They'll be Guardian columnists.
They'll be Guardian columnists.
Just watched that Anthony Weiner Storyville. Typical Democrat,; loud and proud but a filthy, seedy, corrupt pervert at heart.
I watched HyperNormalism tonight. If there's a pearly gates reconstruction of my life, I want Adam Curtis to present it. I'm not sure how to feel about any of the things he shows in that. Trump's charge to the White House being straight out of the Kremlin playbook is eye-opening.
I read a little bit about that movie, was it any good? How much of a Leftist is he?Originally Posted by Shindig
He says he's not a Lefty - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis#Politics
People often accuse me of being a lefty. That's complete rubbish. If you look at The Century of the Self, what I'm arguing is something very close to a neoconservative position because I'm saying that, with the rise of individualism, you tend to get the corrosion of the other idea of social bonds and communal networks, because everyone is on their own. Well, that's what the neoconservatives argue, domestically. [...] If you ask me what my politics are, I'm very much a creature of my time. I don't really have any. I change my mind over different issues, but I am much more fond of a libertarian view. I have a more libertarian tendency [...] What's astonishing in our time is how the Left here has completely failed to come up with any alternatives, and I think you may well see a lefty libertarianism emerging because people will be much more sympathetic to it, or just a libertarianism, and out of that will come ideas. And I don't mean "localism".
Accepting that would mean having to accept that 1) he isn't thick; and 2) he's donned them all.
This is pretty good: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-richard-rorty
In particular I liked this:
If the left/centre-left are going to have any kind of relevance then they (we) need to get our shit together and actually have a cohesive plan that works, rather than focussing energy on marginal issues which don't speak to the majority.In the book, Rorty predicted that what he called the left would come to give “cultural politics preference over real politics”. This movement would contribute to a tidal wave of resentment, he wrote, that would ricochet back as the kind of rancor that the left had tried to eradicate.
Well, this is it. Like when he referred to "the finalists" for cabinet positions. He's so obviously trolling, and yet certain quarters (alright, phonics) will rush to make a story of it regardless.
That's pretty much (New) Labour, isn't it? Decide they know best and then set about vilifying everybody who disagrees or professes an alternate view. In Britain, anyway, you can trace most of the BACKLASH back to decisions taken by the Lord Blair. Nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-seven as "Year Zero" deserves another chapter.
Well, that (first sentence) is essentially what politics is: deciding you know best and trying to enact that worldview, so I don't see how that's specific to Labour.
My point is more that Jez, Ed and friends have driven labour down a fruitless path to try and please everyone, of all niches and quirks, whereas what they need to provide is a genuine, considered plan to react to globalisation and the inherent disempowerment it generates among the majority of people.
The Conservative kick towards introspection, isolation and putting up walls (metaphorical and physical) won't have the desired effect either mind - the horse has bolted and isn't coming back. Britain and the US are a essentially finance/tech economies and nothing we're doing here will help those industries. Let alone all the steelworkers, drivers and factory people who's jobs are going to disappear over the next 10 years due to the first two groups.
Disconnecting free markets/trade from this loose idea of 'globalisation' would be a start. We can still trade freely, and let steelworks go to the wall, without letting a trillion foreigners in and contracting decisions out to supranational, universalist wankers.
How does that help anyone though? The elderly/pensions are a far bigger drain on resources than Big Jeff from Tanzania and his chums. Likewise, it doesn't stop the steelworkers or whatever getting completely buttfucked.
Genuine question - is there any legit data for where "benefits" money goes, per nationality of claimant?
EDIT: Google says: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06955/SN06955.pdf - which is a smaller percentage than what I thought it'd be.
Then they should reform the pension/welfare system (and the entire philosophy of the state), otherwise your system is actually a Ponzi scheme.
One for you, @GS.
Why is the West accepting immigrants who take out more from the system than they contribute, who are either unwilling or unable to assimilate, whose culture is fundamentally incompatible with Western notions democracy and Liberty, and who also statistically commit far more crime than native born citizens.
It's that simple, why? Who benefits? You can have economic interdependence while still behaving in a non-suicidal manner.
Also those jobs are coming back, take away stifling regulations and taxes, throw on some incentives, and you will see.
I have a grudging respect for McGuinness - but I can't hack Adams. It doesn't help that he's thick as shit.
Y'know, integration and assimilation is a bullshit angle to take on this. All you need is tolerance, not this outright acceptance. I mean, you could suck apple pie out of Uncle Sam's cock but it's maybe a step too far.
You can't have a multicultural society, when push comes to shove people will almost always vote along tribal lines over some abstract political principal / public polic approach.
