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Post by ganews on Oct 3, 2017 23:05:48 GMT -5
Also, if you take your tacit argument that if the status quo is dismantled in a way that causes suffering, it is therefore inherently unconscionable, then the Civil War should never have happened, and slavery should have been permitted to continue in perpetuity. I think that's a bit glib, but point taken. Still, the perspective of whether a class revolution is "worth it" can't really be judged ahead of time, and rarely is the decision made by those who have the most to lose. By which I mean the poor, minorities, and women, because they usually lose as a class. Maybe a handful of rich, white men get their heads lopped off, but by and large they finish on top. I think we'd all like some more assurances that things will be different this time before signing up for the next revolution. Which is not the same as quietly submitting! Once again the argument is a matter of degree - radical revolution or work to improve the existing system. |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Oct 3, 2017 23:22:48 GMT -5
Oh come on, Puerto Rico isn't falling apart because of leftist policies of radical change. Shit is falling apart because a certain radical right-wing white supremacist is happy to let Puerto Rico collapse, because radical right-wing white supremacists will be very pleased when more services inevitably get privatized as a result of said collapse. Leftists have nothing to do with the Puerto Rico situation, and no one thinks otherwise (I don't even know how you could read that in the selection). The implication here is that one (the only?) way for revolution to happen is for the powers that be to let things to get really bad like with PR. That could have happened early in the 20th century; one of the major drivers of Teddy Roosevelt's policies was that rapacious capitalism should be checked just enough to keep revolution from happening. The commenters I noted seem to be wrestling with the immediate human cost required to trigger radical change toward a theoretically better but decidedly uncertain future. I personally am not ready to chalk it all up to sunk cost fallacy, not while there is so much we as a country can still do for people if said white supremacists aren't in the way. Your selection of comments was literally about the situation in PR being what the leftists have supposedly wanted all along. That's how I could read that in the selection. You're the one who made a comment that made the situtation in PR into being about how leftists are wrong, when they did, indeed, have nothing to do with the it. To the extent that there are leftists out there that want things in the US to get so horrible that there's a literal armed revolution (and honestly, I suspect that's a pretty tiny proportion of leftists), I disagree with them. But I didn't see too many leftists complaining when AHCA failed that now an armed revolution was less likely because now healthcare wasn't about to become even more unjust. Dismantling an empire need not be inherently revolutionary, at least not in the sense of a revolution which causes widespread armed conflict. You seem to be conflating all leftists with people who want a literal armed revolution. But what sorts of things do you think we can do for people if Trump isn't in the way? Is, for example, single-payer healthcare a valid goal, or is pushing for that just a "pony"? |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Oct 3, 2017 23:57:37 GMT -5
Also, if you take your tacit argument that if the status quo is dismantled in a way that causes suffering, it is therefore inherently unconscionable, then the Civil War should never have happened, and slavery should have been permitted to continue in perpetuity. I think that's a bit glib, but point taken. Still, the perspective of whether a class revolution is "worth it" can't really be judged ahead of time, and rarely is the decision made by those who have the most to lose. By which I mean the poor, minorities, and women, because they usually lose as a class. Maybe a handful of rich, white men get their heads lopped off, but by and large they finish on top. I think we'd all like some more assurances that things will be different this time before signing up for the next revolution. Which is not the same as quietly submitting! Once again the argument is a matter of degree - radical revolution or work to improve the existing system. Yeah, but again, I don't think most leftists want a literal class revolution in the sense that you mean it (I don't, for, among others, some of the reasons you outlined, although I'd dispute that poor people, women, and people of color are always worse off on the whole afterwards) so much as "ponies" like universal healthcare, free post-secondary education, affordable housing, a $15 minimum wage, for neoliberals to stop dismantling welfare, for a redistribution of wealth or at the very least the cessation of the rapid consolidation of wealth at the very very top that will continue under Republican and incrementalist Democrats alike, etc. The problem with working to improve the existing system is that it's debatable whether incrementalist neoliberals like the Clintons and Obama even "improve" the existing system overall. Bill Clinton's welfare "reform" was hellishly evil, as was his criminal justice reform, as was signing DOMA, etc. Obama got the ACA passed, but that was a far-right wing Heritage program to begin with, and now, because a Democrat supported it and declined to push for anything more, Republicans have successfully labeled it as "communistic" or fucking whatever, and can point to where it falls short as evidence that nothing less putrid than something even more extreme than AHCA or whatever