Time for it to die, and for the corpses of von Mises and Hayek to be dug up, paraded through the streets, and thrown into the Tiber. Every once in a while, I get some ass who snootily tells me that his (strangely, it’s always been a man) brand of liberalism is superior to mine, and then proceeds to announce that he is a true “classical liberal” (translation: he’s a flaming Libertarian) or more rarely, that he is a “neoliberal”, although that species of conservative prefers to hide the term under a fog of economic buzzwords. I detest them all.
Now George Monbiot has written a wonderful summary of the crimes of neoliberalism, that poisonous doctrine of St Reagan and St Thatcher. It’s one of those essays where I do a disservice to it by quoting only a small portion of it — but I’ll do it anyway, just so I can tell you to go read the whole thing.
Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.
It is the most pernicious and pervasive ideology of our time. I’ve been hearing a lot of it in complaints about tenure and teachers’ unions lately — “these are just efforts to give teachers job security“, as if that were some horrible abomination. Shouldn’t we aspire to give everyone job security? Isn’t it a good thing when people can rely on stable employment and income? But no, much of the public has absorbed this notion that chaos and fragility are virtues, that we need to be able to, for instance, fire people as punishment for inefficiency.
They never seem to care that the beneficiaries of that ruthlessness all seem to be the most useless parasites, the profiteers and rent-seekers and exploiters of the market. The punishment is the thing. We’re all getting screwed over, but hey, at least we get the vicarious thrill of seeing someone else screwed over even more.
As the brilliant Doug Henwood put it:
meritocracy = money + bullshit
Except, what happens when a service or product has a level of quality, or lack thereof. that can’t be predetermined by the purchaser?
There is at least one aspect of the ideas of von Mises and Hayek that would perhaps be preferable to the current practices, and that is the idea that failing businesses should be allowed to fail, and bailouts (a keynesian practice) should be avoided.
A bailout basically siphons the public’s money into businesses that have demonstrated they cannot be trusted with it. Now, I can’t really speak about the US, but in Greece where I live, the idea that banks should never, ever be allowed to go bankrupt has resulted in 6 years of horrible recession, has sucked out the income of households and businesses not actually on the government’s tit and has left our economy in ruins, without actually making said banks any safer financially. We need ever greater loans to sustain this propping up of failing banks, which are bound to collapse one day as sure as death and taxes (both extremely prevalent in Greece nowadays). It would have been far better to have been allowed to go bankrupt in 2010, and suffer our losses as best we could, than to undergo this prolonged and agonizing death, where an ever increasing percentage of the population is left without any means of living, yet the “economy” endures.
And yet the public calls the measures enforced by the EU, the IMF and the government “neoliberal”. The word has just turned into an expletive.
Perhaps I should mention here that I have been consistently supporting leftist parties (which have consistently failed to apply leftist politics). In a sense, what matters is not how “big” or “small” a government you have, but on which side of the economic scales the goverment’s thumb applies force. Naomi Klein is correct in writing that the IMF is a Keynesian institution gone astray, but the problem in the current crisis is not that it enforces neoliberal measures, but on the contrary that it insists on a Keynesian program that stimulates the parasites in an economy, leaving the actual productive part to shoulder the costs.
The worst part about neoliberalism is that most people don’t even recognize it as an ideology. It’s treated like a law of nature. Many of our political parties [and we have quite a few in The Netherlands] are converted to it. So the political debate is heavily depoliticized and the outcome is like phlebotomy: if it doesn’t work, phlebotomize some more.
The bailouts themselves were not the problem. The problem is the complete and utter lack of meaningful consequences after the bailout. Having millions and millions of people see their houses repossessed despite always paying their bills on time simply wasn’t an option, and would’ve started a spiral that would’ve resulted in mass unemployment and homelessness like during the Great Depression. The near collapse of GM and Chrysler were the first stages of this, and other many other businesses would’ve followed after these two disappeared.
Sure, the economy might’ve recovered faster if all these businesses were all allowed to completely fail, but do you want 25% of your population unemployed and homeless for several years while the established money figures out how to fix what they caused? Probably not.
@ ck, the Irate Lump
More than 25% of the population in Greece *is* currently unemployed, and the only thing preventing a huge wave of homelessness is the traditional family structure, as young people flock back to their parents’ homes.
I have no illusion that the market will self-regulate; our economy is going down the drain. The problem is, the EU and the IMF are pressing for ever stricter austerity measures, ostensibly to prevent the economy from failing, but in reality postponing the inevitable. When the inevitable happens, most Greeks will have lost their savings and their jobs, public businesses and vital assets will have been privatized, and a handful of politicians and bankers will get to keep their profits in offshore companies. Had we gone bankrupt in 2010, we’d still be in deep trouble, jobless and homeless maybe, but at least we wouldn’t be burdened with an unbearable national debt that will *still* have to be paid, and the country would get to keep some basic means of rebuilding the economy, this time hopefully with something more than hot air.
