The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians. – H.L. Mencken
I once compared American political parties to a group of boys arbitrarily divided into two teams for some sport, and because the differences between them are practically nonexistent it’s impossible to tell them apart without some cosmetic designator, such as the color of their uniforms; otherwise a boy might accidentally throw the ball to a member of the wrong team. About a decade ago somebody decided to assign the colors red and blue to the Republicans and Democrats respectively; the irony of the fact that red is traditionally the color of the left (in which direction the Democrats supposedly lean) and blue is more often associated with political conservatism (in which direction the Republicans supposedly lean) seems completely lost on the American public, and provides a useful symbol of the total lack of coherent philosophy in either party.
But American political parties are not the only groups whose enumerated principles conflict with one another, and whose actions and policies often directly contradict every one of their stated principles and even work against each other. Republicans claim to be in favor of smaller government …except for the machinery of war and police oppression. Democrats claim to be in favor of civil rights and free speech…unless that speech offends someone or those rights prove inconvenient. “Feminists” claim to be in favor of a woman’s right to control her own life…unless she makes choices of which the feminist establishment does not approve. Marxists proclaim that every citizen is equal…except for the leaders, who are more equal than everyone else. Christian fundamentalists believe that Biblical laws should be literally observed…except for the Old Testament ones about food, slavery and menstruation and the New Testament ones advocating separation of church and state and condemning rigid interpretation of Scripture.
These groups are not based on shared philosophies, no matter what they claim; they are cults, mass movements which require absolute, unthinking conformity from their followers. These cults exist for one purpose, and one only: to win political power for their leaders. Every policy, every strategic decision, every position is intended to advance that one end, either by implementing control mechanisms or by winning converts to serve the leaders as slaves and foot-soldiers. Irrational, unscientific, contradictory policies (such as the neofeminist ones described in my column of one year ago today) are useful for sorting the sheep from the goats: anyone who accepts them without question is a reliable lackey, and anyone who questions them is a dangerous malcontent who must be excommunicated.
Cultic groups are often effective at accomplishing their true goals, though of course that never works out too well for the sheep because the promised Utopia never materializes; how could it when so many of the cult’s stated principles contradict each other? This is why schisms invariably form in mass movements (whether they be political, religious or what-have-you) as soon as they win power: since only some of the stated goals (as opposed to the real ones) can actually be implemented, those who support one subset of those goals must turn against those who support contradictory ones. Conversely, it’s also why groups which respect individuality (such as libertarianism) have such difficulty winning their goals; the only way to please everyone in such a group is to have a small number of clearly-stated principles, and unfortunately that doesn’t attract the kind of mob support that a collection of grandiose “free lunch” promises can.
In countries whose political systems give even small, single-interest groups a voice, sex worker rights organizations have had far more success in reforming oppressive laws than in countries like the United States, where it’s necessary to inflate a great big tent with hot air in order to win any degree of political clout. That’s why mainstream sex worker rights organizations have attempted to utilize the cult approach, promoting a hodgepodge of ideas (many of which are borrowed from neofeminism, Neomarxism and “queer theory” and have absolutely nothing to do with sex worker rights) and demanding lockstep conformity, complete with attacks on those who dare to question the dogma of the “leaders”. This is like trying to herd cats; many sex workers choose the profession precisely because they’re nonconformists who want to be their own bosses.
As I’ve pointed out before, gay rights activists succeeded with the one-issue strategy by expanding their “tent” to include lesbians, bisexuals and a number of smaller sexual minorities grouped together as “transgender”; sex workers need to do the same thing by fighting attempts to divide us into “legal” and “illegal” sex workers, “high” and “low” class, etc; we also need to win the support of true feminists who recognize that a woman’s right to own and control her body doesn’t just mean abortion. Decriminalization can only be won by fighting to get government out of individuals’ private lives altogether, not by demanding it let us alone in some ways, but interfere in others and “protect” us in still others while simultaneously abrogating the rights of other people we oppose. We cannot defeat the control freaks by becoming exactly like them and forming a “Wild Party” whose only distinguishing feature is our red clothes.
