04-22-2020, 10:19 AM
(04-21-2020, 03:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-21-2020, 09:57 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-21-2020, 01:05 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:(04-19-2020, 03:46 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote:(04-18-2020, 10:53 AM)Ghost Wrote: I think the most likely scenario is that both the nationalists/populists and fringe left will be called out by "normies".
Who are the normies? Neoliberals?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Normie
Neoliberal [ism] - An ideology that adheres to the liberalized flows of labor/capital/raw materials across nations states so as to achieve the maximization of profits. It's "success" is measured by this thing called "GDP". GDP = gross domestic product. The stuff it measures is stupid since MIC spending is a plus sign while a bunch of externialities like pollution never, never get a minus sign. Reagan,Thatcher,Blair,Bill Clinton, the EU, US "establishment", are all evil, nice festering fomites of this mind virus.
I agree with Rags: the neoliberal philosophy is now totally, as compared to partially, rancid. None of the neoliberal concepts were promulgated for the betterment of anyone other than those actually pitching the ideas. That they have had the economic clout and the balls-on patience to push them regardless of the situation speaks highly of their perspicacity, and badly about their humanity. Now those ideas are asked to solve problems they actually caused, and the chickens are flying home in droves.
Absolutely. They win largely because they are such good deceivers and communicators, starting with the great communicator. They tell us they are giving us "freedom." "Government is the problem." That's a good one; who likes "the govamint?" They tell us that the 1980s was a boom time, and that greed is good. But it was only good for those pitching the boom. They falsely call themselves populists now, and stoke the racism and xenophobia that underlie much of the neo-liberal line: "don't give my tax money to freeloaders," and you know whom they mean. Taxed Enough Already, they cry. Now they are protesting because they have to work a little bit and take some responsibility to keep others and themselves safe. Poor gun toters; they can't go out and go party. So they go to their new TEA Party and make themselves and others sick.
The neoliberal idea is that people must give Big Business the freedom to privatize, monopolize, and gouge, holding that maximal profits are themselves a super-prosperity that solves all problems. Neoliberalism comes with more mindless consumerism and with more intense disparities of opulence and deprivation, on more rapid depletion of resources, the ravaging of the environment for quick bucks or enhanced profit, on lower pay, the sacrifice of of workplace safety, despotic management, bigger rewards to administrative elites, reduced taxes for the super-rich, and government representing economic and bureaucratic power instead of the People. It is hard to see what is liberal about that. It is fascism without the torture chambers (at least here), official racism, and reckless warfare, although wars for profit and support of brutal plutocracy in countries that have "American interests abroad" (meaning, in a particularly-American form of Orwellian Newspeak, American corporate investments overseas such as Kennecott Copper which caused America to support the Pinochet coup and subsequent dictatorship) are possible.
Should people attending the "Liberate (name state with a state Governor hostile to the Trump agenda)" rallies, contract CORVID-19 and die in large numbers, then such will reshape the political ethos of America from 2021 on. Nothing convinces those not involved in a failure of the failure of the idea than does self-destructive failure. Success inspires imitation even to the extent of doing much the same on a bigger scale; gross failure discourages imitation.
Donald Trump took Reaganomics (but not Reagan foreign policy!) to a preposterous conclusion and he has done more to kill it than any liberal crusader for social equity. After Trump, Obama is going to look very good for both liberal and conservative agendas, which reminds me of Eisenhower in America and DeGaulle in France, if without the military heroism. (This said, Obama seems to suggest the model of a senior military officer due to his temperament). The Mature Reactive is no visionary, but he makes few mistakes and allows people to do things on a small scale that, if highly successful on a small scale, work well enough on a grand scale. Trump wasn't even a good businessman.
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.