I always appreciated one (specifically a _single_ one, that is) of the details of tenure. That the tenured cannot be fired for presenting alternate approaches that the admins finds disagreeable. The problem is defining all those terms [eg: ‘alternative’, ‘admins’, …] acceptably. Like one recent prof. who taught offensive conspiracy “theories”. Who deserved to have his tenure rescinded for teaching WAG’s as facts. Teaching students to revolt, and to be revolutionary, goes beyond teaching “unpopular opinions”. also rescind-tenure worthy. To use tenure as a free pass for hateful speechifying, is abusing the concept of tenure.
Maybe tenure grants could specify what acts will void the tenure (if they don’t already. IDK).
OK, so obviously I can’t simply name the solution to a massive systemic crisis, but maybe just for a start could we try not voting for neoliberals? Half the people on this forum (Myers included, sometimes) seem to hold this idea that we can and should denounce this poisonous idea every day except election day, but when it comes time to vote we are morally/legally/honor-bound to use the most powerful control of government that we have to explicitly demand more of the same toxic policies we spent the past 364 days denouncing, and then act confused when we end up with a government that continues them.
Mind you, it’s probably too late to fix things anyway. Even if we could somehow confiscate all unearned wealth, it still wouldn’t be enough to pay recompense to the people who have suffered, let alone the people who have died. Not that we’ll ever get far enough to even consider that— whether it be an entire nation subjugated through imperialistic wars or a single person wrongfully convicted of a crime and exonerated years after the fact, the idea that people who have suffered harm deserve true (rather than “symbolic”) recompense is practically unheard of, and the idea that the people who cause said harm should be held accountable is rarer still.
Give them government jobs. Lots of people need jobs and we have lots of infrastructure in need of repair.
In fact, give all the ex-GM workers jobs building public transportation. It would be fitting, given the history.
That Monbiot article slaps together everything he doesn’t like and labeling it under “Neoliberalism” as the bogeyman, whether it’s Neoliberalism or not. “Investor-State Dispute Settlement”? That’s been around for 50-60 years, and it doesn’t let you overthrow national regulations – if it goes the way of investors, the state just has to pay some damages.
@Alkivonidas
Greece should have left the Euro back in 2010. The next two years would have been hell – with the Greek government scrambling to minimize capital flight and scrape together enough hard currency to buy food, fuel, and medicine – but after that the New Drachma’s devaluation would be so great that Greece would be recovering economically via exports and tourism (assuming they’re smart enough not to default on contracts with partnering companies needed for exporting).
@brett
I agree, but at the time (and ever since) there was no political will to do so, either from greek political parties or the EU. Also, the scenario you present *might* have worked if the Greek people could be trusted to go through the expected hardship united, and if all the while our government would do everything humanely possible to ease the transition, shelter the more vulnerable social groups and prevent escape of capitals and black market practices.
It would make a wonderful SF novel, in other words.
@ Jake Harban #9
The problem is that you have to compare the neoliberal candidate to the alternative. I despise neoliberal policies too, but I’d choose them over a theocracy any day of the week. Especially in the states where your christian leaders have the worst of both worlds (i.e. horrible economic policies in addition to the god crap).
My other objection is that, while election day is important, it is far from the only input we have to change the system. Yes, it can be like beating one’s head against the wall, but a lot can come from those 364 days of protest. And people have been voting for more progressive values in the primaries by supporting Sanders, who actually has a shot at winning.
Unless you can somehow simultaneously convince 150,000,000 people to join you, a vote for a left-leaning 3rd party canidate in the general election is an impotent protest that benefits the right. Yes, it fucking sucks but 5% of people voting for Jill Stein will not help in any significant way. Even Google auto-complete doesn’t include her in the list until you get to “Jill Ste”.
right there is the root of a profoundly distorted view that results in where we find ourselves all in. That is entirely one sided. A case could be made that one of the most important attributes of human beings is our ability to cooperate, we are a social species we are able to form huge groups of unrelated individualizes to accomplish besides just the feeding and housing of all but great tasks that have nothing but symbolic significance.
The idea that we are all about composition primarily is a very pinch view. When competition becomes so elevated the it becomes “winning is the only thing” that matters it becomes self-destructive . The evidence is all around. In the United States political competition was kept under control during the cold war by the agreed upon common enemy of the Soviet and Chinese States. Now those enemies have changed and the need to cooperate and compromise to even the degree we did at the time is completely gone replaced by ruthless competition with the resulting self-destructive policies..
We can’t even agree to keep the infrastructure we need to survive and function in working order forget any modernization.
What the hell happened to the common good?
uncle frogy
I’ve noticed a relatively new trend that has been absent during the rest of our nation’s history (well, modern history).
Previously, the far right pushed its luck, gun sales increased and they pulled back. Their rate of pulling back on their extremes closely matched ammunition sales for the new firearms.
Today, firearm sales soar, neocon pundits do their thing anyway, ammunition sales soar higher than what the military greedily gobbles up in time of war and they push their luck even more. Meanwhile, the punditry seems to be closer to relabeled anarchism, couched in libertarianism.