One Year Ago Tomorrow
“Grace” is a short biographical sketch of my best friend, whom I’m sure you’ll agree is quite an interesting character.
The Red / Blue thing – it’s ONLY about “beating” the other guy – so your anology to sports teams is spot on. I used to be a Republican – basically because I’m a small government guy and I STILL believe strongly in projecting power overseas – the United States is the new “Rome” … we didn’t ask for that position and we won’t last as long as the Romans did in it – but it’s who we are and jumping off that merry-go-round is going to mean PAIN for the good guys.
However, I got tired of voting for Republicans who campaigned on cutting government – and then, once elected, did the opposite – and grew it. Even Reagan grew government – I cut him some slack because he had to deal with a Democratic Congress but I cut GW Bush NO SLACK for his inexusable expansions of government and debt at a time when he and his establishment Republicans controlled EVERYTHING.
LOL – it’s sooooo …. fucking … frustrating!! This nation was on a collision course with disaster long before anyone in this country even knew Obama’s name! And now, to cure the ills of Obama – the answer is to elect the same guys who blew it out their ass last time? No thanks!!
I’m a libertarian now – such as the state of the libertarian party is. I checked the Libertarian Party website of Louisiana a few months ago and the the damn thing is so ugly and unreadable it almost gave an epileptic attack – so Libertarians may have the right ideas (domestically) – but we sure don’t have our shit in one sock when it comes to media and spreading the gospell!
Believe it or not – THERE ARE a lot of people who identify as conservatives who would come around to Libertarianism. A lot of conservatives really like Ron Paul’s domestic message. The thing is though – they throw up when they hear his tin foil naive views on foreign policy and the bad guys in this world. I’m turned off by them too.
Yes, I realize that Paul is a REPUBLICAN – but let’s face it – a lot of Libertarians hold the same kind of views on foriegn policy that Paul does.
My answer is – GFT out of foreign policy – you can have a debate and a “big tent” there because most of Americans aren’t with the Ron Paul view of that. What’s important – is the DOMESTIC policy of getting government out of our lives – out everyone’s lives. Once you’ve done that – once you have a nation that subscribes to those principles and lives by them – the foriegn policy will sort itself right out.
Also – I have the HOTS for Grace … BIG TIME!! 😉
“I once compared American political parties to a group of boys arbitrarily divided into two teams for some sport, and because the differences between them are practically nonexistent it’s impossible to tell them apart without some cosmetic designator”
No.
See Jost’s 2006 article, “The End of the End of Ideology,” in the American Psychologist. It should be an easy matter for My Lady to locate this through Google Scholar (although I can of course send My Lady a copy if the article proves difficult to locate). Therein, Jost discusses a large volume of research showing that…
* Leftists are higher in psychometric Openness, a personality trait distinguishing imaginative, odd, intellectual individuals from down-to-earth, everyday, concrete thinkers. Rightists are higher in psychometric Conscientiousness, which differentiates between organized, goal-oriented individuals and more haphazard and lazy people.
* In college dorm rooms, Conservatives have more event calendars, postage stamps, ironing boards, and American flags, while Leftists have more music CDs, more art supplies, and more homogeneous libraries.
* Conservatives have greater fear of death, dogmatism, and uncertainty avoidance than leftists.
Ultimately Jost only scratches the surface; Eysenck was far more thorough, and if you can get your hands on a copy of his book with Wilson on _The Psychological Basis of Ideology_ or his tour de force, _The Psychology of Politics_, I would recommend it. There, he documents the scientific studies which reveal a wide variety of differences not only between leftists and rightists, but between members of atheistic, militaristic “tough-minded” political movements (such as Communism and Fascism) and more moderate, “tender minded” individuals. Both liberalism/conservatism and tough/tender-mindedness are known to be substantially heritable, which means that, while socialization does play a role in attitude formation, to some extent political attitudes are also passed down genetically.
