Tainari88 wrote:Milton Friedman is not interested in capitalism?
Sure he was. Very much a free market capitalist. Early in his life, he was for military intervention. Later in his life he was not. He opposed the Gulf War for example. So he wasn't necessarily in good graces with neoliberal/neoconservative types at that point in his life. However, he supported both legal and illegal immigration. Free movement of labor is very much part of proletarian internationalism.
Tainari88 wrote:Clinton is not into profit or Biden or Obama even though all of them had very powerful Big Pharma and Big Banks contributed to their very expensive campaigns and Chelsea Clinton is married to a banker...bankers have nothing to do with capitalism?
Big pharma is largely fascist. It's not free market at all. Neither is the healthcare system. Neither is the higher education system. You seem to think that capitalism is always and only about profit. It's not. It's a means of aggregating capital to put together industries that individual resources could not do alone.
Tainari88 wrote:Where do you get these lame takes on what the neocons and neolibs get their playbook from?
I thought you knew Irving Kristol started off as a Trotskyist.
Irving KristolKristol was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of non-observant Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Bessie (Mailman) and Joseph Kristol.[5][6]
He graduated from Boys High School in Brooklyn, New York in 1936 and received his B.A. from the City College of New York in 1940, where he majored in history and was part of a small, but vocal, Trotskyist anti-Soviet group who eventually became known as, The New York Intellectuals.
Like Trotsky, the neoliberals/neoconservatives believe in permanent revolution too--just not a purely proletarian one. That is part of why they prefer a muscular foreign policy, and while you'll see that Biden will likely be more aggressive with the military than Trump was. Additionally, Biden is reversing Trump on immigration--meaning the establishment learned next to nothing. There are big differences between Trotskyists and neoliberals/neoconservatives for sure. For example, Trotsky ended up opposing the Soviet Union as a degenerated worker's state, much like China is today. The establishment neoliberals and neoconservatives most definitely do not oppose China, even though China is running concentration camps much like the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany did.
Tainari88 wrote:Kahlo and Rivera are on the Mexican currency. Both Communists. Name me one damn Communist that ever made it on to the USA system of money and banking? None is the answer.
So what does it tell if you have communists on a currency controlled by a central bank?
Tainari88 wrote:Yet somehow the neocons are associated with an eternal revolution proponent like Trotsky who got in huge arguments with Lenin and others....I will tell you something though...the Trotskys were incredibly disciplined in academics.
Many of the neoconservatives and neoliberals are disciplined academics too. Clinton was a Rhodes scholar. So was Robert Reich, Strobe Talbot, Roger Porter, Ira Magaziner, Franklin Raines, Russ Feingold, David Vitter, George Stephanopolous, Susan Rice, Cory Booker, Bobby Jindal, Rachel Maddow, Pete Buttigieg, etc. They are a lot of things, but they're not stupid.
Tainari88 wrote:Tell me how Obama and the rest became Trotsky followers?
Trotskyists or liberals mugged by reality. Meaning, they are disillusioned with Trotsky, not embracing him.
Tainari88 wrote:Do you believe in your own theories that somehow they don't like capitalism?
They are all concerned with its present structure. However, they are not interested in a socialist revolution like you.
Tainari88 wrote:Pelosi, Biden, etc all have stated inequivocally that they are pro-capitalist and believe in that fully.
Oh, yes. I understand that. They are also utterly corrupt. Do you know Pelosi bought call options in Tesla before Biden announced the US government would be buying electric cars? Remember all the hemming and hawing about a few senators who sold just before covid broke? Notice that those critics are suddenly silent when it's Nancy Pelosi?
Tainari88 wrote:Critical theory about what BJ?
Encyclopedia Brittanica wrote:Critical theory, Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. Believing that science, like other forms of knowledge, has been used as an instrument of oppression, they caution against a blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal of human emancipation. Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely influential in the study of history, law, literature, and the social sciences.
Tainari88 wrote:They successfully defeated the conman Trump. Trump has a big group of loyalists.
That's a contradiction. They didn't defeat him. They stole an election where he gained 12M more votes than in 2016. Trump's political strength is objectively stronger now than it was in 2016.
Tainari88 wrote:I happen to think violence is inevitable now.
I'm inclined to agree.
Tainari88 wrote:There is always other choices BJ. For all of us human beings. They might not be ideal choices but there is a better choice than a lying conman narcissist from Queens.
If Trump wasn't there, we'd have Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. Frankly, I think Trump was the better choice. He also trolled them endlessly, which was and still is very entertaining.
Tainari88 wrote:Working people in the USA need to realize the conman is not caring about working class rights.
Trump is not interested in proletarian internationalism. So his position on taxes, trade and immigration dropped the unemployment level to record lows, especially among minorities; and, they saw their wages rise for the first time in 30 years. You can tell them that they've been conned all you want. People can see what's going on in their bank accounts.
Tainari88 wrote:I don't agree with this statement. Bernie Sanders appealed to the working class.
Yes. You're absolutely correct. I mean at election time, he was the major party candidate on the ballot. Both times, the Democratic establishment killed off Bernie Sanders.
Tainari88 wrote:Since the American public has been BRAINWASHED against any form of socialism at all for years and years?
