from the no-one's-leaving-until-we-have-unanimous-agreement dept.
The rise of populism has rattled the global political establishment. Brexit came as a shock, as did the victory of Donald Trump. Much head-scratching has resulted as leaders seek to work out why large chunks of their electorates are so cross.
...
The answer seems pretty simple. Populism is the result of economic failure. The 10 years since the financial crisis have shown that the system of economic governance which has held sway for the past four decades is broken. Some call this approach neoliberalism. Perhaps a better description would be unpopulism.Unpopulism meant tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves. Unpopulism was rigged to ensure that the fruits of growth went to the few not to the many. Unpopulism decreed that those responsible for the global financial crisis got away with it while those who were innocent bore the brunt of austerity.
2017 Davos says: The 99% should just try harder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:07PM (48 children)
Populism is the reassertion of the democratic will of the people over the economic failure of the technocratic ponzi scheme.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:28PM (13 children)
There's a generational aspect in that establishment bet on the success of legacy media, and lost. They put all their bets on one roulette spot, then newspapers and legacy fake news TV died. Whoops.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:07PM (12 children)
Well at least you're drawing a distinction between newspapers and TV news. I really wish the term "fake news" didn't exist though. It implies outright lies when the reality is something more like corporate-controlled politically-correct propaganda. The point being that it cuts liberals as much as it cuts conservatives, serving mainly to make big industry (the real American dictators) look good.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:23PM (11 children)
Don't kid yourself that there isn't a LOT of outright lying going on.
But sure, it's all backed up by a slightly softer system where saying the right thing gets you attaboys and moves your career along and asking tough questions or reporting real news does the opposite. So people are quite conditioned to only see what they are supposed to see.
But either way the mainstream news at this point is dominated by fake news. They're no better than the People's Daily or the old Pravda.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:38PM (10 children)
But the whole point is that the reporters themselves believe what they're saying. If they themselves were outright lying, we could tell, other reporters would call them out, and the whole publication would be discredited. Instead, they are really peddling half-truths. They aren't lies per se; they're actually a lot more dangerous.
That's what the term "fake news" obscures: that there is enough truth mixed in to make reality indistinguishable from fiction. In addition to the unfortunate political charge that blames the left or right instead of the real perpetrators.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:51PM (5 children)
I've detected them flat out lying many times over the years, and particularly in the past year they seem to be to the point where they don't even try to hide it so much as justify it in many cases.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:37PM (4 children)
Why should they hide it? Even if caught in those lies there are no consequences.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:41PM (3 children)
So they don't feel the need to hide it anymore. They're so completely in touch with their paymasters, and out of touch with the rest of the country, they don't even seem to realize the response they are provoking.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:30PM (2 children)
I dunno. I'm certain I'm detecting a frisson of fear. They know something very bad is coming. It's why the billionaires and other thieves are building themselves bunkers everywhere. It's gonna be really, really funny to see the look on the faces of the Wall Street execs at the helipad off lower Manhattan when they realize their chopper pilots ditched them to fly their own families to the bunkers to hunker down with the families of the butlers, maids, and chauffeurs. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of crazy, heinous shit happening in the middle of the collapse, but that will be one very bright spot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:40PM
No worries for Elon Musk. He's building tunnels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:43PM
It would be interesting to find out the location of the bunkers. I rather like the idea of packing the air intakes full of dog shit.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:40PM
you're on crack. they are lying whores. bought and paid for. every time, they skew the story in favor of their masters, the state and corps. why are you trying to act like they are well meaning people. they are degenerate scum ruining the country/world. not many things more vile than msm. even local news whores are disgusting. they need to be attacked not covered for.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:55PM (2 children)
Don't let them off the hook that easily. They know damned well that telling the right series of half-truths leaves an overall impression that is a lie. Most of us learned that very well at an early age after trying to half-truth ourselves out of trouble.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:30PM (1 child)
You miss my meaning. Telling half-truths is worse than telling outright lies, because the doublethink involved makes it harder to detect falsehood.
My framing is not an attempt to let anybody "off the hook". It's not about who is morally wrong or right. It's about understanding the real problem better. If you believe they are telling outright lies and are doing so willingly, then the solution is to fire them and only listen to honest people. But if you understand that they believe they are being honest, that they have been convinced they are doing good and not doing evil, then replacing them won't help. The replacements will do exactly the same for exactly the same reasons.
We must accept that the reasons and methods are bigger than any one person. We must accept that there isn't anybody we can fire and replace to solve the problem. We must accept that attempts to create good and true news sources will be co-opted by these same forces, often becoming worse than what we were trying to replace.
If we don't accept this, then we are merely prey. We will become mouthpieces for the same so-called fake news we tried to escape.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:08PM
Which is why I never believe anything the MSM tells me without confirmation from other sources these days. I rather think they may be lying more often than not.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:26PM (28 children)
What's always struck me about populism is that the corporate-funded media routinely treat the term like a pejorative. Apparently in their minds doing what the people want isn't what a democratically elected leader is supposed to be doing, or something.
For future reference, some of the things Americans got from populism:
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- anti-trust laws, including the breakups of Standard Oil, US Steel, and Bell Telephone.
- direct election of senators
- referendum and recall in many states
- the EPA
- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts
- abolition of slavery in the northern states
- the legal right to form labor unions
I understand where this is coming from, though: When those with power are doing far far better than those without, they tend to see the mass of their fellow citizens as an angry mob outside their fortress. And those with power think that giving the mob what they want will only encourage them, and will look to those who will be "tough" on them rather than those that will "appease" them. They haven't gotten it through their heads that if said mob can't get what it wants via democracy and votes, they'll seek out other ways to get it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:31PM (10 children)
"What's always struck me about populism is that the corporate-funded media routinely treat the term like a pejorative."
To be honest, the term has always sounded a little fishy to me. I can't think of a good reason why it should, but all the same, populism has always seemed to lack some legitimacy. Only in recent weeks and months has the term seemed to assume some legitimacy, in my mind. In Europe, as well as the US, are standing up to say "enough is more than enough", and shooting down politicians with proven crappy records. "Alt-right" is what the left has chosen to call it, but it is a populist thing.
When you get right down to basics, democracy is little more than a popularity poll every couple years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
That's only because you guys don't understand what the term actually means...
"Populism" is promising and/or giving to the people whatever sounds good to them, disregarding the consequences. Examples:
- Republicans decry handouts.
- Democrats decry high-pollution jobs.
- Everybody is happy blaming the minorities for their problems
- Everybody is safer if you jail bad guys forever
If you're systematically buying support with decisions that will bite [the people] over the long term, that's populist.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 31 2017, @02:31AM
That viewpoint is based on the assumption that the people who are guessing at the consequences for political actions have a more accurate picture than the population at large. I think that's at a minimum open to challenge, especially when the people who society has decided have a right to an opinion that matters have seriously screwed up (e.g. failing to stop the terrorist attack on 9/11, failing to prevent the crash in 2008, wasting military resources on a country that didn't attack them, etc).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:03PM (7 children)
"Alt-right" is what the left has chosen to call it, but it is a populist thing.
