Tainari88 wrote:@wat0n you are in the lower right libertarian quadrant. The politicians in that quadrant I really dislike a lot. No wonder we don't get along. I really detest politicians who are individualists and love to be climbers yet refuse to deal with state power in a realistic way. It is a bad combination in my book. Milton Friedman ruined many economies in the developing world. High debt, and people losing worker rights is not something I think is a long term solution. I hate it.
Those economies were ruined long before Friedman showed up. If anything, they did as Friedman advised not because they believed him or not but simply because it was
the thing they could do.
Tainari88 wrote:Also, it is good to know your polar opposites. You are not my polar opposite. I do not like authoritarian rulers. Never have. For me the polar opposite of me on that graph you put above? Is Benito Mussolini and Donald Trump, and Hitler, etc. Lol. Yeah, those fucks are my absolute opposites. Lol.
I think Bukele is likely going up somewhere in the upper part of the chart, just based on how much power he's accumulated. It's hard to know where on the left/right spectrum though.
Tainari88 wrote:I did a little research on Bukele. He started out in his hometown a bit outside the outskirts of San Salvador the capital city in El Salvador. He joined the FMLN. A leftist party. He understands a lot of Leftist political philosophy. He was the son of a doctor. A well respected one and he is a business background person. But he is also very much leftist in dealing with the money and the privileges. He represents mostly poor and lower middle class people in a small nation. He never really says negative things about the USA. But he does not approve of the USA's actions in the region. He is a mixture of the good parts of the Left and the good parts of the Right and it is a fusion that is strange and interesting. I think that is why he was able to gain both sides into getting him elected.
There's some of that going on, but I think the #1 reason is simply that he's showing to care about the insecurity issue, which is of course a huge problem in Salvador. Of course, there are those accusations from the left that he's done that by reaching a deal with the maras, but ultimately the fact that Salvadorans widely feel more secure is an accomplishment in the eyes of most.
What I'm more concerned about is his obvious concentration of power. We've seen what normally happens after, both inside and outside Latin America, once people get tired of their current administration for whatever reason. We've also seen how dangerous they can be internationally if they're powerful, although I don't think El Salvador can invade Poland.
Tainari88 wrote:Salvadoran society is conservative socially. They believe in either Evangelical protestant beliefs or traditional Roman Catholicism. Atheists, Buddhists, agnostics, irreligious beliefs are almost nil. Nothing. They are very traditionally Latin American in behavior. Very family oriented, and rural Latin American which means close ties with extended family, neighbors and friends. Very hard working. No one in El Salvador has been on welfare or free food programs. None. All of them are work or die of starvation people.
I think you have to be careful here. As you said, it's something closer to the rural Latin American model, cities are most definitely not the same.
You mentioned Chile in your subsequent post, maybe you'll find this interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ChileBut just like elsewhere, and this is specially clear in the US, rural areas are waaaaaayyyyy more conservative and religious. So if a country is not as urbanized or just became urbanized recently you could expect the population to be more conservative and religious. Again, comparing El Salvador and Chile, around a quarter of Salvadorans currently live in rural areas - which is where Chile was in the late 1960s.
Tainari88 wrote:They also are great admirers of independent businesses and micro business models. They like family-run businesses. Family-run farms. They are at their heart very much Indigenous in history. Their ancestors are a mixture of many of the Indian groups of Central America.
The class status is very much a part of their hierarchy. In the end though there is a very spirit based, loving, and strong sense of community. They are not rugged individualists. Not at all. They are very much a community based society led by very conservative institutions like the Church and the state.....but they are tied to the land, tradition and they are warm people, loving and being a very small nation with little land? They know each other and their families well. Like a small town might. Puerto Rico is like that too in a way. The Ricans know each other. It is a small place with long roots and our families know each other well.
Knowing that? When they pick a leader they all agree on? A small miracle--Nayib brought warring factions together....they will be reflecting a lot of democratic will. If Nayib betrays that he will be the most hated man in Salvadoran history. But I think he won't. I think he is going to make a foundational change and hopefully let go of power when he has to do it for the good of his own nation's needs.
Oh, we have to wait and see about that. The real test will be when he starts facing a more widespread internal opposition.
Sooner or later, some corruption cases will show (it's a fact of life we can't fully get rid of corruption, even if some societies are more corrupt than others even the least corrupt ones have to deal with corruption scandals from time to time). The economy will face a recession, as they happen sooner or later. Or maybe other gangs will surface and crime will increase. Will Salvadorans still support Bukele?