Have our anarchists relabeled themselves and found their new and preferred course toward anarchy?
The seeds of distrust for anything cooperative and especially government are sown widely. Even private associations are distrusted, save for the preferred groups and fascism is rampant.
That’s an anarchists’ paradise, ripe for the plucking.
auto correct and my eyesight conspire against me.
I apologize for some of the confusing wording above.
uncle frogy
re 9:
I agree, partially. When there is something other than a binary choice between “neo-” and “hyperconservadonk”, which is what the coming election presents. Refusing to vote until an alternative is presented is a form of nihilism, allowing the status quo to remain unhindered. It is easier (I think) to get neo-liberals, to modify their policies, than the conservadonks who are locked into their ideology.
The last four presidential elections had decent liberal candidates on the ballot. I can’t speak for anything less national than that, but in my state there have been decent liberal candidates on the ballot for Senate most of the time and for Governor in at least the last two elections. My congressional representative is a bit trickier; until a few years back, there was usually a decent liberal candidate for Congress (who didn’t win) but then I got gerrymandered into a Liberal District so now I have a decent liberal Congressman (who always wins).
As for 2016— I’ll vote for a decent liberal Congressman (who will almost certainly win) and a decent liberal President (although exactly who that is will depend on the Democratic primary, among other things).
In fact, other than giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in 2008, I don’t think I’ve ever voted for a neoliberal nut and I’ve never missed an election. “Vote neocon, vote neoliberal, or sit out” is a false trichotomy, and that people fail to see this is one of the reasons it persists.
What other VIABLE alternative exists? Wishful thinking is not a viable alternative, as the radicals from my college days showed. They couldn’t get anybody in the middle to follow them, making what they were doing impossible to implement. The votes were never there, and never would be.
Had Greece gone bankrupt in 2010, it would have become incapable of importing the fuel, drugs, and food its population needs, and vulture founds would still be hounding the Greek state, demanding payment with interest for the Greek Debt.
That’s why it was the right-wing, austerity fetichizing parties which were pushing for a Grexit: their leaders expected that a banished Greece would end in a situation as shitty as Venezuela’s, which in turn would have pushed the rest of Europe’s public opinions to meekly accept their bitter and poisonous medicine.
Which is why the people who claim that a Grexit would have benefited Greece are spewing rose-tintet bullshit: if that had happened, Greece would either have had food riots followed by a right-wing pro-austerity government winning snap elections, or food riots followed by a coup and a dictatorship, and in any case, the austerity fetichists would be pointing at Greece and telling the rest of Europe “See what happens when you fuck with us?“
Thanks for posting this PZ.
We really need more people questioning these assumptions.
Since Monbiot reasonably dates the adoption of neoliberalism to the mid-1970s, and given the vast growth of cross-border investment over the past half century, it’s quite reasonable to regards ISDS as a feature of neoliberalism. And the fact that ISDS decisions can’t directly repeal or block laws is of little importance: once one corporation achieves a victory, in these unaccaountable and undemocratic tribunals, it will be obvious that others could do so with respect to the same law. And the mere threat of being sued for billions of dollars is a powerful one. There is absolutely no justification for such tribunals, in treaties between states with independent courts, other than giving corporations the whip hand over democratically elected governments.
Nerd @ 18
FTFY.
Akira Mackenzie,
The radicals went to a union meeting of the dorm workers (essentially permanent part time employees) at the Enormous State University I was attending, who were striking for medical benefits and a modest raise to cover the cost for the union members. The union members were totally uninterested in having their social conscious raised, or looking at any bigger picture. Essentially they tossed the radicals out the door, since they sounded “UnAmerican”. Same problem with hard leftists these days. The try to cover too much ground for the comfort of those in the middle.
And it is in the middle where elections are won (like Obama did twice) and lost, not on the fringes and nobody has evidenced otherwise.
Although we may see a case to refute that if the Donald throws a temper tantrum (expected) if he doesn’t get nominated King of the USA, er the Rethug Presidential Nominee.
Neoliberalism? So…..what exactly is neoliberalism and what makes it different from neoCONSERVATISM? I ask that because I was under the impression that President Reagan and those who followed him in the Republicans were conservatives, not liberals.
dalehusband @ 24
Mainly “liberals” who believe in important social issues like reproductive rights, GLBT rights,and gun control BUT no one should even think about touching their precious wealth.
For example:
“The new tablet line is coming out in two months and the factory in Bejing is at peak production. I plan on spending my stock options on a new solar panel for the roof and an AUTHENTIC Amazon dirt floor for the kitchen. Speaking of wh, can’t the police do something about these vagrants? I didn’t buy a $3 million San Francisco townhouse to have bums… I mean, homeless persons pick leftover organic, fair-trade tofu from MY compost heap! I don’t want them to scratch up the finish on my new Tesla with their shopping carts.”
You know, suburban upper-middle class soccer parents, high power attorneys, respected surgeons, Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley hipsters, and just about anyone who can afford to attend a Clinton fundraising dinner. Certainly not those dirty, uncouth, blue-color, working poor the American Left used to support.