My Gawd, Runaway! How can you just throw something so obviously "not-even-wrong" like this out there? Alt-right is just rebranded Nazism. It's got the racism, got the misogyny, it's got the subtext of repressed authoritarian homosexuality: what's not to like, if you are the complete opposite of a populist? No, alt-right is a "fake populism" or fascism. You need to take Steve Bannon seriously.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:26PM
And "the left" didn't coin the term. The "alt right" called themselves that. I mean, for fuck's sake...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:05PM (2 children)
Alt-right is just rebranded Nazism. It's got the racism, got the misogyny, it's got the subtext of repressed authoritarian homosexuality
Nazism is not misogynist (sexist, that is, it accepts humans have two sexes, yes). Nor is it any kind of sexuality, be it hetero or homo (not everything is related to sex, you pervert :). National Socialism follows nature, and therefore accepts the fact women and men have different roles. But neither is considered more important than the other:
"The two [man's and woman's] worlds are not antagonistic. They complement each other. They belong together just as man and woman belong together."
Alt-right is just rebranded Nazism
alt-right is a "fake populism" or fascism.
So which is it? The two (three) are not the same. Well, at least you didn't mix up corporatism too (spoiler: unions count as corporations in corporatism).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:00PM (1 child)
Steve Bannon, Jeff Gannon, Karl Rove, Peter Thiel. No to mention that Milo guy, and Spencer. No sexuality associated with the alt-right? Nazis? Are you sure? And why are you defending Nazis, AC?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:12AM
Messrs. Bannon, Rove, and Spencer are probably straight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer#Personal_life [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove#Personal_life [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bannon#Personal_life [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:17AM (2 children)
Like the talking heads at the various demonstrations, you regurgitate any number of foul-sounding names, as if they were all synonyms. My favorite talk show has a guy (Ken) who attends various demonstrations, and interviews demonstrators. At least 70% of the interviewees are so vacuous, you wonder who attends to their personal hygiene and body functions. They will blather on and on, using terms like "literally Hitler", along with your fascism, racism, misogyny, and they usually throw in a couple green phrases.
That empty headed parroting of terms and phrases they don't understand gives away the useful idiots quickly.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:22AM (1 child)
That empty headed parroting of terms and phrases they don't understand gives away the useful idiots quickly.
My point, exactly, Runaway! Tu quoque!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:01PM
Don't even THINK about my quoque! I don't swing that way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:49PM (2 children)
Part of the problem is that "populism" is too generic of a term.
Sanders-style liberal populism is hugely different from grumpy authoritarian populism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:28PM (1 child)
What do you mean grumpy? The country's falling apart and murders are going through the roof. That's why we need more aircraft carriers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:09PM
"murders are going through the roof"
Do you have any reliable citations for that? Be careful - I said "reliable citations". Had you said that "murders are going through the roof in Chicago", I would have no argument. Had you pointed at some other locations and/or demographics, I might find it difficult to argue your statement. But, nationwide? The US as a whole? I don't think so.
For "reliable citations", please don't quote some politician or other. District attorneys aren't any good. Those bastards like to lie to us, both to convince us that there IS a problem, and that THEY are the ones to solve the problem.
I don't believe that the murder rate, nationwide, is significantly higher today than it was ten or twenty years ago. I'll cite the FBI on that: https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low [mises.org]
Despite the fact that the FBI has proven itself to be unreliable (especially Comey) I think those numbers are pretty close to reality.
Now - the country falling apart - yes, no, maybe . . . . that depends on US!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:53PM (2 children)
For future reference, some of the things Americans got from populism:
This is an interesting list. I'm going to address how populism affects it today.
- Social Security
- Medicare
The party that the populists have chosen wants to eliminate these, but they're still popular enough that they probably won't be able to.
- Medicaid
The populist party is cutting this way back.
- anti-trust laws, including the breakups of Standard Oil, US Steel, and Bell Telephone.
The populist party doesn't believe in enforcing anti-trust laws.
- direct election of senators
We have this, but is it helping?
- referendum and recall in many states
Referenda in many states have led to recreational marijuana legalization. However, the party of the populists intends to re-assert Federal law and enforcement over this, leading to direct conflict with those states.
- the EPA
The EPA has been completely neutered by the populist party.
- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts
The populist party disagrees with these and is working against them.
- abolition of slavery in the northern states
The populists who elected the current populist party seem like they'd like to bring back slavery.
- the legal right to form labor unions
The populist party is adamantly opposed to labor unions.
They haven't gotten it through their heads that if said mob can't get what it wants via democracy and votes, they'll seek out other ways to get it.
Well the mob has gotten exactly what it wanted with democracy and voting, including rolling back all the things on your list. The mob wants greater inequality between the rich and the poor, it wants more religion-based policies, it wants greater power for corporations, and it wants policies which harm minorities. It's getting that now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)
Populism isn't a right or left thing. This time around, the Ds did a better job squashing the populists on the left than the Rs did on the right. Had the Ds not been as good at internal dirty tricks or simply realized their attempted coronation would cost them the presidency, we might have seen Sanders as president and could just as justifiably called him the populist president.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:22PM
You're exactly right, I'm just pointing out that populism is a very mixed bag. You can get some great things with it, or you can get some really horrible stuff (which isn't that hard to do when the populace is stupid and uneducated and easily convinced to vote against their own interests by demonizing some minority group).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:58PM (8 children)
Your entire populist list is an affront to some of the richest, most powerful people before the measure was passed:
- Social Security
a tax on labor so high that it is broken out as a separate line-item on all paychecks, and required by law to be 50% hidden from the workers.
- Medicare
- Medicaid
meddling in medical reimbursement since 1965
- anti-trust laws, including the breakups of Standard Oil, US Steel, and Bell Telephone.
Ask a Rockefeller what the breakup of Standard Oil did for them?
- direct election of senators
How many senators were being selected rather than elected by the old process? The "selectors" of Senators only did so at high cost because it benefited them, and apparently it happened often enough that needed to be addressed. Stripped of (a piece of) their political influence, the ex-Senator selectors lost what was a valuable tool for them to shape the laws.
- referendum and recall in many states
Same.
- the EPA
Oh my - the direct enemy of business everywhere. When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits (unless the corporation is specifically in the business of EPA compliance)?
- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts
A bigger pool of voters, a new diverse population with additional rights - can only make it harder to control things from the top.
- abolition of slavery in the northern states
Same.
- the legal right to form labor unions
!
