The first thing we need to do is stop using the term "liberals" for them. That is an honorable title that belongs to people who believe in freedom of speech, due process, independent courts, and a restrained government. They are not liberals.
The first thing we need to do is stop using the term "liberals" for them. That is an honorable title that belongs to people who believe in freedom of speech, due process, independent courts, and a restrained government. They are not liberals.
I agree our political terminology has lost all meaning. I find myself aligned with perspectives across the political map these days. The term conservative is equally nebulous. But the word "communist" carries significant historical context, much of which is not directly applicable. There is a self righteousness that is arising on the "left". An openness to ideas, experience, and communication are traditional liberal values, or so I once thought. They are cloaked in the historical shell of liberal values, but have lost the intellectual and emotional core that gave rise to these values.
Yes, yes, yes! We lack proper terms for the rise of these tyrants! I argue that the Establishment that Dr. Roberts, NYT, Fox, CNN, NPR, et al is neither exactly left nor right. The Establishment now stands for corporate hegemony over Western Civ, Perpetual War for profit, perpetual lowering of the value of labor & general impoverishment of the lower orders, & extinguishing civil liberties.
I view this project as neither entirely left or right. Yes, the left are sort of useful idiots chasing the promise of collectivism; the idea that on some fine day Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, will pay in taxes the same percentage that we here pay, and that Russians & white supremacists lurk under our beds. But the right seems to think that the Pentagon exists to protect us, and that taxing Bezos would be immoral.
Matt argues Orwell's 1984 is overused, but I prefer itтАЩs terminology because it makes no reference to the original left or right, but sticks to totalitarianism without political orientation, which I believe is where weтАЩre headed. I love this Anthony Sutton quote:
тАЬSooner or later people will wake up. First we have to dump the trap of right and left, this is a Hegelian trap to divide and control. The battle is not between right and left; it is between us and them.тАЭ
I wish Matt would turn his mind to what we should call the Dr. Roberts in this Cowardly New World. The poor souls who went down on the Titanic all knew it was an iceberg, I imagine. We donтАЩt know what to call what it is that is striving to enslave us.
Great contribution, Bill, to which I would like to add, as just another American in his early Seventies who has been a wage slave his entire life, a trenchant observation from a great mind of the Seventeen Hundreds:
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
┬лI argue that the Establishment that Dr. Roberts, NYT, Fox, CNN, NPR, et al is neither exactly left nor right. The Establishment now stands for corporate hegemony over Western Civ, Perpetual War for profit, perpetual lowering of the value of labor & general impoverishment of the lower orders, & extinguishing civil liberties.┬╗
My usual point of political history:
* There are two main sides to the right, the "tory "(nationalist, industrialist, traditionalist) (which is itself split into "low tory and "high tory") and "whig" (globalist-interventionist, financialist, radical/"woke").
* During feudal times the right was "high tory" representing mostly farm owners and merchants.
* Then the "new right" arose which was "whig"; victorian liberals initially representing emerging "ironmaster"/business owner class, and they fought for freedom of the markets, freedom of contract, and related "radical" issues.
* Eventually much of the right morphed back into "high torysm" but more industry based as industry became a rentier business.
* Then finance (more precisely the "leveraged debt lobby") took over both parties turning them to "whig" politics.
* Recently the "low tory" right with Trump took briefly over the Republicans.
For the people, politics has been reduced to a sporting contest, with little discussion of any policies that impact capital. The terms have become cultural badges. For the media, politics has become a means to generate engagement and retain advertising consumers, discussing only policies that have no meaningful impact on capital or established power structures, preferring superficial and cultural criticism of the other political team. For capital, politics is an analysis and investment process, ensuring they have hedged properly between the parties to dictate the state processes and regulation that influences their industry.
Do the terms correctly group advertising demographics? Probably. Do they have any meaningful policy or political philosophy definitions attached to them? Less and less. Second amendment or trans rights? Chose your tribe. Workers party or bosses party? Not so clear anymore.