The issue isn't 'acceptance' or 'tolerance' as such. Labour, when Straw was Home Secretary, drastically reduced the administrative burden for immigration and effectively turned a blind eye to a substantial increase in immigration - particularly from the subcontinent. We were knowingly admitting vast numbers who didn't meet the requirements, but the government of the day didn't particularly care. In 2004, with the accession of the A8 states, Blair actively decided against introducing transitional controls. It led to significant and, more importantly, rapid change in certain communities.
Many in these communities were naturally uncomfortable, and felt they were engaging in some sort of social 'experiment' (for lack of a better word) that they never asked for and never consented to. When concerns were raised, Labour actively sought to shout them down by dismissing them as 'xenophobes' and 'racists'. To compound matters, Blair's governments continued to advocate multiculturalism - in effect, numbers would go up (treble from the Major years) and there would be no serious requirement for people to integrate. It may have been well intentioned, but it's created segregated communities and simmering resentment.
So it's all fair and well preaching 'tolerance' and 'acceptance', but a big part of the Leave vote can be traced back to Labour's complete mishandling of immigration and assimilation of communities thereof. It's their own fault, mind you, as it was part of an active ideological drive to 'rub the right's nose in diversity'.
That went well for them, I suppose.
Why does the Left love 'diversity' so much? Is it a desire to import new voters? Annoy the Right? What is it? Because certainly immigrants increase labor supply and therefore hurt the working class, the former core constituency of the Left, the most. I just don't get why they did this?
Isn't that all the Tories' fault though? Since we're blaming the opposition for the wrongdoings of the current Conservative government in the other thread.
It's that failed socialism isn't real socialism mindset. It will be different this time, and Yugoslavia only collapsed for a lack of community centres and prominent black faces in the media. Stupidity, in a word, albeit combined with a need for new clients/voters after the white working class rejected them in the eighties.
It's not really though, is it? At the same time you have them starting to love 'diversity', they're abandoning their old socialism and embracing neoliberalism.
The wider backlash against the political classes stems from, in my view, three key things: 1) Iraq 2) the financial crisis and 3) the expenses scandal. Labour (i.e. Blair) was clearly responsible for Iraq, which is probably the worst foreign policy disaster since Suez. Labour didn't cause the financial crisis of 2007/8, but they put the country in a terrible position to deal with it. We ran a budget deficit every year from 2002, with borrowing to fund current expenditure. We were completely over-reliant on tax revenues from the City, where they seem to have made a Faustian pact to turn a blind eye to any excess whilst the tax revenues rumbled in. It meant when the bite hit, we were uniquely vulnerable. Massive current expenditure funded by borrowing, a loss of tax revenues, a collapse in confidence in our main tax revenue generating area of the economy and the need to invest tens of billions to bail out the banks.
The third wasn't solely a Labour issue, but it's a bit lol when supposed socialists are fraudulently pocketing tens of thousands from the public purse whilst advocating that the rest of us behave differently. The Tories are just capitalists working the system, but the left tend to set themselves up as being "better than that". This was more of a 'you absolute wankers' issue, rather than going to the fundamental issue of whether the political classes "knew best" in terms of policy direction and economic management. Iraq and the GFC showed that they very clearly didn't, and that's caused a significant trust issue with the wider public.
If we're considering a complete list of Blairist failures, his various communities and equalities acts were really rather patronising - in effect suggesting to everybody (except on the left, which loves virtue signalling) that the great British public were, somehow, a collection of closet racists and / or misogynists. They needed a Blairist wave of charity singles and communities singing kumbaya to treat people decently, which obviously wasn't happening until Blairism decided that it should be enshrined in law and they could scold everybody else for not doing it already. Nobody likes the insinuation that they're a cunt and can't be trusted to behave decently. See: grammar schools, where again the Lord Blair decided that the public can't be trusted to make their own mind up for their kids.
We've already covered the immigration debacle.
So yeah, if you want to know why everybody hates politicians and why political correctness is fighting a rearguard action to a revival of populism defended with 'he says what he thinks', look no further than New Labour - where the most important man in government was Alistair fucking Campbell, who was spinning everything as evidence of the Lord Blair's divinely inspired benevolence.
I mean in thinking that historical precedent doesn't apply because this time it will be different, although I suppose that is more of a technocratic mindset than an exclusively leftist one.
Oh right, I get ya now.
What a man the Donald is.
I think there is a non-trivial probability that Trump is an unprecedented PR / media genius.
Again, if you haven't watched HyperNormalisation, get on it. It gives a compelling reason as to why Donald and Putin are so tight. Putin's lot do the same.
Hahaha I hit a nerve
What you mean here (as with most of the rest of your tedious left-bashing) isn't that I've lost my perspective, but that I don't share yours, therefore I'm in error.