the fuck can fix healthcare in America, when the reason that the ACA is failing is because it's only marginally better than just a bandaid with some Neosporin on it being placed onto a gangrenous wound. Then you have other stuff Obama did like deporting two million people, or slashing billions from food stamps over the next decade. Hillary Clinton likely would've been no better. So where are all the incremental neoliberal "improvements" in the existing system? Why not just support leftist policies like single payer healthcare, free post-secondary education, a real tax reform that would redistribute wealth by heavily taxing the ultra rich, etc? A radical revolution in the sense that you are imagining of an armed uprising isn't going to happen, very few people actually want that, and those that do have basically no influence. I don't think that pushing for the leftist goals that I mentioned are going to cause undue suffering; I don't think they will cause women, people of color, and poor people to lose out; on the other hand they will almost certainly continue to do so under neoliberal efforts at incrementalist reform. |
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Post by ganews on Oct 4, 2017 7:40:42 GMT -5
I think that's a bit glib, but point taken. Still, the perspective of whether a class revolution is "worth it" can't really be judged ahead of time, and rarely is the decision made by those who have the most to lose. By which I mean the poor, minorities, and women, because they usually lose as a class. Maybe a handful of rich, white men get their heads lopped off, but by and large they finish on top. I think we'd all like some more assurances that things will be different this time before signing up for the next revolution. Which is not the same as quietly submitting! Once again the argument is a matter of degree - radical revolution or work to improve the existing system. Yeah, but again, I don't think most leftists want a literal class revolution in the sense that you mean it (I don't, for, among others, some of the reasons you outlined, although I'd dispute that poor people, women, and people of color are always worse off on the whole afterwards) so much as "ponies" like universal healthcare, free post-secondary education, affordable housing, a $15 minimum wage, for neoliberals to stop dismantling welfare, for a redistribution of wealth or at the very least the cessation of the rapid consolidation of wealth at the very very top that will continue under Republican and incrementalist Democrats alike, etc. The problem with working to improve the existing system is that it's debatable whether incrementalist neoliberals like the Clintons and Obama even "improve" the existing system overall. Bill Clinton's welfare "reform" was hellishly evil, as was his criminal justice reform, as was signing DOMA, etc. Obama got the ACA passed, but that was a far-right wing Heritage program to begin with, and now, because a Democrat supported it and declined to push for anything more, Republicans have successfully labeled it as "communistic" or fucking whatever, and can point to where it falls short as evidence that nothing less putrid than something even more extreme than AHCA or whatever the fuck can fix healthcare in America, when the reason that the ACA is failing is because it's only marginally better than just a bandaid with some Neosporin on it being placed onto a gangrenous wound. Then you have other stuff Obama did like deporting two million people, or slashing billions from food stamps over the next decade. Hillary Clinton likely would've been no better. So where are all the incremental neoliberal "improvements" in the existing system? Why not just support leftist policies like single payer healthcare, free post-secondary education, a real tax reform that would redistribute wealth by heavily taxing the ultra rich, etc? A radical revolution in the sense that you are imagining of an armed uprising isn't going to happen, very few people actually want that, and those that do have basically no influence. I don't think that pushing for the leftist goals that I mentioned are going to cause undue suffering; I don't think they will cause women, people of color, and poor people to lose out; on the other hand they will almost certainly continue to do so under neoliberal efforts at incrementalist reform. I think we're getting at the real crux of the nib, here. When I hear the words "radical leftist", you're exactly right: my mental picture is about 100 years old, or a Bolshevik, or the cartoon of a radical on an old cover of "The Anarchist's Cookbook". Or a couple people from my 20s who really did think armed revolution was the answer, or someone from a Black Block. Yeah, those people have no power. I have been conflating those people with your definition of a radical leftist. Not to completely re-litigate 2016, but I also tend to mix into this group people on the left whom I consider too short-sighted to make rational choices for flawed candidates over total disasters. It's that group that looks to me like they want to burn everything down and start over, to varying degrees of literalness. Do they have power? Well, they certainly got a lot of press coverage. The policies you describe - universal healthcare, free post-secondary education, affordable housing, a $15 minimum wage, for neoliberals to stop dismantling welfare, for a redistribution of wealth or at the very least the cessation of the rapid consolidation of wealth - to me these are not radical. They're on the left, but hell, all this was in the last Democratic platform. Well, it was down to $12 (vs. current national $7.25), free college below a household income level, and using words like income inequality instead of redistribution of wealth, but that's what we'd call incrementalism. We'd have to call everyone to the left of Kevin Drum a radical. I don't think that pushing these policy goals or their next steps (national guaranteed income!) is going to hurt anybody, they are exactly what we should be doing. Also ACA was not the Heritage Foundation program: it's a fairly common but wrong story and it's been around for a while. That's the kind of story that just gets in the way of progress. |
