Imagining a Left-Populist America

Post Reply New Topic

I like The Young Turks, but I don't know anything about The Ring Of fire.

The young Turks are so horrible their hilarious in the omg people like this really exist god help us way.
They lie lie and lie more and throw tantrums when they don't get what they like. The prime repersentive of the extreme left I surprise.

It was funny to watch them on election night though

So what your saying is the democrats and CNN aren't far left enough for you?

Cause they're far too progressive and controlling for me.

I support welfare and stuff but I find myself with more rational people and allies on the right side then left. Atleast I've met more who are right leaning but ok with me being on ssi. But they know me. I think if more republicans met and knew people on welfare they'd be more ok with it. As is for a lot of them we are just some faceless person who is the used as a scapegoat by the elites.

But atleast the right doesn't aim to control every single thing we do like progressives want to.

The right throws tantrums all the time. Remember when Obama got elected?



That's an oversimplification.

They are fine when it comes to racial and sexual issues. They don't need to go any further to the left in that regard.

Unfortunately, the Democrats ignore class-related issues like corporate welfare and war lobbying. They would lose their corporate sponsors if they did that. Wealthy "limousine liberals" tend to be like this. They ignore the concept of class antagonism in order to cover their own rich asses.

Some of them even claim that the biggest racists in America are in the working class.

This is why so many people in the white working class vote Republican.



Perhaps the Republicans would be okay with welfare if they knew about corporate welfare.
I will admit that there are a lot of irrational people on the left. Tumblr is full of them.



I totally understand what you are getting at. For the record, I'm not fond of the PC/SJW crowd. I'm not fond of the "White people need to purge racism from their subconscious." mentality. I'm not fond of the "Porn teaches men to rape." mentality either. Women look at porn all the time.

The other leftists often call me a "brogressive" and a "brocialist". LOL Whatever.

The modern left focuses on navel-gazing and self-flagellation too often. We should focus on concrete policy plans instead.

That's what my Richard Rorty thread was all about. At this writing, it still hasn't gotten any responses. Why?

"The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement."
- Karl Marx

I really think that if you put people in charge of matters that don't concern their immediate life and surroundings, they're bound to screw up badly, regardless if they even want to do right. It defeats the purpose of specialized knowledge and specialized functions. It forces everybody to be aware of, understand, and connect an absurd amount of wildly disparate information that no one person could ever even remotely be aware of at once, let alone comprehend. It renders everyone incompetent and inadequate by default. No one can meet those demands and expectations, but most people can pretend that they do to some extent, and most people buy into it to some extent. So that's what people do, and that's what the whole thing is all about in practice.

High levels of centralization of control, in turn, are bound to favor a minority of the population and harm the majority (by comparison, at least -- which is largely what determines perceptions of well-being and satisfaction). The increasing centralization of power/control over the ages evolved as a consequence of destructive competition, not as a solution to it. People accept the authority of a leader or their respective institution because they fear it enough not to challenge it and because they believe that their (perceived) common enemies will be harmed more or kept more in check through the maintenance and acceptance of that authority than by challenging it. But then whoever is already in power has always a better chance to fabricate common enemies that don't exist yet, just so they maintain their position. Which eventually they do, and the lie perpetuates itself.

Monkey grabs a stick and says "I rule". Other monkey says "monkey stinks". Monkey hits other monkey.

Group says "other group stinks". Monkey says "I rule them too". Group says "monkey rules".

Other group is gone. Other monkey says "I rule". Monkey says "other monkey is other group". Group says "other monkey stinks". Group grabs a stick and hits other monkey. Monkey says "group rules".

Monkey still rules.

The real challenge to be solved is how to conciliate the principle of wide representation with the principle of not making people responsible for matters that don't really concern them. There's a need for a complex structure based on simple hierarchical principles that everyone can actually understand. Coordination of groups rather than centralization. And representatives can only ever really be representative if they're as much part of the group they represent as everyone else in the group. Simply exchanging favors and promises doesn't make someone a representative, it's only a feature of inter-group dynamics instead.


I'm quite confident that collective dumbness is an inherent weakness of the species.


What's the fun in that?

This brings me back to the Piraha.

In Piraha culture, it is extremely inappropriate for an adult to tell another adult what to do.

When people are truly happy, they generally stop caring about other people's business.

Are you implying that the masses would create a totalitarian society? I doubt they would. They would probably create laws to satisfy everyone's human needs and laws to protect their democratic government from undemocratic corruption ... but I imagine that their society would be quite permissive apart from that.

Unlike many political people, I have a very high opinion of Average Joe.



All of this applies only to authoritarian regimes.

An authoritarian regime is an undemocratic government that does not represent the will of the masses.



I trust in the average person more than you do.

I'm fairly certain that a truly democratic society would become a permissive society. People who micromanage the lives of others are usually despised by the rest of the population. In truly democratic societies, they get voted out of leadership.



Wow. Seriously?

The human species is the greatest species to ever exist. We went to the moon. We invented everything. Even "smart animals" like chimpanzees can't put a sentence together.

