A discussion of this sort is better conducted "in clear".
See you in the newer thread & thanks!
]]>I'd suggest looking at what's been happening with the economies of places like Wisconsin, which went from progressive cities in control to reactionary rural rednecks in control, to get a vision of the future of the US (if you can't remember back to when Bush II was in charge) (the tl;dr version is that Wisconsin never recovered from the Great Recession for some odd reason). Much though I dislike economics, economies do better when they are reality based, and not run on BS.
]]>“This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.”
]]>Two freakin' MONTHS on Melville's Billy Budd, all 66 pages of it, on and on about the Christlike Billy, who stutters so much that he can't defend himself at the end, and gets keelhauled.... CRAP And esp. for those of us who, y'know, might not be freakin' Christians... No, it isn't about the human condition....
Then the guy spent two weeks on "literature from the Bible", and TWO DAYS on The Odessey, which I have always loved.
Besides, we know what happened to Moby Dick - the top of his head got an orange paint job, and he's went up the Potomac to Washington.
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]]>It would be trivially easy by certain non-State actors as well. 0.5 cal, synchronized attack, say good-bye to 75% of the energy network of America. Oh, and it takes 3-8 weeks to even make the replacements.
Um, been done. Read Stephenson's Zodiac.
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]]>I think your scope is much too narrow because the so-called liberals are, were, running the exact same scam, even NOW there is hardly any mentioning of the ongoing genocide in Yemen or the total fiasco and humanitarian disaster "we" created in Libya.
NO discussion or analysis of CETA, TTIP, TISA and TPP to be found in the media, except on blogs and "fake-news" sites.
There is only ONE philosophy allowed at government levels today - Neoliberalism.
Both "the left", "the right", the "opposition" are simply just differently coloured neo-liberals. Bound by something like "The One Ring" to follow "responsible social- and economic policies", which all just happen to come from the work of Chicago School of Economics and "business friendly" think-tanks.
The only place this latest "war on terror"-atrocity popped up was on The Intercept, not anywhere on even the "leftist" media here in Denmark, because, the left are warmongers also.
The one good thing is, with the election of Donald Trump, it is becoming clear that "liberalism" is finally running on fumes (or maybe it's Pervitin).
PS: If I was living in one of these places, I would probably sign up for you-know-who too. Give something back to the "world community" for all their lessons in the values of democracy, in kind too.
]]>Look at the Dems in the US today, and you'll see a really hard split between liberals and left-leaning, and the now-old neoliberals.
And NEITHER of them is into creating their own reality, which involves ignoring facts in your face.
No, they are not "all the same", which is a wonderful right-wing meme intended to result in "it doesn't matter, so don't vote, and don't take any interest in politics."
It's attitudes like yours that put Trumpolini in office, and Brexit.
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]]>Also, you are singing an old, old song. The one sung by Da'Esh now, & by the Nazis, Fascists & Communists all throughout the 1930's: "Western liberal democracy is dead & our new Clean Pure True way led by ( Insert name of $_Leader here ) is the wave of the future"
Well, it was lying shit then & it's still lying shit now.
]]>Regarding some of the later off topic stuff I've just glanced at, part of the problem with "liberalism" is that it's at least three words for the same thing. One issue is that liberalism is part of a dichotomy about international relations, namely "liberalism vs realism", basically free trade versus protectionism. That kind of liberalism is independent of the liberalism that is part of the dichotomy "liberalism vs conservatism", basically freedom and social mobility vs establishment authority and social stability. This dichotomy is really about feudalism being replaced by capitalism : do the classic aristocrats keep control or do they let the nouveaux riche grab part of the pie. The labels from that dichotomy are still in use, though at least in the US they don't mean the same things. First, long ago the then nouveau riche quickly replaced the aristocrats and became just like them. The idea and forms of a liberal system still remained, but in practice social mobility came to be severely hindered and the establishment held all the authority. What had been liberalism became conservatism. In the meantime socialism had been invented, with the notion of equality of outcome ensured by popular control in the economic sphere. The original form had a very specific and rigid script of exactly how history was supposed to go and how everything was supposed to be reinterpreted, one that predicted the inevitability of its own triumph if you just waited long enough. The success of any alternative was sure to be just a temporary setback due to insufficient pushiness. Sort of like millenarianism. Dissatisfied with this as the only alternative to the new conservatism dressed in the skin of liberalism, a new form of liberalism emerged (along with many other flavors) namely "social liberalism" which accepted the value of having a functioning market system but also of having a popularly controlled government interfering in the markets and ensuring some semblance of equality of opportunity, or at least a playing field not slanted quite so much in the favor of those on top staying there and doing whatever they want at the