Really? I've unequivocally stated that there are only two politicians in the United States that can get major crowds--Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. In stealing an election from Trump, they did not defeat him at all. In fact, they put on the most humiliating presidential inauguration in my lifetime; and yours too for that matter.
Tainari88 wrote:The USA is the one that has an issue with it. Why?
We like our creature comforts. We look at Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea, China, Myanmar, etc. and figure we're much better off without socialism.
Tainari88 wrote:They are threatened by it because it is about losing money and control and the elite wants to squeeze everyone dry that is below them.
Some do. That's true. That's why Trump supporters have been belly laughing about Melvin Capital and Reddit and other folks buying up stocks like GameStop or AMC and forcing wealthy short-sellers into short squeezes. It's quite funny to see them howl and call the SEC for help as they lose billions.
Tainari88 wrote:Roosevelt was hugely popular because he SOLVED a terrible economic depression in the 1930s with socialist social and economic programs.
Look at US GDP stats. The recession in 1938 was brutal. What solved the depression was World War II. We are more or less in a Great Depression now, because there is no pricing power for most things except for healthcare and college educations. Most other things, except real estate and precious metals are going down in value.
Tainari88 wrote:They are going to have to give in again with this pandemic. Because the option of no schools, no hospitals, mass homeless evictions and no unemplolyment insurance is not going to go well for the Republican party or the Democratic party full of neoliberals who fund perpetual wars and who are being sponsored by the Defense industry, banks and private corporations who know American democracy is for sale and is a sham.
Oh, it's the Democrats who are running everything now. Haven't you heard? Weren't you saying that Trump was defeated?
Tainari88 wrote:Have you read the debates in the USA congress during and before and after the American Civil War BJ? The slaveholders truly believed that the hiarchy is there and it is natural and it is right. But some people challenged that thought process. A clip from Harriet the movie. Yeah, for some pigs who belive owning another human being is 'natural'and ínnate....they sound like you do with the bullshit about pecking orders of chickens.
Sure. That has changed, and throughout much of the world as well. It has allowed people with higher IQs to improve their lot in life regardless of their ethnicity, race, color, creed or gender for all practical purposes. However, liberalism cannot do much for people with low IQs. As Jordan Peterson points out, both liberals and conservatives are wrong. When you have people with an IQ of 80 or lower, they cannot perform a gainful role in an information society.
Tainari88 wrote:The USA has people who have come from deep poverty and become bourgeois and elitists. The same person. That lets me know that the pecking order is arbitrary and malleable and not done in concrete.
Yes, and that is usually a function of IQ, hard work, capitalism and risk taking. Most of the ultra rich are what many would call "new money." They also all came from good homes.
Tainari88 wrote:It is not a fixed and natural system. It is artificial BJ.
It is not strictly hereditary. That's true.
Tainari88 wrote:Wasn't the USA about a new society where people were free to choose their own destinies?
Sure. Largely they do. There are people who have screaming high IQs and aren't wealthy. They're frankly not motivated to that end. However, there are not a lot of imbeciles who are wealthy. As the old adage goes, the fool and his money are soon parted.
Tainari88 wrote:and the mass group of HAVE NOTS is enormous and growing.
That's the bigger problem. Who is Elon Musk ruthlessly exploiting? How about Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Ok. I agree that Jeff Bezos is an asshole. I hope his warehouse workers and drivers unionize just to fuck him up a bit. I think a major strike against Amazon would be a good thing. He's got it coming to him. Where do you go next? McDonald's is not a career for people. It's for high school and college kids. Outsource all the manufacturing to China, and you're going to have big social problems. That much should be obvious. It certainly was to Trump.
Pants-of-dog wrote:As long as we agree that he has never shown himself to be capable of long term political strategy, and that this logically implies that his current behaviour is almost certainly not long term political strategy.
Getting elected president of the United States definitely counts as having a long-term political strategy.
Pants-of-dog wrote:this would, of course mean that it would be illogical to claim that President Trump is even more powerful now than when he was President
His support is broader now than it was in 2016.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes, and this is why Trump will never beat the Establishment. The establishment is capable of thinking farther than four years in advance while Trump is lucky to think about the next four minutes.
The establishment wins, because it cheats. It's not a hell of a lot more complicated than that. Do you honestly think Biden is more popular than Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump? Why didn't anyone come to his inauguration to cheer him on?
Pants-of-dog wrote:I have looked at what he has done.
This is how I know there are no examples of him doing anything that could be described as long term political strategy.
His political actions created substantial improvements in unemployment rates and wage increases for working class people. That's why he got 12M more votes in 2020 than 2016. That's why the establishment is shell shocked in spite of having stolen an election. They threw everything at him, and he still got more popular, not less.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes, his ability to smear contradictory slogans together and trick right wingers into voting for him is impressive, but this is due to Republicans supporting post factual paradigms for the last few decades and Trump is just conning them.
If that's your opinion, why do you not see that as a long-term political strategy?
Saeko wrote:Holy shit. This is the heist of the century.
It's hilarious.
Saeko wrote:Could be. But guess what? It's still illegal.
Most law of that sort is commercial. Possession in many cases means possession with the intent to sell. We shall see. But who cares anyway?
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden