There are a large number of right wing people that one hears about who have a penchant for saying the most outrageous things. right wing media and use that as a route to financial success.
Take, for example, Candace Owens who is employed by the website The Daily Wire as a columnist. She started out as a political activist by criticizing the Republican party and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) but then suddenly in 2017 she became a conservative and started attacking the usual targets of the extreme right wing. She is now a pro-Trump conspiracy-spouting election denier who seems to be a popular figure in right wing circles despite not saying anything worthwhile. She is not alone. The last decade has produced a regular stream of such people.
James Wigderson has a theory about how such people use their hateful and logic-defying rhetoric as a vehicle for making themselves desirable to the right kind of group.
One of the Republican Party’s most popular after-dinner speakers, Candace Owens, announced on Monster X (formerly Twitter), “I will tell you that I am a big believer that Hollywood was created by the CIA. I believe that.”
“When I think of all the societal ills and how they artificially place people at the top of Hollywood, preaching toxic principles, routinely anti-family principles, definitively Satanic principles, should make you pause and wonder why is that?”
…If Owens ever does find herself without gainful employment, don’t feel too bad for her. She’ll just spend more time on the lecture circuit where she makes $50,000 to $100,000 per speech. She gets paid more if you expect her to use polysyllabic words, and then it’s your responsibility to explain to her what “polysyllabic” means.
Despite her intellectual shortcomings, Owens is a favorite of Republican organizations for providing dinner entertainment. Part of her appeal, undeniably, is that Republicans like to have African American speakers at their events to prove that they’re not racist. Part of her appeal is that her mere presence at these events is an “in-your-face” to the “mainstream media” and the culture at large that finds Owens contemptible.
Mostly, there’s the chance that your organization could be the sponsoring organization when Owens says something completely bonkers. The frisson of excitement generated by the possibility that Owens could say something racist, sexist, homophobic, or even just plain fascist, helps sells the tickets necessary to pay for her appearance. Oh, what fun.
…It was Ann Coulter who gave CPAC its Star Wars cantina reputation. Fired from National Review for suggesting America needed to invade the Middle East and convert everyone to Christianity (so quaint sounding now), Coulter would pack them in just so Republicans could say they were there when she said something like, “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building.”
Now we have a whole generation of provocateurs, and none of them are even as literate as Coulter.
…Where once your local Republican Party found a prominent party leader who could speak intelligently on an issue, or a prominent public intellectual who could address national affairs, the Republicans will show movies by Dinesh D’Souza explaining how the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The competition among these people as to who can say the most outrageous things and thus draw attention to themselves is fierce, so much so that some of the familiar figures of a few years ago are not mentioned nearly as much these days, because they have been upstaged by those willing to go even further. Ann Coulter is now seen as a member of the despised Republican establishment. Michele Malkin and Pamela Geller seem to have disappeared off the face of the Earth. Dinesh D’Souza is still around making ‘documentaries’ for the faithful about how the 2020 election was stolen but otherwise is barely heard from. He faces stiff competition from newbie Vivek Ramawsamy for the role of top Indian-American rightwing nutcase.
I am sure that there are more but I cannot their recall names off the top of my head because there is only enough space in my brain for a limited number of right wing cranks to occupy.
Is this practice of gaining notoriety and money by saying outrageous things that are not grounded in reality only a right wing phenomenon? I am aware that my own political biases may blind me to similar characters on the left. Any suggestions of left-wing counterparts who command such high fees to give bonkers speeches?
We have our own selection of pestilential rent-a-gobs in the UK. It’s such a phenomenon that Mitchell and Webb did a radio sketch about it almost a decade ago.
https://soundcloud.com/kay-woods/sadie-pipkins
(for context, “Sadie Pipkins” is a thinly concealed variant of Katie Hopkins -- the bigot du jour of the time).
so, the CIA created hollywood? good trick!
CIA founded 1947. First hollywood studio 1911.
perhaps hollywood created the CIA? or the CIA has timemachines!
I learned the concept of “audience capture” at either Science-Based Medicine or Respectful Insolence. Once you establish an audience with your crazy ideas, you need to up the ante to keep them from drifting away, potentially to other influencers. Pretty soon, your audience is in control of you as you strive to meet their desires. Opioid addiction is a pretty good metaphor here.
“…preaching toxic principles, routinely anti-family principles, definitively Satanic principles, should make you pause and wonder why is that?”
I can tell you why! It’s because Hollywood’s only motive for anything they do is money, money, money, money, and money.