cost of those below. This new thing, which wasn't quite socialism because it was happy to stay with a mixed economy as an end rather than as an intermediate phase, took on the old mantle of "liberalism" at least in America. But to survive it had to ally itself with various brands of socialist and socialist disguised as liberal (wearers of the skin of "progressives" which is a whole other story), and thus the conservatives (who used to be called liberals and whose usual international relations flavor was an hegemonistic brand of "realism" called "neoconservatism") started conflating the social liberals with the socialists they rubbed elbows with. What's worse, the fascists superficially had much in common with the social liberals in that he broad brush strokes were similar. They both tended to go for a mixed economy, with government involvement to rein in egregious immorality (though they defined it differently with fascists being social conservatives as opposed to social liberals being, well social liberals--an additional source of confusion--and identifying immorality as things like lead in city water supplies rather than gay marriage) and keep the market serving the people rather than degenerating. Conservatives even accused liberals of resembling fascists in totalitarianism regarding control of speech and such, partly due to the instigations of socialist "allies" in "liberal" clothing. There are differences between modern or "social" liberals and fascists however. One is that while fascists pay lip service to the idea of the leadership merely reflecting the will of the people, they are simple authoritarians in practice: the communication is all one way. Another is that true social liberals don't want to direct all of society, they want to select strategic points at which to apply rigidity as a means of creating conditions in which liberty consistently has results that benefit all and ensure roughly equal opportunity, rather than degenerating into stasis as those who win have the power to ensure they stay on top. They are trying to create a setting with parameters, but then within that create space to let things be fluid. Kind of tricky. And to do so in the presence of other ideologies pulling toward attractors, which is much more simple than making a turbulent flow take the shape you want and stay there.
]]>See, we would be so much more effective having people issues, money issues, rather than identity issues. Which is why we got identity politics pushed on us from every angle. Which has now failed as a population management strategy because it is obvious that no actual progress is being made.
This being clear will not stop the dims .. democrats .. from doubling down on identity issues, so the republicans will get 4 more years. Just wait.
Because Trumpolini's neo-Fascism is clearly, not better. If one wants to move to a better situation in the long term, then one often has to endure some shorter term suffering to get there. I consider that an investment.
When you want to fix your house, you scrape the paint, reveal the rotten wood, now your house is much worse, not better. But now the problems hidden underneath are revealed, then, you can deal with them, put new paint on and your house now is better.
To me, you see, it is a general problem that the president of the united states can globally, unchallenged by "allies"; regime change, murder, disappear, torture, nuke, all on his/her own initiative.
With scarcely any media attention - except - when that great arbiter of random truth and justice happens to be Donald Trump. Even then the entire mass-media outrage is about someone missing their plane while zero fucks are given about 30-80 people murdered. Possibly with a vendetta element too.
Trump is just where we are now. It doesn't help painting over all of the old rot with a more kind, less crude, face while the murder & surveillance machine just keeps on trucking.
"Western liberal democracy is dead ... Please stop projecting, I only said the first part. It's up to everyone what happens next. "Stopping Trump" or "stopping" the visible blisters (a.k.a. Trump, Wilders, Brexit, Le Pen) on the paint will not stop the dry rot underneath.
Actual change in "how we do things here" is needed to fix.
PS:
Sorry to break this, but: Fascism happened many years ago. Not the old kind with parades, music and opportunities for able men to prove their mettle in battle, but a boring kind of PKI-driven fascism where governments became subservient to corporations, "The Market" and a few wealthy people.
Privatized Media only telling the news that corporations and wealthy people likes to hear. Police who primarily responds effectively to thought crimes or rich tourists being robbed and a bloated, wasteful, military practising their craft on brown people. This sucks.
The passing of TPP, TISA, CETA and TTIP would have ratified the rule of business and money over all people. Donald Trump put a yuuge spanner in all that.
Possibly, as you seem to think, totally only because he want to rule himself like in classic fascism. Even so, stopping those treaties was still progress and a (perhaps temporary and only until The Donald is explained what these treaties do for him) victory for humanity!
It is, in my opinion, good too that Donald Trump has set up a huge bitch-fight inside the US government on who is The Boss.
Just recently we have The Pentagon shooting it out with the CIA and the US State Department inside of Syria and Iraq. Now, the real fighting will (for some time at least) be inside the halls of power because The Donald has just gone and poked Equilibrium and everyone is rushing to Washington to grab whatever they can.
See? Worse, before, Better. Popcorn. There is Hope.
]]>*So almost certainly no one here.
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