If I understand you well, you seem to believe that Trump's government is a reaction to the democrats going too... what? Too woke? Too progressive?
IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power.
You can't look at the US in a vacuum. What is happening here has happened dozens of times elsewhere. Was Orban elected because the opposition was too woke? Was Mussolini elected because the opposition was too progressive? Of course not.
Trump voters have a really warped perception of the democrats, thanks to decades of well-funded propaganda. They believe the neoliberal party that holds mildy rainbow-capitalist social views is actually a "degenerate trans gang" out to trans their kids or whatever.
In truth, the democrats are socially very mild compared to actually progressive parties around the world. Blaming their mild social policies instead of the massive campaigns of disinformation that made them pass for extremists is ludicrous.
Here: I'll posit that if the democrats actually fixed the country through more corporate taxes, socialized universal healthcare, free university and such, we'd have heard none of Trump. Without them ever needing to abandon their social policies.
But they did not, as they too rely on corporate donors and are too afraid to lose their support by addressing the actual issues this country faces: growing inequalities, etc.
> After first Trump win, all the networks tried to do attempt some soul searching with added bonus of melodramatic hand wringing ( whether it was sincere or theater, I leave up to you to interpret ) on how could this have happened
Yes, liberal media is condemned to be forever clueless, as they can't reason about the prevalence of money in US politics, and couldn't foresee the very obvious consequences of the wealthy channeling hundreds of billions of dollars toward promoting right-wing populism.
> You might not be wrong here. However, I would like you to entertain the alternative, because I am not sure you did that in any kind of serious way. "They go low, we go high" at its core is adherence to the existing standard, which is basically what the society is built around. If you tell me that standard is degrading. Maybe the degradation does not quite make it null and void, but it further erodes existing standards eventually leading to societal collapse and a vacuum and I hope that you do understand that humans are not exactly great in a vacuum.
For better or worse, I believe the only solution is for an hypothetical economically progressive party to "play dirty", that is to say employ a form of "left-wing populism".
Bernie has been kind of successful in his "oligarchy tour", redirecting the anger of Americans from minorites and unto the billionaires, which largely contribute to this country's actual issues for one.
There is no fixing this mess through an appeal to "centrism" or "status quo".
<< There is no fixing this mess through an appeal to "centrism" or "status quo".
I personally do not think it can be fixed in its current form, which is primarily why I argue to maintain what we do have.
<< Bernie has been kind of successful in his "oligarchy tour", redirecting the anger of Americans from minorites and unto the billionaires, which largely contribute to this country's actual issues for one.
I give him credit. He made those policies 'cool' among young people. Were it not for his age, he would have been a real threat to the existing power centers.
<< For better or worse, I believe the only solution is for an hypothetical economically progressive party to "play dirty", that is to say employ a form of "left-wing populism".
Eh, best I can say is that whatever they are doing now is definitely not working well. We might be in disagreement about the way, but I would not mind being on the 'winning side' for once.
<< In truth, the democrats are socially very mild compared to actually progressive parties around the world. Blaming their mild social policies instead of the massive campaigns of disinformation that made them pass for extremists is ludicrous. Here: I'll posit that if the democrats actually fixed the country through more corporate taxes, socialized universal healthcare, free university and such, we'd have heard none of Trump. Without them ever needing to abandon their social policies.
I do not think you are wrong about any of this, but it is impossible to say for sure one way or another.
<< They believe the neoliberal party that holds mildy rainbow-capitalist social views is actually a "degenerate trans gang" out to trans their kids or whatever.
The interesting part here is that the democrat party was partly forced to consider changing their stances a little as a result of that propaganda. The internal party conversation still seems to be ongoing, but the impact has been clear ( calls to 'not focus' on minorities that are too small to matter and too, whats a good word, visible to the general population ).
<< IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power.
I do not claim to be some political whiz, but I am still somewhat attuned to the local 'vibe'. As always, it is possible that I simply see what I want to see and just form satisfying explanation afterwards, but I did see some of the things coming. So even if it is shallow, it appears to work as a heuristic more often than not. I admit that sometimes I wish it did not.
That said, if you can offer a counter explanation of the forces at play, I am all ears. Believe it or not, I am actually listening now.
<< If I understand you well, you seem to believe that Trump's government is a reaction to the democrats going too... what? Too woke? Too progressive?
Hmm, close. I think we can start with that. Democrats were in a weird spot, because, as you noted, they were putting a facade of a working man's party, while getting fairly cozy with interests that do not exactly align with those. From that perspective alone, internal conflicts of interests were inevitable. That helped build some of the discontent you mentioned ( and help build narrative about uniparty and bolster both sides are the same conversations ).