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Post by louiebb on Oct 4, 2017 8:31:27 GMT -5
Well hell. How the fuck did you think it would happen? I swear, people like Philip are why I can never stomach radicalism... "oh we wanted an orderly destruction of the status quo, without causing any suffering." You know, unlike basically every other time revolution's happened in human history. ... Also, if you take your tacit argument that if the status quo is dismantled in a way that causes suffering, it is therefore inherently unconscionable, then the Civil War should never have happened, and slavery should have been permitted to continue in perpetuity. Oh, come now. That's not any sort of "tacit argument" I was making. I never said that that change without any suffering was the standard that must be held to, I simply find it a bit disingenuous to advocate for radical flipping of the status quo while wringing hands about that suffering. Revolutionaries have to be more committed to their cause, which in the long run they see as being beneficial to the people, than to the short-term welfare of those people. That's what makes them radical rather than merely liberal (we can go down the list, from Sam Adams to Robespierre to Bakunin to Lenin). And that's a legitimate point of view! But not one I share. Usually, you just get an "Animal Farm" situation, with the "Vanguard of the Revolution" stepping in to become the new oppressor class, or (at best) something like what happened in America, which was that a bunch of different white men were now the ones collecting the taxes. To your Civil War example, which I think is actually a good counter-argument to radicalism: There's a difference between radicalism and liberalism. The Civil War happened not because of radical abolitionists like John Brown, but because the North was (seen as) moving in a more liberal direction towards restricting the growth of slave-holding. Lincoln was no flaming-eyed radical, he didn't come to office looking to end slavery. But he favored more liberal measures to hit back against miscarriages of justice like Dredd Scott, and make it so that slavery couldn't extend into the territories. The "radical" approach to ending slavery would have involved the North truly launching a campaign to destroy the South's ability to keep slaves, to encourage insurrection. In other words, Harper's Ferry on a national scale. The South couldn't take even the relatively moderate Republican platform, and felt that, though they'd been calling the steps throughout most of the ante-bellum period, the government got stacked against them in 1860, so secession happened. At that point, it's less useful to see Lincoln's subsequent actions, including Emancipation, in the light of a "right-left" spectrum, than one that also includes other considerations such as stances on the authority of the Federal government. And do we call the secession movement "conservative" or "reactionary" in this regard? A case could be made for either, which impacts the character of the war as a whole, and in fact is a better way of thinking about the character of abolition. After all, Gen. Ullman said, and I agree, that "they who fired [on Ft. Sumter] were the greatest practical abolitionists this nation has produced." The end result was, certainly, more radical than what even folks like William Lloyd Garrison were expecting at the onset of the war, but we could say that it only happened that way because the outcome was forced not by the actions of the Left in the end, but by those on the Right. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Oct 4, 2017 12:23:59 GMT -5
below an article on the Puerto Rico crisis, the comments of the day: Philip • 7 hours ago I've said it here before, but: as a leftist, it's really fucking surreal to be unhappy about the rapidly-accelerating collapse of the entire American imperial project. I want it dismantled, not coming apart like a busted jet engine shredding itself and throwing shrapnel everywhere. The way things are going, we're going to cause even more suffering in our collapse. RovingYouthPastor > Philip • 7 hours ago The fact that this is how things fall apart when they fall apart is part of why I greatly tempered my own radical leftism. Wait wait wait how did this start a giant generalized argument? Puerto Rico is one of the most literally imperial projects—we got it when we decided to take Spain’s overseas empire so we could have overseas colonies on its own. And Puerto Rico’s status remains essentially colonial. Sure, they’re full citizens and they’ve voted to remain essentially in a colonial state a bunch of times—though the consensus has changed in favor of statehood after the most recent vote—but they don’t have the representation and privileges of a state, Congress has denied to listen to their most recent appeals for statehood, the whole debt thing is a consequence of them not being a state (and nakedly exploitative), and “Puerto Rican” remains separate from “American” in the popular consciousness even if they aren’t on paper. Puerto Rico is literally an imperial project, and the degree of neglect they’re getting is a consequence of that. |
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Post by ganews on Oct 4, 2017 12:31:35 GMT -5
Since we've made a few references to the Civil War already...
