United States Politics Thread 47

[Otto Kretschmer]

Doesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?

[Raphael]

Doesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?

Partly, but mostly it's an ideological opposition to doing anything that might be perceived as friendly or helpful.

[Linguoboy]

Doesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?

It also reflects Trump's strictly transactional view of foreign policy. We don't get anything he cares about in exchage for these expenditures (like kickbacks or joint real-estate ventures), therefore they are "corrupt" and "wasteful". He just uses the small government rhetoric to shore up support from the GOP.

[Ahzoh]

The US government kinda givin me this vibe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQJhvs4amQ

In terms of people scrambling to undo, mitigate, or control the damage caused by Trump and his ilk to the entire democratic project

[zompist]

Doesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?

Partly, but mostly it's an ideological opposition to doing anything that might be perceived as friendly or helpful.

More likely: Elon Musk has a grudge against USAID because it was instrumental in ending apartheid; also because it was investigating (his company) Starlink in Ukraine.

[keenir]

Am I the only one who sees a contradiction between

nope, you're not.

And he'll do anything just to extend US global dominance by even a decade.

Except, of course, fund USAID or any other source of US soft power. He's never once considered holding out a carrot when there was a stick within reach.

I would not be surprised if, once he was informed that "no, carrots are not really weapons to superpower pilots' eyesight", he considered it proof of the inferiority of soldiers (who he thinks buys everything they're told without question) and the presence of lying liars who are in foreign governments.

also, carrots are evil because they are veggies and not part of the KFC-McD food pyramid.

[keenir]

More likely: Elon Musk has a grudge against USAID because it was instrumental in ending apartheid; also because it was investigating (his company) Starlink in Ukraine.

makes sense; see also the FAA director who was fining Musk's rockets (which Musk thought were very pretty when it exploded in the atmosphere & needed lots of planes redirected)

[jcb]

I thought demagogues - usually charismatic ones - were part of the populism package, if not the definition...that most of them in recent times have been racist and sexist as well, that tars the term with their baggage, but doesn't yet change the word, so far as I'm aware: does FDR still count as a populist, charismatic or otherwise? Teddy Roosevelt? George Washington?

That definition is exactly what enemies of real populism want you to think.

In that case, so we're both on the same page, can you explain to me what populism is, in your mind?

thank you.

I go by Thomas Frank's definition: "a trans-racial movement of working people demanding economic democracy"
- https://youtu.be/151glS2WDNw?si=2fkVV6AAljNaZLpY&t=107

I guess decades of McCarthyism wnd a century of Red Scare propaganda have really done their job.

The only winning strategy to me seems to be rebranding European-style democratic socialism as a "third way". Don't know what we'd call it, but somewhere there'd have to be "freedom" in the name because what seems to frighten USAmericans most about "socialism" is the loss of "freedom" it entails--because we'd all rather be "free" to work for starvation wages and actively avoid going to the hospital, I guess.

If only there was an appropriate word with a good American history...

[Ahzoh]

We were all worried about Trump before the election, but it seems we should have been worrying more about Musk.

[jcb]

It's because Republicans are against anything that is good.

I think Zompist was being sarcastic

I know he was being sarcastic ─ but fundamentally it is yet another example of Republicans being against good things because, well, Republicans are against anything good.

It's not just ranked choice voting they're trying to suppress, but all alternatives. The (Republican) state legislators of North Dakota are trying to ban approval voting after Fargo (the largest city in North Dakota) started using it 7 years ago. They already tried once, but the governor at the time (Doug Burgum) vetoed it, because he saw it as big government over-reach. North Dakota now has a new governor (Kelly Armstrong) (Burgum is now Trump's secretary of the interior, BTW.), who may care less about having any kind of scruples or governing philosophy beyond just owning the libs.
- https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/farg ... te-capitol

[rotting bones]

Question: Aren't drugs mostly smuggled through legal ports of entry?

Besides, I'm pretty sure foreign aid shores up the global economy. I don't understand why 21st century "capitalists" don't appreciate the obvious fact that the lack of redistribution leads to market collapse.

To be fair, even workers don't seem to realize that under capitalism, lowering the price of goods leads to deflation, destroying jobs.

...

