10-25-2018, 06:14 AM
(10-25-2018, 05:22 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(10-25-2018, 01:33 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The millennials don't favor right-wing "populism" (which is not populism). They favor the opposite. So that prediction is based on an incorrect assumption. The millennials oppose Brexit and other right wing alt-right nationalism favored by older generations in Europe and America today.
In Britain, they favour Corbyn. But in many places on the Continent, they favour the nationalists. Younger American millennials (born in the late 90s) also preferred Trump over Hill.
But they do not favor Trump now.
Quote:Quote:There is no "authoritarian progressivism." Progressivism and social justice are liberal and create genuine freedom. Only neo-liberals think that pro-business policies are policies of "freedom," and that opposing oligarchy is "authoritarian."
PC is authoritarian. Full stop.
Authoritarian progressivism is 'pinko' authoritarianism usually associated with fellow travelers of Commie regimes. They believe that collectivism would solve all problems, and they fail to recognize that even in 'socialist' societies, bureaucratic elites can take on aristocratic methods of self-selection ("my kid gets a chance to get ahead in the nomenklatura, and the bright child of yours, you farm laborer or factory laborer, will have no chance", says the member of a 'socialist nomenklatura in the old Soviet Union or its bureaucratic equivalent today in Corporate America) in both 'socialist' states and in a plutocracy like ours.
Quote:Quote:If indignation of tyrannical governments rises in the third world against western imperialism, then perhaps neo-cons could rise in The West among those who want to maintain it. But since neo-cons are out of date, so is western imperialism, which is what it is.
Imagine a scale of authoritarianism, from 0 to 100. Western imperialism could be 30, maybe 40, but many of your beloved national liberation movements are close to 100. A combination of Western-educated intelligentsia's left-wing authoritarianism and traditional tribalism seems to be the worst. Neo-cons were right to fight this devilry.
Which is like defending someone like the late Erich Honecker or Nicolae Ceausescu because he isn't as bad as Stalin -- or the late Agosto Pinochet because unlike Hitler he did not invade his neighbors or do a Holocaust.
If we must never let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the workable good, we must also never let the horrid use the horrific as an excuse for its existence.
Quote:Teejay Wrote:I am predicting that the 2020's will an emergence of an "alt-left" which will be social democratic or socialist, advocating green politics and alter-globalization. The second global economic crisis will bring an economic downturn so bad that the right-wing populists are going to lose a lot of their appeal.
I think I agree, this can be the political persona of millennials in middle age. I imagine something slightly different: a fusion of nationalism (it has to be assimilated to end the polarisation!), environmentalism and PC. Anyway, how do you imagine a rebellion against the millennial establishment in the 2050s?
The GI Generation was patriotic without being the worst sort of nationalist. The valid patriot recognizes that the patriotism of people in other countries is valid. The perverse nationalist sees no validity in the patriotism of people in other lands that that nationalist wishes to subject and exploit. Environmentalism is a necessity and not a luxury in a world which cannot accelerate its use of fossil fuels and cannot simply make the manufacturing system a swift conduit of raw materials and labor to the landfill. A valid substitute for political correctness is genuine politeness. Thus it is grossly impolite to make jokes about handicaps and derisive ethnic jokes.
Promising as the GI Generation was, it also made mistakes such as believing that large-scale production and giant projects were the solutions to all problems. The Millennial Generation will be blind to the flaws in its solutions to the mess that we now have.
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.