The other day I read some predictable, familiar comments about gun control: it's in the constitution, it's ingrained in the culture, you'll never repeal the second amendment. Fair arguments, especially in the current paradigm, and I've made them myself. But I've got one response - we got rid of slavery. Real gun control will happen, eventually.
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Post by ganews on Oct 4, 2017 12:50:02 GMT -5
below an article on the Puerto Rico crisis, the comments of the day: Philip • 7 hours ago I've said it here before, but: as a leftist, it's really fucking surreal to be unhappy about the rapidly-accelerating collapse of the entire American imperial project. I want it dismantled, not coming apart like a busted jet engine shredding itself and throwing shrapnel everywhere. The way things are going, we're going to cause even more suffering in our collapse. RovingYouthPastor > Philip • 7 hours ago The fact that this is how things fall apart when they fall apart is part of why I greatly tempered my own radical leftism. Wait wait wait how did this start a giant generalized argument? Well, because I instigated it.... It was nothing to do with Puerto Rico in particular or imperialism in general, that's just where the comments were from. I wanted to examine perceived differences in approach on the left, and I think we've got a little more understanding now. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Oct 4, 2017 12:53:03 GMT -5
ganews I think a bunch of ultra-general strawman arguments extrapolated from the offhand, possibly off-topic remarks of some rando internet commenter isn’t “understanding”
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Oct 4, 2017 17:14:47 GMT -5
Since we've made a few references to the Civil War already... The other day I read some predictable, familiar comments about gun control: it's in the constitution, it's ingrained in the culture, you'll never repeal the second amendment. Fair arguments, especially in the current paradigm, and I've made them myself. But I've got one response - we got rid of slavery. Real gun control will happen, eventually. I've been thinking about this a bit over the past couple of days too (not in the context of the Civil War, more in the context of how exactly substantive gun control that can't be quickly dismantled by GOP lobbying can possibly happen). My suspicion is that it will probably take an actual repeal of the 2nd Amendment to achieve lasting gun control. Any sort of ban on specific firearms/classes of firearms/types of ammunition or on limits of how many firearms/how much ammunition a single person can own seem like they could be easily overturned whenever Congress is under GOP control. Likewise if a law on the local, state, or national level were passed saying that one must be a member of an organized* militia in order to own a firearm, or even if a hypothetical future liberal Supreme Court were to rule that the Second Amendment must be interpreted in this fashion, I think "gun rights" advocates would quickly find a way around this. I haven't done more than very cursory research on this, but in the event of ownership of firearms being banned by anyone who was not a member of a militia, I could easily see red-leaning states quickly changing the rules of admission to their state militias (this is different from the US National Guard, according to Wikipedia) to allow essentially nominal membership to said militias for a small fee, and then having application for such membership being made so easy as checking off a box on a form when purchasing one's first firearm, or something of that nature. So while I'd certainly like to see substantive gun control laws put in place as soon as possible, I think that ultimately what will be needed is an amendment to the Constitution overturning the 2nd Amendment. Which seems borderline insurmountable at the moment, but we shall see; the gun control movement may gain influence, after all, I imagine if you'd asked someone in the latter half of the 19th Century if an Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the sale or brewing of alcohol was plausible, most of them would likely have had a hard time imagining how that could happen (not that I think the 18th Amendment was a good idea). And as you said, we got rid of slavery, an institution which was certainly far more deeply embedded into the fabric of society than firearms are today. |
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Post by sarapen on Oct 6, 2017 10:37:03 GMT -5
Point of order: Don't we already have a US Politics thread?