If they don't, what will Bukele do? Will he try to intervene in the electoral process (commit fraud, not let the opposition run, etc) to remain in power or will he just leave? It's rare for politicians who concentrate power in their hands to just leave, and Bukele's own decision to run for reelection against the Constitution suggests he wants to remain President. So I think it is far more likely he'll refuse to quit and do whatever it takes to avoid having to do so than he'll accept an electoral defeat. His own behavior thus far suggests that, I think.
Tainari88 wrote:The USA has to not interfere ever again though. If they do another civil war in El Salvador training those fucking killers from the SOA like before? El Salvador will be at the gates of the place that destroyed them, like the classic Romans and the wandering tribes left out in the desert....who were abandoned to their luck....and will come back to claim retribution.
I doubt the US is interested. There is no real competition as far as security goes, no anti-American guerrillas trying to reach power or offering external powers access to military bases or anything of the sort. The Monroe Doctrine isn't really a factor here.
OTOH, one thing you could expect is for the US government to cut aid to El Salvador if Bukele ends up becoming a dictator and/or becomes hostile to the US. But surely, you would expect that to happen wouldn't you?
Basically, if a country doesn't want American influence then it should indeed be free to rid itself of it - but it should also put its money where its mouth is and not complain if the US government suddenly decides it doesn't want to give it economic aid or loan money.
Even personally, I doubt you'd give or loan your own money to someone who says you suck and that he doesn't want to deal with you in any way. If the person later requested your financial help, I assume you'd also reject it and wish him luck - even more so if he kept speaking shit about you behind your back, after asking you for money. Why would it be any different when it comes to foreign relations?
Also, you may find it weird but IIRC the US also intervened to support the center left in El Salvador when they were drafting their current Constitution. They elected a Constitutional Assembly in the early 1980s and the right won that election. They wanted a conservative Constitution, and wanted to turn back the clock as far as the agrarian reforms were concerned - until the US stepped in, and threatened to cut aid if they did so, effectively supporting a more centrist Constitution. The pressure worked, and the rollback was a lot milder than it would have been otherwise. The US intervened because it believed not doing so would eventually lead to a revival of the Soviet-aligned far left armed groups.
Tainari88 wrote:I do not analyze societies based on unscientific feelings. It is based on cultural anthropology tools based on taking cultural characteristics of nations and fitting them with models that work for their history, cultural milieu and matrix and their economic and social and so on goals.
This is Chile's profile. The reason Chile keeps going for socialism in the long term despite what you may think is that socialism fits their cultural tendencies. They have had a high degree of authoritarianism in the recent past and they also are class-based and unequal in many ways economically. They desire more fairness in wealth distribution. Thus why have you got Bachelet and the Libertarian socialist. There is a need for more equality because Chilean society has very clearly drawn class distinctions for a long time.
Here:
https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country/chile/
Notice that Chileans are very communally oriented people in general. Not really into Ayn Rand stuff. As a society, they are one of the most socialistic in BEHAVIOR of all of South America. It makes sense according to the criteria used. Check out the scale. Each society has differing degrees of cultural behavior. The USA is way more individualistic than Chile by a very large margin.
It's kind of hard to judge if we can't see what their model is or how it's constructed. I don't even know what the scale is or where do other countries lie.
Furthermore, you can see all sorts of comparisons when it comes to culture, including by looking at other axes. Here's an example:
Based on those axes, Chilean values are indeed not like the US - although we're similar in the secular/religious axis, Americans are more geared towards self-expression over survival (which is loosely related to individualism). But Chile is not like the rest of Latin America either in these dimensions, it's closer to the Catholic European countries or to some Western and South Asian countries.
Note this doesn't mean Chile is socialist, at all. You can be collectivist and still be capitalist, right wing and support free markets. They are not mutually opposed, at all. This is one deep misunderstanding.
Also, I don't know if you looked at my older political compass posts but I am usually between -1 and 3 in the left/right axis. That is, I'm closer to the center than either extreme. And there were many economic questions for which I'd have answered "neither agree nor disagree" if the option had been available, since the answer depends on the situation. I am far more open to big government in Europe or here in the US than in Latin America for the simple reason that the governments operate more efficiently than in Latin America. If you want me to pay higher taxes and give me better public services in return, I may as well be fine with it. I currently pay higher taxes and tax rates than I would if I lived in Chile, even earning the same salary.
I don't think there is a consensus within Latin America as far as economics goes. The debate is way more polarized than it is elsewhere and the same country can go from one extreme to the other.
I also don't think Latin American societies are as collectivist as you think they are, or at least not in the sense you seem to think. You should be able to tell by how hard it is to get the Latin American population to pay income taxes, does this look like a collectivist outlook to you? Or maybe what's actually going on is that many people want to get top notch public services without paying for them at all?
- By wat0n
- By litwin