Power structures are necessary for the organization of complex societies. Positions within power structures should be based upon efficacy within a role, determined by those subservient to the role, democracy. Power structures require feedback mechanisms for optimizations and alignment. But what is optimization and alignment? Is it the greatest good for the individuals at all levels within the structure? Is it the greatest good dependent on proximity to the apex of the structure? America has decided on the later, but perhaps not by choice. Thomas Picketty showed us without active intervention wealth coalesces indefinitely. The great mass of wealth seems to now exist outside the organizational processes of society. Fluid wealth existing for its own sake, existing only to multiply by any means. Existing outside states, but having massive influence upon them.
The feedback mechanisms to power have all been neutered. Neutered through the dilution of political terms and philosophies, through election funding, through regulatory capture, through destruction of workers movements, through information control. Neutered because great wealth is beholden to nothing, has no direct attachments to societal structures. If Democracy is functionally a facade, what do the party terms even matter? What do we call those who viewed themselves as traditional liberals who have abandoned the core tenets of liberalism in greater service of capital? Traitors? Opportunists? Realists? What do we call those who have enslaved us? Rulers.
Mmmm...I catch your drift but I canтАЩt agree with the entirety of your comment. YouтАЩre right that it makes a travesty of the term тАЬliberalтАЭ to apply it to the citizens of Wokestan. As I was typing my comment that actually crossed my mind, but I let it slide because itтАЩs an easy shorthand for a large segment of the population these days.
Where I disagree is with your blanket assumption that all these people are communists. I assume that some are, especially if youтАЩre referring to the more public and vocal activist voices on the left. But IтАЩm talking about people I know well, law abiding and mainstream members of my family and friends who go way back. I can assure you without one iota of doubt that they are not communists! Trust me, these late middle-aged New York Times readers sitting at home worrying about their second vaccine shot and examining their 401(k) accounts are what they themselves would refer to as old-school liberals. Like lobsters in a slow cooker, they have no clue that theyтАЩre being boiled alive. When I ask them if it isnтАЩt getting a little hot in here, their eyes glaze over.
ThatтАЩs what makes the current free speech crisis so tragic. ItтАЩs not an insidious cadre of commies who will do us on, itтАЩs our own damn brain-dead тАЬliberalтАЭ selves.
I'm going to push back again, this time on the use of the word "Nazis." I'm a Jew, and the nice liberal people I'm referring to here are mostly Jewish. And even if they weren't, it still takes a lot to cross the line from wimpy liberal to literal Nazi. My mother's parents lost all their family members in the Holocaust in Poland. My uncle died fighting the Nazis under Gen. MacArthur in the Philippines. That word has a particular and special resonance, and I don't employ it lightly. I share your disdain for the citizens of Wokestan and I see the ideological and tactical similarities that exist among authoritarian movements of many different time periods.
Although I know that the term gets thrown around rather casually these days, I'd prefer that we reserve the word Nazi for Nazis.
I mean, I'm assuming you didn't completely miss the last 20+ years of things like BUSH=NAZI and the related Trump lines.
Original Nazis aren't coming back; it was a European phenomenon associated with millennia of anti-Semitism across Europe, economic depression, national humiliation and one particular leader. The imitation Nazis like the crew in Skokie that the ACLU defended back in the 70s don't have much significance and are mostly doing what they do for notoriety. Also, most people today have no personal memory of why Nazis were hateful, for that matter. Finding people who were alive and aware in 1945 is growing rare.
Along comes a group that actually classifies people according to race and wants to ban books and cancel people out that aren't coordinated with their mindset, has a totalitarian philosophy and we're not supposed to make the obvious analogy?
..and has clear political power, forgot that part. The cancellations prove this.
The SPD and KPD were pretty sure that the Nazis were going to be short-lived, their biggest error. That's why they failed to fight and rolled over in 1933. I mean there were other problems in Germany...disunity for one thing... at the time that would have hindered resistance to the Nazis, but the lack of will to fight was the worst.
The first step to fighting back is calling them what they are.