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Post by ganews on Oct 19, 2017 6:04:14 GMT -5
At least the University of Georgia isn't paying hundreds of thousands of dollars so that a neo-Nazi can speak on campus. If my little sister goes to the Georgia-Florida game this year, I'll have to tell her to make a sign.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Oct 20, 2017 19:03:04 GMT -5
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Post by haysoos on Oct 23, 2017 9:53:11 GMT -5
The ban would also make it illegal to wear most scarves or balaclava in the winter, or wear sunglasses on the bus. I'm not sure whether to be relieved that all of these attempts at passing racist legislation are so wildly incompetent as to be unenforceable and get thrown out the instant they hit a courtroom, or continually saddened that such incompetent boobs are not only proposing such laws, but have been elected to positions that allow them to exercise such flagrant asshattery. |
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Post by Lord Lucan on Oct 24, 2017 17:48:45 GMT -5
The ban would also make it illegal to wear most scarves or balaclava in the winter, or wear sunglasses on the bus. I'm not sure whether to be relieved that all of these attempts at passing racist legislation are so wildly incompetent as to be unenforceable and get thrown out the instant they hit a courtroom, or continually saddened that such incompetent boobs are not only proposing such laws, but have been elected to positions that allow them to exercise such flagrant asshattery. I’m listening to the Quebec justice minister on the CBC just now and I will say that her argument for facial recognition as important to communication and security in the use and rendering of public services is not without some merit. She was played a recording of a Muslim woman who explained that a restaurateur had refused her veiled friend service, incorrectly citing the new proscription as applying to all public accomodations, evidently feeling emboldened by it. Nonetheless, the minister maintains, as she would, that they’ve satisfied the relevant Charter accomodation requirements. So who knows if it would be upheld or not. Such laws have survived legal challenge across Europe. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Oct 30, 2017 16:01:27 GMT -5
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Post by ComradePig on Nov 11, 2017 14:00:18 GMT -5
Mohammed Bin Salman is the perfect storm of ambitious and stupid. He just can't help himself from moving on from one grand plan to the next even when the last ones are still imploding on the daily.
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Post by ganews on Nov 11, 2017 20:21:48 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2017 10:21:28 GMT -5
Mohammed Bin Salman is the perfect storm of ambitious and stupid. He just can't help himself from moving on from one grand plan to the next even when the last ones are still imploding on the daily. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm rooting for him |
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Post by ganews on Nov 19, 2017 16:43:58 GMT -5
swagonion any thoughts on the Vox writers trying to unionize? Do you know this doofus?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2017 16:46:34 GMT -5
Vox unionizing is bad, and here's why
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Post by ganews on Nov 21, 2017 13:45:38 GMT -5
A long but excellent read: " 'The Nationalist's Delusion' Trump’s supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination." My only critique is that it wan't just nationalists fooling themselves; everyone who thought economic anxiety was the major driving force was fooling themselves. |
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Post by ganews on Nov 25, 2017 19:10:46 GMT -5
I think we're getting at the real crux of the nib, here. When I hear the words "radical leftist", you're exactly right: my mental picture is about 100 years old, or a Bolshevik, or the cartoon of a radical on an old cover of "The Anarchist's Cookbook". Or a couple people from my 20s who really did think armed revolution was the answer, or someone from a Black Block. Yeah, those people have no power. I have been conflating those people with your definition of a radical leftist. Not to completely re-litigate 2016, but I also tend to mix into this group people on the left whom I consider too short-sighted to make rational choices for flawed candidates over total disasters. It's that group that looks to me like they want to burn everything down and start over, to varying degrees of literalness. Do they have power? Well, they certainly got a lot of press coverage.Pulling on an old conversation... The activist who said "I would rather have Trump be president for four years and build a real left-wing movement that can get us what we deserve as a people, than to let Hillary be president and we stay locked in the same space where we don’t get what we want" is opening a coffeeshop/bookstore. You say that kind of thing in the face of obvious disaster, you better put up big time on the other side. This is building a movement? Good for him that he's personally doing well enough to ride these four years out, instead of wondering whether he will lose health insurance, being personally threatened by the local neo-Nazis emboldened to spray-paint his church, sitting in an unlit room in Puerto Rico because aid is coming so slowly, etc. etc. |
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Post by Lord Lucan on Nov 25, 2017 19:51:12 GMT -5
Mohammed Bin Salman is the perfect storm of ambitious and stupid. He just can't help himself from moving on from one grand plan to the next even when the last ones are still imploding on the daily. Thomas Friedman is rather more sanguine, albeit tactically registering the proleptic, skeptical asides one would expect amidst the admiration. But he had the benefit of a personal audience in his ‘ornate adobe-walled palace in Ouja’. |
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Post by sarapen on Nov 27, 2017 13:36:44 GMT -5
On actually existing capitalism1:
The ridiculous feud between two jillionaire assholes over a tennis court
One guy is the type of obsessive bastard who becomes a self-made millionaire. The other guy is Ike Perlmutter, owner of Marvel Comics and personal friend of Donald Trump. There's accusations of DNA theft, poorly-written extortion letters, possible false flag anti-Semitism, and enough money wasted to probably build 20 tennis courts.