Fixed that for you.
If neoliberalism were really about competition above all else, we wouldn’t see nearly so many big monopoly companies out there. Freedom from state-imposed limitations is what it is all about, which isn’t quite the same thing at all.
dalehusband@24,
Try reading the linked artice.
Actually, you can win elections with only the fringe: you just need the turn-out to be very low. Which is why extremists of all stripes don’t mind the population becoming more disillusioned with the political process (including why the GOP hardliners did all they could to sabotage Clinton then Obama at every turn and purged their party of its moderate voices)
***
Not only monopolies, but also parasitic heirs hoarding a growing share of the world’s wealth.
One of the worst ones was how Neoliberalism tried to solve poverty worldwide – through “microfinance”.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/nov/21/rise-fall-microfinance
Who knew that the whole thing wouldn’t work? Well, apart from everyone who ever heard the term “loan shark.”
dalehusband wrote:
In general the terms target different policy items. Neoliberalism usually refers to economic policy, while neoconservatism generally refers to foreign policy and military policy. For example, libertarians are basically always neoliberals, but only sometimes neoconservative, while a Tea Party Republican is probably both.
I should also mention that in many countries, the liberal party is often the most conservative mainstream party running for government. The U.S. definitions for liberal versus conservative is rather unique to your country.
@#18, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Okay, here’s the thing:
If Hillary Clinton can win without Sanders supporters who are currently not going to vote for her, which your posts on this thread suggest that you believe is the case, then every word you type trying to convince Sanders supporters that they should support Clinton is just wasted energy. I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.
On the other hand, if Hillary Clinton cannot win without Sanders supporters who are currently not going to vote for her, then your posts on this thread are actually doing her harm. You’re coming off as condescending and rude.
I ought to mention, though, that the candidate you’re acting as an apologist for just made your task a lot harder; the other week she gave a speech to the Brookings Institution (you can find video online if you look around). This speech only made it into the news in bits, specifically the bits where she talks about Israel (confirming that yes, she is best buds with the thug Netanyahu and thinks that giving the Israelis even more assistance in their long-term genocide of the Palestinians is a great choice), but that wasn’t actually the majority of the speech. She also just happened to mention a few other things:
1. She more or less preemptively announced repudiation of Obama’s Iran deal.
2. She talked about invading Iran.
3. She said that she will indeed push ahead to enforce a no-fly zone in Syria (putting us in direct conflict with the Russian military). It’s not just speculation any more, it’s a definite plan.
4. She furthermore vilified Russia over the Ukraine, confirming that we will continue to stand with the neo-Nazi thugs and criminals we have been backing, even if it means sending troops.
5. She basically said the destruction of Libya was not just not a problem, but actually went exactly as planned, and she intends to follow a “muscular foreign policy” which will involve further such operations.
Until that time, I was willing to entertain the possibility that Hillary Clinton was perhaps merely stupid in a specialized way, a kind of political idiot savant who was well-intentioned but had the worst judgement of any politician in recent times, but this speech made it clear that she is not merely evil but also dangerous to such an extent that yes, Trump is actually a better choice from a practical perspective. At least with Trump there’s actually a chance the idiot in the White House won’t set off World War III — Hillary Clinton just confirmed that she’s actively planning on it.
She, and you, can go pound sand. Anyone who backs her is hoping for global thermonuclear war. You might as well vote not just for Donald Trump but for Ted Cruz.
You’ve made one hell of an immense leap with the global thermonuclear war bit. First and foremost, nobody wants a nuclear war of any sort, not the US, not the Russians, as mutual assured destruction is a very real thing.
Second, who would sign off on the POTUS unilaterally launching nukes? Nukes are operated under the two man rule, even for the POTUS and a senior cabinet member would have to agree with the use of nuclear weapons, such as SecDef or SecState. We came quite close a few times when Reagan was POTUS, the result of those close calls were treaties that lowered the number of nuclear weapons and left them neutrally programmed, rather than hard coded to target.
That said, I’ve never understood the fetish our politicians have with Israel, always declaring their support for that foreign nation above and beyond all other things. Just once, I’d like to hear a politician swear that he or she supports this fucking country, not a foreign nation. Support Israel if you’re running for an Israeli office, not a United States office!
Well, in said speech, she did say that the nuclear option wasn’t off the table in reference to iran, although in context it appears to have either been a joke or a misspeak.
Well, it could be a misspeak, it could be just another campaign promise that she has no intention of following through on.
Seriously now, when did we start giving credence to a campaign promise? Obama promised to close GITMO, knowing full well that Congress wouldn’t allow it, GITMO remains open for prisoners.
Where reality meets the road is, we elect the best and biggest bullshitter.
It’s happened once already. Admittedly, that was against a defenseless population that had already been beaten, not one that could fight back, but still. It’s clear that the US is willing to use city destroying weapons and defend and celebrate that use decades later.
You do realize that those weapons were used in a world war, where cities were incinerated by firebombings as well?
