[Rancid]

I wonder if he's a CIA plant.

[Truth To Power]

I wonder if he's a CIA plant.

Watching him, I sometimes get the feeling he's just mouthing rehearsed talking points. He doesn't seem to just make $#!+ up like Trump, nor have a clear understanding of what he is saying, like Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson.

[QatzelOk]

So, you don't include in the Chinese "legacy" the country's tyranny and suppression of dissent?

Ie. "We have a responsibility to protect...." (whatever our media tells us needs protecting )

This is closer to the 21st century's "reasons to bomb and rob other nations" than the Cold War motivations that Truth To Power has raised from the dead (capitalism purity).

[Tainari88]

Tyranny is loved by the US government. As long as the Tyrant son of a bitch is our son of a bitch! That is their thing.

[JohnRawls]

Why are you guys hating him? Yes, he is far right if you broadly speak it or libertarian. But that is what Argentina actually needs after years of Peronism to actually, you know, have a future. Far right by itself is not bad, especially after the adaptions at least in Europe. They have abandoned anti-EU rhetoric, their Putin cock sucking and some other dumb economic ideas. The reason "left" is not winning anywhere is because they still haven't done so for some reason.

Right now they have become a more mainstream variation while still keeping anti-Islam rhetorhic/anti-outsideEU-immigration rhetorhic in Europe for example which is nothing new for standard conservative parties.

[Tainari88]

Why are you guys hating him? Yes, he is far right if you broadly speak it or libertarian. But that is what Argentina actually needs after years of Peronism to actually, you know, have a future. Far right by itself is not bad, especially after the adaptions at least in Europe. They have abandoned anti-EU rhetoric, their Putin cock sucking and some other dumb economic ideas. The reason "left" is not winning anywhere is because they still haven't done so for some reason.

Right now they have become a more mainstream variation while still keeping anti-Islam rhetorhic/anti-outsideEU-immigration rhetorhic in Europe for example which is nothing new for standard conservative parties.

The last time Argentina had a far Right pig man dictator backed by the USA and Kissinger this is what happened:

Massive torture, disappearances, they had pregnant women who had their uteruses cut open the baby taken away and given to the Far Right torture fucks to raise and then had their heads decapitated and put in their uteruses and sewn up. Pope Francis had a colleague in his lab that was a Communist. A peaceful one. She was drugged tortured and thrown from a plane to die along with many others. Kidnapping and murder.

The country was traumatized. That is why anyone from the Right with Nazi or Far Right tendencies is really not trusted.

30,000 tortured kidnapped, raped, killed and the babies raised by the people who did the torturing.

Why do you not acknowledge that JonhRawls...? You are really pro US government no matter what the fuck they do right?

It is disgusting the amount of denial you live in.

I never back authoritarian dictators. I never liked them or trusted them. I never will.

Using force to get power and retain power is not something I think makes society work better or more humanely.

The problem is always going to be a lack of human rights being respected. You can have political differences. But if you are using violence and killing or starvation of the nation in order to get your greed agenda for capitalism done? It is going to get a bad reaction. A really bad reaction. It has been proven over and over again.

But, for you it is about finding excuses for these assholes. WHY?? For God sakes John you live in Estonia!!! Not the USA!! You are not an American citizen and who knows if you ever visited or lived in that nation ever!!

But you defend it like it was your native society? Why? Can you answer that honestly or is it too much for you to deal with?

I have an entire lifetime of dealing with the USA and its internal and foreign policy. An entire lifetime. Dealing with it.

Who gives a fuck if you come from a tiny nation that is not prominent on the world scene? It is YOUR HOME. A place of history for your family. It is not a super power. Most nations in the world are not super powers. They are the home of many billions of human beings. All have similar wants and needs. That is what universal human rights are about.

In order for that to gain traction all over the world....being able to acknowledge human rights violations is critical. Being blind to the shit that your own group does and that other nations do is vital. That is why I am not some Right Wing Nationalist who backs whatever the powerful want because I am just some DRONE and brainwashed by commercial propaganda person.