I'm mostly surprised that populism has been sleeping for so long, I guess we've been distracted with prosperity, shiny new toys, free communication and such.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:03PM
"Populist party" is an oxymoron as old as Rome (the populares were the equivalent just before the collapse of the Republic). Factions ("parties") arise in oligarchies, systems of government where a few people (a senate, parliament, commission, etc.) are chosen by some criteria of worthiness ("the best candidate for the job") to make decisions and others to execute those decisions. Populism, in its purest form, belongs to democracy, the system of government in which people collectively (not through representatives, but directly) make decisions and executives are chosen by lot and in multiples that spread power broadly through the body of citizens.
A "populist party" is simply an oligarchic faction who enacts the will of the elite by pretending to champion the masses instead of pretending to superior qualifications.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
> When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits
Sometimes it has! Shocking, I know. Sometimes these industrialists get so stuck on the way they've always done things that they would almost rather commit murder than change, even when it is a change that directly benefits them as well as everyone else.
As a general rule, if your process is creating excessive pollution, you may be wasting money. You may be throwing out valuable byproducts. For instance, consider the practice of gas flaring.
As another example of what could there possibly be not to like about this. sure wish the EPA or the DOT would improve traffic lights. We waste a lot of time sitting at dumb red lights that can't tell there's no traffic on the cross street. At least the electric car will end the waste from idling at a red light.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:52PM (2 children)
Change is risk. Always flared off the gas wasting potentially $50M per year in resources? What's the cost (base+risk) of changing the process?
Base cost may only be $25M, indicating potential ROI in 6 months, but if there's $2B of product flowing through this process per year, even a 5 day shutdown could mean another $27M in losses, now ROI is out at a year, and that's just the "good case" shutdown risk, actual shutdown times could range from 0 to 60 days worst case. What do you think happens to management's bonus if they get shutdown for 60 days, losing almost $300M, while attempting to chase a $50M/year efficiency gain?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 30 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
Industrialists are as anti-improvement as everyone else. More so, actually. If you have a good thing, you want to maintain it.
Over and over, the music and entertainment industries have fought change that ultimately was to their benefit. They were opposed to player pianos, AM radio, the cassette tape, the VCR (remember Valenti's infamous histrionics likening the VCR to the Boston Strangler?), the CD burner, the mp3 format, and now, the Internet. They seriously seemed to think it was reasonable to demand that no one use new technology that might disrupt their crummy business models. And they've been wrong. Every single time. They lost, and their business grew enormously as new technology greatly increased access.
It's the same with the automotive industry. They didn't want to make cars safer, really safer, because that might cost them more money. Tons of low hanging fruit that they didn't want to pick, easy stuff like seatbelts and headrests. Most incredible was some of the astonishing waste they built into their cars. Lot of 1960s era cars can be vastly improved just by adding a 5th speed to the 4 speed transmission. Even more, sacrificing economy for pure cosmetics, in the person of the typical radiator grill that is much wider than the radiator. Makes the engine compartment into a rigid drag chute mounted on the front of the car. Instead, they treated the public to incessant whining that forcing them to improve was incredibly expensive and would bankrupt them. They were wrong.
And of course we have the oil industry, running propaganda campaigns to deny that there is Global Warming, so they can keep on selling oil.
Because of this long history of fighting against good changes, industry doesn't have much credibility.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @08:26PM
Oh, I wouldn't say industry has no credibility, I'd say they have negative credibility - you can virtually count on them to lie cheat and steal as much as they can - it's like an adversarial process - they make something people want, and they do it in the most "risk averse, cost effective" manner possible - both of which are externalizing as many costs as possible. They say they're benefiting the consumers with low prices, but a bigger lie has never been told - prices are set by what the buyers will pay, not what the sellers can sell for - profits are determined by the difference between sales price and production cost, and it is the law of the corporations to maximize profits, again by externalizing as many costs as possible - to the environment, labor forces, taxpayer funded subsidies, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:03PM (2 children)
Constantly and by design. If it wasn't so damn sad I'd find it hilarious how many people miss this. The EPA exists in order to immunize polluters from lawsuits. The cost of complying with the relatively weak (and often wholly inadequate) EPA standards is FAR lower than the cost of dealing with lawsuits from the people whose water you are poisoning to do business.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:49PM (1 child)
"When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits (unless the corporation is specifically in the business of EPA compliance)?"
Constantly and by design. If it wasn't so damn sad I'd find it hilarious how many people miss this. The EPA exists in order to immunize polluters from lawsuits. The cost of complying with the relatively weak (and often wholly inadequate) EPA standards is FAR lower than the cost of dealing with lawsuits from the people whose water you are poisoning to do business.
O.K. - good point, EPA compliance is cheaper than lawsuits, but pre-EPA environmental contamination lawsuits were relatively rare, and sometimes the EPA limits actually do take things farther than necessary to protect the environment - as you say they are usually inadequate, but mostly they're just arbitrary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:04PM
Historically the EPA was created to head off a rising flood of them, however, as awareness and scientific understanding of the negative effects had just hit critical mass.
If the EPA had not been created, then the insurance companies would have effectively made the regulations, and it stands to reason they'd tend to be tighter than what we have now, because they'd have to pay whenever a court decided they'd gotten it wrong, a worry the EPA has removed from the calculations.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)
You must be a communist. All those items in your list were anti-capitalist measures that totally destroyed the economy and the country.
You would think that a light bulb would go off somewhere for them, right? How much do you want to bet Marie Antoinette regretted not just having given the peasants the bread they were demanding?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 31 2017, @03:14AM
I am indeed socialist-leaning on a lot of issues. And of course it's been decades since each of those policies I mentioned were enacted, and both the economy and country are still here. Which says a lot about the predictions of doom and gloom that always seem to show up whenever somebody proposes giving the citizens what they're asking for.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:37PM
In other words: the 99% should try harder to get a handle on their government and make it work for them.
The 1% have been "giving back" a proportionally greater share of their time, attention, and wealth, to ensuring that they continue to get richer. Say they pay a 3% "governance" tax - not required of them by law, something they choose to do with their time and money to make sure that things continue to improve for them.
The 99% aren't putting up a similar effort or expenditure. The 99% can't win a spending war with the 1%, even if the 99% became as cohesively organized as the 1% (itself an impossible task), and they put 10% of their collective wealth into shaping government to benefit themselves, the 1% could still respond to that thread by out-spending them.
Where the 99% have power is, of course, in numbers. As a start, they could fielding and voting for candidates who actually represent their interests. They could take the time and effort to create a media channel that carries their side of the news. They could, but mostly they're busy "working harder, not smarter" which is doubtless a cornerstone of the anti-populist strategy.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by letssee on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:52PM (3 children)
if by 'reassertion' you meen 'demise' you are right.