Don't get me wrong. I like Koko the gorilla. She is an interesting animal ... but she's still a mere animal. She uses individual words, but never proper sentences. She has never said anything with any philosophical depth.

She's smart ... for a dumb animal.

Humanity is great. That's why I try to glorify humanity at every conceivable opportunity.

They would and they have and they will.


Did we need to? Did the total subjective gains outweigh the total subjective and objective costs?

In the context of global society as it exists today, the Piraha as you describe them are a counter-example to the other things you're saying about people and how they behave in society. There is a very big difference between "isolated local society (~dozens of people) with little or no contact (or need for contact) with outside groups" and "society as it exists today". We weren't naturally-selected for this.

Primitive societies have a much lower objective standard of living, but, on the other hand, egalitarian well-being in local isolated society is, quite unsurprisingly, much simpler. People can even be happy in Piraha-type primitive conditions after all. But not in the middle of a global society, because human perception is relativistic, and because there simply isn't the same ratio of "number of people" to "immediately-relevant resources" (in other words: there's competition, and there's need for planning).

Are you referring to Nazi Germany?

Nazi Germany was funded by big businesses, since it was not a threat to big business. In fact, the Nazis had millions of communists and anarchists killed.

Fascist Italy was similar. It also received corporate funding.

The masses almost never create authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is almost always forced upon the masses by those who want to hold onto the means of production.

That's circular reasoning. You're defining what "control by the masses" means (and even just the idea of "masses" itself, by extension) by the examples that support your view, and dismissing any similar ones that contradict it ("it only went wrong because of big business"). In fact, your view itself contradicts your view. There's no basis for your proposition other than wishful thinking. How would you ever even have a society where truly no one likes Michael Bay crap, other than by coercing everyone into conforming to the notion that Michael Bay crap really is crap? You're suggesting totalitarianism without realizing it.

I, for one, sincerely believe that the phrase "realizing your true potential" is just code for "you're not good enough, you gotta do more to earn your right to exist" (Rick & Morty's "slavery with extra steps"). Or, to put it another way, it's propaganda. And probably no system, current or historical, makes more intensive use of this type of propaganda than capitalism does. It's a way to inflate scarcity, because the economic model is fundamentally based on things never being good enough as they are.

Human beings really don't like to feel like their efforts are for nothing though, so a byproduct of that cultural notion of "full potential" is that people end up believing that it's a real thing that can actually be achieved. Some kind of topmost form of human existence. "You're not there yet, but if you apply yourself, you'll get there". Then they notice that they never seem to get there (sunk cost reflexes kick in at this point). Then they argue whether it has already been achieved by someone (it's made-up anyway, so you might as well just say you and/or your lifestyle is that mythical topmost form of human existence already, no more chasing after it like a rat in a wheel). Give it some time, wait for some kind of crisis, and, voilà, you have all the ingredients for fascism. Mixed, stirred and ready for baking.

For the things you're saying to have any meaning, you need to at least have a concrete etiological distinction between "masses" and "big business". In other words, "if the difference between one thing and the other is fundamental and not situational, then what is it that defines that one can never turn into the other, and what does that inherent property arise from". I say that they're not distinct classes of beings, they're manifestations of social dynamics that arise from the contact between beings of roughly equal nature.

The USA is no Democracy. Its a one party system. Why do you think they cant repeal Obamacare despite a "majority?"

I think its a shame that we have no real Populist party in this country, only the Republicrats and the Libertarians. IMO Libertarianism is a naieve philosophy that is selfish and amoral, and has a one dimensional grasp of geopolitics and social dynamics. Its like all the worst of Autism, and sadly most of its adherents see it as a bullet proof ideal whose rightness should be apparent to everybody.

Libertarians live in a fairy tale where all the unpleasant, unexciting work the government does (roads, zoning, water/waste, etc.) just magically come into being without government authority and taxes to make them so. Not to mention it goes against everything humans know about animal nature: if a powerful beast leaves the grassland (current government), another powerful beast will take it's place (dictatorship, or military junta).

That's the spirit!

America doesn't have a true populist party for a reason. Not enough people know about the destruction of Western democracy.

Tell people about why democracy isn't working in the West. That is the first step towards social change.

Totally agreed. Libertarians also oppose ANY business regulation, ANY public institutions funded by taxes INCLUDING public librairies and public schools; would like to do away with what paltry and inadequate social services are avalible in the US, and want to legalize all drugs. Just think of that while cutting the funding of hospitals at the same time!

There are some forms of government that don't work for large nations but that I think would work for small, culturally homogenous ones. Theocracy is one. Communism is another.

When Sitting Bull was with the Buffalo Bill show, what he saw in New York City disgusted him. Not the urban jungle, but the fact that there were destitute people among such abundance. His observation was that whites knew how to make everything and distribute nothing. Among the Native Americans nobody was destitute unless the whole tribe was destitute. Old people were taken care of by everybody. That we call them savages is the irony. I don't see what we have as a true civilization because of the lack of this kind of Humanism. What little we do in that regard is nothing compared to what we could do with our science and etc.