All this is a far cry from boys arbitrarily divided into two teams, My Lady.
Fascism is atheistic? Is that why the Nazis wore “God is with us” on their uniforms?
Fascism is not inherently atheistic; it isn’t a party but a method of government like democracy, monarchy, etc. It has inherent characteristics, but no particular religious viewpoint any more than any other form.
No offense, but bullshit. There are no real and enduring differences (as Obama has demonstrated), and the Democrats’ whining “we’re smarter” while the Republicans whine “we’re more moral” is just misdirection from the fact that they’re all fascists in different-colored hats.
I’m not sure the two of your are talking about the same set of people. Mark, if I’m understanding him right, is discussing the differences between the liberal and conservative rank and file. These people probably do have real differences in the way they see the world, unless you believe ~70% of America is one homogeneous mass of authoritarians. But Maggie was discussing the Republican and Democratic leadership and cheerleaders, for whom belief is attire.[0] Unfortunately these are the people that actually set the rules.
For this subset, membership in the team and victory *of* the team is more important than any particular position. And with victory defined as the acquisition of political power, it’s no surprise when expansion of government power is the invariable result. You get what you aim for.
Mark, I’d be interested to see the results of that same study, with the sample restricted to only elected officials at state-level or higher. (getting a useful sample size may be hard though)
Also, how do I insert a link inline here?
I believe you’re correct. As far as I’m concerned, it’s immaterial why people choose to follow the men in the blue hats, red hats, green hats or purple hats with pink polka-dots if those men are going to do precisely the same thing as one another, and I’m incredibly tired of the followers of any one team touting their intellectual, moral or whatever superiority over followers of the other; as soon as one accepts the label “follower”, none of the rest matters because the organizations are gamed to exclude anyone who refuses them blind obedience. It’s the same moral problem as cops have: once a person has agreed to surrender his own moral judgment to that of an “authority”, he becomes at best amoral and at worst immoral (if he supports his leaders even when he knows they’re wrong, as Democratic party loyalists support Obama’s myriad civil rights offenses).
I moved the link to your name, so people can click on it. To embed a link, you have to use the HTML code [a href=”url of the link”]text you want to make clickable[/a] (but replace [] with ).
The link was intended as a footnote to go right before the [0]. Linking it to my name makes it look like my site, which it isn’t. 🙁 Oh well, disclaimer is here, and thanks for the instruction.
I don’t think I have anything to add on the rest, except that it feels like common sense to me and I wish such common sense was more common. My objection was to conflating the teams with the moral positions they claim to espouse (but don’t).
“Democrat == Republican” is not the same logical statement as “Liberal == Conservative.”
Right. Which is why I call myself a liberal instead of calling myself a Democrat. If the Democrats or some third party group would advocate (not just talk about but work towards policy in line with) the “let me live my own life” values claimed by Libertarians plus the social safety net and check on corporate power espoused by (but less and less actually worked towards) the Democrats, I’d join that party and identify with it proudly.
And, like Meghan McCain is always catching hell from the Republicans, I’d probably catch hell from this liberal political party… assuming of course that I ever got enough attention for them to bother saying anything about me.
Although I consider myself a socialist, I’m no Marxist. I oppose Marxism, unless it’s of the Groucho/Harpo/Chico variety. Marx had a lot of idea which worked in theory, but failed in practice.
But in the end, the Marxists and capitalists both ended up supporting the same basic system- A small group at the top running everything, and controlling wealth, and the means of creating it. That’s the exact opposite of what I’m for. I’m in good company, Emma Goldman also opposed Marxism and Capitalism.
One big reason that Democrats and Republicans seem the same is that they both work for the same bosses, the 1%. They both work for the same goals, although along different lines. Both see us, the people, as needing to be controlled, as needing to be ruled, rather than as being the ultimate political authority.