The technocratic ponzi scheme is the cause, that's for sure, but populism is not a reassertion of democratic values. It leads to fascism and dictators. Making the unwashed masses even worse off then when they were ruled by the 'illuminati' technocrats.
Individual people can be smart. Large groups of people are stupid and will dig their own grave. Always. I do hope we can get to skip the 1940-1945 phase and go straight to the democratic revival that probably (hopefully) follows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:57PM (2 children)
This is inaccurate, I meen (sic) that we all knew the demise was upon us. [wikipedia.org] The question becomes; what are we going to do about it?
It is simply impossible for anybody to deny this.
Erm... this is a problem. The technocrats who created our current predicament cannot be trusted to resolve it. A fascis was a bundle of sticks, at it's core it means collectivism. Mussolini came to power as a member of the Italian Socialist Party [wikipedia.org] and fascism only took on it's modern connotation after he abandoned democracy and embraced corporatism. It is not the Nazis but the Communists who are undisputed world leaders in politically motivated body count. Do not mistake the left for hippies! [theguardian.com]
We all know the way supranational organisations were going and are aware that this kind of centralized planning has historically always led to mass slaughter. It's not a class issue, the "unwashed masses" have enough intuition to know when the prevailing narrative is plain wrong.
Yes, I am an individualist and a democrat. I too hope you are right but would remind you that the violence preceding and providing the justification for Hitler's rise to power came from the left (antifa) and from not the right.
(Score: 2) by letssee on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:18PM (1 child)
would remind you that the violence preceding and providing the justification for Hitler's rise to power came from the left (antifa) and from not the right.
Erm, that's not completely historically correct now is it? There was violence brewing all around in the 30's. The antifa you mention was created in germany as a reaction to nazi paramilitary organisations for example. It's not as if the right was very peace loving then (and neither the left for that matter).
I think the main problem is that lots of people here seem to think 'populsim' means 'doing what the common man wants'. But that's just 'democracy'.
Populism means (at least it used to mean when I was in school): 'telling people whatever they want to hear, regardless of if it's possible or true'. i.e. demagogery.
The ris of this sort of populism (trump, brexit, wilders here in holland, le pen in france) is disastrous, especially for the people voting for the populist parties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @01:31AM
Marinus van der Lubbe was the patsy. Violence and destruction of property is never the answer, it is the question. Historically, we do not like the answer. The reason I presented it as I did is because I currently see little evidence of political violence from anybody on the right (based stickmans [knowyourmeme.com] defensive actions excepted).
This remains to be seen -- we are not repeating our grandfathers nationalism. Trump is a reaction against identity politics, corruption, regulatory and media capture. Brexit is a reaction against imposed autocracy and uncontrolled mass immigration. Geert Wilders winning an outright majority would have been a disaster, no question. Fortunately politics in the Netherlands is so fragmented that there was never any chance of it. Marine Le Pen, I believe is the best hope for France and Europe and that is not me supporting or lionising her. A European trading block is fine, destroying national sovereignty and hegemony for a federal superstate is a fantasy of the deranged. Using en-mass muslim immigration to achieve that end is the fantasy of the completely bat-shit, institutionalize-me-now insane. It's not happening and I do (as someone in the UK with with muslim friends) fear the backlash if the situation is not contained quickly. Cognitive dissonance is strong! [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:31PM (8 children)
It's not just economics. It's the perception that the governing elite, the so-called 1% (although it's more like 0.01%) have not only looted the world for their own benefit, but have been utterly incompetent in their management of the political and economic structures with which they were entrusted. There is no excuse for governments drowning in debt. There is no excuse for uncontrolled illegal immigration. There is no excuse for a lot of things that have been done (or allowed to happen) in the past few decades. But the elite didn't want to disturb the masses with hard choices, so they distracted us with bread-and-circuses and manufactured crises.
Now, the elite can no longer hide the disasters that they have created: their financial mismanagement is weighing ever more heavily on the global economy, Ponzi schemes for health-care and retirement are near collapse, masses of uneducated and unemployable immigrants are proving indigestible. Meanwhile, the masses watch the elite fly on their private planes to their various luxurious homes, protected by their private security forces.
Populism is a very dangerous thing, because it is basically government-by-mob, and mobs aren't particularly intelligent. However, this is what our politicians have brought us to. If they aren't careful, populism can quickly turn ugly, involving rope and lampposts.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:07PM (5 children)
To my mind whenever discussions of so-called "populism" ever come up, the question really becomes: what's your alternative? Because really an argument against "populism" is generally also an argument against democracy, or at least the forms of it that are common today. "Government-by-mob" as you put it is just another name for democracy, something recognized all the way back to Plato. (Though Athenian democracy was less extreme than the modern versions in terms of suffrage -- democracy comes from demos, effectively rule by the collective will of all the paterfamilias figures from the various landed estate divisions; only a small minority of adults in ancient Greek democracies were granted suffrage.)
So what are you advocating as a solution? "Populism" just seems a convenient term to invoke when democracies go off the rails, but those trends are inherent in democratic systems for the most part. The Founders of the U.S. sought to limit the influence of the people through things like Senators being elected by state legislatures, the Electoral College, appointments to many other federal offices, etc. We've gradually watered all that down over the centuries.
And the biggest shift arguably began under FDR (a rising patrician star from a party which used to be a coalition of northern elites and southern racists), whose populism was probably helpful in instituting aid to the masses during the Great Depression, but it broke the Constitution in the process by removing all semblance of a federalist division of power with the states. And many of the "Ponzi schemes" as you put it weren't originally created that way -- Social Security, for example, was originally an insurance program (as it stated in its name). What was it insuring? Well, mostly against living too long. It was never intended to be a "retirement program" or substitute for pensions. When it was instituted, the average lifespan was around 65 years, so Social Security was a backup income for people who lived longer than average. Most people were still expected to basically work until they died.
Now, decades later it seems like a "Ponzi scheme" only because it was subsequently represented as something about "retirement" when it was never intended to be such. And even then, we had chances to fix it -- in the early Reagan years during a SS crisis, Alan Greenspan had a plan to fix SS at least for a several decades, because they anticipated the Baby Boomer growth in required funds. So they started collecting more taxes -- but then the government spent that money instead of saving it like the plan originally intended. All of this is to say that SS started out with good intentions, as did a lot of government boondoggles.
And we've seen the legacy of populism from Reagan's "trickle down" through Obama's chants of "Yes, WE can..." It's all about convincing the populace that they're getting something while mostly screwing them over further. The current populism isn't only a reaction against the "governing elite"; it's also a reaction against previous poor choices by the populace in electing leaders who also were populist in their rhetoric and behavior.
TL;DR -- to say "populism is a very dangerous thing" is basically to say that "democracy is a very dangerous thing."
