The opinions of morons don't count. — StreetlightX

Actually, they did count. They elected Trump. So you stand corrected.

But sure, keep up the propaganda. — StreetlightX

Are you a Trumpette? Or worse, are you one of those people who pretends to moderation like Joe Mansion? Or something else? Hopefully you are not a Trumpette. I'd have to stop giving you oxygen.

Maybe one day people like you will look into Biden's congressional record, but I don't hold out much hope. — StreetlightX

Yeah, he was/is a real Hitler. LOL!

Amazing.

And people wonder why Trump remains a threat - they think he is some kind of aberration, and not cut from exactly the same fabric as Biden is.

And people wonder why Trump remains a threat. — StreetlightX

No, we don't wonder. I already corrected you on that point:

The opinions of morons don't count.
— StreetlightX

Actually, they did count. They elected Trump. So you stand corrected. — James Riley

Morons, racists, white nationalists and fascist are the reason he remains a threat.

Ok buddy :)

Ok buddy :) — StreetlightX

YEA! Another covert! Vote liberal!

Why vote cancer? Seems like a terrible idea.

Why vote cancer? Seems like a terrible idea. — StreetlightX

Yes, voting cancer would be a terrible idea! That would be like voting for Covid! Learn how to read, silly.

That's why I said "vote liberal." Liberal is not cancer. Liberal is the fount of all that is good, including that which conservatives now want to conserve, and which their forebears fought against.

Liberal is the fount of all that is good, including that which conservatives now want to conserve, and which their forebears fought against. — James Riley

:lol:

Keep going, Kim Ill James.

Also what is it about liberals and Hitler? If he didn't exist, I'd imagine liberals would have to invent him because otherwise they would have no way to orient themselves politically.

Keep going, Kim Ill James. — StreetlightX

Name one man-made thing you like that was not brought to you by liberals over the kicking and screaming of conservatives at the time of it's genesis.

Also what is it about liberals and Hitler? If he didn't exist, I'd imagine liberals would have to invent him because otherwise they would have no way to orient themselves politically. — StreetlightX

I can't speak for all liberals, because I'm not as magnanimous as they are. But I think you are correct. Hitler makes a good reference point and if he didn't exist, we'd have to use someone older, like Nathen Bedford Forrest, or Mitch McConnel. :rofl:

Liberals never gave anyone anything, apart from maybe worldwide colonial genocide in pursuit of capitalist profits. Anything every wrested from the powers of conservatism was done so by the exercise and threat of violence by the working class the world over.

Also American 'liberals' simply are conservatives by any sensible measure, so it's not really a distinction worth any difference.

Liberals never gave anyone anything, — StreetlightX

I guess you don't know your history. Liberals gave you all that is good. It was conservative forces (and their bitch, religion) which maintained all that was bad that liberals were trying to move on from.

Anything every wrested from the powers of conservatism was done so by the exercise and threat of violence by the working class. — StreetlightX

Actually, no. Liberals enticed the cowardice of conservativism to come out from under their rock and invest their ill-gotten gains. But they could only do it by agreeing to protect the cowards from having to take personal responsibility for their own actions. You see, they aren't really risk-takers unless they can hide behind the big government skirts (i.e. corporate veil).

To the extent liberals wrested anything with violence, it was just the return of stolen labor and/or capital.

I guess you don't know your history. Liberals gave you all that is good. — James Riley

It's crazy that Americans think only other countries engage in propaganda.

I love this. I didn't realize parodies could be this real.

It's crazy that Americans think only other countries engages in propaganda. — StreetlightX

We don't think that. We know full well Trump and his acolytes are masters at propaganda. Of course, they have help from Putin, et al, but still. If there weren't a home-grown conservative apatite for it, it wouldn't work.

I love this. I didn't realize parodies could be this real. — StreetlightX

I didn't realize you thought all liberals and all Americans . . . blah blah blah. You'd fit right in with the Trumptettes, if you already aren't one. Say, are you a Trumpette? Just want to know if I should ignore you or not.