Groups like sex worker rights groups are going to have a tough path in nations like the USA that are hooked on religion.
the Marxists and capitalists both ended up supporting the same basic system- A small group at the top running everything, and controlling wealth, and the means of creating it. That’s the exact opposite of what I’m for. I’m in good company, Emma Goldman also opposed Marxism and Capitalism.
Indeed. Marxists in Spain took farms that had been collectivized by anarchists and handed them right back to the previous owners. The communists understood that any success in worker self-management would spell the end for bureaucratic dictatorship within the labor movement.
Public financing of elections. Your boss is the guy who pays you, and Democrats and Republicans alike are indebted to corporations and unions and special interest groups (the NRA and big corporations being obvious cases for Republicans, teacher unions and yes, big corporations for the Democrats). With public financing, elections would be funded by the American people, and thus the American people would again be the boss.
Now I can just hear somebody screaming “THAT’S MORE BIG GOVERNMENT SPENDING!!1!!1!!!ONE!!11!!ELEVEN!!111!!!” Bullfeathers. The very first time some megacorp doesn’t get a special contract, or some special tax break, all the money spent on publicly funded elections will have been made back, with interest.
I think it can be helpful to distinguish between the purpose of government and the purpose of political parties. Government’s purpose is to rule over you perpetually and coercively through the initiation of violence against you. Political parties are there to use psychological ‘sales’ tactics to trick you into supporting (voting for) government.
The differences between sports teams have to be pretty arbitrary (geographical location, color of kit, choice of mascot etc) because they are required to conform to the official rules of the sport – such as the rules of football.
The differences between political parties must also be pretty arbitrary because they also are required to adhere to the official ‘rules of government’. They must, for instance, stick to the rule of conducting all social organisation through the initiation of force (‘laws’) against the public. They must stick to the rule of having one monopolised and centrally controlled economy/ currency. They must stick to the rule of taxing the public by force and giving a large proportion of the money to military industrial and banking corporations .. and so on. If a political party ever broke these rules it would be like a football team coming onto the pitch wearing jet packs and carrying laser guided catapults.
It is this conflict of interests which causes political parties to be so contradictory and inconsistent. They serve the government, not the public, yet they must also try to attract the public’s vote, yet they can only do this by offering the public a very narrow range of ‘incentives’ (ie bribes) which must not contradict the rules of government. (Offering to exempt us from government violence, although an excellent bribe, is sadly not allowed). These bribes must all stick to the rules therefore be based on the government initiating violence against us – whether to prevent us from doing something by force (law) or to extract money from us by force (taxes) which is then redistributed to certain sectors of society in the form of bribes (tax breaks) in an attempt to gain more votes.
Bribing the public with its own money is of course a zero sum game. Thank goodness governments haven’t granted themselves the power to go into debt, otherwise this system where parties compete for votes by offering bribes would inevitably result in the government getting massively into debt and the economy collapsing – oh wait – I just remembered….
Political parties and their leaders must basically play the role of slick salesman AND violent mugger simultaneously. They must approach us as mafia gangsters would approach the owner of a local bar – offering certain, ahem, ‘benefits’ and ‘protection’ in return for a monthly fee. Except political parties, acting on behalf of the government mafia, are not allowed to be as honest and as open (and perhaps as friendly and accommodating) as mafia gangsters. This makes their job very hard indeed (hence all that political spin and bizarre rhetoric). But luckily for government they do control education and so they can literally train us from the age of four to love government mafia and to give it a special name (‘democracy’), so it all balances out in the end!
And so a big reason why political parties end up emphasising (relatively) small* but emotive social issues (gay marriage, abortion, prostitution etc) is because they have such limited scope for being different when it comes to all of the big issues (the use of violence AKA laws, monopolised economy, perpetual wars etc).
