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The fundamental issue is this: liberalism is inherently opposed to providing security to people, and people are drawn to anyone who can promise them that. Whether its protection from hunger, want, of from threats, real or imagined, liberalism assumes, and treats other people as if they are not moved by such guarantees. That of course everyone is already safe, or is capable and willing to act with the confidence that comes from knowing that you, personally, are safe. The ideal of the market, as composed of rational agents who (with total confidence and without doubt), must constantly act and react to the constantly shifting sands of dynamic capitalism, is treated as reality, or rather, the 'true emancipation' of human beings. That is not how real people act, or will ever act. Real world human beings are fearful, anxious and easily spooked, they are in need of constant assurances and guarantees if they're even to be calm, let alone happy. How is this ignored? The reason is simple: the greatest proponents of liberalism are already shielded from its worst excesses. They live stable, secure lives, and so are free to hypocritically advocate that others act and believe exactly like them, even if 90% of people are in no position to rationally or logically do that. No one can 'stay calm', nor should they stay calm, when their person and livelihoods are threatened.
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Jan 19, 2017 06:12
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:24 |
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Here's an example of what I mean: The logical endpoint of liberalism, as a pure ideology, is capitalist libertarianism. Libertarians only ever come from the demographic who are least likely to ever personally experience any of the downsides, who have never themselves ever been threatened by anything (they are, almost without exception, rich/middle class, male, cis and white). And as soon as they ever actually feel threatened, they immediately jump to fascism, and fascism of the worst kind, with all the racial bigotry and selfish violence that implies.
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Jan 19, 2017 06:22
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So the question of 'how do you radicalize liberals' sort of presupposes that liberals as a group aren't going to shrink. We're quickly entering an era where the sort of liberalism that's been espoused, is proving incapable of delivering what it's promised. It's only possible to ignore reality for so long, eventually the 'mom liberals' have to bleed off, and they can either go left or right. This being politics, more = better than, so ideally you want them to go left. The optimal strategy is:
For conservatives, you're better off appealing to ideas of 'common sense', because they tend to be attracted to the familiar - so even if you have a 'radical' idea, you want to actually make it look less radical than it is. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 08:14
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BrandorKP posted:For what it's worth the Chicago school and Friedman at least tried to have an empirical foundation. But that is not where we are now. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 08:23
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Crowsbeak posted:If it has to be national socialism then let it be a national socialism divorced from the idea of skin color. Let us promote the nation based on being American . Let us make Americanism an idea and attack filth like the Devoss's as traitors to our nation. Let us make being the worker the national idea and portray our enemies as the enemies of our country.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:32
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Race and racism still exists and is not going to just magic itself away, just because you decided to say mean things about bankers - if anything, that will simply re-express itself as anti-semitism. Point is that the 'internal' enemy is perpetual, it acts as a symbol of internal failings, whatever the cause, and since the real causes are never actually recognized or addressed, you're in a mode of perpetual witch-hunting. The better approach is recognizing that the world is complex, we live in a system, that system has flaws. China is not the eternal other, it's just another country filled with idiots.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:56
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Openness, honesty and consistency are not luxuries, to be discarded because you think you can win more votes, they're essential qualities of the better future. The problem with employing 'deceptions' or 'convenient lies' like tribalism, is that you actually end up with people who believe that poo poo, who buy their own propaganda, and it always ends up getting out of control. Once something is released into the wild, you can't predict what it's going to do, and you can't correct it if it all goes a way you don't want it to. Look at the experience of the 'reagan' conservatives, who peddled for so long to their base the same bullshit over and over again, despite not really believing it themselves - now, their lies have taken on a life of their own, and they're unable to rein it in.
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Jan 21, 2017 09:01
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The current distrust of cities is purely economic - firstly, it's not all cities, secondly, it's because they have benefited from the two speed economy while everyone else has been poo poo on. NY is fine, LA is fine, but everyone else is sort of hosed? It's not like everyone has the capital for their own start-up, but they're the only guys actually making it. But historically, protestantism has had a thing against cities because they're seen as dens of vice/decadence, while the countryside live simpler lives and are therefore more virtuous (see "salt of the earth"). Which probably has something to do with cities historically having negative growth rates, because of diseases and such, that only ever 'recently' (read: in the last hundred years of so) changed because of things like sanitation systems. Now, your economies of scale generally mean you're better off living in cities.
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Jan 21, 2017 13:11
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 19:24 |
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You're treating those actions as if they've occurred in a political vacuum, the people you're talking about live in a bubble. That image of the 'elite' was specifically designed and propagated by people who knew what they were doing, it is not the 'inevitable' outcome you make it seem like.Crowsbeak posted:Well it is honest that most of our problems are from people like the Devosses. Also I can make them a perpetual enemy based on how many people have received their money. So their can be a constant hunt for them as "agents". Plus most of that family, and the Kochs would flee. So they can both act as our eternal and external enemies.
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Jan 21, 2017 15:15
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