But what's the alternative? That's always the next question. The Founders seemed to believe that isolating more decisions among the landed elite, but also distributing the decision-making power through oodles of checks-and-balances seemed the way to go. At least then you'd have mostly more informed people making the big decisions or at least having a voice of veto to the people (e.g., through Senators elected by state elites, and the President elected by an elite Electoral College). This was the theory of the Roman Republic for several centuries too, until it was gradually undermined by allowing officials to consolidate power under popular demand. But putting more power in the hands of the elite also allows them to consolidate even more power for themselves, so do we just end up with the problems of an oligarchy instead?
It's all well and good to point out the evils of "populism," but what's the fix for that? History tells us again and again that the people vote in oligarchs, they vote in dictators, they vote in tyrants. The long legacy of the 20th-century move toward greater "power to the people" is now bearing fruit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:32PM (1 child)
Tsk tsk, mixing Greek and Latin legal terms! The Athenian equivalent of a Roman pater familias (literally, "the father of the family") would be kyrios (master), who was legally in charge of the oikos (household).
That said, Athenian democracy was controlled by about 15% of the population, while the problem with western democracies right now is that they by all appearances are controlled by about 0.1% of the population.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:22PM
Yeah, yeah... I know the terms. Just using ones that might be somewhat likely to be at least familiar to people without a background in Classics. But yes, I was being a bit loose with terms. Point is that the Greek demos was a small administrative subdivision from which democracy derives. Democracy was about the representation of those subdivisions (at some point effectively landed households completely with ruling families, slaves, etc.), and demos came to figuratively mean "the people" even though most of the population wasn't actually voting.
Anyhow, the U.S. has a scaling problem too. The Founders intended representatives to represent a few thousand people, not hundreds or thousands or millions. (Well, a few thousand landowners who were voters; originally they represented about 30000 total people.). That shift in scale which happened since the Constitution was drafted is bound to create significantly greater divisions between the people and their representatives.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:42PM (2 children)
You make some really excellent points. One of the best comments I've read on Soylent :-)
I just want to respond to a couple of points. Populism isn't, in my mind, democracy. Populism is stupid democracy, a knee-jerk reaction of the population, without much thought behind it. In this sense, it what the founders of the US were trying to prevent through checks-and-balances, through restricting the vote to an educated subset of the populace. This brainlessness is also what lets populism so easily be derailed, or degenerate into rioting and violence.
The alternative? There really isn't one. As some unknown person said (famously quoted by Churchill): "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.". Democracies normally only survive a couple of centuries before the concentration of power and associated problems destroy them. It's increasingly looking like much of Western civilization is reaching senescence. Can we roll back the clock this time? Remove the ever-increasing concentrations of power? Unlikely, although Brexit is (imho) an unexpected step in the right direction.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:58PM
Thanks for your comment -- and actually, I should say that I share many concerns with your first comment as well (if that wasn't clear).
I guess one of my issues is with the definition of "populism," which always seems to be problematic. We can see it in other comments on this story -- some people want to claim "populism" is the reason behind many good things in government; others see it as you do, as a pejorative for when democracy gets screwed up.
The "brainlessness" you mention is basically what Plato and others meant by "mob rule" or whatever, and I guess if anything my point is that it's a problem endemic to democracy. Everyone wants to say they are "democratic" (not in sense of party, but in sense of supporting suffrage for common people) until some "populist" movement comes along that causes a tyrant to be voted into power or whatever. But that's part of what being "democratic" will entail. The masses are inevitably going to make decisions sometimes that work against their best interest, and very frequently they will endorse leaders who promise them what they want to hear, regardless of what they do (or even if they do something to support popular sentiment, they'll ignore boatloads of accompanying corruption, etc.).
I don't see how you separate those tendencies of democracy (your "populism") from the "good" democracy. It's all democracy. It's a feature of the system, for good or for ill.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:01PM
Careful with those assertions on the supposed stupidity of democracy. Democracies can be lead astray with propaganda and lies. That's not the fault of the democracy, except for being too credulous. Populism is the garbage out from the garbage fed in to the swarm intelligence by propagandists. Bonus that they also get to malign the very concept of democracy which they're trying to subvert.
Democracy can also be cheated, for instance by rigging elections. Trump did not win the popular vote. There is doubt whether he really won the Electoral College. The rust belt states handed him the election by very slim margins, and there are lingering questions about vote suppression. There's also FBI director Comey's October surprise, and possible Russian interference. But the US doesn't seem to have any provision for pausing and taking stock. The machinery has to grind on and swear in someone to be president on Jan 20. Full speed ahead and damn the very real questions about the integrity of the vote. Seems to me no one should have been anointed POTUS elect for at least a month.
I certainly hope that this time around, the public remembers the 2003 Gulf War, and will make it impossible for the Republicans to pull a stunt like that again and get us to invade another nation. The most likely targets right now seem to be Syria or Yemen. They're small and weak, with weak friends, easy pickings for a show of military might and glory. But there's no telling. The entire Islamic world is a potential target. Or, who knows, maybe the Republicans will hoke up reason to invade some leftist country in S. America such as Venezuela. They may shy away from Iran, as it's bigger and stronger and has lots of mountains. N. Korea is protected by China, so that may be out too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
immigrants are proving indigestible
It depends on what kind of BBQ sauce you use, though a Cajun rub works pretty good too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:55PM
I put them into a melting pot. The fondue is delicious.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by theluggage on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:37PM (13 children)
Unpopulism meant tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves.
Whereas populism means handing power to egalitarian, salt-of-the-earth, saints like hereditary property tycoons or the far right wing of the UK Conservative party, who we can trust to fight selflessly for the rights of the working masses...
What populism is actually achieving is weakening any large, powerful centre-rigtht/center-left blocs who try to temper capitalism with liberal/social values - like the US Federal Government or the European Union - and might just be big enough and ugly enough to stand up to big, international corporations and oligarchs. You think Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Money etc. are going to stand up for the wage slaves and discover "enlightened self-interest" once they're freed from pesky EU/Federal regulations on workers rights, environment, competition etc.? Really? You think that Theresa May or the Orange One aren't going to be at the beck and call of big business?
The EU is going to be seriously weakened by the departure of the UK, and its pretty obvious that the US government has been weakened and discredited by the antics of the Orange One who's only success in his first 3 months has been to drive wedges between his government, the states and the judiciary.
Never before have so many turkeys been persuaded to vote for Christmas. Get ready for the race-to-the-bottom as our new "populist" overlords try to offer the most management-friendly terms to businesses.
Now, I'm a great fan of Hanlon's Razor - cockup is more likely than conspiracy - but if you were a huge multinational or private plutocrat and wanted to run a divide-and-conquer campaign against your main opposition, the Brexit and Trump campaigns would be a pretty credible effort.
Of course, the US Democrats and UK Labour, Lib Dems and moderate Conservatives helped by abjectly failing to mount effective campaigns or field suitable candidates, and nobody in their right mind could not think that the EU had its own serious issues to solve. However, all Brexit has done is to give the EU another serious issue to solve that could quite easily destabilise the whole continent.