(*Of course these issues are going to be important if they affect you directly. I’m not downplaying them).
Also, endlessly debating these emotive ‘minor’ social issues is exhausting for the public and fills up most of the available debating time, so that there is never any time left to debate the big issues such as “What right do governments have to rule us by force anyway?” And one reason why these issues are so exhausting to debate is generally because government (the blanket initiation of force against the whole of society) is no way to ‘solve’ these ‘problems’ in the first place! In fact often the use of force IS the problem.
And so emphasising these kinds of emotive issues (and interfering in them) are how political parties attempt to give the illusion that they are different from each other and ‘opposing’. In reality political left/ right parties are like two pillars which support government high above. On the ground they appear to be separate (‘opposing’) and spaced some distance apart. But if you look up you will see that both ‘sides’ (both pillars) lean against each other, and they meet (join forces) higher up. They form an arch or a pyramid.
Without the two party system (false left right paradigm) government would be exposed for what it is – a monopoly on the legal right to initiate force against us to do whatever the hell it wants. People would say “F*** that!” and walk away….. just as they would walk out of the stadium if only one football team ran out onto the pitch and started kicking a ball about amongst themselves.
The two party system is just an example of ‘divide and rule’. And yes government is just another religion/ cult used to control society.
It’s funny that people sometimes complain that political parties are ‘just the same’. But imagine if they ever were radically different. It would become obvious after each election that half the population (the ones who who voted for the losing party) was now being completely oppressed (by force) by the winning party.
But with the current system, the difference between the red team being in power and the blue team being in power is hardly noticeable. This should make everyone totally freak out, but it has the opposite effect (mostly because government runs education and makes us incapable of thinking critically).
This is the paradox (the insanity) of government/ democracy/ statism. It is a two party system which is really a one party system (no matter who you vote for the ‘government’ still gets into power). It is shaped like an upside down tuning fork. If it were proper two party system it would be obvious tyranny (mob rule) and if it was a proper one party system it would be obvious tyranny (fascism/ communism). So it pretends to be a little of both… and it gets away with it.
But none of this even matters. The ONLY distinction that matters is between people who advocate coercion and the initiation of violence to organise society and those who advocate free, voluntary peaceful transactions and a respect for self ownership as a way to for society to organise itself. Any other debate is a side issue and a distraction. And usually a deliberate one too.
The more we talk about government the more real it seems to be…. but in the end there is no government, there is only belief in the idea of a government. And faith / prayer (voting) to this mythical social organiser.
In reality there is no government, there are only people and their silly ideas.
I tried to keep it short, I really did! Sorry 🙂
Reading your blog is like riding a roller coaster. This article and the last one were good, but then I read further and I notice you left off that one philosophy. The one that’s really similar to socialism as was originally conceived but was so obviously flawed that no one even tried to make a workable ideology of it. I am speaking of libertarianism, and I am of course kidding.
But in reading this, I think I have realized why Libertarianism is wrong. The government should, I guess, stay out of people’s private lives. But the private sector is not people’s private lives.
To put it simply, economies are guided by some kind of internal moral compass, so it doesn’t come as naturally to humans, as independent contract work, or orgies. Cavemen didn’t have primitive stock markets and acting like leaving well enough alone will work is going to fail just as badly as mismanagement.
In every economic success story, the role of government control plays a key role. Libertarians argue that isn’t the case and try to bring up examples supporting their claims, but even modest research would quickly put their claims to rest. Americans are generally thought to owe about 35 percent of their success to the government, though a case could made it’s actually 39 percent. Other countries generally believe in that the government played an even larger role.
I still think you’re all super awesome and stuff.
The private sector may not always be a person’s private life (though for someone like Maggie it certainly is), but the private sector is the source of all wealth. This is how people like President Obama score own-goals: by destroying private-sector jobs with overregulation and high taxes, they destroy the source of funding for the agency jobs they tout as substitutes.