If they’re “preaching” toxic, Satanic, anti-family principles, it’s because audiences eat it up.
That’s just what they want you to think!
The American templates (at least since the eighties) started with talk radio. Then Roger Ailes got together with Ratfink Murdoch to create Fox News, and its even more toxic branch Fux And Friends with Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly etc. Also, outside Pox there was Wossname, the one who died in cancer. Let’s not forget the guy who simulates weeping in front of the camera (he was unable to keep up the outrage so he has faded).
Politicians…the emergence of Sarah Palin opened the gates for Mega-stupid.
The one who invented “death panels”, I forgot her name. And countless new ones pop up like COVID variants. As the script is very simple they could probably be replaced by AI … even producing more classy results.
With Candace Owens the big jump seemed to start with her being told she was wrong.
Back in the GamerGate days (2016), Owens came up with this <sarcasm>fantastic</sarcasm> idea for stopping cyberbullying (something she had the target of in high school) by creating a site that would allow for doxxing of bullies; basically assuming that their anonymity was the biggest problem. (The sheer number of people willing to post open threats under their real names shows how accurate that assumption is.) Zoe Quinn (target #1 of GamerGate) tried to reach out to her and tell her what a horrible idea that was, mostly because a tool meant for doxxing would very rapidly become just another tool for the bullies to use. Owens misinterpreted what Quinn said as a threat, somehow jumping to the conclusion that Quinn was a bully trying to shut down her site. GamerGate immediately saw the potential and started courting her for the same sort of reason any far-right group would court a black woman, as someone who can be a difficult-to-attack face of the group. And the radicaliztion continued from there…
Owens fits right in with the Q-Anon sorts because her primary driving force isn’t actually righting wrongs or equality, it’s ‘I am the righteous underdog’ so she is quite willing to sit with anybody who butters her up, tells her how smart she is, and gives her someone else to blame for the people telling her that she’s wrong.
Making a nice living from being evil?
“There’s a lot of opportunities, if you know where to take them, you know.”
Pet Shop Boys
Phenomenon has been around for some time; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_jock
Parts of this may be relevant (and fun)
Alien Super Show February 7th.
“Trump Goes Medieval -- Is Taylor Swift a PsyOp? -- Fox Pitches Civil War & Biden Scandal Fan Fiction”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_g3UFEp_u7U
It seems to be. I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
First of all, it’s hard to be outrageously left-wing. State a really radical left wing policy and people tend not to get angry, they just pat you on the head and shake their heads at how touchingly naive you are to think something like, say, a universal basic income or properly socialised healthcare might be a good idea. If you suggested literally executing rich people, they’d smile and thank their lucky stars that there’s never any chance anyone with those opinions will ever get anywhere near power. Why not? Because of reason 2.
Reason 2 is that the sorts of lefty people who believe the really ludicrously outrageous, unacceptable, fantastical things are not out there attacking the right -- they’re far too busy attacking each other.
cartomancer @#1,
Thanks for that link. It is so on target!
This sentence tickles me.
Yeah, it’s indeed a pretty silly claim, Holms; what would be quite difficult is to express oneself purely in monosyllabic terms. That’s the problem with the sort of reporting Wigderson exemplifies; silly claims that make little sense and are of course false, but sound snippy.
Also, the left has been so thorooughly cowed and demonised that literally nobody has even dared to mention (never mind seriously advocate) a really radical left wing policy -- such as the abolition of private property* -- in generations.
And so we have nutjobs like Truss and Rees-Mogg claiming that the Civil Service, the bond markets, and even the slightly-less-insane wing of their own frickin’ party, are all riddled with secret radical leftists, because nobody remembers what an actual radical leftist even looks like.
I genuinely think we’ve reached the point where some on the Tory right would denounce the actual risen corpse of Margaret Thatcher as a Marxist, because she wasn’t really quite as radical as they imagine the fantasy Thatcher they have shrines to in their basements was. (Also, I think the actual risen corpse of Margaret Thatcher would probably be preferable to any of the various arseholes and chancers they’ve offered up as PM in the last few years…)
(* No, I’m not actually advocating this.)
Hmm… I don’t think that’s just because the left has been demonised. Rather I think it’s because even if you think the abolition of private property would be a good thing, if you’ve got ANY connection to reality at all then it must penetrate your consciousness that most people actually like private property, and that the only way you’d ever get the power to enforce such a thing would be at the point of a gun. Obviously if you’re that left wing I think you’d probably advocate herding Tories into gas chambers or something, so it’s hard to have a sensible conversation about people that far off the centre.