But, hey, I'm no millionaire but I'm lucky enough to have a small, portfolio which has been doing really, really well since the Brexit vote (of course, in 2 years time when Brexit actually happens and the pigs come home to roost in Trumpton it may be a different story, but yay for diversified portfolios) - so enjoy the 0.01% interest on your cash savings and when your car factory re-locates to Poland and May outsources the entire benefit and healthcare system to a Cayman Islands services company, don't blame me - I voted for Kodos. Except... no, I don't think that. I think it would be a bloody tragedy and I will be really, really happy if I turn out to be wrong.
The answer seems pretty simple.
Part of the problem is charlatans offering deceptively simple answers to complicated questions...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @12:57PM
Low base rates and credit expansion as a band-aid for deeper structural problems are part of what people are voting against. When Obama took office student loan debt (or "asset" as these morons call it) was $640 billion. It now totals $1.6 Trillion and forms over 25% of the Federal Governments "assets". While education served this example, the pattern has been ubiquitous. Unsecured credit results in price inflation which is a disaster in an economic environment combining low inflation and low growth.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:31PM
Don't forget Scotsit. 300 years of history and collaboration goes up in ****. So sad. Putin is smiling tho...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sgleysti on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:20PM (5 children)
I consider Bernie Sanders to be an actual populist (new deal democrat -- close enough), while Donald Trump is just a charlatan / con man / bullshitter.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:53PM (4 children)
Don't fool yourself. Donald Grump conforms to a long tradition of populism. In fact, authoritarian populism that ends up in hard-right policies lead by a cult-of-personality is probably the most common form of populism. Practically every african dictator followed that model. Ferdinand Marcos in the phillipines is another example. And of course Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:12PM (2 children)
Sure, but I don't count him a populist because I don't have confidence that he will do anything that substantially benefits the majority of American citizens.
In other words, kleptocracy is not populism, regardless of one's rhetoric.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)
Then your definition of "populist" is a personal definition disconnected from all common usage and thus of little use in communicating meaning to anyone else.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:51PM
As is common in these kinds of discussions, you and I were working from two different valid definitions, both of which are contained in the following linked article:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/populism [britannica.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:13PM
Stalin
Stalin was not exactly a populist. Stalin was Stalin. Putin is more of a populist than Stalin ever was. Stalin only cared about himself and the rest were disposable. He could have cared less about his popularity as long as everyone feared him. Trotsky, on the other hand, was a populist that opposed Stalin and ended up with an ice pick to the brain for his efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky [wikipedia.org]
The bottom line is Stalin directly murdered 10s of millions through his actions. When he took "direct control" over the army in WWII, Soviet Union almost collapsed. The guy is more of Roman Emperor Nero than of a populist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:36PM (4 children)
Unpopulism meant tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves.
Whereas populism means handing power to egalitarian, salt-of-the-earth, saints like hereditary property tycoons or the far right wing of the UK Conservative party, who we can trust to fight selflessly for the rights of the working masses...
They don't have to perfect, they merely need to appear better than the alternatives. And let's face it, by not having credible policies on key populist issues (such as immigration control which was the decisive factor in both Brexit and the Trump election), their opponents have conceded a great deal of ground.
What populism is actually achieving is weakening any large, powerful centre-rigtht/center-left blocs who try to temper capitalism with liberal/social values - like the US Federal Government or the European Union - and might just be big enough and ugly enough to stand up to big, international corporations and oligarchs.
Yes, that is a pleasant silver lining to this. Frankly, I think "big, international corporations and oligarchs" are just an Emmanuel Goldstein ruse, something to distract us with a two minute hate, while the true powers slowly take over. After all, the main threat of large businesses is that they can be used against us by the governments that control them. Weakening the largest governments helps reduce the potential harm.
And it's telling that the first serious democratic challenges in a while to this takeover are so viciously attacked. Democracy isn't pretty, but we should be glad when it works as advertised.
But, hey, I'm no millionaire but I'm lucky enough to have a small, portfolio which has been doing really, really well since the Brexit vote (of course, in 2 years time when Brexit actually happens and the pigs come home to roost in Trumpton it may be a different story, but yay for diversified portfolios) - so enjoy the 0.01% interest on your cash savings and when your car factory re-locates to Poland and May outsources the entire benefit and healthcare system to a Cayman Islands services company, don't blame me - I voted for Kodos. Except... no, I don't think that. I think it would be a bloody tragedy and I will be really, really happy if I turn out to be wrong.
Trump has been good for my US-based folio too. We'll see if pigs roost or not. But Trump at least has a pretty small hurdle to meet - reverse most of the policies of Obama and don't be terrible economically for however many terms he can cling on.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:05PM (3 children)
"I think "big, international corporations and oligarchs" are just an Emmanuel Goldstein ruse, something to distract us with a two minute hate, while the true powers slowly take over."
Actually, I think those corporations are just a front for the "true powers". Who are they, anyway? Well, look at "old money" first. Maybe some "new money" families count themselves among the elite, but the elite would look down on them.
http://yournewswire.com/former-kissinger-ceo-says-the-world-is-run-by-30-families/ [yournewswire.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/photos/the-world%E2%80%99s-richest-families-revealed/ss-BBmRgsr#image=1 [msn.com]
Hmmmm - who owns Monsanto, anyway? No, I don't mean small time stock holders - who owns and controls Monsanto?
http://naturalsociety.com/who-are-really-the-top-shareholders-of-monsanto/ [naturalsociety.com]
People like to talk nasty about Hugh Grant, Monsanto’s CEO, and obviously a shareholder. The same goes for Bill Gates. He purportedly owns millions of shares of Monsanto stock as well. But who are the real owners of Monsanto? The answer might be shocking.
The real owners of Monsanto stock are institutions, and people who hide behind those institutions, not individuals like Gates and Grant. According to multiple sources, five investment funds are the top shareholders in Monsanto, with the Vanguard Group, Inc. at the top. You can view the rest below.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:50PM
Maybe add to that list some companies that are just NEVER in the news:
Schlumberger [wikipedia.org] (everything you need to drill for oil),
Cargill [wikipedia.org] (agribusiness on the scale of Soylent Green)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:57PM
The real owners of Monsanto stock are institutions, and people who hide behind those institutions, not individuals like Gates and Grant. According to multiple sources, five investment funds are the top shareholders in Monsanto, with the Vanguard Group, Inc. at the top. You can view the rest below.
I agree. I believe institutional investors are one of the key drivers for short term thinking in business today. It's not their money and hence, they ultimately aren't interested in the long term success of the business. But I don't think these people are "family". What I see here is the rise of the power of well-connected, unaccountable bureaucracies with government bureaucracies the worst of the lot.