Besides, regulations that stop business from catering to common choices (such as Bloomberg’s large-soda ban) do very much butt into the private life of every consumer.
As most people here know, I’ve decided to not vote for Barack Obama in November. But I would like to ask: exactly who has he raised taxes on?
There’s so much wrong in your statement, I don’t know where to begin …
In “every” ???
I don’t think so, unless you include government “removing” itself from some controls as part of the equation you’re speaking of.
Here ya go … some reading material on “government control” …
http://www.econreview.com/events/wageprice1971b.htm
This is what Nixon left to Jimmy Carter – Carter further bungled things by simply re-directing government efforts to control inflation. It only got worse under Carter.
Reagan came along – got government out of the business of “chasing the bubble” (Submarine term for wildly flapping the planes in an attempt to gain depth control of the boat) – and we came out of that recession and got a handle on inflation.
And oh, by the way – things got A LOT better under Reaganomics – which even I will admit weren’t perfect but were a damn site better than Nixonomics and Carternomics – and that is not even debateable. I lived through this – raised a family through this and I know how it was.
The four pillars of Reagan’s economic policy were to reduce the growth of government spending, reduce income tax and capital gains tax, reduce government regulation of economy, and control money supply to reduce inflation.
^^ He didn’t do all that – and he used a blended approach in some cases – but he damn sure DID reduce government regulations because I remember Democrats screaming about it as the cause of the stock market crash in ’87. In retrospect – it’s even hard for me to call that a “crash” – more of a blip, certainly – compared to ’08.
If government control is essential to economic success – then it’s a case of “less is more”. In other words – government is playing the solo like George Harrison would … and NOT how C.C. Deville would.
Yes, actually, I do mean that sometimes the government works best by getting out the way and letting people screw up.
The government is essential in a sort of “less is more” way, which is not the same as no government control.
You did just say “used a blended approach in some cases” which is definitely playing a role in the private sector.
I’m not saying the government can’t screw up very, very badly, it’s just it can do things that very important for an economy. It can do those things well, or it can do them poorly but it has to do them very poorly for it to be worse than not doing them at all.
Government isn’t a “silver bullet” … my point is – government itself is often wrong about the problem and what must be done about it.
They just need to learn to keep their dick skinners off things and we’d be all much better off.
Bad news in Europe – look at what is happening there. Trillions being spent there in bailouts when the only thing that can and should be done is – everyone should grab something solid and brace themselves for the crash.
Because it’s coming – and no government intervention will prevent it and it’ll be a lot worse if they try.
That’s also kinda of my point, though it can also get it right a lot of the time and most of the really impressive economic success stories involve the government got it really right.
The Europe thing is kinda of a bad example because the EU made the member nations give up a lot of their tools of economic intervention.
But, there’s Greece and Spain, but there’s also Germany, which has been almost bankrolling the EU and it has a lot of Government power.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s still like AP rounds or something useful. Libertarians don’t accept that in their philosophy.
I’m not saying the government can’t screw up very, very badly, it’s just it can do things that very important for an economy. It can do those things well, or it can do them poorly but it has to do them very poorly for it to be worse than not doing them at all.
When you come down to it, government is bullying, and there are a lot of real problems bullying won’t solve (and will even worsen) no matter who is the target. But that’s the only tool in government’s box, so it will use it.
This is why we need leaders who are much more willing, much more of the time, to refrain from doing anything.
How many tools are there? The only major alternative to bullying someone is bribing them. Governments can do that.
It’s not like libertarianism is appealing to someone’s better nature.
I think the point is … government is wrong just as often as it is right. So sure, maybe you can point to a few instances of economic success that government played a role in – you can also point to a lot of instances of economic FAILURE that government played a role in – and I gave you one with Nixon’s wage and price controls. That was followed up by Jimmy Carter’s own brand of economic failure in the late 70’s.
A broken clock is right twice a day – that’s not reason enough to keep it around.
