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I rest my case.
There is one aspect of autocracy I never see anyone discuss. It seems to me the great appeal is that if you let the dictator run things you no longer have to think. Analyzing issues and making decisions, none of them perfect, is avoided as much as one can.
I have lunch with people who have advanced degrees in the sciences, mathematics and engineering. Many of them latched on to HRC transferring data from the state dept to the ex-prez's server. They say the can't vote for a person who would take that risk. The latch onto that and say they can't vote for her. They do not want to worry about economic inequality and our sinking into a 3rd world.
I wish someone would point out the seduction of not thinking.
leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists
Nice work posting your solutions to the obamacare created healthcare debacle in the US. It is clear none of you leftie/socialists above care about anything but whining and bitching. You must be fun to live with.
We have strayed afar.
deepspace. Thank you for a great post by Votaire. Mind opening. As a retired person who has lived through Viet Nam, Kennedy Assasination, Watergage, Whitewater, Iran Contra, CIA running cocaine to America and so on, and am very well educated, I would have preferred that nobody had voted for either candidate. There would be the greatest statement ever made in America if no one voted for either candidate. Imagine. We had the opportunity to show the world just how an intelligent mass of people would not vote for a criminal, or a con man, etc. So, for the most of us, we are not intelligent and very misinformed. Trump was elected.
How many neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, neo-Christians, neo-this, and neo-that, are aware they are merely spouting the same old, right-wing economic, religious, and political absurdities -- me-first greed, ideological intolerance, and concentrated power -- that have existed in one form or another since the dawn of civilization?
Indeed, how many Americans today realize just how much their country owes its founding values and principles to the great thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century, many of them French, who conveyed profound, "new-age" insights, which resonated with the common people throughout society as something true and timeless, insights which led directly to the American Revolution, closely followed by the French Revolution, and, really, to all the rest of the democratic movements in modern times?
The progression of the human spirit back then, arguably the most pivotal in all of human history, was populated by radicals and revolutionaries (liberals) who pushed back as hard as they could against established, reactionary, political and religious authoritarianism. Have we come full circle in just 250 years? Is it ripe for a new revolution? Or, do we bow our heads and submit like good little citizens, reversing the course of progress?
"Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world." --Voltaire
(Usually shortened to: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.")
leoanduna -- It seems there are too many subtleties to the HRC loss for you to state Comey is the only reason she lost. First, I agree that if Comey would have kept his mouth shut HRC would have won. However, if there were no interstate crosscheck by Chris Kobach, and Comey still did what he did, it seems HRC would have won.
"Where is this outrage against neoliberalism coming from? " Ask the people of Detroit. And please avoid inane rhetorical questions, OK?
The only reason Hilliary Clinton lost was because James Comey scared the willeys out of a bunch of people.
Unrelated but important: I'm hearing a lot of talk from eastern european outlets that Putin has been targeted for assassination....not just run of the mill threats either.
I honestly could not compare an election in France or any other country to the USA. We are a unique monstrosity. Basically a 2 year plus election process. Tons of money involved. A mainstream media owned and operated by the 1% that has incredible control. A voting system that is different from state to state and poorly documented in all. An easily manipulated voting system. Lobbyists have free reign. Donators are uncontrolled. The population is very uninformed. No other country could compare.
The French decided that voting for a neoliberal was better than voting for a neofascist.
With that said, the European outrage against neoliberalism can be traced to the giant free trade agreement that the European Union is. We all know that free trade agreements create massive wealth for a few and an economic race to the bottom for the rest of us. What enlightened working class citizen wouldn't be pissed about this?
Free trade just like trickle down is an economic fraud....a tool used by greedy neoliberals to screw workers everywhere.
I'm just finishing Thomas Frank's book "Listen Liberal" and have read Chris Hedges "Death of the Liberal Class" where the Neoliberals are described as too much part of the establishment to really push for big social, economic change. The Neoliberals with their meritocracy seem to believe in a modified Protestant Work Ethic: I'm better off because I function at a higher level and if you just get a better education, or "graduate better" as Mr. Frank says, you will too.
I grew up in Flint, Detroit, and Lansing Michigan and it was the shop workers and former shop workers there who helped Trump get, as Michael Moores smartly says, "appointed by the Electoral College." Clearly, the Neoliberals were not addressing their pain.
The Democratic Party needs to do some soul-searching and, in my opinion, realize that they need to head in the direction of Bernie Sander's priorities and not Bill Clinton or even Barak Obama. The party needs to get back to the F.D.R., Party of the People.
It seems to come back to Marx and class conflict, and as usual, those with the most power are kicking the snot out of those with less. Democracy is the only thing standing in the way. Meanwhile, in an election where I live this past Saturday, 6% of the registered voters bothered to vote. And the beat goes on.... Thanks for reading. I feel better.
