There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest(theguardian.com) |
There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest(theguardian.com) |
A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that doesn’t threaten their own wealth and power. This definitely rings true.
What this is more broadly is the Overton Window. There is "acceptable" topics that can be broached.
As for Right versus Left, well that is 1 dimension politically. There is for example authoritarian / libertarian scale. So many political tests have the "Quad" or "Compass". Most people normally score around the middle.
However there are 4 dimensional tests such as this.
I have no idea how accurate these are, or whether they are biased. But there is certainly much more than left vs right.
> A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that doesn’t threaten their own wealth and power. This definitely rings true.
Well what you are talking about is the idea of hyper-normalisation. The idea is that you finance both sides e.g. pro fascist, anti-fascist etc. This creates a state of confusion where people don't really know what is going on and become apathetic to it.
Adam Curtis made a documentary about it, however here is a snippet from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=wcy8uLjRHPM
(Not that the Left has a monopoly on conspiracy theories of course, but it should be called out whenever it appears).
“The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.
That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.
White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.”
Edit-the point is to see beyond that possible connection and to what really needs to happen: the voters demanding and reinforcing their political powers. Practically, I think this asks people to not become jaded, “tune out”, and accept what’s going on as too big and beyond your influence.
Engage-read the news, do all the research you can muster on what politicians are doing, and come up with your own opinion. Then do your civic duties to reinforce your opinions.
Its about the ways in which the top 0.01% hide their money in networks of shell companies, tax havens etc, and the difficulty of actually taxing them.
On social issues, there is a fairly clear right vs left.
On economic issues, it really is oligarchy vs ordinary people.
On war, foreign policy, the MIC is linked up with big money, and ordinary people vary, but anti war talk is often marginalized.
Go down the list, and it should become fairly clear big money does have conflict of interest issues, and politics reflects that reality.
Right now, economics is a high priority. Flat out, too many Americans (and this is true in other places too) are not getting what they need, and some modest wants fulfilled from their labor.
That is forcing a class discussion as a priority over the usual politics.
Examples:
Even the bigots need Medicare for All (or sane health care policy generally) Speaks to common class issues. Populism.
Given a choice between tolerating trans people, gays marrying, and say, feeding kids in a reasonable home and the promise of gainful employment, which has priority? Your socioeconomic status impacts this greatly. Speaks right to divide on left, as well as common class issues.
The current shift toward class issues puts social progress at risk as new and powerful wedges form at the boundaries of all this stuff.
Lefties struggle with a non trivial divide, and it is drawn right along big money lines. And the anti big money people have that as a priority. Many will not be swayed by threats or risks related to social regression.
I invite someone more aligned with the right to offer their take on all this. Would be high value.
If you ask me, all these observations, and that is all they are, add up to a basic shift in the body politic. And it has happened.
No undo. It will all just have to play out, until we reach a new more consistent state.
So which is it, the solution or a danger?
Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
There might not be right vs left, but the article definitely hits some familiar notes
The solution is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
> So why do we continue to hear and use the same old “right” and “left” labels?
> I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted.
Wouldn't this imply the oligarchs control the media? Or at least the public discourse? But that's not the impression I get from the media. CNN, MSNBC, and other networks make it perfectly clear they are anti-Trump, in fact most of the media seems to be in agreement with that. Same with the most popular reddit channels, popular outlets like Guardian, Vox, Huffington Post, and Twitter. I mean almost everybody seems to agree that Trump is bad. YouTube and Fox seem to be the exception.
I wrestle with understanding why most media are anti-Trump and anti-oligarchy, and the oligarchs are still able to control those media's use of 'left' and 'right'. How does this work?
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To oversimplify greatly to the point of banality, if rich person A says "I'll be on the left" and rich person B says "I'll be on the right", and both actively pump money into their respective campaigns, what do they have in common?
It is very easy to convince yourself that someone else's actions are insincere. If this -- your own belief supported by your desire to see them as horrible people -- suffices for you as evidence, why should anyone attempt to argue against you?
In other words, there isn't much value in "fashion" or "virtue signaling" accusations except in preaching to the converted.