As far as libertarianism appealing to someone’s better nature … what right does anyone have to appeal to my “nature” at all? Only a statist believes that government somehow serves a useful function in “herding” human behavior.
What positive aspects of human nature is the Chevy Volt – a pornographically overpriced useless “green” car serving? It’s not serving any purpose except to drain our monetary resources.
You assume that government is SMARTER than all the “bad people” you want to control. I assure you – it is NOT smarter and never will be. Government directed our banks to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them – that’s a losing proposition for the “bad guys” in the banks – but you know what – they found a way to make money off those loans. They came up with Mortgage Backed Securities and they made a killing until the economic collapse and then the government bailed them out – they outsmarted the government. They will always outsmart the government.
LOL – one of the things I liked about Marx was at least he was a rational “socialist” – he knew government would never be smarter than the guys who control the economic wealth so he just said “let’s take it from them at the point of a gun”.
Which is the ONLY way the government ever outsmarts anyone.
“….I think the point is … government is wrong just as often as it is right. …”
Yes and the punchline is that it really *doesn’t matter* either way because governments rule through VIOLENCE (laws) and so when they get it wrong they don’t go out of business and get replaced with competent ‘service providers’, as would happen in a free society/ free market.
In fact, when government’s get it wrong it creates a CRISIS which, perversely, gives them EVEN MORE of an excuse to implement unpopular and nefarious policies, than when things were ticking along relatively smoothly. (Policies which were probably handed to them by lobbyists, such as the international bankers and military industrial corporations).
IOW an incompetent government serves their lobbyists better than a competent one! ‘Crisis policy making’ can effectively bypass even the pretence of any kind of democratic process.
And from the public’s point of view, when government wrecks the economy (or whatever) the poor sheeple, who are virtually tripping with ignorance and propaganda from government education and mass media, just get into a panic. The more traumatised, stressed out, confused and panicked we are the less rational we become and the more we tend to seek ‘strong leaders’ to tell us what to do. We sheeple are so conditioned to accept government that even when we know government is responsible for the crisis we STILL look to government for the solution, rather than acting rationally and washing our hands of government and starting to organise our affairs without them.
With our pathological must-be-dependent-on-government mindset, all governments really need to do is promise to “make everything better again” and we will buy their latest range of painful but ‘necessary’ policies.
The logic they use on us goes like this: government ‘solutions’ might taste bad but, like bitter medicine that makes us wretch, it’s for our own good in the long run!
And so we all open our mouths and swallow.
Just look at the gallons of post 9/11 medicine we have swallowed. Glug, glug, glug….
The EU is also a good example of this. The EU was from the start a full blown but covert plan to centralise political/ economic power in the hands of the ‘elite’. It is the new Roman Empire. (Barroso even admitted this publicly).
What Hitler failed to achieve through tanks and guns in five years the EU has been doing by stealth and politics over 60+ years. The end goal in both cases was/ is the ‘unification’ of Europe under a centralised unelected dictatorship and against the wishes of the people. And hey presto! 80% of all new laws in Europe today now come from UNELECTED Eurocrats in Brussels. It’s a dictatorship by definition – only it’s less in-your-face than Hitler’s attempt and gradual enough that most people can’t pinpoint when exactly the takeover actually happened.
So now the EU is failing to stick – inevitably – because it was always a *forced marriage* between incompatible partners from the beginning. In a free world it would just collapse naturally and we’d all go back to being friendly but very different neighbours, but because it’s all ruled through government violence they will tell the sheeple that the only way to ‘save Europe’ is to ‘integrate’ it EVEN MORE ie centralise power in the hands of the elite even faster… and perhaps this time do it on a global scale ie ‘Global Governance’. In fact I guarantee this is what they will propose (they already are if you look carefully enough).
Political leaders are just salesman. Politics today is just salesmanship – it is pure psychology – (backed by violence).