I’ve said it many times, paraphrasing Flavia Dzodan -- my left wing politics will be IN POWER, or it will be bullshit. The right understand this well, I just wish the left understood it as well. Tony Blair did. Thanks to his pragmatism we got peace in northern Ireland, the minimum wage, SureStart centres, gay marriage sort-of (civil partnerships), devolved government and much much more. Unfortunately his footnote in history won’t be any of that, it will be the single word “Iraq”. (Other footnotes from my lifetime will be “poll tax”, “bastards”, “bigoted woman”, “Brexit”, “Brexit”, “Brexit” and, possibly, “lettuce”. Not sure what Sunak’s is going to be yet. “Stop the boats”?) But he got POWER, and brought the people with him. You won’t ever get that by advocating simply taking everyone’s stuff -- even most of the poor like the stuff they have.
Ooh, interesting thought experiment… didn’t have to think for very long, though.
Cameron? Definitely. She’d never have made the massive miscalculation he did trying to pander to the right by giving them the referendum on Brexit. She’d have simply stepped on the Rees-Moggs and his ilk, not tolerated their bullshit. For this reason, I have no hesitation in name Cameron as, while he was in power, the worst PM of my lifetime.
May? She was, in the words of Stewart Lee, a palate cleanser PM, a foul-smelling mouthwash that you swill around your gums before being forced to eat actual human shit. Took the position of worst PM from Cameron.
Johnson? Actual human shit. Worse than May. I never imagined, in fact, that they could possibly find anyone worse.
Truss… do I need to say it?
Sunak? He has the distinction of being the first Asian PM, and good for him. They can’t take that away from him. That’s his biggest achievement, though. That, and managing to not be as bad as Truss, thus breaking the streak. But would I rather have Thatcher? At this point, questionable -- because I think right now the Tories are so unpopular there’s absolutely no realistic prospect of them winning the next election under Sunak, and there’s no realistic pretender who could change that. I honestly think of Thatcher in her prime was leading them right now, it might still be a close run thing in the next election… so no, I’m happy with Sunak there. I think Thatcher would do a better job of leading the Tories, and I wouldn’t want that.
#3 Matt
I’ve been saying that about Pharyngula for years!
Yeah, but the point I’m making is that the right still has a fair population of nutjob extremists proposing things which are equally completely disconnected from reality, who serve to make marginally-less extreme positions look reasonable by comparison, and to drag the entire Overton window inexorably rightwards -- to the point where previoulsy unspeakable ideas like abrogating the rule of law so that we can set up off-shore concentration camps for refugees, or banning any form of protest more radical than writing a strongly-worded letter the the editor of the Times, are now apparently reasonable policy positions held by a non-trivial minority of the current governing party and deemed worthy of serious consideration by all impartial commentators.
Meanwhile, the lunatic fringe has its own fucking TV “news” channel where they froth about how none of this goes far enough, and a deeply wierd bloke who used to be a second-rate TV archaeologist peddles David Icke level conspiracist bullshit that looks disturbingly like actual WWII-era Nazi propaganda with the names changed and the serial numbers filed off.
And on the other hand, the left is reduced to conducting purges of anybody who thinks Labour politicians might have any business on a picket line, or that maybe Israel might have gone a teeny bit too far by killing 10,000+ children in its current round of “self defense”.
The point I’m making is that everyboby expects the left to be reasonable, whilst the right get a free pass to try crazy shit like legislating objective facts out of existence.
I’m not entirely sure what an “extreme left wing” policy that is also harmful and ridiculous would be. Further up the thread people have mentioned “abolish private property”, but as far as I am aware no left-wing theorist has ever advocated that. The Soviet Union began with the redistribution of land to the former serf class, and eventually set up collective farms, but those are not an abolition of private property (indeed, a system with no private property but an all-powerful state is more properly called an extreme feudal system, and is very exploitative indeed).
The most extreme left-wing policies I can think of are a sweeping replacement of the capitalist system of production and distribution with a cooperativised one, a universal basic income, comprehensive universal social services and thoroughgoing wealth redistribution through taxing the rich, so that rich people simply don’t emerge from the society. A 90-100% wealth tax on wealth over, say, £2 million would do it.