Be a realiist. The powerful in the world can and will be ABUSIVE. How do you deal with abusive governments and abusive power brokers in the most powerful nations in the world? Being blind? No.

The first step is to understand why a nation reacts a certain way. Argentina has a really bad scene from the seventies. For sure. Study it.

[JohnRawls]

The last time Argentina had a far Right pig man dictator backed by the USA and Kissinger this is what happened:

Massive torture, disappearances, they had pregnant women who had their uteruses cut open the baby taken away and given to the Far Right torture fucks to raise and then had their heads decapitated and put in their uteruses and sewn up. Pope Francis had a colleague in his lab that was a Communist. A peaceful one. She was drugged tortured and thrown from a plane to die along with many others. Kidnapping and murder.

The country was traumatized. That is why anyone from the Right with Nazi or Far Right tendencies is really not trusted.

30,000 tortured kidnapped, raped, killed and the babies raised by the people who did the torturing.

Why do you not acknowledge that JonhRawls...? You are really pro US government no matter what the fuck they do right?

It is disgusting the amount of denial you live in.

I do acknowledge that since when did I ever deny Argentinian hunta atrocities . Not sure where you coming from here. The new President is not them though nor is he advocating anything similar. This is like saying Stalin killed millions along with Mao in Gulags so Norwegian social-democrats shouldn't exist. That is by default a bad faith argument.

Peronism ruined Argentina. Hunta also ruined Argentina. Let the guy cut everything, let him open the country to the world and lets see how it goes. It can't get worse for Argentina honestly.

[Dimetrodon]

I will never be convinced that this is not a parody world.

[Tainari88]

I do acknowledge that since when did I ever deny Argentinian hunta atrocities . Not sure where you coming from here. The new President is not them though nor is he advocating anything similar. This is like saying Stalin killed millions along with Mao in Gulags so Norwegian social-democrats shouldn't exist. That is by default a bad faith argument.

Peronism ruined Argentina. Hunta also ruined Argentina. Let the guy cut everything, let him open the country to the world and lets see how it goes. It can't get worse for Argentina honestly.

That neoliberal shit economics libertarian shit has been done all over South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. It was a total and unmitigated DISASTER.

Where have you been in these experiments with economies that are about free market capitalist individualism competition shit?

Has it occurred to you that the reason Estonia did well post Soviet era has been that the NATO group put a lot of effort behind making sure the ex colonies of the USSR were incredibly improved to SHOW that the USSR sucked. They put efforts and loans and so on in favorable terms. They played politics with the economies to make sure Eastern Europe did not get what Latin America got. Why?

It is simple. The USA government CONTROLS and relies on Latin America being fucked for life in order to have hegemony in the New World, and protect its position. They have to make sure no one on their side of the world gets ahead of them or that Europe or Asia interferes with the wealth creation of having the land of the Americas resources being taken from them. They have all of us in Latin America on SLAVE extraction mode. Go one by one and examine every single nation's economic and social and political interference history from Washington DC. Go do it. It is extraordinary shit. The constant interference. The Europeans do not go in there and rile things up without the US tacit approval. Because the US and the EU have a pact. The US has the Americas, and Europe has Africa. The US has parts of Asia, and EU has parts of some of Asia. The last of the rivals are Russia and China. If they can divide and conquer both and disrupt the two or three big ones in Asia they will then be in a coalition to keep extracting for another one hundred years. They are not getting the reality of the new problems coming up.

It is tiring talking about this because you have to think about how SATANIC is this shit? It is really really bad.

That is the reason there is fucked up economics. Who controls the IMF and the banks and the people in charge of making decisions that are about credit and infrastructure projects?

The USA. The multinationals.

All nations have variations in political thought in them. None are monoliths. The issue becomes who is going to deliver the goods?

[wat0n]

Neoliberal Chile >>>>> Socialist Venezuela

[JohnRawls]

That neoliberal shit economics libertarian shit has been done all over South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. It was a total and unmitigated DISASTER.

Where have you been in these experiments with economies that are about free market capitalist individualism competition shit?