The first thing we need to do is stop using the term "liberals" for them. That is an honorable title that belongs to people who believe in freedom of speech, due process, independent courts, and a restrained government. They are not liberals.
They are communists.
I agree our political terminology has lost all meaning. I find myself aligned with perspectives across the political map these days. The term conservative is equally nebulous. But the word "communist" carries significant historical context, much of which is not directly applicable. There is a self righteousness that is arising on the "left". An openness to ideas, experience, and communication are traditional liberal values, or so I once thought. They are cloaked in the historical shell of liberal values, but have lost the intellectual and emotional core that gave rise to these values.
Yes, yes, yes! We lack proper terms for the rise of these tyrants! I argue that the Establishment that Dr. Roberts, NYT, Fox, CNN, NPR, et al is neither exactly left nor right. The Establishment now stands for corporate hegemony over Western Civ, Perpetual War for profit, perpetual lowering of the value of labor & general impoverishment of the lower orders, & extinguishing civil liberties.
I view this project as neither entirely left or right. Yes, the left are sort of useful idiots chasing the promise of collectivism; the idea that on some fine day Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, will pay in taxes the same percentage that we here pay, and that Russians & white supremacists lurk under our beds. But the right seems to think that the Pentagon exists to protect us, and that taxing Bezos would be immoral.
Matt argues Orwell's 1984 is overused, but I prefer itтАЩs terminology because it makes no reference to the original left or right, but sticks to totalitarianism without political orientation, which I believe is where weтАЩre headed. I love this Anthony Sutton quote:
тАЬSooner or later people will wake up. First we have to dump the trap of right and left, this is a Hegelian trap to divide and control. The battle is not between right and left; it is between us and them.тАЭ
I wish Matt would turn his mind to what we should call the Dr. Roberts in this Cowardly New World. The poor souls who went down on the Titanic all knew it was an iceberg, I imagine. We donтАЩt know what to call what it is that is striving to enslave us.
Great contribution, Bill, to which I would like to add, as just another American in his early Seventies who has been a wage slave his entire life, a trenchant observation from a great mind of the Seventeen Hundreds:
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
┬лI argue that the Establishment that Dr. Roberts, NYT, Fox, CNN, NPR, et al is neither exactly left nor right. The Establishment now stands for corporate hegemony over Western Civ, Perpetual War for profit, perpetual lowering of the value of labor & general impoverishment of the lower orders, & extinguishing civil liberties.┬╗
My usual point of political history:
* There are two main sides to the right, the "tory "(nationalist, industrialist, traditionalist) (which is itself split into "low tory and "high tory") and "whig" (globalist-interventionist, financialist, radical/"woke").
* During feudal times the right was "high tory" representing mostly farm owners and merchants.
* Then the "new right" arose which was "whig"; victorian liberals initially representing emerging "ironmaster"/business owner class, and they fought for freedom of the markets, freedom of contract, and related "radical" issues.
* Eventually much of the right morphed back into "high torysm" but more industry based as industry became a rentier business.
* Then finance (more precisely the "leveraged debt lobby") took over both parties turning them to "whig" politics.
* Recently the "low tory" right with Trump took briefly over the Republicans.
I prefer Brave New World ...
For the people, politics has been reduced to a sporting contest, with little discussion of any policies that impact capital. The terms have become cultural badges. For the media, politics has become a means to generate engagement and retain advertising consumers, discussing only policies that have no meaningful impact on capital or established power structures, preferring superficial and cultural criticism of the other political team. For capital, politics is an analysis and investment process, ensuring they have hedged properly between the parties to dictate the state processes and regulation that influences their industry.
Do the terms correctly group advertising demographics? Probably. Do they have any meaningful policy or political philosophy definitions attached to them? Less and less. Second amendment or trans rights? Chose your tribe. Workers party or bosses party? Not so clear anymore.
