Welcome to the end of democracy

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except, when democracy began in modern times it meant cutting off the heads of rich people. There have been periods in which democracy has been working better, these were usually times in which there were labour shortages and national economies were closed off, so neither could rich people leabe nor could workers, willing to work for less, move in.

The right had gotten the idea in their heads that that elite would always be on their side, specifically because they had been enabling the elites all this time.

"But what about all that bootlicking I did? Of treating it as divine will? Of treating it as the divine will of the market? Of ostracizing anti-capitalists? Of electing people who lower your taxes? Of telling people taxes and government programs are immoral?"
"Sorry, we can make more money now by just pandering to the left and throwing you guys under the bus."

Pandering to the left is more profitable than being (more or less) apolitical. Pandering to the right is now little more than a niche. The market "betrayed" the right and they are delightfully livid.

What a lot of nonsense there is contained in this exchange. Two points for a start...

Firstly, the idea that wealthy capitalist elites are only paying 'lip service' to wokeness & social liberalism (rather than being the main drivers of it) is nonsense. This is something certain leftists desperately want to believe so they can reconcile their supposed anti-establishment credentials with the fact that their social left-liberalism is identical to the values espoused by most big businesses and financial institutions. In this day and age, do people seriously think it's the little people who shape the culture as opposed to the rich elites who control the media and big tech, who fund the universities and who lobby the politicians? Give me a break!

Secondly, the implication that 'the right' (worldwide, since the OP itself has an international focus) is one undifferentiated mass who have always blindly supported capitalist excess is also nonsense. Do you think right-populist Pat Buchanan is a blind supporter of modern capitalism? What about right-populists like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin? How about right-wing distributists and social credit theorists like G.K. Chesteron and C.H. Douglas? How about Juan Peron? How about fascists like Oswald Mosley? How about conservative revolutionaries like Oswald Spengler? How about the 'eco-fascist' Pentti Linkola? When Vladimir Putin pushed aside several oligarchs, was that another example of 'the right' bending over backwards to appease 'capital'?

As for ordinary 'right-wing' voters (or any other voters) in your average modern, Western, liberal democracy, it's somewhat harsh blaming them for the current state of affairs since the only choices they are ever given are merely slightly different combinations of capitalism and social liberalism.

Speaking as a person who has been intermittently active in various causes including the LGBTQ+ rights movement, I know from direct personal experience that nearly all the ideas popularly called "woke" today -- and treated in the mass media as if they were brand new ideas -- are, in fact, much older, in most cases at least a few decades older, and have long been part of the culture of grassroots leftist and minority-rights movements.

Periodically the corporate establishment co-opts ideas from the left, when enough corporate executives become convinced that doing so is good for their bottom line. This has happened repeatedly during my lifetime.

Usually this happens in response to some major success on the part of the left.

For example, Black activists and the left have been complaining about police brutality forever, usually getting nowhere. Then, suddenly, in around 2010 or so, thanks to the advent of smart phone video cameras and YouTube, it became a lot easier to document police brutality than it had ever been before. Hence the rise of massive Black Lives Matter protests all over the U.S.A. in 2013.

This made the elite folks realize they had to do ... something. Hence, for example, more corporations began hiring "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" consultants. The latter did what they could to educate the corporate execs about white privilege, etc.

Meanwhile, back on the grassroots level, the rise of Black Lives Matter inspired various other grassroots minority-rights movements (e.g. the T of LGBTQ+) to get a whole lot louder in demanding their rights too.

The transgender community does have some natural corporate patrons (transgender-friendly health care providers), but these corporate patrons arose in response to pre-existing demand -- NOT vice versa. The transgender community was NOT created by a corporate ad campaign selling people on the idea of changing their sex. It is also NOT a new thing that appeared on the scene just yesterday. (See timeline.)


With this I agree. Most people are unaware of the variety of right wing ideas and groups out there, just as you seem to be unaware of the history of the left during the past several decades.