There’s a hell of a big difference between WWII and today’s disputes and wars.
Case in point, WWII was a total war, our entire economy was devoted to supplying the war effort, food rationed, fuel rationed, industrial capacity turned to making weapons of war. That isn’t present today, there is no major power making war with us and none are about to start such a destructive war with us, as the economic disruption would be far too excessive.
Warfare isn’t about killing the most people, it never was. It’s about destroying the will to continue the dispute that started the war by making the costs so high that the warring societies would be irrevocably harmed by continuing making war. Nuclear weapons start out of the gate as non-starters, as one only cements global opinion against you for using them when a nation threatening condition fails to exist.
If Iran really wanted nuclear weapons, they’d have thousands by now. Instead, they have enriched their uranium to a massive 20% – you need 98% to be weapons grade, whereas some experimental reactors can use 20% enriched uranium and it’s a useful bargaining chip in negotiations. Add that to the fact that Iran lacks any delivery system for a heavy nuclear weapon (they’re infernally heavy, with the most modern compact unit weighing in over 100 pounds and layer cake devices (multi-stage high yield devices) are even more massive), it’s a non-starter for Iran. It’s smoke and mirrors to focus attention away from other more pressing matters.
As for a land war with Iran, again, a non-starter. Iran has significant mountainous terrain, a nightmare for warfare throughout history and today is no exception. Iran also have a coastline positively bristling with antiaircraft and antiship missiles and only one primary naval base at Bandar Abbas, with a largely littoral navy, plus a handful of Kilo submarines.
The largest threat to any attempted attack is the missiles that are well distributed around the Iranian coastline and layered inland as well. A secondary threat, the Kilo boat force, which is tracked continuously.
Sorry, but the entire Iranian boogeyman is just what all boogeymen are, a figment of the imagination. If we started any action, every base in the GCC states would be in flames, our ships aflame and our aircraft turned into twisted, scattered components and Iran still largely untouched.
Meanwhile, Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, hasn’t done anything to create a nuclear weapon and had they actually had a nuclear weapons program, they’d have thousands since the great Iranian boogeyman was first raised by Bush the Lesser. Seriously, the physics is fairly straightforward and it’s been well over a decade of “emergency”.
I don’t know. Maybe this site is misleading. Maybe I’m reading things wrong. But I don’t see a major difference between Sanders and Clinton on foreign policy here.
http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Bernie_Sanders_Foreign_Policy.htm
I have to say that “strengthening NATO” and “leaning on China” don’t sound like the best of all possible foreign policy decisions. Nor am I particularly wild about the “continue drone strikes” one, though at least he acknowledges that they can be counterproductive.
Trump, now. Trump just comes off as whiny in his statements. Not even as scary as I was expecting, just flat out whiny and stupid.
http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Donald_Trump_Foreign_Policy.htm
Yep. I’m not sure how that changes what I said, though. The US was also willing to completely burn cities to the ground with firebombs therefore…what does that mean about its willingness to use nukes?
That’s true and…kind of the problem. If the US goes fascist, who is going to rescue it from itself? No one. If it weren’t for that, I’d say, “Sure, go ahead. Vote Trump rather than Clinton. Let the US go fascist. Maybe the resultant mess will remove some of the power from the US which is badly overpowered and dangerous in much the same way the Koch brothers are dangerous: Just too much concentration of wealth and power producing a bully.” But…the resultant mess will simply destroy the world and that would be…bad.
Well, we did have that modest problem in Brussels, something not too modest to families there.
What else is in Brussels? NATO HQ. A few miles from the terrorist attacks.
As for China, we’ve had more network breaches than Carter has little liver pills, largely from PRC government information warfare units. Yeah, that needs a bit of a leaning on, as the information gleaned is being used for commercial gain as well as military gain. It’s literally costing the US billions of dollars each year to recover from these breaches.
Leaning here doesn’t mean military, it means diplomatic measures to tell them to “stop it, dammit!”.
As for US drone strikes, we do need to be a lot better on them. We’ve turned it into a numbers game, hitting the wrong target, as in civilians not involved in any shenanigans. That needs to stop, yesterday. That said, I have no problem sending a hellfire missile up the ass of someone with an RPG that is up to no good. We just need to be damned sure about our target, not turning it into a numbers game that looks good on reports and turns into shit in the long term, as it then turns into a terrorist recruiting tool.
Still, note the carbon copy line items. They’re sweet spots for campaign contributors.
Whereas Trump remains clueless, as usual. Trump’s amateur night at the opera. The man couldn’t even identify our nation’s nuclear triad, let alone any other matter of government, he’s all bluster and bullshit. That was readily apparent when he went on about a wall at the Mexican border “and I’d make Mexico pay for it”, with magic, I guess. The man is more full of shit than a Christmas goose, but nobody bothers to call him on it, as for the press, it’s a free circus act.
Your first point fails, due to the significant differences between a world war and the current clusterfuck of a “global war on terror”. Cities aren’t being saturation bombed, we’re not using firebombs on cities. We do occasionally drop a building on a terrorist, hell, I’ve guided a device into some of the bastards houses. Felt like shit when a neighbor’s home collapsed, but now we have much smaller devices, far less likely to kill the poor folks next door.
