We Can Work It Out - Politics & Philosophy | Page 110 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Ron Nasty said
There was a stay at home order in Canada, DL, for instance, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told citizens on 23 March (the same day we in the UK went into total lockdown):

We’ve all seen the pictures online of people who seem to think they are invincible. Well, you’re not.

Enough is enough. Go home and stay home … we’re going to make sure this happens, whether by educating people more on the risks or by enforcing the rules if that’s needed.

Canada wanted to avoid using their “Emergency Powers Act” for the first time, which they would’ve needed to to make the stay at home message mandatory, but Canadians definitely got strong messages from their powers that be to stay at home.

Good point. However, that’s an advisory, not an order, as an order would give police the authority to fine or arrest violators.

As much as I would like it, I highly doubt there will be a successful third party run for the presidency anytime soon. There quite simply isn’t any other party in the US with the national infrastructure or funding to be able to pull off something like that soon, and it’s not easy to build that kind of thing in only four years. In the long term, I’d like to see progressive Democrats build their own party in unity with the Democratic Socialists of America or a similar organisation, but I doubt that could happen by 2024.

In my opinion, progressives should mostly be focused on down-ballot primaries and elections so as to establish a real presence within state legislatures and Congress itself, as this seems to be where they are most effective. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I can’t help but feel that concentrating so much on trying to get Bernie the nomination did the left a disservice this year – the presidency was always going to be a longshot, whereas winning congressional primaries seems to be going pretty well and if it continues will allow the left to become a voting bloc significant enough to start affecting real change. 

50yearslate said
Ok, but Teddy Roosevelt ran more than a century ago and Perot didn’t even win any electoral votes… and 15% of the vote won’t get someone elected, it’ll just take away votes from Biden.  

Good point but the goal would be to both scare the living hell out of the corporatist duopoly and gain traction over time until you win.

QuarryMan said
At this stage it seems like Trump is going to refuse to leave office if he loses the election, but assuming he does lose and then leave office quietly, it’s very much up in the air where thinks could go on the Democratic/third party side of things.

While i think he’ll try to steal the election by limiting the number of mail-in votes counted, i don’t see him refusing to leave office. If he loses, he’ll probably just claim that he has better things to do and just leave peacefully.

Biden is pretty old and senile, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he steps aside for Kamala by 2024, and then hopefully we’ll have a more progressive challenger to either of them for the nomination in that year (though I wouldn’t be confident about their chances).

While it’s certainly possible, i don’t think it’ll happen since presidents rarely choose not to seek re-election and even if it does, the DNC has a long history of making sure neoliberal corporatists get the nomination, so Kamala will likely narrowly win.

On the Republican side I can see it going one of three ways by the time Trump’s out of the picture – one of Trump’s kids continues the dynasty, Tucker Carlson or someone similar runs on a more populist platform for continuity there, or it’ll return to someone like Marco Rubio who is much more of a polished and presentable neocon. If the latter scenario pans out, I could see it as part of a long term Republican strategy to expand their coalition into a Latino base, as right now their wedge issue that holds their coalition together (abortion) is looking like it could be dealt with by SCOTUS and thus no longer be a viable way of uniting a winning coalition.

I really hope it’s the 3rd one since the left would be much more willing to vote Green if it was Kasich or Romney vs Biden vs AOC than if it were Trump Jr. or Carlson vs Biden vs AOC due to establishment Republicans being very similar to establishment Democrats.

As for your last point, i don’t see the Supreme Court overturning Roe V. Wade since neither Reagan nor Bush was able to in their 8 years in office and even if they do, it would leave the decision to the states so the Republicans would still be able to unite on a federal abortion ban.

However, it would be really nice if the issue of abortion stopped becoming a key issue for both parties since there’s a lot of pro-choice Republicans and pro-life Democrats who are completely ostracized from their party due to their disagreement on this one issue.

The closest we got was Planned Parenthood V. Casey in 1992 when we had 8 Republicans and Byron White, a pro-life Democrat, in the courts.

However, even this wasn’t enough to overturn Roe V. Wade, although it modified it so states are only required to allow abortions until fetal viability.

I think personally if I could snap my fingers and make everyone in the world instantly understand just one concept, it would be that of neoliberalism. In my opinion, it’s the most crucial piece of the puzzle if you want to understand the history of the last fifty years. 

I would posit a different definition, however. Based on my understanding, neoliberalism is a style of economics based around the belief that the free market is the best way to run the economy. In practice, it represents a push towards a specific set of policies, including but not limited to deregulation, austerity, privatisation, globalisation and financialisation, with the overall goals of reducing the role of government in the economy and letting the market work unrestricted. 

QuarryMan said
I think personally if I could snap my fingers and make everyone in the world instantly understand just one concept, it would be that of neoliberalism. In my opinion, it’s the most crucial piece of the puzzle if you want to understand the history of the last fifty years.

I would posit a different definition, however. Based on my understanding, neoliberalism is a style of economics based around the belief that the free market is the best way to run the economy. In practice, it represents a push towards a specific set of policies, including but not limited to deregulation, austerity, privatisation, globalisation and financialisation, with the overall goals of reducing the role of government in the economy and letting the market work unrestricted.

Looking back, that’s probably a better definition than mine.

What’s confusing about defining neoliberalism is that they’re liberal (AKA libertarian) on regulation but not necessarily on taxation, so a lot of the definitions online that describe it as liberalism with an emphasis on economic freedom are misleading because neoliberalism actually split the economic portion of the political compass in two.

lovelyritametermaid said

3. It’s built around maximizing profit rather than actually caring about people:

I can’t think of any ideology more selfish than neoliberalism. Even fascists (as awful as they are) care about their people but to neoliberals, you’re worthless unless they can financially benefit from your existence.

Yep. The whole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality that comes with neoliberalism is entirely toxic, especially for those who don’t have the privilege of being able to do so. You here these “inspirational” stories of Americans getting out of decrepit socioeconomic conditions just with “hard work” and “motivation”, but these are cherry-picked just for the defense of neoliberalism– “you don’t like being homeless and starving? Can’t find a job/can’t work because of a disability? Can’t afford the skyrocketing prices of privatized healthcare? Just work harder! Stop being lazy!” It’s these ideas that really make me fume.

Couldn’t agree more, they’ll gladly show off that 1 person who went from being homeless to a CEO like as if it’s the norm but ignore the millions of people struggling to afford rent or the millions that can’t afford their medical bills (with some losing their house or even going to prison over it).

4. Identity politics:

While classical liberals despise identity politics, neoliberals love it because it distracts people while they do horrible things.

Yep– its all a performance for them. Neoliberal feminism especially gets on my nerves.

Definitely, pop feminism pushes all real women’s issues aside and instead focuses on nonsense like complaining about cartoon characters not wearing enough clothing and even on the rare occasion where they talk about a real issue, they use so much hyperbole that the issue no longer seems genuine.

For example, women make less on average over men because they’re often discouraged from entering higher paying fields. If you explain the wage gap like this, it seems like a pretty reasonable point and it’s much easier to convince people that the wage gap exists.

However, pop feminists like to claim that women get paid less FOR THE SAME WORK, which discourages people from believing that there’s a wage gap because this rarely (if ever) happens and has been illegal since 1963 so even if it were true, there’s nothing that can be done about it.

In fact, neoliberal identity politics are a great recruitment tool for the alt-right, as having women and minorities complain about trivial nonsense makes them look bad and also discourages many on the right from caring about genuine examples of bigotry because they spent too much time crying wolf.