The big problem is that the American left still supports moderate policies. Both fascist and moderate policies produce bad outcomes for the electorate. The difference is that moderate policies make their proponents look weak, whereas fascists utilize the self-immolating tendencies of hysterical mobs to facilitate capitalist exploitation.

This doesn't mean the fascists will always win. It means the fascists will always have a way to win back power. Instead of improving lives, American politics is now about whether we have jackboots stomping on our faces while the capitalists rob us blind. In other words, it is what it has been for a while now, but even more so. And the voters won't see it, being stuck in superficial ideas like "America First" vs. "decency".

What you need is a wrestler as a populist candidate. The right is willing to pull similar stunts. What nerds like Slow Boring don't understand is how to exploit the failings of the two party system to support good policies. You can't make history by constant rearguard action. You have to be willing to take a risk and show people things they don't yet know they want.

[rotting bones]

And--most bizarrely of all--why do the folks who cling the tightest to this belief describe themselves as "Christians"?

It's a flawed chain of associations that's blindingly obvious to everyone except smart people in the 21st century: If you're not going to change your behavior, you are being "traditional". Traditionally, people were religious. Therefore, being religious is a way to signal that you are not going to change your behavior.

[rotting bones]

and the west *was* kind of a monolith, though it may be more difficult to see this if one isn't a westerner. of course there's always disagreements, but when push comes to shove, it was a settled question for all of the nineties and two thousands which side of any international conflict most if not all western countries would be on. the french have some differences with the americans, but they sent their boys to die for them in afghanistan anyway. no one questioned the us's role as leader of the "free" world, and now people do. now the white house openly discusses invading denmark. this was my prediction from the start, that a trump win would mean a less cohesive west. i don't think i'm wrong thus far.

America controls too many resources for its allies to turn against it decisively.

I'm not seeing Empire fail in the Third Word yet. The Islamist regime that took control in Syria seems to be a Western puppet. Bangladesh turned to China after USAID was cut, and China has its own identity crisis: https://youtu.be/W-ono_TRx64?si=E4U70hin-vm7qiKm

To convert America's weakness into concrete gains, you need to create a leftist movement in other countries, a movement commanding sufficient combined resources to challenge American hegemony.

PS.

kinda like old byzantium would have been greek without being a part of greece.

Pretty sure they had a strong Roman identity.

[zompist]

Question: Aren't drugs mostly smuggled through legal ports of entry?

Besides, I'm pretty sure foreign aid shores up the global economy. I don't understand why 21st century "capitalists" don't appreciate the obvious fact that the lack of redistribution leads to market collapse.

That's a good question, and the answer is not obvious. Why didn't the rich appreciate Rooseveltian liberalism, which not only didn't guillotine the rich but let them get richer, at the mere cost of letting the rest of the country prosper too? (And this has been a longtime problem. Adam Smith had to actually try to convince the rich that prosperous years were good. The rich of his day were terrified of rising wages.)

There's a facile answer, that capitalists are just evil. But the trick was, under Roosevelt and his successors, there wasn't much of a capitalist class. The Depression destroyed most of them. Companies were run by managers, not owners... millionaires, not billionaires. The robber barons of the 1860-1910 era were dead and those of the 1990s+ weren't around yet.

But they already had the Southern Strategy... in its homeland, the South. It had worked for a hundred years, till it was threatened by the civil rights movement. The conservatives could have let it go... but then they'd get never get any president more conservative than Eisenhower or Nixon. They gambled on making the Southern Strategy nationwide: hide the agenda of the rich behind culture war issues. Nixon could never commit to the bit, but Reagan could, and reinstituted plutocracy without the people noticing.

Then what happened? To be honest, I think they lost control of the monster they'd created. Do the rich want 25% tariffs, anti-immigration crusades, trans scapegoating, white supremacy, and Elon Musk disintegrating the state? They do not. But they can't stop Trumpism any more; indeed, they have to grovel before it. And it's not like they have any hope of getting the voters behind their pure More Money for Us program anyway.

(Of course, most of the new crop of techbro robber barons have bought into the culture war themselves... but they're not the brains behind all this anyway; they were babies when the strategy was adopted.)