Where art thou, Homo economicus? Show us the rightful path to maximum economic efficiency and ever greater profit. Forgive us our trespasses against the Spirit of Capitalism and save us from this vale of tears.
1. I don't like the formulation "late-stage capitalism" because, really, how would we know? Perhaps we're just in the early stages of capitalism's thousand year reich. This is your depressing thought to ponder for today. |
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Post by swagonion on Nov 27, 2017 21:07:35 GMT -5
swagonion any thoughts on the Vox writers trying to unionize? Do you know this doofus? I support the unionization efforts, even though I, myself, can't unionize. (They're going with WGA East, and as someone living west of the Missisippi, I can't join WGA East, while WGA West ONLY represents screen and TV writers. Boring, pedantic fun!) And I know German. He's a good kid, but wrong about this. |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Nov 27, 2017 21:16:24 GMT -5
swagonion any thoughts on the Vox writers trying to unionize? Do you know this doofus? I support the unionization efforts, even though I, myself, can't unionize. (They're going with WGA East, and as someone living west of the Missisippi, I can't join WGA East, while WGA West ONLY represents screen and TV writers. Boring, pedantic fun!) And I know German. He's a good kid, but wrong about this. Is there a good reason why WGA East doesn't accept journalists across the country, or why WGA West doesn't accept journalists period? Follow-up question: Could you just write all your articles from now on in the form of one-act avant-garde screenplays and join WGA West? |
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Post by swagonion on Nov 27, 2017 22:54:27 GMT -5
I support the unionization efforts, even though I, myself, can't unionize. (They're going with WGA East, and as someone living west of the Missisippi, I can't join WGA East, while WGA West ONLY represents screen and TV writers. Boring, pedantic fun!) And I know German. He's a good kid, but wrong about this. Is there a good reason why WGA East doesn't accept journalists across the country, or why WGA West doesn't accept journalists period? Follow-up question: Could you just write all your articles from now on in the form of one-act avant-garde screenplays and join WGA West? I genuinely have no idea why the organization grew up this way, but I'm guessing it has something to do with WGA East primarily representing playwrights and novelists (and thus being more open to writers of all stripes). |
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Post by Lord Lucan on Dec 3, 2017 23:24:18 GMT -5
On actually existing capitalism1:
The ridiculous feud between two jillionaire assholes over a tennis court
One guy is the type of obsessive bastard who becomes a self-made millionaire. The other guy is Ike Perlmutter, owner of Marvel Comics and personal friend of Donald Trump. There's accusations of DNA theft, poorly-written extortion letters, possible false flag anti-Semitism, and enough money wasted to probably build 20 tennis courts.
Where art thou, Homo economicus? Show us the rightful path to maximum economic efficiency and ever greater profit. Forgive us our trespasses against the Spirit of Capitalism and save us from this vale of tears.
1. I don't like the formulation "late-stage capitalism" because, really, how would we know? Perhaps we're just in the early stages of capitalism's thousand year reich. This is your depressing thought to ponder for today. “Peerenboom himself was a capital "L" liberal and a financial backer of the federal party, which would later help him realize his political ambitions. In 1995, Transportation Minister David Collenette, a friend, appointed him to the Toronto Harbour Commission.” The Liberals are of course a party of Parenbooms. www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Dec 4, 2017 19:58:03 GMT -5
1. I don't like the formulation "late-stage capitalism" because, really, how would we know? Perhaps we're just in the early stages of capitalism's thousand year reich. This is your depressing thought to ponder for today. Or some Philip K. Dick-style time shit could happen and what we're living in is "early stage capitalism", and 16th Century mercantilism is the real "late-stage capitalism". |
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