As for the US turning fascist, there are plenty here raising merry hell over fascism being the calling card of the far right and frankly, the majority of the populace loathe the extremists.
Currently, with the cream of the crop of GOP candidates, I could successfully run a potted plant against them and win.
As for destroying the world, humanity is far too puny to destroy a planet, indeed, puny enough to not even destroy the biosphere, but strong enough to create its own extinction.
As for the rest, we have a fascist leading the GOP race, we have a democratic socialist and a corporate democrat running on the leftish side. I’ll be voting for the democratic socialist, as I’ve learned from my travels and observed quite well what worked well. Where primaries get a smaller turnout, the final election gets the largest and the middle of the road crowd. A crowd disgusted with Trump Central news, idiocy and insanity being considered the norm.
Or, as the saying goes, “It ain’t over until the robust lady sings”.
I’ll be hitting the hay, it’s 03:30 here and I’m on mid-shift at work. Add in an allergy attack that has my eyes feeling like they’ll squirt from my skull any moment, yeah, it’s bedtime (I already took 50 mg of diphenhydramine, which is a 1.0 on the scale of antihistamines (other newer drugs are lower than that 1.0 and nothing so far is higher)). If this continues, I’ll have to add an allergist to my ever lengthening list of specialists…
It’s a reasonable point. “Destroy the world” was an exaggeration. And the biosphere is probably in no great danger. I have faith in the ability of bacteria to evolve to many, many situations, including high radiation levels. Heck, the life around Chernobyl will probably inherit the earth. I am, however, fond enough of humanity to be unable to contemplate its extinction with equanimity.
I’m not sure that that crowd is larger than the crowd that loves nothing better than being the biggest bully around and doesn’t mind being oppressed as long as someone else is oppressed even worse. We’ll see, I suppose.
Go squash some histamine. It’ll probably be better in the morning.
wzrd1:
Ahem. https://www.google.com/search?q=bombing+syria+city+before+and+after&tbm=isch
(Really?! “It could be far worse” is a weak justification)
wzrd1 wrote:
So long as you’re doing drone missile strikes in an attempt to assassinate a person, you’re going to have a lot of “collateral damage”. If you don’t want innocents killed, then you have to stop drone assassinations completely. Hell, the idea of the U.S. regularly doing assassinations in other countries ought to be giving people pause, regardless of the specific method employed.
So, rather than kill the terrorists, we should just accept our office buildings being destroyed while they’re occupied? We should close our embassies when they’re attacked?
If you accept “collateral damage” in another country, what’s supposed to be less acceptable about it in this one? They’re not a part of our club? They’re too far away to consider as real, full human beings with the same rights and moral status as us?
Suppose we don’t bomb a neighborhood somewhere, and the terrorist in it who we would’ve killed ends up bombing a different neighborhood (suppose it’s a neighborhood in the US, if that’s required for making you care about it). Or suppose that they don’t do that, as a consequence of the fact that nobody was provoked by a preemptive strike that we didn’t engage in.
In what sense do we have some kind of moral responsibility to bomb a nebulous group of people all over the planet so thoroughly that we can’t reasonably expect any to remain and counterattack us? How is it somehow our fault, or something that we shouldn’t accept, if we come up with any plan other than the patently ludicrous one of killing a fucking huge number of people in order to prevent the killing of people? Or maybe I’ve mischaracterized it just now, because the motivation wasn’t actually to prevent people from being killed — if that’s so, since it isn’t being done for peaceful reasons or in order to get a peaceful result, then what was “bomb the terrorists” actually supposed to accomplish? And why the fuck should we want that?
In what sense do we have some kind of moral responsibility to bomb a nebulous group of people all over the planet so thoroughly that we can’t reasonably expect any to remain and counterattack us?
Especially since this sort of random bombing or even semi-targeted bombing only creates more grievances and therefore more potential bombers. Unless we want to literally bomb humanity to extinction, there will always be someone who might want to fight back.
Considering that the number of people killed by terrorists (in the US and Europe, at least) is tiny when compared to the numbers of people killed by other causes that we do just accept as part of the normal day-to-day risks of being alive, I don’t see why not. (Although I don’t see why you’d need to close embassies when they’re attacked…)
I grew up in the UK at the height of IRA activity. Every other week there would be another bombing or assassination. We didn’t go out and start bombing Catholic housing estates in Northern Ireland in response. We kept calm and we carried on.
@49: Especially given that even the worst terrorist attacks in the US and Europe haven’t actually done that much damage to the countries as a whole. I was in NYC on 11 Sept 2001. I don’t want to downplay the damage done to individuals from the attacks. But the city itself? Back up and running nearly as usual within days. Pretty much back to normal within weeks. Even the WTC has been rebuilt. Bigger. Better. Ruder. Five towers, one much taller than the others, if you see my point. The majority of damage to the US was done by the response to the attacks, not the attacks themselves. The Patriot Act is still damaging the US. The invasion of Iraq led directly to ISIL and hence the Belgium and Paris attacks. Maybe France would be best advised to bomb the US so it would stop creating the conditions that create new terrorists. If bombing did anything besides kill some people and annoy others.
