Partly, but mostly it's an ideological opposition to doing anything that might be perceived as friendly or helpful.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 12:01 pm 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.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 12:01 pmDoesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?
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.Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 12:04 pmPartly, but mostly it's an ideological opposition to doing anything that might be perceived as friendly or helpful.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 12:01 pm Doesn't closing of USAID just reflect the misguidedly neoliberal/libertarian idea of "small government"?
nope, you're not.
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.Linguoboy wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 11:50 amExcept, 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.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2025 8:51 amAnd he'll do anything just to extend US global dominance by even a decade.
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)
I go by Thomas Frank's definition: "a trans-racial movement of working people demanding economic democracy"keenir wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 9:23 pmIn that case, so we're both on the same page, can you explain to me what populism is, in your mind?jcb wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:17 amThat definition is exactly what enemies of real populism want you to think.keenir wrote: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?
thank you.
If only there was an appropriate word with a good American history...Linguoboy wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 8:23 pmThe 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.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 3:09 pmI guess decades of McCarthyism wnd a century of Red Scare propaganda have really done their job.
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.
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.
America controls too many resources for its allies to turn against it decisively.Torco wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2025 4:15 pm 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.
Pretty sure they had a strong Roman identity.
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.)rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 12:25 am 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.
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.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.
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.Rotting Bones wrote: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.
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.To be fair, even workers don't seem to realize that under capitalism, lowering the price of goods leads to deflation, destroying jobs.
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 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.Zompist wrote:I'm not saying you're wrong... maybe that's precisely what we need.
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?zompist wrote: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 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.)
both can be true.
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.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 09, 2025 12:22 pm 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.
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.