Do they appreciate that their chosen carriage will take them to climate collapse, depression, and maybe revolution? No, not really. They're not smart in that way, and they live in a bubble.

What you need is a wrestler as a populist candidate. The right is willing to pull similar stunts. What nerds like Slow Boring don't understand is how to exploit the failings of the two party system to support good policies. You can't make history by constant rearguard action. You have to be willing to take a risk and show people things they don't yet know they want.

You're a visionary, so you like visions. Maybe once a generation, more likely once a half-century, people are willing to side with a visionary.... if only because all the alternatives have fizzled out. In our history that probably only applies to Lincoln and Roosevelt. The '60s were full of visionaries, but not one of them was electable.

I'm not saying you're wrong... maybe that's precisely what we need.

(Oh, and calling Matt Yglesias part of the left is unnecessarily complimentary. He's a '90s liberal of the sort that prides themselves on having conservative friends and a few contrarian conservative opinions.)

[jcb]

Besides, I'm pretty sure foreign aid shores up the global economy. I don't understand why 21st century "capitalists" don't appreciate the obvious fact that the lack of redistribution leads to market collapse.

As I said before, conservatives would rather be king of a mole hill than a fellow citizen of a mountain. They feel more secure when they are more *relatively* richer than everybody else, even if they are absolutely poorer.

To be fair, even workers don't seem to realize that under capitalism, lowering the price of goods leads to deflation, destroying jobs.

What people mean when they say that prices are too high is that they can't afford to buy the things. It's easier to think that the solution is lowering the prices than to realize that everybody's wages would be at least twice to thrice of what they are now if wages hadn't gotten disconnected from productivity starting with Reagan. The former lets people think on a micro scale, which they're used to, but the latter requires them to think on a macro scale, which they're not used to and generally bad at.

What you need is a wrestler as a populist candidate. The right is willing to pull similar stunts. What nerds like Slow Boring don't understand is how to exploit the failings of the two party system to support good policies. You can't make history by constant rearguard action. You have to be willing to take a risk and show people things they don't yet know they want.

I'm not saying you're wrong... maybe that's precisely what we need.

I strongly agree with Rotting Bones. The Dems can't win by just constantly reacting to whatever awful shit the Repubs do. They have to act instead of react.

Dems think they are geniuses every time they retreat to the center, thinking that it can only win them votes, but they're wrong. Retreating from bold economic equality has only discouraged people from thinking that it's even a possibility, so instead they seek out other, bigoted, solutions to their economic problems.

Furthermore, the clock is ticking for the Dems to figure it out. American democracy can not withstand the current fascist assault forever.

Maybe once a generation, more likely once a half-century, people are willing to side with a visionary.... if only because all the alternatives have fizzled out. In our history that probably only applies to Lincoln and Roosevelt. The '60s were full of visionaries, but not one of them was electable.

Was it really because they weren't "electable"? Or because there wasn't enough misery and alienation for enough people to be motivated to vote for them?

[WeepingElf]

Was it really because they weren't "electable"? Or because there wasn't enough misery and alienation for enough people to be motivated to vote for them?

I think it was a combination of both - there was no major party representing countercultural views (don't forget that the Dems were not far left of the Reps at that time and supported the Vietnam war, among other things), and most people were content with how things were going. (Even those who had lost a loved one in Vietnam often blamed that to the Vietcong rather than on the US government.)

[Otto Kretschmer]

BTW - isn't the association between Christianity and laissez faire economics a relatively new thing? It seems to be a rather strange mix that (to my knowledge) only exists in the US.

[keenir]

kinda like old byzantium would have been greek without being a part of greece.

Pretty sure they had a strong Roman identity.

both can be true.

[Travis B.]

BTW - isn't the association between Christianity and laissez faire economics a relatively new thing? It seems to be a rather strange mix that (to my knowledge) only exists in the US.

If anything, it is also more a specifically an association between Protestantism and laissez faire economics than Christianity in general. At least historically Catholicism has been associated with corporatism in the proper sense of the term.

[Travis B.]

kinda like old byzantium would have been greek without being a part of greece.

Pretty sure they had a strong Roman identity.

both can be true.

The Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Rome saw themselves as the proper inheritors of the Roman Empire; they specifically called themselves "Roman" for instance.