09-24-2020, 09:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-24-2020, 09:09 PM by Warren Dew.)
(09-24-2020, 01:25 PM)sbarrera Wrote: Can you be more specific, re: "other errors" ?
I am curious if you have your own version of the red and blue generational constellations.
I'd rather not waste a lot of time on a political argument, and your original post is way too deep in the blue koolaid to answer briefly, so I won't go into specifics.
I don't think there are separate constellations. You can divide people by Red or Blue, which is merely party labeling, or you can divide them between the outgoing neoliberal regime and the incoming regime, which we don't know the details of yet.
Red Idealists include Gingrich and Trump, and also some younger people like Romney and Baker. Of these examples, all but Trump are stuck in the neoliberal mindset, though Gingrich might be able to adjust. Pence is also Idealist, and if Trump is so successful that Pence wins a term in 2024-2028, it remains to be seen whether he will build on Trump's movement toward a nationalist workers' future, or if he'll be the final exponent of neoliberalism.
Blue Idealists include the Clintons, and Sanders and Obama act a lot like Idealists though they are on the edges of the generation at best. The Clintons are neoliberalism personified. Sanders and Obama could be exponents of a different future, one where workers are marginalized but neoliberalism is replaced by an oligarchy of economic elites legitimized by votes from the government dependent welfare masses. Or rather, that's what their vision of socialism will become once it's implemented by Blue Reactives.
Red Reactives are dominant in the active Republican party - almost all Republican Senators of note are Reactives, along with the Republican House leadership. These are the guys doing the detailed planning to finish the transition of the Republican party into a workers' party - one that champions people who work for a living over people who don't, where the latter includes both people on long term welfare and ridiculously rich owners and investors.
Blue Reactives dominate the ranks of those ridiculously rich owners and investors - Bezos, Pichai, etc. These are the people who wouldn't mind transitioning from being oligopolists to being oligarchs, and wouldn't mind replacing pesky workers with machines and an expanded welfare vote plantation, at least until they can get rid of democracy entirely.
Civics I think are tougher to get a handle on, mostly because they parrot memes from Idealists, thinking they are their own ideas, without actually having independent ideas of their own. You can argue that the Charlottesville marchers and the BLM and Antifa rioters - not the protesters, the rioters - are examples, but these aren't their own causes; they're the causes of the Idealists who brainwash them. To the extent that Civics have an interest of their own, it's to get back a share of the increasing productivity that has since 1970 been going entirely to employers and investors. Some would prefer to work and get back some of the increasing share that has been going to welfare recipients over that time; others would prefer to become welfare recipients as long as they can get a share of the increasing productivity; many are neutral as to which happens, but they want what they perceive to be their share. None of this is conscious, but it drives the Idealist ideas they are willing to embrace, and their rejection of the ideas they don't support.
(09-24-2020, 02:56 PM)David Horn Wrote:(09-23-2020, 05:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(09-23-2020, 04:01 PM)David Horn Wrote: If the Democratic centrists lose this one, after losing under Hillary, there will be no centrist Democratic candidate again anytime soon -- nor should there be.
Even if Biden wins, there won't be another centrist Democrat any time soon. Neoliberalism has run out of steam and a President Biden would merely preside over its final collapse.
Good point, though the bitterness will be much less if he wins.
The bitterness of the neoliberals?
George Friedman thinks the last neoliberal term will be 2024-2028, which he thinks will have a Democratic President. I agree that 2024 is a little early for the final nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. It's also possible that a Red neoliberal like Romney or Baker will wrest back control of the Republican party and be President then, but that doesn't seem the way to bet right now.