Whatever anyone think of David Icke’s wacky inter dimensional theories, he deserves kudos for exposing this sales technique back in the 90’s. He gave it the perfect name:
Problem – Reaction – Solution
Whenever you see a crisis on the news, take note of the solution being proposed. What you are watching is, in essence, a sales pitch.
interesting take on social control:
I’m attempting to engage with the neofeminist crowd at Taslima Nasrin’s blog. Alas, a more doctrinaire, less thoughtful neofeminist would be hard to find.
I’ve linked to several of your blog posts, but none of the readers there are interested in hearing any opposing views.
You really need to publish some of this stuff: The material is all cogent and utterly quashes these tired old arguments from authority.
You need a bigger speaking space than this blog.
Just discovered this post. I’ve found there to be a certain disconnect much of the time between sw and women’s right activists in the west and women’s rights activists in Third World contexts. Perhaps some of the difficulty in communicating with Taslima Nasrin may have to do with the fact that when we cross into the Third World a whole different set of issues – or ‘contradictions’ if you know Marxist lingo – come into play.
Even when individual activists don’t want to, they are confronting colonialist, class, and basically feudal-patriarchal religious elites, all of which ‘get in the way’ so to speak of the individualist anarchist (libertarian) approach that makes more sense in western contexts. There are just a lot of variables at play and for anyone engaged in practical work in or with those regions, these various forces, and the organized political forces opposed to them – however faulty – cannot be ignored or dismissed.
To put it another way, in a western context, saying ‘women should have the right to make their own choices’ is a meaningful thing to say and work for because women can reasonably be expected to actually be able to USE such a right.
But in much of the Third World, particularly the Islamic world and India, where feudal patriarchy still holds massive sway, asserting women’s right to make their own choices defaults to women accepting what intense social pressure compels them to accept. Often this pressure that keeps people in general and women in particular from being able to assert their individual selves has virtually nothing to do with state oppression; it comes from social structures.
Can we say that their acceptance of feudal norms is ‘their best option’ then? and that they are therefore entitled to ‘chose’ purdah, for example? I don’t think that’s an adequate response. An intense struggle is and should be underway to change social reality and it can’t base itself on letting the status quo remain so long as people consent to it.
Given that reality, it’s not uncommon that women activists immediately gravitate to western feminist discourse couched in terms of women’s consciousness falling short of what they objectively need, that they need to be liberated from the choices that they themselves make – which in a ‘free and fair’ poll under current social conditions would almost certainly replicate feudal-patriarchal religious norms.
After NATO led the overthrow of the Libyan government a few years ago, carried out on the ground by Islamist militants, a lot of women’s rights activists enthusiastically worked go guarantee women a certain minimum percentage of representation in the new Libyan parliament in the hopes that this would open the door to social change. But then the women who filled the slots proved to be fundamentalist Muslims who have enthusiastically joined their male colleagues in sending the women’s rights struggle into reverse and the situation is now markedly worse.
I’m not trying to pick sides here, just to point out that the different social realities as between the west and the Third World often cause people to fall in line with different general discourses. Sometimes, yes, it’s blind dogmatism, but I’ve found through years of living in the region that there’s generally a lot of ‘back story’ behind the way they relate to general feminist discussion.
The religious neofeminist types, like most of the religious, have a hard time realizing that what they believe is belief, and not reason.
Though I liked your other articles I think you should stop talking about politics, since you’re mostly wrong.
“I once compared American political parties to a group of boys arbitrarily divided into two teams for some sport, and because the differences between them are practically nonexistent it’s impossible to tell them apart without some cosmetic designator”
This is absolute bullshit, there’s many studies showing the differences between how a liberal thinks and acts from a conservative.
Also “Marxists proclaim that every citizen is equal…except for the leaders, who are more equal than everyone else.”
True Marxists don’t think like that, you’re probably just thinking about Stalin or Kim Jong il.
It feels you want to tear everyone apart even if you have to force and lie to do it.