John Locke "wealth of nations" is essentially the bible of conservative thought. It's our version of the communist manifesto, only it actually brought the planet out of absolute poverty 1 billion at a time, while Marxism radically increased the level of global poverty.

One of the primary premises is that monopolization of wealth and resources is bad.

The reason low taxes and low regulation is good is exactly because it prevents that monopolization of resources.

If you didn't know exactly that, you quite literally have no idea what being a conservative is.

I mean really really, you have zero conception of the idea.

Conservatives being more naturally in touch with what has existed in the past, are far far more vigilant about how taxation and regulation can be connected to quasi feudal estates.

FYI lets not forget the riches man in the world got that way due to electric car subsides.

There's a radical difference between having rich people with power, and rich people all aligning under a signal royal dynasty.

The competition between the riches people on the planet ensures that they are never truly ruling things.

Elon musk became rich because the people wanted electric cars, and he gave us that.

There's never been a time in history that some aristocrat became king because he produced a horse that ran on water.

Groan ... here we go again. You are clearly proud of you past activism, but the fact that various "woke" causes existed long before big corporations started pushing them doesn't contradict what I'm saying at all.

It's not like the LGBTQ+ activist minority of decades ago actually convinced the masses of the validity of their cause and then the corporations (reacting to 'consumer demand') followed suit. What happened instead was that powerful elites took these minority causes and foisted them onto the unwilling majority. These elites knew they could get away with it; they knew that the masses would grumble for a bit, but would continue using their goods and services and would eventually learn to accept the 'new normal'. These elites and corporate leaders weren't responding to demand, they were creating demand.

The trans issue makes this even clearer. The vast majority of people just don't want to hear about that stuff at all, and yet they are forced to. And in decades gone by, all big corporations ever needed to do to avoid losing the custom of the tiny number of trans people out there was just keep quiet. Most people don't want to be reminded of politics when they're deciding what groceries or what laptop to buy. Woke capital is a thing because capital has made it a thing.

As for the idea that the elites were forced to started listening to black activists once black activists acquired smartphones, well that idea doesn't really hold up when you consider the vast amounts of black / POC / minority violence and criminality that also get captured on video but that get routinely ignored by the media and by the elites (not to mention incidents of police brutality against Whites that also gets ignored - look up the shooting of Daniel Shaver for instance).

Just when I'm about to give up on this place, I discover someone else who gets it. Very well said.

The Shaver shooting you mentioned is doubly outrageous as in addition to being a horrific crime, the officer was not only not punished, but his department engaged in egregious shenanigans in order to allow him to retire with a generous pension for the PTSD he allegedly suffered after shooting an unarmed man crawling on the floor and begging for his life, one of the worst cases I know of.

Nobody put a gun to the heads of the 75 million republicans who "went back Jack" and voted for Trump again.

They kept voting for maintaining the current state of affairs.

Recent polling among these "moderate" fools is they would do it again in 2024

sounds like facebook, amazon and google should be released from the shackles of taxes and regulations, lest they become monopolies. wait... didn't Lenin write that unregulated capitalism necessarily ends in monopolies? - I'm pretty sure he did, and I'm pretty sure he was right.
That doesn't mean taxes and regulation necessarily prevent monopolies. Only without any whatsoever, you get facebook, google and amazon.

No, what happened was that the LGBTQ+ rights movement, and the larger organized LGBTQ+ community, eventually gained enough traction in enough major metro areas to be seen as a member in good standing of the alliance of marginalized minorities.

This did involve some elite involvement, especially in more recent decades. After all, some LGBTQ+ people are, themselves, wealthy. Hence the LGBTQ+ rights movement eventually included some well-funded lobbying groups, as well as the many larger grassroots groups. This combination of well-funded lobbyists and a large well-organized grassroots movement eventually, gradually, convinced more and more politicians to get on board -- at first just in a handful of "gay ghettos," then gradually in more and more places.

Also, more and more educated people, in more and more places, came to recognize that anti-gay prejudice was simply irrational.