That said, to your point about going too woke, it did not help with people already being in a rather foul mood over being on the wrong end of the stick of economic policies and, as as results, were looking for something to focus that anger on. And the right was able to find at least two very viable scapegoats, who were both explicitly supported by the democratic party ( immigrants and trans ).
So in a sense, dems went too far on dumb stuff, while reps were playing for keeps.
I don't believe there's anything the democrats could have been that wouldn't have been twisted by the massive propaganda apparatus in service of the GOP. If they abandoned their ever ill-defined "wokeness", Fox News would have found something else to scapegoat all the ills of America on.
There are legitimate critics of the democratic party, like their abandon of class matters, or how hollow their social militantism feels because of it. None of those are the reasons the dems are bad mouthed in conservative media.
Democrats can't win by appealing to an ever-elusive and shifting "center". They will forever be the party of child-eating degenerates to the people that voted for Trump, no matter how many causes they drop.
> That said, if you can offer a counter explanation of the forces at play, I am all ears. Believe it or not, I am actually listening now.
I didn't invent most of my ideas on fascism. I look into history books and attempt to apply the lessons of the past on our current situation. Here's a summary of what I think I have learned:
While fascism is an internally inconsistent ideology, it does exhibit consistent aspects. One of them is support from the capitalist class. For example, this connects Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, Trump...
Once the current liberal-democratic model starts malfunctioning because of its internal contradictions* (and it always does), the mask slips and the wealthy start supporting far right populism.
This is the only way for them to prevent the rise of socialism (by redirecting the middle class' anger toward minorities) while keeping on deregulating and privatizing the economy.
Evidently, this doesn't fix anything and only makes things worse, which is part of why fascism always fails in the end, although that can take a relatively long time.
I don't believe there's anything to be done but wait, once the cogs of the terrible machine are set in motion. Wether we're here yet, I do not claim to know.
* Imbalance of power between classes. Capital always gets his ways, and so the material conditions of the rest of the population are left to slowly degrade.
---
Last time, America got lucky in the person of FDR (and what he represented). Through the New Deal, he was able to rekindle the flailing economy by essentially pumping money to the working class, curbing discontent. At least for a time. The wealthy of the time absolutely didn't like that, and attempts on his life were made.
He didn't actually fix the underlying issues though, and 80 years later, we're back to square one.
IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power.
You can't look at the US in a vacuum. What is happening here has happened dozens of times elsewhere. Was Orban elected because the opposition was too woke? Was Mussolini elected because the opposition was too progressive? Of course not.
Trump voters have a really warped perception of the democrats, thanks to decades of well-funded propaganda. They believe the neoliberal party that holds mildy rainbow-capitalist social views is actually a "degenerate trans gang" out to trans their kids or whatever.
In truth, the democrats are socially very mild compared to actually progressive parties around the world. Blaming their mild social policies instead of the massive campaigns of disinformation that made them pass for extremists is ludicrous.
Here: I'll posit that if the democrats actually fixed the country through more corporate taxes, socialized universal healthcare, free university and such, we'd have heard none of Trump. Without them ever needing to abandon their social policies.
But they did not, as they too rely on corporate donors and are too afraid to lose their support by addressing the actual issues this country faces: growing inequalities, etc.
> After first Trump win, all the networks tried to do attempt some soul searching with added bonus of melodramatic hand wringing ( whether it was sincere or theater, I leave up to you to interpret ) on how could this have happened
Yes, liberal media is condemned to be forever clueless, as they can't reason about the prevalence of money in US politics, and couldn't foresee the very obvious consequences of the wealthy channeling hundreds of billions of dollars toward promoting right-wing populism.
> You might not be wrong here. However, I would like you to entertain the alternative, because I am not sure you did that in any kind of serious way. "They go low, we go high" at its core is adherence to the existing standard, which is basically what the society is built around. If you tell me that standard is degrading. Maybe the degradation does not quite make it null and void, but it further erodes existing standards eventually leading to societal collapse and a vacuum and I hope that you do understand that humans are not exactly great in a vacuum.
For better or worse, I believe the only solution is for an hypothetical economically progressive party to "play dirty", that is to say employ a form of "left-wing populism".
Bernie has been kind of successful in his "oligarchy tour", redirecting the anger of Americans from minorites and unto the billionaires, which largely contribute to this country's actual issues for one.
There is no fixing this mess through an appeal to "centrism" or "status quo".