I have a feeling that today (or yesterday) is probably a huge generational shift.

[Cocoa_Puff]

I was wrong. January 6th 2021 is nowhere close to the darkest day in America.

[Eric the Green]

(01-20-2021, 01:11 PM)azzamacca84 Wrote: i'm a newbie here.. just wanted to quickly weigh in give you a big gold star for your analysis/ diagnosis of the current political climate.. I think too many people are preoccupied by this "left / right" culture war manufactured by the mainstream media as a red herring to distract the bulk of the population and exploit the moral differences and grievances between an ingroup and an out group ('city elite' and the 'rural deplorables') and of course turn them against each other as the ruling plutocrats gain an unfathomable level of power and increase the consolidation and monopolisation of all industries , big money and public opinion. Until we all wake up and come to realise this fallacy, we will only create more division and social unrest at the behest of the establishment. Things aren't what they seem..  Dems and Reps are both completely corrupt but i must say it's the dems i fear most in 2021, as i write this response as Biden gets inaugurated. The establishment have gone all in and have chosen the dems as their party to to their bidding.. This is antithetical to the core principles of which the left have always stood for. So we need to be very aware of this shift to authoritarianism and moral group think and history tells us,it's the left who is it will be used against ultimately  

Tulsi has resigned from her seat as congresswoman.. the dems treatment of her has been quite abusive using mccarthy like smears to demonise her  she'd be a fool to ever go back..  I believe she will run in the midterms as a republican as the reps grow their working class base and anti establishment / populist sentiments in the post trump era. I think you will find growing movement of populist/ anti war/ anti estab lefties following suit as they become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned be the neoliberal, corporatist agenda the democrats will continue to grow as the plutocrats become the ultimate facscim.. trump was never a fascist.. he's many things but it's laughable when i hear ppl claim this.. gen theory reminds us that history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes and follows a certain rhythm etc.. as a society , we tend to become so fixated with the past crisis' as a mechanism to never repeat the biggest atrocities of the past and rightfully so, however this major blind spot will always fool and mislead the best of, anticipating a into a more familiar event or crisis.make no mistake, this is a new form of fascism, a revised one  and  even more frightening and powerful than what we've ever known. This one has no front man and substitutes force with subtlety. Its not nationalism, it's globalism.. and it seeks to reign over the entire human global population, serving the greed, hedonism and special interests of a small group of unchecked oligarchs who have become our most orwellian nightmare come true.

I am glad to see Tulsi has resigned her seat. I don't know or remember that. Do you have any more good news

It's too bad you have, from my point of view, reversed the actual nature of the political parties in your mind. Too many people have done that. The working class does have genuine grievances, and the Bill Clinton version of the Democratic Party no longer represented them to the extent that it did in the times of FDR. 

But the Republican Party remains the home of neo-liberalism. This is very obvious and a totally-certain statement. It is the bedrock and core of its platform and purpose, and Donald Trump was a neo-liberal on steroids. He masked his true fascist and neo-liberal core by bruting about his views on the trade issue. This is where "anti-globalism" comes in, which attracts some working class and others to Trump. But trade is a small part of his policies. And it is a hard policy to enact and make stick. He only got a few concessions to the NAFTA treaty that he originally wanted to abolish, and getting tariffs on China to help US workers was a huge challenge. The main result was a trade war. So as sympathetic as I am to complaints about workers losing jobs and wages to offshoring and companies hiring cheap labor abroad instead of Americans, it is a hard problem to solve.

Globalism itself is just an irreversible fact. It is not fascism. We are one world since the 1890s, and the races and nations can no longer be walled off from each other, as Trump and his followers falsely believe. Nationalism is always linked at the hip to fascism, as it is in the minds of all those groups who attacked the Capitol January 6th, shouting "USA, USA!" as they did so. These are the fascists: white supremacists, conspiracy-theory fools, and militant gun nuts who make up the alt-right and right-wing in the USA-- and they are fanatical neo-liberals too. And Trump is their leader. To support Trump to any extent, is to support fascism.

Globalism is corporate, to the extent that we allow Republican neo-liberalism to make it so. Neo-liberalism imposes upon the world a regime of deregulation. It says taxes and regulations on greedy businessmen must be reduced so that they can prosper and be the "job creaters" from whom prosperity will trickle down. But trickle-down doesn't trickle. And neo-liberalism has a hidden horror to it: racism and social darwinism. It says if someone is poor, it is their fault, and taxpayers should not have to pay for welfare. This is the true fascism, and it is Republican Party dogma.

Social government programs are necessary and help the economy. Prosperity trickles up, not down. Democrats are still the Party of this principle, and they act on it to the extent that they can. However, in the USA the Democrats have had little power since Reagan, who made neo-liberalism the governing ideology in America (and Margaret Thatcher made it so in the UK). Democrats have too-often compromised and co-opted the Republican neo-liberalism due to the power of this tempting ideology. Who likes the government? It must be "the problem," as Reagan has fooled us into believing. Republican Party neo-liberalism has blocked the Democrats at every turn, and they will continue to do so. The result of neo-liberal power is our environment and climate are being destroyed, working people and the poor are being left behind, our culture is trivialized, our democracy is threatened and marginalized, speculation is allowed to destroy our economy, our community is broken and atomized, etc.

The left-right battle remains the valid and true conflict, not a mainstream media hoax or distraction. The core political battle in the USA remains as it has been since the 1890s. As the end of the PBS doc on The Gilded Age said, the political battle remains that between those who think the government's purpose is to provide for and protect money, and those who think it is to provide for and protect the people. The Democrats protect the people, to the extent that they can, and are allowed to. The Republicans protect money, and are allowed to without any restraint. Confusing this picture has the only purpose of perpetuating the rule of money.





My description of neo-liberalism aka free-market ideology is here: http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

Rachel Maddow's definitive description of Reaganomics (neo-liberalism) https://youtu.be/z5CCRI1vdwE

What is Neo-liberalism by George Monbiot https://youtu.be/jOuzABjrAo4

This is Neo-liberalism: https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/thi...liberalism