” what it strongly prefers? Why is it allowing concentrated private capital to undermine necessities of life in the interests of profit and power? The “demands” are hardly utopian. They are commonly satisfied elsewhere, even in sectors of the US system. Furthermore, the demands could readily be implemented even without significant legislative breakthroughs. For example, by steadily reducing the age for entry to Medicare.
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The question directs our attention to a profound democratic deficit in an atomized society, lacking the kind of popular associations and organizations that enable the public to participate in a meaningful way in determining the course of political, social and economic affairs. These would crucially include a strong and participatory labor movement and actual political parties growing from public deliberation and participation instead of the elite-run candidate-producing groups that pass for political parties. What remains is a depoliticized society in which a majority of voters (barely half the population even in the super-hyped presidential elections, much less in others) are literally disenfranchised, in that their representatives disregard their preferences while effective decision-making lies largely in the hands of tiny concentrations of wealth and corporate power, as study after study reveals.

The prevailing situation reminds us of the words of America’s leading twentieth-century social philosopher, John Dewey, much of whose work focused on democracy and its failures and promise. Dewey deplored the domination by “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda” and recognized that “Power today resides in control of the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Whoever owns them rules the life of the country,” even if democratic forms remain. Until those institutions are in the hands of the public, he continued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

This was not a voice from the marginalized far left, but from the mainstream of liberal thought.

Turning finally to your question again, a rather general answer, which applies in its specific way to contemporary western democracies, was provided by David Hume over 250 years ago, in his classic study Of the First Principles of Government. Hume found

nothing more surprising than to see the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and to observe the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. ‘Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

Implicit submission is not imposed by laws of nature or political theory. It is a choice, at least in societies such as ours, which enjoys the legacy provided by the struggles of those who came before us. Here power is indeed “on the side of the governed,” if they organize and act to gain and exercise it. That holds for health care and for much else.” see link