The NSA isn't trampling the civil liberties of the world because it is running errands for the Rothschilds or whatever. It's because they can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:47PM
They even got their own "brand name" "designed" by their staff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonomy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:23PM (16 children)
Sure, populism is the result of economic failure. That doesn't mean it will fix the economy. On the contrary, populism seems to mean giving more power to total charlatans who are happy to claim they will fix the system when all they really intend to do is line their own pockets.
The real problem, what got us here in the first place, is dwindling interest in good governance. And we got there because things were pretty good for a while. The post-WW2 economy was powerfully maintained by strong, effective government regulations (like Glass-Steagall) and simple, fair wealth redistribution (like the GI bill).
If there's any one thing that allowed these policies to stagnate and die, it was the way that politics refocused from economic issues to social ones. Addressing civil rights has got us mired in a pleb-on-pleb war over racism and misogyny. And until we can lay down those arms, I don't think we're going to get anywhere.
Not that I have any good ideas for how to do so. I personally would rather that people on the right stop being racist, misogynist assholes. But those people would probably prefer that the left stop assaulting their so-called traditional values.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:31PM (6 children)
*cough*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:04PM (5 children)
When someone makes a disclaimer you are indeed redundant and stupid to point it out as I'd nobody noticed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:38PM (4 children)
There was no disclaimer, just a self-defeating argument predictated upon incorrect and easily disprovable assertions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:54PM (3 children)
It seems like it's the famous "I'm not $x, but $observation_x_would_make" in disguise.
Maybe we don't need to conclude that things like that are an admission that the speaker is, in fact, $x.
If we need somebody to blame, I think I first observed that pattern as concerns "I'm not racist, but" or "I'm not sexist, but". I'm Not A Conservative, But... I never really thought that was a good way to go about dialogue. I'm Not A Liberal, But... well, maybe I am a conservative, but it's just too bad Conservatives with a Capital C believe I should be stoned to death in the street because of how I was born. Am I "virtue signalling" now?
How about if we just read what the other person has to say and think on it critically without jumping to conclusions, using black-and-white thinking, or throwing their entire post into one of a few very small buckets?
The human mind isn't a C compiler. It does not need to completely abort comprehension the first error it runs into.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:04PM (2 children)
How about if we just read what the other person has to say and think on it critically without jumping to conclusions, using black-and-white thinking, or throwing their entire post into one of a few very small buckets?
I think the problem is that some people just don't like brazen displays of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance especially in an argument that purports to take the higher moral ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:33PM (1 child)
There was no hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance. The gist was "we should all get along, but I don't know how to get there because I would like other people to not do x y and z." It is an admission of knowing the end-goal but not knowing how to achieve it. If you want hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance look at your own posts, those of Jmorris, VLM, and often Runaway. Of you three only Runaway has the decency to stop spouting irrational comebacks when someone make a valid and inescapable point. Part of why he gets positive commentary from his ideological opposites and jmorris/khallow/vlm rarely do.
I tried to be more calm and rational, but after a while it takes its toll when the other person doubles down on bullshit, ignores inconvenient points, or just flat out makes shit up. There is plenty of propaganda on the liberal/progressive side, but it doesn't even come close to the bullshit spouted by breitbart or rush limbaugh. So everyone who isn't alt-right really has a hard time dealing with the alt-right because there is just too much bullshit to wade through and debunk. If we could actually settle issues and keep a record of such conversations for future reference then it would be a lot easier. It goes both ways too, plenty of bullshit from the liberal side that gets downright scary: kill / imprison all cops/rich people, unrealistic methods of fixing the wealth gap, overly optimistic solutions for social problems, etc.
See what I did there? I offered an olive branch so you would realize I'm not only attacking conservatives. Not sure I've ever seen an olive branch coming from the conservative crowd here, just more talk about wiping out liberals. Maybe a spreadsheet would help and we could have some polls to see what the site's user base generally thinks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:06PM
No, I wrote what I did because it was self-contradictory, the assertion was pure projection and meustrus (with no sense of self-awareness) had identified himself as the problem. You do not build a dialogue or hope to arrive at consensus by engaging in ad-hominem, the cult of leftism* has forgotten this.
* Disclaimer: I'm a social liberal and will no longer even debate IRL with people who behave like this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 29 2017, @02:24PM (4 children)
I've been finding this site pretty interesting recently: https://www.redneckrevolt.org [redneckrevolt.org] There are some interesting articles there which do not fit into the cookie cutter media inspired caricatures of left and right, including the recognition that they're all charlatans. For example:
https://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2016/12/02/TO-OTHER-WORKING-AMERICANS [redneckrevolt.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:04PM
"Our real enemies are mostly white English speaking Christians."
I like this latest pope a little bit (although i hate the whole power church thing: that's not religion, that's power and money) because of his saying he'd rather people are atheists if they are going to be bad christians/catholics.
Too many 'religious' people talk the talk, but forget about walking the walk (i've known too many of them... most of them i walk the walk more than THEY do).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:34PM (2 children)
That looks pretty interesting. I might as well get this out of the way rather than waste a bunch of time with it.
My goal here is to just get the bullshit out of the way up front as quick as possible.
What is this movement's reason for wanting gays dead?
Any ties to different Militias?
(Score: 2) by karmawhore on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:08PM
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:02AM
I don't think they do want gay people dead. As an aside, I am not what you'd call working class. I just find it very interesting how there is a vocal and visible group that doesn't fit into the caricature of left and right. I fit the caricature of a lefty: good income, atheist, post-grad degree, intentionally child-free, drive an electric car, grow myself an organic garden, vote Green -- the whole nine yards. But I think there are a lot of interesting ideas out there though, especially once we get past the cartoonish stereotypes for those are in fact, nothing but a form of prejudice.
Anyway:
https://www.redneckrevolt.org/single-post/2017/03/28/PHOENIX-MAGA-MARCH-REPORTBACK [redneckrevolt.org]
https://www.redneckrevolt.org/principles [redneckrevolt.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 29 2017, @04:41PM (3 children)
More specifically, one of the two major groups of people trying to control the government has spent the better part of 40 years pushing the idea that "good government" is an oxymoron, and when in power does everything they can to prove their point. The other major group might be able to remedy this, except that both major groups of people are busy selling policy off to the highest bidder and the only question is how brazen they are about it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:08PM (2 children)
More specifically, one of the two major groups of people trying to control the government has spent the better part of 40 years pushing the idea that "good government" is an oxymoron, and when in power does everything they can to prove their point.
Sounds like they're right then. If your scheme strongly depends on opponents bending over backwards to make your scheme work, then it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:50PM (1 child)
Government is not a scheme, and there will never be a way around it. You can morph it into corporate structures, coop living scenarios, whatever. In the end you still have some group organizing human activity to some degree.