All these things are intended to benefit the majority at the expense of the exploiter class. A true left wing policy cannot but have that aim. You can criticize a left-wing policy for being unworkable, or not achieving its aim, but you can’t criticize it for being intrinsically opposed to human welfare, like almost every policy on the right is.
That’s the fundamental difference -- right-wing policies are by definition those that favour the exploiter class, left-wing policies those that favour the exploited class. One simply cannot be in favour of the exploited over the exploiter and be outrageous and ridiculous.
Candace Owens , in fact any Black Republican, reminds me of Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks at this point. And I have ‘paid them no mind ‘ since other than to think that they’re crazy to get in bed with the Hitleroids ! Any woman who supports a Republican at this point, I’m inclined to think has a masochism kink . Sister, keep that to yourself please because I don’t .
jenorafeuer @7 beat me to it. I’ll never forget that Owens was broken by a victim of GamerGate telling her a doxxing app is a bad idea.
An even more pathetic origin story is The Quartering, who became what he is because Wizards of the Coast took away a Magic the Gathering preview card he was given because he was harassing a cosplayer who was involved in a game of Rip It or Flip It, where you take a pack of Magic cards and open them upside down, then you can either blindly rip it or flip it safely upright, and she ended up destroying an expensive card. Of course none of his ire was reserved for the men who were also part of the game.
Anyway, as it turns out, real life supervillain origin stories are ridiculous.
I went to college with Michele Malkin. I didn’t know her, but I did hear a rumor that there was some transformation that occurred in her there. Comments here about people getting “broken” reminded me.
I wish I could argue with anything in post #18.
@cartomancer
These are policies I am sympathetic to.
1. No one has the right to police who goes where on planet earth. (e.g. what gives Americans the right to say no one can come inside these arbitrary lines that are dawn on the map?)
2. No one needs more than a few million to live a good life. People who have more than that need to be taxed out.
3. Ditto for corporations. High profit = High taxes -- accounting tricks will be criminal offences -No one making a high level profit should be allowed to layoff employees for cost savings -- no monopolies. No unrelated company behemoths and “synergies”
4. Kill the stock market as it exists, There has to be better ways to invest in a company.
5. Earths resources do not belong to any one company or any one nation. While a company can make a profit (e.g. an oil company) , that must be capped. All excess should go back to fund things for a better life for people.
6. fixed term limits for all politicians, judges etc. End lobbying.
I could go on i guess. ..Im sure this can be classified as extreme left wing , Its ridiculous because it is currently unworkable, whether its harmful remains to be seen (law of unwanted side effects). I think most left wingers have a pragmatic view too that prevents them from strongly advocating for these solutions even if they agree with the principle thats why you may not hear of them.
He never got a majority of votes cast, so the second part of that is a dubious claim. And he could have done so much more with the power he got -- like reversing the increase in economic inequality, which he didn’t even pretend to attempt, so his claim to be “left” at all is a dubious one -- I reckon he was to the right of Harold Macmillan (for the young andor non-British, Tory PM 1957-63).
Dunc@#15:
We’ve already seen the equivalent in the U.S., where if you present modern Republicans with Ronald Reagan’s actual policy stances they’ll consider most of them too left wing. That’s because, for all his ills (and honing the Religious Right into a political machine was something he actively collaborated with, so he laid several of the cobblestones leading us to Trump), Reagan was still connected to reality and understood that sometimes you have to at least appear to compromise, as well as try to hide the nasty stuff you’re doing that people might complain about.
@Deepak Shetty, 24:
Point by point:
—--1. No one has the right to police who goes where on planet earth
Disagree. I don’t want you in my garden. I don’t want BP drilling for oil in Antarctica. There are a number of cases between those two extremes, but you get the idea.
——--. (e.g. what gives Americans the right to say no one can come inside these arbitrary lines that are dawn on the map?)
er… nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and all the money. I mean, I get your point, they don’t have the right, but they have the might, and aren’t about to not have it, so saying anything about bringing them down a peg or two is just suggesting someone puts a bell on the cat, isn’t it?
——--2. No one needs more than a few million to live a good life. People who have more than that need to be taxed out.
Agree, fully… except, if you implement that, how do you stop people with more from just buggering off to a more billionaire-friendly country, taking their money with them?
——--3. Ditto for corporations. High profit = High taxes — accounting tricks will be criminal offences -No one making a high level profit should be allowed to layoff employees for cost savings — no monopolies. No unrelated company behemoths and “synergies”
Agree fully… except same question. Putting such policies in place would just have the biggest employers pull out and go somewhere more compliant, wouldn’t it?