Power structures are necessary for the organization of complex societies. Positions within power structures should be based upon efficacy within a role, determined by those subservient to the role, democracy. Power structures require feedback mechanisms for optimizations and alignment. But what is optimization and alignment? Is it the greatest good for the individuals at all levels within the structure? Is it the greatest good dependent on proximity to the apex of the structure? America has decided on the later, but perhaps not by choice. Thomas Picketty showed us without active intervention wealth coalesces indefinitely. The great mass of wealth seems to now exist outside the organizational processes of society. Fluid wealth existing for its own sake, existing only to multiply by any means. Existing outside states, but having massive influence upon them.
The feedback mechanisms to power have all been neutered. Neutered through the dilution of political terms and philosophies, through election funding, through regulatory capture, through destruction of workers movements, through information control. Neutered because great wealth is beholden to nothing, has no direct attachments to societal structures. If Democracy is functionally a facade, what do the party terms even matter? What do we call those who viewed themselves as traditional liberals who have abandoned the core tenets of liberalism in greater service of capital? Traitors? Opportunists? Realists? What do we call those who have enslaved us? Rulers.
Mmmm...I catch your drift but I canтАЩt agree with the entirety of your comment. YouтАЩre right that it makes a travesty of the term тАЬliberalтАЭ to apply it to the citizens of Wokestan. As I was typing my comment that actually crossed my mind, but I let it slide because itтАЩs an easy shorthand for a large segment of the population these days.
Where I disagree is with your blanket assumption that all these people are communists. I assume that some are, especially if youтАЩre referring to the more public and vocal activist voices on the left. But IтАЩm talking about people I know well, law abiding and mainstream members of my family and friends who go way back. I can assure you without one iota of doubt that they are not communists! Trust me, these late middle-aged New York Times readers sitting at home worrying about their second vaccine shot and examining their 401(k) accounts are what they themselves would refer to as old-school liberals. Like lobsters in a slow cooker, they have no clue that theyтАЩre being boiled alive. When I ask them if it isnтАЩt getting a little hot in here, their eyes glaze over.
ThatтАЩs what makes the current free speech crisis so tragic. ItтАЩs not an insidious cadre of commies who will do us on, itтАЩs our own damn brain-dead тАЬliberalтАЭ selves.
Woke Nazis then. Because they seem to have a lot in common with the NSDAP. The focus on race is one key similarity. Tactics is another.
I'm going to push back again, this time on the use of the word "Nazis." I'm a Jew, and the nice liberal people I'm referring to here are mostly Jewish. And even if they weren't, it still takes a lot to cross the line from wimpy liberal to literal Nazi. My mother's parents lost all their family members in the Holocaust in Poland. My uncle died fighting the Nazis under Gen. MacArthur in the Philippines. That word has a particular and special resonance, and I don't employ it lightly. I share your disdain for the citizens of Wokestan and I see the ideological and tactical similarities that exist among authoritarian movements of many different time periods.
Although I know that the term gets thrown around rather casually these days, I'd prefer that we reserve the word Nazi for Nazis.
I mean, I'm assuming you didn't completely miss the last 20+ years of things like BUSH=NAZI and the related Trump lines.
Original Nazis aren't coming back; it was a European phenomenon associated with millennia of anti-Semitism across Europe, economic depression, national humiliation and one particular leader. The imitation Nazis like the crew in Skokie that the ACLU defended back in the 70s don't have much significance and are mostly doing what they do for notoriety. Also, most people today have no personal memory of why Nazis were hateful, for that matter. Finding people who were alive and aware in 1945 is growing rare.
Along comes a group that actually classifies people according to race and wants to ban books and cancel people out that aren't coordinated with their mindset, has a totalitarian philosophy and we're not supposed to make the obvious analogy?
..and has clear political power, forgot that part. The cancellations prove this.
The SPD and KPD were pretty sure that the Nazis were going to be short-lived, their biggest error. That's why they failed to fight and rolled over in 1933. I mean there were other problems in Germany...disunity for one thing... at the time that would have hindered resistance to the Nazis, but the lack of will to fight was the worst.
The first step to fighting back is calling them what they are.
correction: who will do us IN...