They are not going to be progressive in the sense of forwarding pro-social, anti-corporate policies.
You seem to be taking within the narrowly defined USA Overton window.
Certainly not anti-corporate, but I don't see why they wouldn't be pro-social. They don't want to be the ones paying for those policies, but every American well educated and in good health would certainly profit their enterprises. It's just that it appears too expensive to be worth the profit to them.
The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich people can pay to change the bundle after it is voted in. The solution to that is to use e-voting to be able to change your vote for separate issues when you do not agree with the vote of your representative.
This author makes erroneous assertions along the way in support of their thesis. So I don’t think it holds much water.
Soros and the Kochs are some of the biggest political donors and influencers and while they donate massive amounts to progressive causes and libertarian values, they have very little interest in helping working class Americans.
I think this reinforces the author's point more than opposes it. Who in their right mind thinks the Koch brothers are anything but pro-oligarchy?
What you mean by "helping working class Americans"? I am definitely working (every day, many hours), does my interest count? If I would like for America to become more libertarian (or more socialist), can it be said Koch (or Soros) are helping my interests? Or only a direct ACH transfer counts? Or something in between - what? Every politician I've see has declared they'd be "helping working class Americans" - and they all have diametrically opposed ideas of what that means. One can almost conclude it doesn't mean anything but a meaningless platitude politician has to do along with shaking hands and kissing babies.
Obviously, if my ingroup folks are doing it, it's the solution - we are just appealing to the wisdom of crowds and attracting common people to our cause. However, if outgroup folks do it, they are exploiting the ignorance of the masses and appealing to the basest instincts of the mob, and thus it is a grave danger.
I don't known which articles and columns you read. But I am from this European country with rising populism. In my opinion, things are going in a better direction than in the times of non-populist government. The current government fulfills promises and pays broad social benefits, but at the same time this populist government has reduced the budget deficit.
Who told you they are anti-oligarchy? They are most definitely pro-oligarchy, they are just upset the power is not in their (I mean a person from their peer group) hands. Compare media behavior when the control belongs to "their" and "opposing" party, and you'll see a stark difference.
> and the oligarchs are still able to control those media's use of 'left' and 'right'. How does this work?
They are the oligarchy. Talking heads on TV are part of the system. There's no some struggle to control them and bring them under the toe of the oligarchy - they are a body part of it. Nobody wonders how a man manager to control the fingers of his own hands - it's his hand, of course he controls it.
Wrestling is a good point here as in it's a show put on for the audience, and Donald Trump was playing a role in it. The idea is that the public left-vs-right in the media etc is a show put on so the people are distracted and don't realize what's going on behind the scenes. The louder the conflict, the better. If I want to relieve you of your wallet, you won't notice the slight touch while I bump into you and create a much stronger sensation by stepping on your toes.
By focusing on how much they hate Trump, what are they not focusing on? What have they all decided has been solved off-screen that you shouldn't worry your head about?
>I mean almost everybody seems to agree that Trump is bad. YouTube and Fox seem to be the exception.
Why are those the positions? And if judging the president was about good governance, how did this split happen across brand lines? And you're saying this as a point _against_ the idea of oligarchs controlling the public discourse?
I dunno, this almost sounds like an Alex-Jones style conspiracy theory.
The very wealthy (and even those of moderate means) genuinely believe they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made their own success, completely blind to the fact their incredibly wealthy or successful parents put them there.
In this way there won't be a situation like Brexit because after initial open ended vote people can participate in subsequent votes too, and can eventually decide that they don't want Brexit or want it even without any trade agreements.
Fake news, (or rather people not smart enough to distinguish fake news), will remain a problem, but democracy uses assumption that most people are smart enough, if this assumption is not true then oligarchs buying politicians is actually useful to the society, but i don't think this is very likely.
Which is why the author is careful to not use those words to describe the situation. Someone like Aubrey de Grey (who isn't even "rich" in this context) is as far from the oligarchy as can be.
I wonder what those goals are, or whether you just have a morphed idea of what goals poor people have.
I did not mean that non-rich do not share this goal, (in fact most people contribute to this merely by their existence willingly or not). What i wanted to say is that being rich or poor is not a good criterion for division.