Dianne, that’s *why* I ranted about numeric attacks, rather than specific and precision strikes.
I’ve actually met terrorists, in the real world, real life environment. They honestly think that they’ll win, via god’s graces or something.
That said, I’m still wondering about Iraq, beyond “He tried to kill my daddy” bullshit.
Meanwhile, you ignore the dozen US embassy attacks, causing over one thousand casualties.
Some bastards just need to be killed, before they blow yet another marketplace full of women and children up again.
Honestly, if they’d join me, I’d shuffle off this mortal coil in a New York minute, if they actually would follow me.
Lacking that faith, I’ll happily pursue the prosecution of the bastards.
Come talk to me after you’ve responded to a market full of dying and dead women and children.
Trust me, it sucked. A lot.
Dunc, there were a full dozen US embassy attacks in Africa before 9-11.
I guess we should have shuttered our embassies or something!
The WTC has *not* been rebuilt, christ knows where you get your news from! It’s a park now, not an office building. This isn’t science fiction, it’s pure fiction!
Bigger, badder, ruder, yeah, that’s me. It’s called warfare, it isn’t pleasant, it isn’t pretty and we really should avoid the shit out of it – always.
Still, come back and talk to me when you’ve repeatedly responded to a marketplace bombing, killing women and children the age of my grandchildren at that time.
We had a dozen embassy bombing attempts that caused well over a thousand injured, buried alive or dead. That’s trivially found in a Google search.
We then got the 9/11 attacks. I lost a cousin in that attack, as well as a few online friends. I’ll happily come out of military retirement to further suppress that insanity!
That said, a numbers game of kills via drone, rather than precision strikes against known bastards, a total non-starter.
One upside of the clusterfuck that is called a war, lower warhead yield, precision destruction.
Trust me, it sucked dropping a bomb onto a bastard, only to also drop the house next door.
We’re not robots, we do still retain a conscience. We just simply have access to information not available to the public.
The thing is, they think much the same thing. And they think that dying is just moving on to the next level of existence, so they’re not particularly concerned about doing so. And probably consider killing rude, but not a big deal. Not like actually destroying someone, just sending them off to heaven or hell a bit early. No biggie, really.
Police work can and has stopped more terrorist attacks than bombing has. The Brussels attack probably wouldn’t have happened if the police had stopped the guy who went through a checkpoint saying that he had been drinking a bit. (One of the terrorists was his passenger.) Police in Freital just stopped a terrorist attack that could have been quite nasty. No bombing necessary, just simple intelligence gathering and raiding the terrorists before they could act.
It’s harder when the terrorists aren’t in your country, admittedly. Like I don’t know what to do about those crazies who bombed the hospital in Afghanistan. But I’m pretty sure heading to Washington with a bigger bomb would be a mistake.
I mentioned being in NYC on 11 September, 2001. I guess I didn’t mention working in Bellevue on 11 Sept, 2001. But I did. They were mostly hurt and dead business people, fortunately few children, but it still sucked. In fact, it sucked so much that it put me off bombing as a solution to social ills pretty thoroughly. Because I don’t really want anyone to have to do that again. But apparently I’m odd that way.
What the…? The exact same towers were not rebuilt, but that’s because no one wanted them back. They were being used as back offices because no one wanted to work there: too few offices with windows, too boring a construction, that sort of thing. But there is definitely a WTC. I’ve seen it. I lived next to the construction site for several years. I’m not sure what you mean by saying that it’s a park now.
I’ve personally used a SOFLAM to precision guide a bomb into a bastard’s home.
I’ve never had a problem with that, felt bad about the poor SOB’s next door, but the maniac was ended, with no further attacks.
Fortunately, we’ve scaled back our bombs, so that that neighbor doesn’t suffer beyond a cracked window.
I’m sorry. That sucks. I had one friend who was literally saved by the inefficiency of NYC’s subway system: He left home at his usual time to get to work but the subway was delayed so he wasn’t at the top of WTC One when it got hit. A couple of other people I know were supposed to be there later in the day. There’s no question that the attacks killed a lot of people and hurt still more. But did they do any damage to the country? Did they strike a blow against western imperialism? Did they impress the world of the power of Allah? No. They were failures from the point of view of damaging the US. Except for the backlash damage. Would Trump be able to propose special IDs for Muslims without them? Would Southwest get away with throwing people off planes because they spoke Arabic without them? Maybe, but probably not. The damage is being done by people’s fear as much as by the attacks themselves. At least within the US and Europe.
I’ll fully agree, the populace’s fears have outpaced the very real world threats.
That said, I recall a dozen embassy bombings, a few office buildings also attacked and a massive degradation of capabilities. An underwear bomber that fizzled and horrifically burned the prospective bomber. A shoe bomber, Maxwelll Smart style, failed. A printer bomb plot that failed.