Has it occurred to you that the reason Estonia did well post Soviet era has been that the NATO group put a lot of effort behind making sure the ex colonies of the USSR were incredibly improved to SHOW that the USSR sucked. They put efforts and loans and so on in favorable terms. They played politics with the economies to make sure Eastern Europe did not get what Latin America got. Why?

It is simple. The USA government CONTROLS and relies on Latin America being fucked for life in order to have hegemony in the New World, and protect its position. They have to make sure no one on their side of the world gets ahead of them or that Europe or Asia interferes with the wealth creation of having the land of the Americas resources being taken from them. They have all of us in Latin America on SLAVE extraction mode. Go one by one and examine every single nation's economic and social and political interference history from Washington DC. Go do it. It is extraordinary shit. The constant interference. The Europeans do not go in there and rile things up without the US tacit approval. Because the US and the EU have a pact. The US has the Americas, and Europe has Africa. The US has parts of Asia, and EU has parts of some of Asia. The last of the rivals are Russia and China. If they can divide and conquer both and disrupt the two or three big ones in Asia they will then be in a coalition to keep extracting for another one hundred years. They are not getting the reality of the new problems coming up.

It is tiring talking about this because you have to think about how SATANIC is this shit? It is really really bad.

That is the reason there is fucked up economics. Who controls the IMF and the banks and the people in charge of making decisions that are about credit and infrastructure projects?

The USA. The multinationals.

All nations have variations in political thought in them. None are monoliths. The issue becomes who is going to deliver the goods?

So you are just against Neoliberal policies even if currently protectionist/autarchy/croniest/leftist policies of peronism fully destroyed Argentinas economy from best in the world or one of the best in the world to what it has now. Weird take but okay.

[Truth To Power]

It can't get worse for Argentina honestly.

How many times has that claim been made about a country, and then it got a lot worse?

[Potemkin]

So you are just against Neoliberal policies even if currently protectionist/autarchy/croniest/leftist policies of peronism fully destroyed Argentinas economy from best in the world or one of the best in the world to what it has now. Weird take but okay.

It wasn’t Peronism which destroyed Argentina’s economy - the Great Depression did that back in the 1930s by destroying the American and European market for Argentina’s main export, beef. Their economy never recovered from this blow. Any nation whose economy is based on one cash export is going to be fragile to external market forces - it tends to be boom or bust, with nothing in between. And, in the long term, bust will win.

[wat0n]

True, but economies tend to reinvent themselves. Chile has also gone through that process - back then, it was about saltpeter and the crisis began when artificial gunpower was invented in the 1920s - but it eventually switched to copper and nowadays copper is the largest export although the export basket is more diversified than a century ago.

[Potemkin]

True, but economies tend to reinvent themselves. Chile has also gone through that process - back then, it was about saltpeter and the crisis began when artificial gunpower was invented in the 1920s - but it eventually switched to copper and nowadays copper is the largest export although the export basket is more diversified than a century ago.

Indeed, but the Peronists weren’t the only ones who failed to diversify Argentina’s economy, or to implement unpopular but necessary economic policies. I’m no fan of Peron - I regard him as an unscrupulous political opportunist who was about as good for Argentina as Trump was for America. But blaming all of Argentina’s current woes on Peronism is absurd, just as blaming all of America’s current woes on Trump is absurd. These people are symptoms, not causes.

[wat0n]

Indeed, but the Peronists weren’t the only ones who failed to diversify Argentina’s economy, or to implement unpopular but necessary economic policies. I’m no fan of Peron - I regard him as an unscrupulous political opportunist who was about as good for Argentina as Trump was for America. But blaming all of Argentina’s current woes on Peronism is absurd, just as blaming all of America’s current woes on Trump is absurd. These people are symptoms, not causes.

The problem is that Perón became the new mainstream. His ideology far outlasted him.

[Potemkin]

The problem is that Perón became the new mainstream. His ideology far outlasted him.