Partisan politics is a joke, a masterpiece of puppet theater. Both parties are terrible, but the GOP actively dislikes government because it shackles their corporate interests. Of course they want 100% freedom to do whatever they want. They aren't correct that good government is an oxymoron, they are short sighted psychopaths.
The Democrats are the opposite, except their psychopathic power trip is about more control through government.
As always, the best path is somewhere in the middle. Personally I would promote the following: socialized healthcare, better border control and auditing of illegal labor pools, more protectionist policies to prevent offshoring of jobs, higher taxes especially for the wealthy (corporate and private), preventing public tax dollars from financing abortions but abortions are still kept legal (pretty much how it is now...), legalize gay marriage everywhere (basic human rights for all), reduction in gun control, and I'm running out divisive issues.
Compromise is what real life is all about. It often sucks because we're all quite naturally selfish / self-centered, but without it we'd still be living in caves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:06PM
As long as that doesn't involve putting your peepee in someone's hoohaa... or being a woman, obviously.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @01:30PM (12 children)
The supposed 'elite' in both the USA and the UK are so utterly out of touch with the working folk of those same countries that the one cannot even understand what the other is saying.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:29PM (11 children)
The supposed 'elite' in both the USA and the UK are so utterly out of touch with the working folk of those same countries that the one cannot even understand what the other is saying.
For example, a lot of propaganda mileage has come from recent Democratic presidential candidates trying to explain fly-over country to San Francisco (Obama's bitter clinger" [huffingtonpost.com] speech and Clinton's "deplorables" [time.com] speech were both to San Francisco audiences). Just think about it. They're trying to explain opponents with different beliefs and get it so terribly wrong in such a tactless way.
And then there's the matter of the grotesque incompetence commonplace in government. For example, the US government burned $400 billion on a terrible jet fighter. While that's great news for any would-be adversary, it's not so great for the people relying on the protection of those planes. That's more than $1000 per resident. So what happens as a result of this? Business as usual.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:54PM (5 children)
They don't want to acknowledge, in many cases seem quite incapable of comprehending, in fact, that they do have opponents with legitimately different beliefs, not just on minor issues but core values. They're still trying to pretend the Russians elected Trump, in conjunction with some enormous white nationalist movement that doesn't exist; rather than face the fact that the candidate they ran was so horrifically tainted half the country would have voted for a farm animal over her if they were the only choices.
"For example, the US government burned $400 billion on a terrible jet fighter. While that's great news for any would-be adversary, it's not so great for the people relying on the protection of those planes."
Our military and foreign policy have long ago quit having anything to do with anything other than internal politics. What's important is not what the plane will or will not do, or what other options there might or might not have been. As long as this thing is spreading enough money around in enough congressional districts it's golden.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:38PM (4 children)
You are factually incorrect, the people were duped through propaganda to hate Hillary more than was reasonable and still she won the popular vote. I didn't vote for her and she was a terrible candidate, but you are going too far in your assertions. I'll go the opposite way and say that if people knew what Trump's presidency would be like, even the first few months, then Hillary would have 100% won the election. It wasn't about core values it was about money, Trump won on anti-immigration and bringing jobs back to the US. The other pieces are minor and not quite as fundamentally different as you'd like to believe.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:51PM (2 children)
Trump won first and foremost by being perceived as the only viable alternative to the ultimate establishment boss - Clinton. He won by campaigning hard and energizing his base at the same time the Democrats were congratulating themselves on their certain victory. He won by promising to drain the swamp - I doubt very much he'll be able to pull that off, but people believed he would at least try and that's why they made it to the polls for him.
Hillary will never drain the swamp. She's the momma 'gator, the boss at the end of the swamp.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:56PM (1 child)
Trump is a buffoon. But he promised to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That's why I voted for him. He did in fact kill the TPP once elected, which is the actual first time a candidate I voted for actually did what he promised to do. All the other stuff he's done so far is a clusterfuck, but the TPP is so huge that so far it's still worth the price of admission.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:10PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 30 2017, @12:00AM
You are factually incorrect, the people were duped through propaganda to hate Hillary more than was reasonable and still she won the popular vote. I didn't vote for her and she was a terrible candidate, but you are going too far in your assertions.
Where was the facts in that section? Asserting someone was "duped"? You need evidence to make it a fact. And what level of hatred is reasonable for Clinton? And how does any of the above contradict Arik's post, even if it is true?
I'll go the opposite way and say that if people knew what Trump's presidency would be like, even the first few months, then Hillary would have 100% won the election.
You have to be joking. He had such a tough campaign slog in the first place because people thought his presidency would be even worse than it's been. Let us keep in mind that for the past year or so - once he became a threat to Clinton, he's been compared with Hitler. Well, it doesn't look to me like Trump is on track to eliminate the US Republic in a year's time. But I suppose by that he's just failing to meet expectations, eh?
It wasn't about core values it was about money, Trump won on anti-immigration and bringing jobs back to the US.
Which doesn't sound like money to me.
The other pieces are minor and not quite as fundamentally different as you'd like to believe.
Unless of course, you're wrong in your baseless assertion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:48PM (3 children)
Yup, Clinton is a stooge who tried to resort to emotional appeals by pumping up hatred, too bad for her she sucks so bad at it and has the charisma of vegetable.
Of course you can't see in the mirror Khallow, notice that you have bought into the same shit shoved at you from the other side of the isle. You often apply generalities and blame individuals for the shitty politics of the Democratic party.
Can we come together to fix our government? Reduce meddling in our individual lives / freedoms yet protect us from the inhumane corporate practices and wasteful pork projects?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:33AM (2 children)
Of course you can't see in the mirror Khallow, notice that you have bought into the same shit shoved at you from the other side of the isle.
Yet another imaginary appeal to self-awareness. I wonder if you're the same AC that has been peddling that line for the last few months.
You often apply generalities and blame individuals for the shitty politics of the Democratic party.
Like blaming all blacks for crimes committed by blacks? If you think about it, I'm sure you'll find my approach superior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:45AM (1 child)
I wonder if you're the same AC that has been peddling that line for the last few months.
The obvious rebuttal is that I am not that same AC, I am the one in the mirror. Fucking mirrors, khallow! How do they work?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 30 2017, @04:41AM
The obvious rebuttal is that I am not that same AC, I am the one in the mirror. Fucking mirrors, khallow! How do they work?
So there's two ACs with that patter? Marvelous.
I notice you didn't get my point. The previous AC post was so clueless it conflated opposites. Blaming individuals for their faults is far different than blaming some broad group for those faults. It most certainly is not "applying generalities".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:27PM
At least our top dog negotiated a $600M discount on $1.6T bill. Atta boy, sickem.
Protection... ha ha ha! This is the guy who would dump 25M Americans off health insurance to save less than 1/4 of the cost of those war planes. For their protection... lol