I (or any "we" that I'm part of) never refer to political opponents as evil, and vanishingly rarely as Nazi's. That's entirely your invention.
Mitt Romney would be someone who in that job would push neoliberal, imperialist policies broadly in line with those pursued by the US in recent decades. Preference for him is strictly in the category of "better the devil you know" ( no, this is not an actual reference to evilness) since those policies remain highly disagreable. He and the establishment that he is part of are to a large measure to blame for the catastrophe that we're about to have inflicted on us. Your laughably narrow analysis of why people are pissed off, posted above (the fucking expenses scandal?!) shows that you don't really get that.
Who would be a good appointment for Secretary of State in your eyes?
Noam Chomsky.
Bernie.
I bet Hillary could do a pretty good job.
His namesake, Henry Kissinger.
Donald Trumpet has apparently been ringing up Argentina asking them to get a shift on with his building permits. Drain the swamp, indeed.
There are few involved in mainstream national politics, particularly any that Trump or the Republican Congress would possibly assent to. So it's not really about personality, it's about policy. But if you're asking me to pick someone reasonably prominent, maybe Chris Murphy.
According to one Argentinian journalist based on an anonymous source and denied by both the Argentinian presidents staff and Trump himself. So in other words, a tenuous claim at best.
Here we have a further example of why your side will eat itself before it gets anywhere. Absolutely convinced of your own superior moral righteousness.What you mean here (as with most of the rest of your tedious left-bashing) isn't that I've lost my perspective, but that I don't share yours, therefore I'm in error.
I (or any "we" that I'm part of) never refer to political opponents as evil, and vanishingly rarely as Nazi's. That's entirely your invention.
Mitt Romney would be someone who in that job would push neoliberal, imperialist policies broadly in line with those pursued by the US in recent decades. Preference for him is strictly in the category of "better the devil you know" ( no, this is not an actual reference to evilness) since those policies remain highly disagreable. He and the establishment that he is part of are to a large measure to blame for the catastrophe that we're about to have inflicted on us. Your laughably narrow analysis of why people are pissed off, posted above (the fucking expenses scandal?!) shows that you don't really get that.
Both sides are convinced of that. That's why they're on that side.
The alt-right sending the lugenpresse into a frenzy in these last few days is just
If you look at polls on the subject (I did a massive qual report on this in one of my former lives) you'll consistently find that on questions like 'Would you kiss someone with opposite political views to you', 'Would you let your children hold opposite political views to you', and so on, the left are always about 2x less willing to do so than the right.
You know I reckon if it's like that it's in part because it's not uncommon that people move politically towards the right as they age. A lot of people are more idealistic and left-oriented in their beliefs when they are young and, to be crass, don't make as much money themselves yet.
So as a right-wing parent I bet it's easier to reconcile with the idea that your kid will be having views contrary to your own (because after all it'll be something you may be able to help change or that may change over time).
Ask the same question about homosexuality and I would be the roles are reversed.
EDIT: And further - in the "Kissing" situation, I personally at least find that Right-wing people tend to look at Leftists more as Naive, in a kind of condescending and patronizing way mind you, but still - compared to Leftists that tend to look at Right-wing people as more Evil, the latter which obviously is harder to accept in a fellow human being.
I dunno. I'd rather have a gay kid than a raving communist, but either would be just fine.
Another thing I'm thinking now is that I bet most of the time in not-quite-"raving communist"-but-far-leftwards cases, those people will be very aware of their own political beliefs, and that they are indeed such.
On the other side of the spectrum you'll probably find people who will have some ideas about what they don't like (rather perhaps than what they like) but not be so politically involved (further right you'll find these "alt-rights" or whatever they call themselves).
He didnt say anything that could possibly make you think that, other than that neo-liberal policies are to blame for American interventionism, which is true and has nothing to fucking do with moral righteousness. Get over yourself
This Farage/ambassador stuff is absolutely laughable. Trump showing yet again how unfit he is to hold high office. Theresa should publicly tell him to fuck off.
I never really understood the logic of Farage being, well, anything to do with anything. We have a perfectly good diplomatic corp that's dealt with countless US administrations in the past, I'm not sure why this would be any different.
At the same time, all the people getting so very, very exercised about the idea of Ambassador Farage probably couldn't name a single UK ambassador to the US (or anywhere, other than Chris Patten), as it's really something no one in their right mind would give a flying fuck about.
Make him a special envoy or somthing. Or just a lord as apparently is in the offing and let him loose on his own over there.
Nigel doesn't seem to be so angry about a foreign head-of-state telling Britain what to do these days, weird that.
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