Say, are you a Trumpette? Just want to know if I should ignore you or not. — James Riley

That would ruin the fun. I much prefer watching you spin in incomprehension from inside the little parochial political box you've set up for yourself.

That would ruin the fun. — StreetlightX

Oh, I get it. You're a fucking troll. Same difference. Trump is a troll too. That's what half his minions like about him. Oh well, you outed yourself even if you were trying not to. DOH! Fucking moron. Bye!

P.S. Look at the thread title. Can't spell liberal and can't spell Trump. Illiterate to boot.

Says the propaganda box spinning peans about liberalism and haiographies of Biden :lol:

Anyway, everyone remember the time Biden trapped students in inescapable debt at the behest of credit card companies and enabled sexual abusers on the supreme court? Can't forget the global warcrimes he heartily supported too. And now a Trump accelerant. Ah, good times. Just a small sampling too. Wonder where all the liberals who cried crocodile tears at Trumps 'kids in cages' went since Biden continued the border policies whole cloth. Such a mystery. It's like liberals believe in nothing so long as they are comfortable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZbhC6tWhbQ

Hmmm, I think the rich harvest for Trump and other populists is begotten from the ashes of the progressive factons tearing each other to pieces... ;)

The ideals of social democracy have been forgotten. In the words of an old Dutch Prime Minister, the equal distribution of knowledge, income and power... Nowardays one side wants liberalism, social but also economic, a second side revolution and a third (which I did not see on the preceding pages) the recognition of diversity in language. None of these views cater to actual needs of people who have to make ends meet in an increasingly complex and alien world.

If Trump is good for one thing, it's that he makes clear who the enemy is. The political field becomes arrayed in a very neat way. The mushy liberal 'consensus' of the 90s and 00s - which just so happened to mark the definitive triumph of neoliberalism - gave way to show that the whole thing was rotten to begin with. Social democracy hasn't been forgotten, so much as its been shown to be a facade stung together by tape as workers lost their rights, pay stagnated, inequality ratcheted up, state supports dismantled, debt became structural, and the Global South was left to rot by the Global North - all long before Trump came to the scene. Trump is nothing but a crest on this wave, but he does a good job defining its contour. Biden on the other hand is like a band-aid tossed into the ocean, right after he finished propelling the waves.

↪Tobias If Trump is good for one thing, it's that he makes clear who the enemy is. The political field becomes arrayed in a very neat way. The mushy liberal 'consensus' of the 90s and 00s - which just so happened to mark the definitive triumph of neoliberalism - gave way to show that the whole thing was rotten to begin with. Social democracy hasn't been forgotten, so much as its been shown to be a facade that stung together by tape as workers lost their rights, pay stagnated, inequality ratcheted up, state supports dismantled, debt became structural, and the Global South was left to rot by the Global North - all long before Trump came to the scene. Trump is nothing but a crest on this wave, but he does a good job defining its contour. — StreetlightX

I fundamentally agree with you, but disagree with your rendition of social democracy. That might be due to the mistranslation of political terms in US and Western European political idom. In US politics there is nothing like social democracy, although I think Sanders tried to introduce its corse tenets in US politics. Social democracy, essentially, is about realising socialist aims without revolution or a dictatorship of the proletariat, which brought it into head on collision with communist parties in Europ, especially in the German Weimar Republic. After the war it was a strong force in Western European politics, forming the Western welfare states. In the Netherlands at least it reached its zenith in the latter 1970s wwith a socially progressive and economically egalitarian government.

In the 1980s, under the spectre of recession, the backlash came. Market capitalism became dominant, under the influence of chicago school economics, shareholder caitalism as well as the world leaders of the time, Reagan and Thatcher. The traditional social democractic parties, the labour party in the Netherlands, but also in the UK and the SPD in Germany, embraced the 'liberal' ideas, more akin to US politics and embarked on a kind of social liberalism. That is what I meant with the 'forgetting'of social democratic values. The'facade' was not social democracy of the late 1960s and 1970s, but the turn towards some form of social lieralism, which indeed marginalized the working class. There we are very in agreeent.