——--4. Kill the stock market as it exists, There has to be better ways to invest in a company.
“There has to be a better way” isn’t a solution. It’s not even a clear statement of the problem.
———5. Earths resources do not belong to any one company or any one nation. While a company can make a profit (e.g. an oil company) , that must be capped. All excess should go back to fund things for a better life for people.
Again, agree fully.
———6. fixed term limits for all politicians, judges etc. End lobbying.
Agree fully. Not sure how you “end lobbying”, but it’s worth trying to.
Stalin did nothing wrong!!!!! (/outrageous left-wing statement)
[I did wait]
This business of categorising worldviews by a mere 1 dimensional schema will always lead to vague and inappropriate simplifications. Left/right just doesn’t do it. It is silly.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
Agree fully… except same question. Putting such policies in place would just have the biggest employers pull out and go somewhere more compliant, wouldn’t it?
Maybe, but if one big corporation gets replaced by five or so smaller corporations filling the same market area, that might still be an improvement.
4. Kill the stock market as it exists, There has to be better ways to invest in a company.
Something like a stock market would almost inevitably arise wherever there’s people investing in companies. Personally, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, as long as there’s sensible regulations and maximum public visibility. (Full disclosure: I inherited some mutual funds from my mom, though it looks like mostly bonds.)
@sonofrojblake
>I don’t want you in my garden.
Your wants are none of my concern, I suggest you talk to your spouse.-We were talking about national boundaries though.
>buggering off to a more billionaire-friendly country,
They can , and should . I mean if all the billionaires want to buy their own island and stay there, cool Id even agree to let them take their billions if that were the case. Say Musk decides to move , who cares -- He still needs to make and sell Teslas.
>Putting such policies in place would just have the biggest employers pull out and go somewhere more compliant, wouldn’t it?
Lets take Amazon. AWS is great , Amazon the retail site policies suck -- AWS profits can disappear into making Amazon the retail site(or its other offshoots bear billions in loss to further its monopoly. Say you break it up. Would Amazon say fine we are going to up and go to Russia?
> It’s not even a clear statement of the problem.
I dont think I need to spell out the problem with the current stock market , do i ? As far as solutions go -- why the heck does an extreme left winger have to come up with solutions 🙂 ? I am not sold that a replacement is needed -- hence no thought to what an alternate would look like.
> Not sure how you “end lobbying”
In other countries , its usually just called a bribe , and its illegal. The difference between these other countries is how strictly its enforced. In the US though accepting and offering bribes is legal , thats the only thing that needs to change.
Deepak, you are evidently wrong.
Bribery is not legal in the USA, nor is lobbying the same thing as bribery.
cf. https://www.globalcompliancenews.com/anti-corruption/anti-corruption-in-the-united-states/
The concept you’re trying to grope towards is called regulatory capture.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
@Deepak Shetty, 31:
Your stated policy was “No one has the right to police who goes where on planet earth”. The point you missed was that whether you intended/realised it not, you’re describing the end of private property. There’s a bit of planet earth that I *own*. My wants will rapidly become your concern when you exercise your proposed right to come into my garden, and I shoot you twice in the chest and once in the head. You don’t seem to have processed the implications, perhaps that will help.
I have no idea what this is about.
If that’s what you were talking about, you phrased your analogy very badly. Again “No one has the right to police who goes where on planet earth” is not about national boundaries, it’s pretty clearly about ANY boundaries. If you didn’t mean that, well, go on, have another go -- what did you mean (and think carefully before you answer…)
What are you, 12 years old? Do you even understand how tax works? Obviously not. Consider: even with the grossly loophole-ridden tax system we have, 10% of the population pay 60% of the tax. It’s a left-wing policy to suggest that they should pay even more. It’s a LOONY left-wing policy to deliberately skew the system so hard they leave, taking more than half your government’s income with them. If you like the idea of hospitals, schools, roads and so on, you should be VERY wary of scaring off the rich, especially given that by definition they’re the segment of the population most able to simply relocate to somewhere where they’ll be able to keep more of their money.
Tell me you don’t understand how tax works without saying you don’t understand how tax works.
You choose Russia because it would seem obvious they wouldn’t go there, thus making your point. You DON’T choose, e.g. Ireland, like Apple did, because that obviously works/worked, and an example like that would make your point look riduculous. Would Amazon say “fine we’re going to up and go to [other country]? You mean… like Dyson did when they up and left the UK and relocated to Singapore? In short then -- YES, they’re able to do it, and if you made life difficult for them what makes you think they wouldn’t?
