Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Aug 11, 2023 4:35 pm
The 80s were all about self-interest that came out of the neo-cons.
No, I think that's not right.
The Sixties gave us the pill, the '60s and '70s the sexual revolution, the '80s were self-indulgence, punk and the failed war on drugs...all of that was clearly drifting left, and hard, too. Whatever was going on in Washington or Downing Street, the ordinary culture was sliding Left, for sure.
Industry has bombarded children and adults with a radically individualist 'I am my surface' type of morality.
I don't know who "industry" is. We're not industrial cultures. What I've seen today is that the bankers, the media and the establishment are firmly in favour of Leftist causes; and that should really, really give us pause -- because it's totally counterintuitive. But I think what the powers-that-be have discovered is that by inducing Leftist revolt on the streets, one can destabilize society and "shake" money and new powers of control out of that "tree" each time things go badly. So now, it's the elites that are pushing the radical agenda like crazy, and it's ordinary working people who are trying to fight back against the unholy coalition of the political elites, the bankers and investors and the media...all of whom win by imposing on the masses a Leftism that they themselves know they will never have to live with.
For all their talk about Socialism, the elites are getting rich, while ordinary folks get poorer. And we all can see that, right in front of our eyes -- take a look at Pelosi or Sanders, for example: those people are not missing a meal, that's for sure. And there are Republicans who are just as firmly on the gravy train at the public expense.
As the '70s mantra went, "I'm okay, you're okay," became the watchword. And at first, the claim was that we all have a right to our own private habits; then it became, "I have a right to wave those habits in public, and have them celebrated and subsidized." And then it became, "You're evil and a bigot if you even raise a concern about my habits and choices: and my habits and choices get all the political backing, and yours get suppressed and eliminated from public discourse." And that's where we are now.
Which gets focused on gays, for example, and now trans, but never seems to be associated with Wall St. and the fraternity robber barron and even middle management abuse and conspicuous consumption of the people wildly supported by Reagan and Bush.
Now supported by the Clintons and Biden. It's bi-partisan corruption. And that's what makes the divisiveness of American politics so damaging to the ordinary folks: it gets them to focus on a kind of "Pepsi-Coke" choice between corrupt Republicans and corrupt Democrats, instead of focusing on promoting people of better character and morals.
Whether it's Clinton, Bush, Biden, Obama or Trump, America has been getting the kinds of politicians it's been willing to accept and tolerate. And the bar has not been high.
...the 50s had extremely high participation in unions...
Unfortunately, unions are yesterday's attempted response to today's problems. They're a dead issue.
For a union to work (and I was in a union, by the way) the economy has to be a national one, with the politicians dependent on the voters and the work restricted to a particular locale. International commerce, globalism, deprives unions of their key power: the ability to withdraw services. The corporations today can simply move their operations to the locale that gives them the most favourable terms, if the union becomes too problematic. And there are now no longer the systems of tarrifs and national limits that made unions possible.
The privitizing of the military got ignored by conservatives.
Maybe. But the warmongers are now very strong on both sides of the house. Somebody is getting rich off the war in Ukraine. It isn't us.
The big business exploitation of military interventions for their purposes.
The politicians, too, obviously. What on earth was Biden's son doing in Ukraine, pretending to work for Burisma, just before this massive war broke out?
The elimination of government controls of the financial institutions.
There never really were any. Financial insitutions have been playing things their own way lately...particularly because of how easy and quickly currency and value can be moved around the world.
They've got a great scam going. It's tag team, good cop, bad cop. With conservatives liking what they think is good cop and liberals liking what they think is good cop, when the cops are happily working together.
Now we agree. Yes, that's exactly the game.
I think some conservatives have learned from the past. After all, it's the conservatives who, by definition, want to conserve the past as a resource for the present; so they can hardly avoid that.
And they tend to focus on social changes, not economic ones. [/quote] I don't see that. I think the Left has been much more strongly focused on "social changes." But it's also not an actual dichotomy: because as the elites have discovered, social upheaval is an economic and power-shifiting opportunity. So ironically, the calls for "social justice" today are backed by the elites. Davos is a great exhibition of this.
So we come back to the same question, which should be nagging us all: why are the elites in Hollywood, in finance, in politics, in business, and so on, so overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Socialism today? What is going on, that an ideology that purports to be about "empowering the worker" and "bringing down the establishment" has suddenly become a
cause celebre for every liar, exploiter and petty tyrant on the planet?
We know these people are not stupid. We know that if anybody can see their own self-interest, it's these cats. We know they have the power, resources and leverage to raise or suppress the profile of any social plan they want...and they want Socialism for us?

Something is terribly, terribly wrong...and we really need to start asking ourselves what it is.
That's not a partisan point, either. Voters on the center and right ought to be asking themselves why the Republican party has essentially ceased to be any way different from that. Something is very, very wrong in America...and in other Western polities, like the UK, Canada and Aus as well.
There is much less concern on the right, or at least through most of my life, about the effects of technology.
Oh, quite the opposite is true: today, the elites are all enthused about technology. And why not? It's delivered to the Bezos's and Gates's money they never imagined before, and to the politicians the means of public coercion and control that are out of this world. Just wait unti AI comes fully online, too: it's a totalitarian's dream to have an instrument so powerful for public management.
Check out the agenda of the WEF, for example: one of their "pillars" is called "The Fourth Industrial Revolution," in which they dream techology will sail them into the totalitarian "utopia" they've been longing to create.
You can't even get criticism of corporations on media. I know the mainstream media are corrupt and I know that these days on social issues, they are leftist. But try to get a program on Monsanto of Pfizer and show what the science actually is with these companies - companies whose corporate charters would have been revoked long ago with their long lists of crimes - and you'll find that the mainstream media aren't really leftist. They carry agendas, whether right or left, and yes, left these days on social issue, to suit their own purposes. But they are corporatist to the bone.
Yes, but do the math, too: which political party was the promoter of Pfizer and Monsanto? And which party today is being supported by all the banks, the media and the military-industrial complex?
Again, something is terribly wrong in America -- and it's a bi-partisan problem.
Both sides are getting played.
Absolutely.
YOu really think the mainstream media and the corporations behind them care about trans people?
You mean like Anheuser-Bush? Or Gillette? or Hersheys? Or did you mean that banks that are posting trans-flags outside?
I don't think that anybody who promotes "transing" cares about body-dysmophia sufferers. At all. What they care about is the Socialist ideology for which every new such cause is merely the carrier.
They love the cultural divide. It's a cosmic level distraction. Get people with relatively little power to think their primary enemy is other people with relatively little power.
I absolutely agree. That's exactly what they're doing.
If you take a pro-radical or pro-Left stance, and I take a pro-Right stance, or even a centrist stance, they are going to be just fine with that. They'll love it. Because it means you and I are watching their shell game, and not noticing that their left hands are taking in the money and power.
Well, if I can speak as an outsider, I see this as one of the worst and most dangerous features of current American politics, particularly: the polarization.
And that polarization is being promoted by powerful corporations, corporations whose power and influence was primarily challenged by the left.
Not just the corporations. The politicians. The media. We must never forget that they are currently forming an unholy trinity, by which all of us are losing.
This will end democracy in America, if it continues.
It's not a democracy. It's an oligarchy that pretends to be a democracy and it's barely pretending these days.
That's at least
on the verge of becoming true. I hope it's not too late for America.
We only get to choose between candidates that a either in the elite power class and/or approved of by Wall St. That's not democratic.
Right. Agreed. That's the problem. And we're still voting on parties, not on character or performance. So we are enabling it.