In the debate above this option has also been forgotten. We are presented with a choice between liberalism and revolution, scylla and Charibdis. Academic freedom, irony an a kind of magnanimous tranquility do not seem safe with the current brand of revolutionaries. I think they are essentially conservative and essentialist, but that is another debate.

Ah, that social democracy. I think Benjamin made the right measure of it long ago:

The conformism which has marked the social Democrats from the beginning attaches not only to their political tactics but to their economic views as well. Nothing has so corrupted the German working class as the notion that it was moving with the current... Social Democratic theory and to an even greater extent its practice were shaped by a conception of progress which bore little relation to reality but made dogmatic claims. Progress as pictured in the minds of the social Democrats was, first of all, progress of humanity itself (and not just advances in human ability and knowledge). Second, it was something boundless (in keeping with the infinite perfectibility of humanity). Third, it was considered inevitable— something that automatically pursued a straight or spiral course.

In other words, it trades on an optimism that was always bound to fail on account of its inability to grasp that class warfare will always be waged - and won - by those who always had a far more realistic understanding of how power works in society: the capitalist class. It's the same reason Sanders failed. He played by the rules as every institutional weapon was brought to bear upon him even as he had mass support. The Democrats would rather Trump win than ever let a man like Sanders near the presidency. They play on the same side. Ditto Corbyn. That will always be the record of social democracy, agreeable as it is. It cannot reciprocate the class war that will always always always be waged upon it.

The Democrats would rather Trump win than ever let a man like Sanders near the presidency. — StreetlightX

It's awesome that nobody mentions that Sanders is a Jew. If he'd been the Democratic candidate, we would have heard about that over and over. It would have been so disgusting.

You heard glimmers of it when there was talk of his "annoying voice" and his "scolding tone" or whatever phrases I half-remember from the time. It was definitely in the wings.

You heard glimmers of it when there was talk of his "annoying voice" and his "scolding tone" or whatever phrases I half-remember from the time. It was definitely in the wings. — StreetlightX

Yep.

Yes yes @StreetlightX indeed, that very same social democracy. When did Benjamin write, the 1920s the 1930s? Ohh so full of romanticism the German nation was, on the left and the right. Class warfare needs to be mitigated. The alternative is to bank on some sort of final victory of the working classes, but that is as ridiculous an idea as the end of history is. A new elite will simply grab the reighns of power. Exactly because class warfare will always be waged it needs to be channeled, encapsulated in discourse and consesus policies and, most importantly, the circumstances of the least well off need to improve most. (apologies for the rawlsian echo, was not intentional ;) )

When did Benjamin write, the 1920s the 1930s? — Tobias

1940 - the same year he took his life while running from the Nazis. You can read the whole thing here. As for the rest, one only has to look at just where the attempts to 'channel class warfare and encapsulate it in discourse and consensus politics' have gotten us. Here. That to me is more utopian than any revolutionary aspiration. To look at everything burning down and say that we just need a bit more of this. Power always wins. The arc of history bends to the barrel of a gun. Only question is who has it.

As for the rest, one only has to look at just where the attempts to 'channel class warfare and encapsulate in discourse and consensus politics' have gotten us. Here. — StreetlightX

I am less pessimistic. Not all is well, by no means, but not all is terrible either. Never before did so many people enjoy a comfortable life. We have miracles at our disposal people 100 years ago could only dream about. No modern times is not without its problems but it never was. The endless fight for the gun wil just be that, an endless fight for the gun and in the process millions get shot and die. As did Walter Benjamin, by his own hand in a society deeply embroiled in 'the struggle for the gun'.

The endless fight for the gun will just be that, an endless fight for the gun and in the process millions get shot and die. — Tobias

Not if we win :blush: