12-14-2021, 02:53 PM
Several cycles operate at once, and those that depend upon a static ideology, believers in which assume that all is settled once and for all after some critical event such as a revolution, are proved wrong. What is wrong with Marxism-Leninism will prove just as much wrong in neoliberalism. I see the late stage of a 3T informed with neoliberal ideology as a deformed and depraved expression of capitalism. Sarkar has something here. It may not be perfect, but Sarkar has one of the longest views of history. He's from India, which has one of the longest histories in the world and a series of cultures. He is as knowledgeable about the West as someone living in the West.
I see Donald Trump as an example of Capitalism at its worst. He did not innovate; he parlayed wealth that his father made into a toy in which he played office. Unlike most capitalists who have no Plan B in the event of failure except to go back to being a 'mere' worker, Trump has been exempt from the consequences of personal failure. He's been a landlord in a time of rents rising faster than administrative costs and taxes and a creator of the sewage that is reality television. As the journalist H. L. Mencken put it, nobody can go broke underestimating the taste of the American public. Just as when Mencken was alive, the level of intellectual sophistication of the American masses remains abysmal. Some people may be highly skilled at a trade or at what passes as a profession, but their learning of the liberal arts could hardly be more superficial. Trump actually made money peddling sludge, and he does the same now in politics.
I see Donald Trump as an example of Capitalism at its worst. He did not innovate; he parlayed wealth that his father made into a toy in which he played office. Unlike most capitalists who have no Plan B in the event of failure except to go back to being a 'mere' worker, Trump has been exempt from the consequences of personal failure. He's been a landlord in a time of rents rising faster than administrative costs and taxes and a creator of the sewage that is reality television. As the journalist H. L. Mencken put it, nobody can go broke underestimating the taste of the American public. Just as when Mencken was alive, the level of intellectual sophistication of the American masses remains abysmal. Some people may be highly skilled at a trade or at what passes as a profession, but their learning of the liberal arts could hardly be more superficial. Trump actually made money peddling sludge, and he does the same now in politics.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.