I think of neoliberalism as the basic program of cutting taxes, starving government (the beast), and then selling it (privatization). Under the present neoliberal GOP, I think we are at the stage of privatization (vulture economic exploitation). We even have Bill Gates, the savior of the third world, out to privatize American education.
The Brexit nationalism has infected Europe because people are stunned by the failures of globalism and IMF austerity programs, even if they don't know where their problems come from. They may blame government, or the EU. Younger people just know they're getting screwed (kind of like the Iraqui youth) so they drift into communist and fascist organizations that fan their anger and bewilderment. Le Pen comes from her father's fascist idealism and the rats follow the pied piper.
This is fertile ground for demagoguery and would-be despots rising through the political channels. Also, as Eric Hoffer revealed in "The True Believer," you have the rise of movements fueled by those recently economically disaffected. The poorest tend to be resigned to their slaughter. It is those falling through the gaping holes of ravaged safety nets or loss of employment to cheap labor or robots who become fodder for radical movements.
The founders of the neoliberal theft machine -- the conniving oligarchs -- are grabbing all the gusto they can via political channels before the collapse of the system. They may even believe in their own fables. In other words, these are symptoms of greedy exploitation gone berserk. The Kochs aren't into Trump nationalism and the orange man can't really buck them. They control the GOP. So Trump in his obsessive narcissism doesn't really care what the GOP does as long as he gets the praise, which is all self-generated by his advancing mental illness.
Yes, I agree with Tim1234, that here there is no pushback against the far right from older people with memories of betrayal and treason. I was watching some news clip video that featured an interview with a husband and wife re the loss of their health care under the new Trump care, and I was stunned, shocked, and horrified all at the same moment to see and hear this man accept it with a whimper while his wife (dutifully) stood by (knowing and keeping her place ) being silent. These two should have been shouting and screaming and punching the air with their fists. Nope. Nothing of the sort. Just a firmly tucked tail, a whimper, and skulking off without an ounce of outrage or fight. Just appalling how low Americans have sunk. So, I'll say it one more time: As long as Americans keep accepting the abuse and making accommodations for it, the worse it's going to get. If America thinks that the uber wealthy are going to do ANYTHING good for them; they are just plain crazy and in full on denial. As far as I am concerned, we are in the hands of madmen. I mean complete sociopaths if not psychopaths (and I favor the latter.) The people who are running this country are serial killers, and the doctors and physician's assistants are the biggest drug pushers out there. If America ever decides to get up off the couch, turn off CNN and Fox and wake the heck up, MAYBE we won't end up locked into being a banana republic like Cuba for the next ten generations.
The outrage is coming from an increased awareness by the people hurt by the policies. On France, they are different as the memory of WWII collaborators is strong. The far right is tainted by this. To the extent the French woman wanted to win she had to put the anti-muslim stuff in the backround so it did not ring any bells. She needed to focus totally on economic populism and a Frankexit. Way different from here as there is no push back against the far right from older people with memories of betrayal and treason.
"It's not Trump and the Republicans who are the problem as much as it is the flying monkeys who voted for them." -- the sentiment of the majority
"I guess you can beat a dead horse". Diane Reynolds
"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience." --Archibald Macleish, American poet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_FFRK7-PdY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROO7xSTxfY
@#21:
Chronic projection, a (superlative) case in point:
"So very, very loud," Diane is so eminently qualified to expound upon what so constitutes ignorance, having been so hopelessly out-Foxed by the so very, very loud Republican newspeak and the so scholarly pontifications of that so lofty intellectual for whom she so voted, His Greatness the Oracle of Mar-a-Lago ..."You know, I'm, like, a smart person."
At the so very, very top of "a list of how to go about solving the problem that will address the issue and satisfy most of the individuals involved" are the blood-thirsty pariahs who propose needless tax cuts for billionaire donors by taking away healthcare for the middle class and the poor -- a so very, very long, long list of radical Republican terrorists and ignoramuses to tar and feather and run out of Washington DC, state legislatures, governorships, mayorships, and city councils in 2018 and 2020.
After taking out all that so stinking, stinking garbage, the only items left on the healthcare problem-solving list are Medicare-for-all, Medicare-for-all, and Medicare-for-all. "Leftie/socialists; leftie/socialists; leftie/socialists!"
And who cares about satisfying the so debauched predilections of the so-so pussy grabbers and grabbies?
So very, very entertaining! Keep those so very, very loud, hypocritical hits right on a-comin'...
...leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists...
~hic
@Mr.Ed
Had to move/modify this because the jackass is so steamed up his coat needs a brushdown and he is getting his rants out of order. Apparently this leftie/socialist can't respond with an intelligent response but;
Brilliant answers to my question Mr. Ed. Lack of any solution? Who cares? Just bitch away and shout Medicare for all and wait for your stall to get mucked.
You are are the classic leftie/socialist alligator, all mouth and no ears.
...leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists leftie/socialists...
~hic