Indeed, which is a symptom of Argentina’s malaise. But he was and is still just a symptom, just as Donald Trump was and is just a symptom of America’s current malaise, and not its cause. And when he first appeared on the political scene, didn’t Peron portray himself in the same light as this current would-be ‘saviour’ of Argentina - as the man who could rescue Argentina from the venality and folly of his predecessors and “Make Argentina Great Again”? Yet people still fall for it, every time….

[wat0n]

Indeed, which is a symptom of Argentina’s malaise. But he was and is still just a symptom, just as Donald Trump was and is just a symptom of America’s current malaise, and not its cause. And when he first appeared on the political scene, didn’t Peron portray himself in the same light as this current would-be ‘saviour’ of Argentina - as the man who could rescue Argentina from the venality and folly of his predecessors and “Make Argentina Great Again”? Yet people still fall for it, every time….

I would not say they are truly the same. Even the rust belt in the US hasn't reached the levels of decadence Argentina has.

The US has been able to adapt, which obviously leaves some states better off than others. Many other countries have done the same, including those with different economic systems like e.g. China. But Argentina just hasn't, for the most part.

[Potemkin]

I would not say they are truly the same. Even the rust belt in the US hasn't reached the levels of decadence Argentina has.

The US has been able to adapt, which obviously leaves some states better off than others. Many other countries have done the same, including those with different economic systems like e.g. China. But Argentina just hasn't, for the most part.

I think Argentina is a good example of what can happen when a nation collectively refuses to face reality for several generations. Peronism was based on selling a fantasy, the Communists in the 1960s were indulging in wish-fulfilment fantasies, the brutal right-wing dictatorship was based on fantasy, every government since then has been selling a fantasy, and now Javier Milei is selling a different fantasy. Like all the previous fantasies, it too will fail.

And it’s not just Argentina. Trump won in 2016 because enough voters bought into the MAGA fantasy he was selling, and Brexit happened because enough Brits bought into the fantasy the Brexiteers were selling. In both cases, there was a collective refusal on the part of an entire nation to face reality.

[Tainari88]

I think Argentina is a good example of what can happen when a nation collectively refuses to face reality for several generations. Peronism was based on selling a fantasy, the Communists in the 1960s were indulging in wish-fulfilment fantasies, the brutal right-wing dictatorship was based on fantasy, every government since then has been selling a fantasy, and now Javier Milei is selling a different fantasy. Like all the previous fantasies, it too will fail.

And it’s not just Argentina. Trump won in 2016 because enough voters bought into the MAGA fantasy he was selling, and Brexit happened because enough Brits bought into the fantasy the Brexiteers were selling. In both cases, there was a collective refusal on the part of an entire nation to face reality.

Precisely Potemkin!

This is why it is critical for people who vote to be pragmatic and be incredibly intentional in how they understand what political action has to be based on. It has to be down-to-earth solutions to pressing problems. It can't be pie-in-the-sky crap.

You have to understand what needs to get done and how it is going to get done. It has to be working models with proven track records of success. People say to me....but Tainari democratic work distributions do they really work? Yes they do. If more people would set that model up? It works. Even surrounded by a sea of conventional capitalist competition shit.

The issue is that the capitalist competition shit can't use its conventional models and force the ones who are different in models to conform or go and destroy the other models with violence and threats. That is not pragmatic. That is predatory. If a model that is different works? And it raises standards of living for workers and it is safer and more secure for keeping jobs in play and workers content because they have security and they have reliability and they have control of their own labor force? Then that has to be respected.

I never liked fantasyland Potemkin. One has to make economics work for a society. You have to make also, concepts about property? To be in service to the largest amount of human beings as possible. Not a way to have an elite live off of others sweat equity in society. That has to end.

Banks being the playground of the rich and powerful and using their leverage to force more money out of poor people already struggling is not what having a credit system should be about. Punishing the ones with the least access to credit is a rule made to favor an elite. The entire system needs to be redone so that it serves the greatest number of working people.

Balance is key.

Make the model work. That is the first rule. Not facing reality is a serious problem. That is the problem in Puerto Rico for sure. And in the USA. A lack of facing reality.