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Danann posted:The gist of it is that the base, both the means of production and the material relations between the classes, was sold off in order to wage class warfare against the metropolitan working class since it seemed very safe to do so in light of the USSR's collapse and the PRC's impending and inevitable color revolution. Under the End of History, neoliberal political economic thought reproduced and expanded itself to its most logical endpoints throughout the superstructure (government, arts, business, etc.), even as material shortages such as bullet shortages during the War on Terror and PPE during the initial COVID waves manifested itself. It never seemed likely that conventional warfare, the ultimate test of state and industrial capability, was ever likely, and the neoliberal superstructure was able to defeat alternatives to it consistently. Thank you. This is a good post and matches my limited understanding. I like this explanation way more than "failsons are in charge now."
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# ? May 27, 2024 11:51 |
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The fails are however, in charge.
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i mean liberalism went from keynes to krugman and conservativism went from buckley to "the qanon shaman" qanon shaman is both more logically and ethically consistent than buckley tho. you can't find an honest conservative intellectual because conservatism is not an intellectual practice.
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Real hurthling! posted:when the us loses ww3 will italy complete the hat trick of swapping sides and going blameless in all world wars? I mean of course! Italy is the only EU country that signs up with BRI and simultaneously wants to leave it and has the bright idea to ask China to rebrand BRI so they still get the projects but not called as BRI projects.
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Votskomit posted:I keep seeing people say this, but it kinda feels like the leftie version of "good times create weak men, weak men create bad times" cliché. It makes sense to compare policy makers from before Nixon/Kissinger and the people after them, because Nixon was the president who switched from gold standard to a debt based economy rely purely on the status of USD being the world currency. It's like getting an unlimited Amex black card that has a runway of about 50-80 years and you can spend whatever the hell you want with it until the USD stops being the world currency. And at the same time, people who have been swimming in liquidity are so ignorant to the power of the USD hegemony they attribute all the prosperity of the West to their own intelligences and "hard works" . So that's how you explain dumber and dumber policy makers after Nixon.
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stephenthinkpad posted:It makes sense to compare policy makers from before Nixon/Kissinger and the people after them, because Nixon was the president who switched from gold standard to a debt based economy rely purely on the status of USD being the world currency. It's like getting an unlimited Amex black card that has a runway of about 50-80 years and you can spend whatever the hell you want with it until the USD stops being the world currency. to be fair to nixon without trying to ahistorically rehab him because he was a goddamn dirtbag, he was probably the smartest us president in history. that he used much of his natural capacity to keep complex network graphs of personal enemies, real and imagined, in his working memory is just a testament to how thin the line is between being a big brained boi and permabanned poster nwordstomper58
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captainbananas posted:qanon shaman is both more logically and ethically consistent than buckley tho. you can't find an honest conservative intellectual because conservatism is not an intellectual practice. I guess that British guy who wrote detective novels but according to Tories was apparently also the greatest theologian of our age?
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Frosted Flake posted:I guess that British guy who wrote detective novels but according to Tories was apparently also the greatest theologian of our age? simpsons_bus_driver_meme.png
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Well the idea is that grandpa built an empire, and now his grandkids are too stupid to even maintain it, let alone create their own. On the other hand, you could say that any idiot could have made the US the dominant power after WW2, that the factor wasn't any brilliance on our part but rather just Europe committing suicide. You could also say that now, decades later, the "natural order" of a multi polar world is reasserting itself as it was always going to, and that even the Kissingers and Nixon's in their prime couldn't stop it. I personally believe the former. That "winning" makes you complacent, but I can certainly find some merit in the idea that everyone was always this dumb.
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there used to be a lot more slack in the system, so even expensive mistakes could be made while settling back into equilibrium. now there isn't as much slack for a number of reasons (including the accretion of past mistakes), so the consequences of new mistakes are comparatively graver. in other words, ![]()
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Bar Crow posted:America has spend the last 70 years ruining and murdering anyone who tries to make anything better. The national equivalent of sniffing glue to destroy brain cells. America really did inherit Nazi Germany’s anti-communism crusade after WW2 lol.
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Nixon's presidency was probably to the left in domestic politics of every president that came after him. Like he started the EPA, did a lot for Native Americans (more than any president I can think of except maybe John Quincy Adams), and tried to fight inflation for normal Americans. Yes yes he also did a thousand terrible things too especially in foreign policy. This is not an exoneration of Nixon, but a condemnation of every president since. I agree that the US does take credit for the cheat code nature of its circumstances, but I also do think elites have gotten dumber over the decades and I think it's because the fail son pipeline has gotten stronger. You always had useless spawn of the elites, but the elite private schools through ivy league to board of some pet company/NGO/non-profit/whatever seems to be streamlined to ensure everyone is maximally dumb and useless. It's how you can have someone so painfully stupid as Trump that has sons that are somehow even dumber and lack even the basic playground cruel cunning of their father. None of Bush Sr's kids were anything but useless even the Prince Who Was Promised (Jeb). etc
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Zadok Allen posted:America really did inherit Nazi Germany’s anti-communism crusade after WW2 lol.
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Fell Mood posted:Well the idea is that grandpa built an empire, and now his grandkids are too stupid to even maintain it, let alone create their own. Also there were better system incentives to be cunning, smart, or even just self-preserving. But those incentives are no more. It matters little if you’re cunning or smart, only if you’re already wealthy. So we get fewer cunning elites because they don’t need to be cunning. Then incentives to be cruel and dehumanizing however remains.