Thought not.
On your second paragraph, the fundamental problem with democracy is that voters cannot have informed opinions about everything: there are simply not enough hours in the day. Without informed voters any vote is little better than a coin toss. Read https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-... and then think again.
> there are simply not enough hours in the day
Sure, that's why i do not propose to take referendums for everything, people give their votes to representatives who work hard to have informed opinions. The difference is that the vote can be changed anytime, and that on specific issues about which voter cares, the representatives vote can be overruled. Even if this overruling doesn't happen very often, the possibility of that will help the elected individual to keep voters interests at heart.
But in the context of articles proposal of "coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class" even millionaires end up outside of "good forces".
The idea of deliberate, clear, top-down oligarch manipulation of media is nonsense, I just thought the argument against that hypothetical to be empty. I do not find the lack of editorial consistency across outlets to preclude it. I could just as easily say the strong division around a low number of media sanctioned positions could even suggest the existence of warring factions of oligarchs. But I don't think that either.
I do think lots of small, deliberate and conscious editorial decisions are an evolutionary process that creates giant editorial shifts where none (or few) participants can see the forest for the trees while they're in the middle of it. Only after it's effects are seen does the change come into focus.
Did not see that until now, but I do get bored by the unlimited barrage of anti-Trump articles that some outlets put out. Sometimes I feel like they are just in meetings all day mulling what they can write to put Trump down.
Still don't think lots of small, deliberate and conscious edits are happening. I know various people in the news business, and they would notice if this would be happening.
EDIT: funny tweet that shows how I feel: https://twitter.com/tabytchi/status/1146513236398944256?s=21
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". If you didn't know the quote then it might sound like a good description of a modern welfare state, so only people with strongly libertarian views would reject it. However most people who recognise it as a quote from Marx will reject it because they are not Marxists.
"It is more important to have a balanced budget than to look after everyone" (quote from memory). False dichotomy: if a country fails to have a balanced budget over the long term then it won't be able to look after anyone.
> We should open our borders to immigration.
This would be a definite "No" to me, but I still answered with "Weakly agree", because otherwise it puts me in the strong-borders faction, which I definitely don't belong into. I don't want open borders right now, but I want the world to evolve into a state where we can have open borders 50 years from now.
(If you consider that outlook crazy, remember that it took Europe 50 years to get from WW2 to open borders under the Schengen treaty.)
Switzerland for example was a Schengen signatory. Switzerland has never allowed open immigration, work permits, or welfare benefits for people entering under Schengen terms.
So while I think you give a good example of what can happen in 50 years, I think it's very important to draw a distinction between Schengen-like agreements and what people commonly understand from the closed/open border debate.
Let's assume (without loss of generality) that your $400k income is from a salaried job at some company. Suppose that there is an NGO fighting to abolish said company on moral grounds. Would you be willing to donate your money to that organization?
Which, even if that NGO succeeded, wouldn't undermine the position in society. If Facebook were dismantled, the employees just switch to Google, Amazon & Co.
Populism is not about ideology of regular people against the elites, that'd be apply more to e.g. various socialdemocratic parties who attempt such goals and ideologies but most of them aren't considered populistic especially if they're in power for years and have to actually implement policies instead of talking about vague results that'll magically arrive.
It refers to a tactic of identifying people who are dissatisfied with current reality and also with the realistic short-term prospects of how future is going to unfold for them even if the promises of the other parties arrive and reasonable economic growth and modest systemic improvement happens, and promising them unrealistic, unachievable improvement (often by suggesting major, radical changes that are a change but can't possibly give the effects they promise) - thus giving these voters hope that others don't, filling that (very valid) need and thus getting their votes.
Populism is pretty much what used to be called "proto-fascism" by Ecco, but communists can also have a strong populist agenda. Where I live, in Portugal, the communist party used slogans like "Leave Nato, away with the Euro" in general elections - simple recipes that couldn't possibly have beneficial effects and that in reality nobody would implement.
What you define as populism has nothing to do with real-world populism, it's just a construct.
Anyway, I'm glad the thread has been flagged.