Eventually some major corporations saw which way the wind was blowing, and decided to get on board with what was, already, clearly an emerging (though not fully developed) trend (at least in the major cities where most major social and cultural trends have historically started).


There's a grain of truth in the above, insofar as corporations, like politicians, need to appeal to niche markets as well as to the general mass market. And, given already-emerging trends, it was reasonable for both politicians and corporations to expect that the majority of people would "learn to accept the 'new normal'," as you put it.

Given the already-existing emerging trends I mentioned above, more and more politicians began to bet that passions were higher on the pro-gay-rights side than on the anti-gay-rights side, hence embracing gay-rights legislation would result in more single-issue voters being won than lost.

I know less about the kinds of calculations that were made by major corporations than I do about the calculations that were made by politicians, but I think the most reasonable hypothesis would be that more and more corporations began to bet that being gay-friendly would result in more brand-loyalty than boycotts.


Most likely they were doing both, actually. They were responding to already-existing (and clearly already-growing) demand and thereby also helping to create conditions more favorable to LGBTQ+ people.


Actually, for at least the past five decades or so, trans people have been a focus of at least morbid curiosity for the masses. (The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one obvious example that pops into my head offhand.) What's new is that trans people are finally starting to be treated like fellow human beings, rather than like a freak show.


And they still aren't reminded of politics when they're buying groceries or computers, at least for the most part, at least in most neighborhoods here in NYC. For example, I don't recall seeing any rainbow flags displayed in any local neighborhood grocery stores near where I live, nor at the nearest computer store. But, of course, rainbow flags are likely to be displayed, during the month of June, in stores in neighborhoods with unusually high concentrations of LGBTQ+ people.


You skipped some key steps here. The smartphones, all by themselves, are not what led elites to start listening to black activists. Rather, smartphone video cameras plus YouTube (plus social media) enabled the rise of a massive and very active grassroots political movement which, in turn, got a lot of attention from politicians and various elite groups.


If more white people supported the ACLU and similar organizations, and if more white people took to the streets to protest police brutality generally, then there would probably be a lot more media coverage of police brutality against people of all races, not just black people.

On the other hand, the "law-and-order" crowd, at least in middle-class and wealthier neighborhoods, doesn't need to take to the streets in order to get the ear of politicians. It is capable of getting lots of attention from politicians without much if any public activism or media hoopla, because the "law-and-order" perspective tends to be well-represented in local civic associations and local business associations. Politicians routinely court local civic associations and local business associations, no matter who else they may or may not listen to. Also, members of local civic associations and local business associations tend to dominate local clubs of both the Republican and Democratic parties. (At least that's true here in NYC.)

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 05 Feb 2022, 12:48 am, edited 7 times in total.

Like I said, we need more white people to protest against police brutality against people of all races.

We can do this without endorsing racial profiling and without denying that black people have, historically, been disproportionately subjected to police brutality.

Autistic people are another category of people who have been disproportionately subjected to police harassment and police brutality.

My boyfriend has often been harassed by cops, almost everywhere he has lived except here in NYC.

Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations”. While it is seminal, I would question whether anyone uses it as a Bible - even Sam Bowman. People like Friedman are more important to the modern capitalist movement. Mankiw probably even more so.

Note that I said “capitalist”, because both Smith and Friedman were liberals, not conservatives. Many modern conservatives value economic liberalism, but many do not. In a British context, David Cameron was an economic liberal, but Boris Johnson is not, except in comparison to the Corbynite left. In a IS context, Donald Trump cut taxes and regulations but he also raised tariffs, which suggests to me that he’s probably no great fan of Adam Smith.

Honestly though, if your dividing line between the right and left is that the left likes Marx and the right likes Smith, you’re going to have a pretty limited understanding of the left. Most people on the left, whether they realise it or not, are closer to Smith than to Marx. Smith won that intellectual battle pretty comprehensively. Today we live in a world where a lot of Smith’s ideas are taken for granted.