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oh ya absolutely I’d vote for Nixon over any of our current choices lol
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sure, why not. nixon's fun
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Fell Mood posted:Well the idea is that grandpa built an empire, and now his grandkids are too stupid to even maintain it, let alone create their own.
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BUY SHOVELS, BUILD TUNNELS
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MELT YOUR GUNS , FORGE SHOVELS
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Lpzie posted:MELT YOUR GUNS , FORGE SHOVELS
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big problems lie ahead
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102723_4 posted:big problems lie ahead This poo poo better not pop off before my next paycheck. Edit: I am NOT minimizing what is happening. I'm being selfish.
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FuzzySlippers posted:Nixon's presidency was probably to the left in domestic politics of every president that came after him. Like he started the EPA, did a lot for Native Americans (more than any president I can think of except maybe John Quincy Adams), and tried to fight inflation for normal Americans. Yes yes he also did a thousand terrible things too especially in foreign policy. This is not an exoneration of Nixon, but a condemnation of every president since. The EPA is a great example of Nixon's intelligence continuing to baffle subsequent generations. He created it to centralize federal environmental activity so he (and future conservative presidents) could better exert political control over it. Set Ronnie and everyone else up on easy mode. You can't rehab Nixon if you dig anywhere below surface level. Though the last sentence of the quoted post here is dead to rights.
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Frosted Flake posted:I guess that British guy who wrote detective novels but according to Tories was apparently also the greatest theologian of our age? who is this refering to?
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Megamissen posted:who is this refering to? Not op but GK Chesterson I assume?
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Votskomit posted:Thank you. This is a good post and matches my limited understanding. I like this explanation way more than "failsons are in charge now." The failsons are in charge, but their fathers, had they lived in modern times, would have been equally as dumb. The ideology of liberalism has created the current material circumstances, and those circumstances in turn create the ruling class ideology ie. perception of the world. Everything is dumber now because their dumb ideology has been able to shape the world for the past 75 years.
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https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1718066649335489004
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start buying guns (to melt into shovels and dig tunnels)
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is there a gigantic market of animal poachers selling guns to gaza somewhere
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Trabisnikof posted:Also there were better system incentives to be cunning, smart, or even just self-preserving. But those incentives are no more. It matters little if you’re cunning or smart, only if you’re already wealthy. So we get fewer cunning elites because they don’t need to be cunning. the political system of the us is basically structured to fail due to how it selects its leaders. the democrats aren't an actual political party but more of a politicians' guild where the main objective is to keep a buncha increasingly geriatric fuckers in office and when one of them finally croaks replace them with some soulless failchild pod person, whereas the republicans are beholden to their blood-gargling base who keep filling the ranks with true believer fanatics who will sabotage the basic workings of government over trivial poo poo
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i mean liberalism went from keynes to krugman and conservativism went from buckley to "the qanon shaman" I give you Keynes and Kruggles, but did Buckley really do anything to deserve his reputation as the representative of the time there were some people with brains on the right? Not that I've particularly looked at his stuff, but all I've seen was not that different from the usually garbage.
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Buckley to me came off mostly as a booster rather than an influencer. He always just seemed like the go-to talking head for whatever the party's stance was at that moment, at minimum providing apologia. That being said he was one of the last libertarian types with any sway, or whatever. He was an old fart in the 00s and was grandfathered in, even though he was (again, within his own boundaries) critical of gwb and his cohort. honestly similar with krugman today. I dont think krugman comes before policies but afterwards to add an air of legitimacy to whatever stupid ideas are being peddled.
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Buckley sounded smart; he could articulate logical premises and identify fallacies; was polite and had upper class mannerisms. essentially the diametric opposite of the modern gop
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Don’t forget that Buckley worked for the CIA with E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City, so there’s a strong possibility he was rather influential in kitty history.
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Trabisnikof posted:Don’t forget that Buckley worked for the CIA with E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City, so there’s a strong possibility he was rather influential in kitty history. aaaaaah poo poo. its exactly like ours!
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poisonpill posted:Buckley sounded smart; he could articulate logical premises and identify fallacies; was polite and had upper class mannerisms. essentially the diametric opposite of the modern gop that and because people have heard of him is why i picked him. russell kirk is probably a better pick but no one has heard of him
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Cerebral Bore posted:whereas the republicans are beholden to their blood-gargling base who keep filling the ranks with true believer fanatics who will sabotage the basic workings of government over trivial poo poo It should be mentioned that a party beholden to its base is the platonic ideal, it's the entire point of democracy
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The Democratic party's base is not among minorities be they racial, sexual, or left wing - which makes sense. You wouldn't expect minorities to be represented in a country without specific structural safeguards in place. Such as the US Senate. The sort of minorities the Democrats claim to represent have no such safeguards, and are simply convenient to pick up when it's otherwise free to do so; in the time of growing fascism it's decidedly not and the dems are dropping the (likely soon to be literally since the US loves genocide) dead weight.
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ClassActionFursuit posted:It should be mentioned that a party beholden to its base is the platonic ideal, it's the entire point of democracy yeah but the base doesnt want better conditions sadly just blood due to malignant social conditioning
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# ? May 27, 2024 11:51 |
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ClassActionFursuit posted:It should be mentioned that a party beholden to its base is the platonic ideal, it's the entire point of democracy yeah this is true. the republicans are an actual political party that has the goal of seizing and wielding power and its leadership has to accommodate its base i'm just saying the immediate problem for the us imperial project is that said base doesn't actually want the government to work
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