I think you can have a crack at doing so in one or two sentences before you blithely assert that it needs killing.
Again, this sounds like the naivety and idealism of a 12-year-old.
Ah, I understand now -- you don’t know what lobbying is, you just know it’s one of those bad things that happen.
You really need to do a bit of learning about how the world works… but then if you were trying to come across as a typical extreme left winger, then the naive idealism and obliviousness to reality is certainly selling it -- excellent job.
@Raging Bee, 30:
Hey, run up a flag -- we agree!
There are two issues with that, though:
1. when Monopoly Ltd. do their big pullout, those five companies don’t just spring into existence magically overnight. It takes time to get back to a point where delivery of goods and services are anything like as efficient as they were before (even if they objectively weren’t that efficient).
2. you need some mechanism to stop the smallest of those five being bought out/taken over by the biggest, and so on until you’re back where you started.
Neither of those are deal-breakers, though -- they can both be managed IF the government in question has the will.
Anti-trust / competition laws still exist in most jurisdictions, and were generally quite effective until we just stopped enforcing them back in the early 80s. It’s a solved problem -- we just threw the solution away when Reagan and Thatcher came to power.
This also applies to this point @ #27:
Again, capital controls restricting the movement of funds between countries were a perfectly normal (and largely effective) part of the international order until the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system at the end of the ’70s. This is why old movies sometimes feature plot points around people trying to smuggle gold or diamonds across borders -- you couldn’t simply transfer a million pounds into your numbered Swiss bank account, and a million pounds in £20 notes weighs about 50kg. Funnily enough, inflation and increasing inequality are actually our friends here, as it’s now even more impractical to move really large sums around in physical form. (Insert Dr Evil “one million dollars!” gif.) International bank transfers are not a naturally-occurring phenomenon -- they are enabled by regulation, and the conditions under which they are allowable can be changed. (Aside: I recently travelled via Doha in Qatar, and every time you come in to land there they play a warning about how you need to fill in a customs declaration if you are carrying large sums of cash, bearer instruments, gemstones, or precious metals, and warning of dire consequences if you don’t.)
The current state of affairs is entirely the result of a series of explicit policy decisions made to dismantle the various measures set up during the 20th century to prevent such things. Those decisions can be reversed -- at least in theory. The main problem is that money buys a lot of influence, so it’s politically difficult.
@Dunc: politically difficult, yes. Impossible? In the current climate, probably. But like I’ve said elsewhere, I have some faith that the generation(s) behind mine will be more inclined to try.
Further to a point I made earlier, when I said:
It’s also a fact that 1% of the population pay 29% of the tax (in the UK). That’s compared to when Thatcher came to power, when they only paid 11% of the total tax take. Since then top rates of tax have been cut a LOT, and since the 2010 increases in personal allowances meant fewer people paid tax at all, so the top 1% of earners were a shrinking proportion of the population, even as they were paying a larger share of the total take.
tldr; it’s complicated.
The divine right of kings once seemed unassailable too… Change of some kind is inevitable -- what form it takes is up for grabs. I try to remain hopeful, though it’s often difficult… That’s one of the reasons I think it’s important to remember just how much things really did improve for a lot of ordinary people during the 20th C, and how recently much of that progress was overturned. Maybe it won’t take 2 world wars and a major depression next time…
@dunc, #15: What actually would be so bad about abolishing private property?
It might have made sense as a concept in pre-Industrial times, in the age of scarcity, when there was not enough stuff to go around all the people and some people had to live without certain things. But we could easily have done away with scarcity altogether, a long time ago, had there only been the will to do so. Why the hell is anyone expected to own a house — which will last several human lifetimes — let alone spend a quarter to a third of their time paying for it? Why haven’t governments built a load of houses that anyone can move into and live in? (We did actually use to have something sort of like that, in the form of council estates, until the 1980s …..)
If you are having knee-jerk reactions about “people stealing your stuff”, consider that in the Age of Abundance, there would necessarily be a whole pile of similar or identical stuff there just for the taking, so why would they bother with yours?
I didn’t really want to get into a discussion about the concept of private property, I was just using it as an off-the-cuff example of a policy that’s as far outside the Overton window as some of the shit the right is pushing. That’s a whole other catering-sized can of worms I’m not sure I want to get into right now.