That’s degraded, pure and simple.
Assuming, of course, that the maniac’s wife or son or best friend or neighbor down the street or drinking buddy or acquaintance wasn’t so impressed or horrified or angered that they took up planning attacks instead. There aren’t a certain number of mad bombers out there who we can kill and ensure that bombing will no longer occur. There are just people with various degrees of grievance or entitlement or fanaticism that will attack or not as the opportunity and pressures arise. I’m not convinced that bombing them or those we think might be them reduces the opportunity and pressures.
Yeah, most bombers aren’t supervillains. They’re mostly rather stupid people who can’t think of a better way to influence policy or glorify their god than to blow something up.
Of course, so are many particularly evil world leaders. Every time I read something about the Nazis I’m impressed not only with how evil they were, but how stupid they were. Much the same with current dictators and wannabes. And US presidential candidates. Trump? Dumber than dirt. Ugly too. And all the charisma and sex appeal of a particularly unattractive Vogon. But winning. Why?
Sigh.
Maybe I shouldn’t make claims about what will and will not influence people’s actions. Clearly I don’t understand human psychology at all. Perhaps I should just not bother my (not particularly) pretty little head about it all.
“Perhaps I should just not bother my (not particularly) pretty little head about it all.”
Well, as I do consider your head quite pretty, just based upon your arguments, I suggest you’re giving up prematurely. :)
A defective approach is a bad thing, a defective program is a bad thing, etc.
Addressing failures and turning them into triumphs is a very, very good thing.
Just recognize that not everyone is a good person, they seem to be at a modest level, 1:100, with true bastards at a much rarefied ratio.
Personally, I’ve always loved meeting people, rather than people and assholes.
A dozen embassy attacks prior to 9/11, causing over 1000 casualties? Interesting… Not according to list list, so I guess I’m going to have to ask to a citation on that.
Anyway, even accepting the premise as true, 1000 casualties over however many years (decades?) isn’t actually that big a deal. The IRA killed nearly twice that number between 1969 and 2001 (1,823, according to the University of Ulster). We didn’t respond by bombing anybody – we responded with police work, security measures, and eventually, negotiations to resolve the conflict. It worked.
Damn it.
Ah, correction, it was 4000 casualties, with 200 dead for the embassy attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bombings
Plus 200 more killed and a like number injured in Bali.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_bombings
All they wanted was for the US to close all embassies and remove all troops from foreign lands, totally reasonable, no?
Well, the latter half is pretty reasonable. The US hasn’t been in a war/military action I consider justified for like 3/4ths of a century.
Where did I even imply that you should acquiesce to their demands? If anything, I’m implying the opposite… The numbers of casualties involved aren’t really that high. You shrug it off and carry on. If you want to play that big a role in world affairs, you’re inevitably going to take casualties. Suck it up.
@alkisvonidas(#3):
Well those banks being propped up was a demand pushed upon Greece by the rest of the EU. Didn’t want those big banks in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain & the UK to fall over for (correctly) believing their respective governments would figure out a way to socialize their losses.
Then we got a repeat of that but this time with governments instead of banks. There is a reason that you could put up a windup doll repeating the same phrase over and over on the chair of the EU negotiator (no room to negotiate only to accept a total surrender), governments would have been toppled and (worse the horror of horrors for the people at the top of the EU) the breaking apart of the Euro as political tool might have happened. And that is why actual democracy in motion was punished by making the terms worse, can’t have democracy if it threatens the cohesion of the EU (even though Tsipras hoped to use the vote as a fig leave to surrender, guess he was not happy when he got support for what he was doing instead of it being rejected).
It’s a shame that Tsipras thought he could bluff his way out of this but it was clear from the start that he never had the intention of wanting to drop the membership card of being in the Euro. On the other hand the EU only postponed this mess and made it worse.
@Brett(#11):
Actually it DOES bypass national regulations. Just the threat of going for ISDS has been effective in binning environmental, safety and health regulations proposed while weakening existing ones to avoid getting hit by an ISDS. Just ask Canada what happened after NAFTA was ratified (hint: since that point 99%+ of laws that multinationals opposed never got further then a proposal). Further it generally isn’t some money. Heck you don’t even have to propose legislation like that. Germany for example ended up paying €3.7 billion just for the fact that it wasn’t going to allow new nuclear power stations to be built. That money wasn’t handed over for cancellation of existing or pending permits and the like but because some energy corporation claimed it might have plans to build a nuclear power plant (or a few) in the next 20 years in Germany and now would not get the profits of that enterprise.
Or the joke that has been played on Russia? and ISDS tribunal (the treaty that that one is attached was never ratified by Russia, just being in the negotiations was enough that it could take the case) determined that they have to pay about 2.5% of their GDP as compensation for breaking up Yukos Oil.
I don’t know of any major ISDS going in favor of a state other then the one that Morris tried to initiate against Australia and that was because the forum shopping was too blatant for the tribunal involved to accept the case.