| From: Thomas M. | 8/16/2022 3:36:04 PM | | | | | | Do you want free speech to thrive? Then it has to be regulated, now more than ever
theguardian.com
A more perfectly Orwellian headline is not possible. |
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| From: Thomas M. | 9/4/2022 11:26:26 AM | | | | | | Trump is a surgeon excising cancerous tumors from our body politic.
Tom |
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| From: Thomas M. | 9/6/2022 10:39:24 PM | | | | | | If Biden wins, that's going to be the power structure:
A Democratic Party fully united with Neocons, Bush/Cheney operatives, CIA/FBI/NSA, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley - presenting itself as the only protection against fascism.
And much of the left will continue marching behind it. Accurate prediction from October 2020.
twitter.com
Tom |
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| From: Thomas M. | 9/18/2022 12:00:09 AM | | | | | | "It's a free country and it's getting freer, to the point of almost total immunity to the consequences of almost any action. It is this way for the few. But for the many, it's like standing up to one's neck in drying cement.
The freedom gap may soon exceed the wealth gap."
twitter.com |
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| From: Thomas M. | 10/7/2022 11:06:06 PM | | | | | | Capitalism and Anomie
A new study demonstrates that foreign direct investment leads to social breakdown.
theamericanconservative.com
Marx recognized that capitalism breaks down social bonds, and he liked that. He felt a good dose of capitalism would leave people defenseless against the allure of Communism.
Durkheim observed the same process at work as had Marx and Engels, but Durkheim believed that rather than giving rise to new, atomized-but-liberated agents, this atomization created social pathologies. He coined the term “anomie” to describe this phenomenon. To Durkheim, anomie was a social condition that caused a breakdown of moral values and an uprooting of individuals from their communities. Durkheim believed that anomie was the condition that gave rise to epiphenomena such as the rise in the suicide and homicide rates.
Recently, political scientist Patrick Deneen has dusted off this old tradition. Much has been made of the fact that in his book Why Liberalism Failed, Deneen blamed liberal ideology for the social pathologies we see in Western societies today. What has been less discussed in Deneen’s book is his frequent implication that this liberal ideology is an outgrowth of international capitalism itself. “The global market,” Deneen writes, “displaces a variety of economic subcultures, enforcing a relentless logic of impersonal transactions.” It is hard not to read sentences like this as indicating that it is the capitalist machine and its globalizing tendencies that produce social liberalism, and not vice versa.
Tom |
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| From: Thomas M. | 11/21/2022 9:27:47 AM | | | | | | Glenn Greenwald with an excellent analysis of Trump/MAGA:
The main problem is utter doctrinal confusion about what "MAGA" even means. So many who claim this label agree on almost nothing beyond hating the media and the excesses of woke culture. Valid causes, but only a fraction of what matters.
There's so little clarity on MAGA policy because Trump's winning 2016 campaign rhetoric often bore little resemblance to what his Administration did. It was filled with old-school GOPs of the type he denounced, who flattered him and thus got their way: The Mike Pompeo Syndrome.
One pivotal moment for this was when Jared Kushner won his power struggle over Steve Bannon. Kushner is pure Chamber of Commerce on domestic policy and neocon on foreign policy. So many like him cynically grabbed the "MAGA" label while continuing Bush/Cheney orthodoxy.
Just go look at what Trump said in 2016 about social spending, tax cuts, foreign policy, benefits for the working class. Little of it happened because he surrounded himself with Reagan/Bush Republicans. They'll use MAGA as a pose, a vibe, but they're Pompeo/Kushner on policy.
The excitement over DeSantis encapsulates this perfectly. It's easy to see why conservatives love him: he's smart, disciplined, shrewd, young, was right on COVID, defies media pressure.
But on policy, he's standard GOP. I'm sure many Republicans want that, but that's not "MAGA."
Trump's 2016 campaign was based on denunciations of Reagan/Bush/GOP orthodoxy on domestic policy and Bush/Cheney/neocon orthodoxy on foreign policy. That's why neocons and the GOP establishment hated him. That's what "MAGA" is. Many who claim that label believe the opposite.
Look at US involvement in the war in Ukraine. The vast majority of the GOP establishment is 100% united with Biden/Dems/neocons: they want full-scale US role. Opposition only comes from the MAGA wing of the GOP (MTG/Tucker) and the anti-imperialist left unrepresented in Congress.
Tom |
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| From: Thomas M. | 4/7/2023 8:52:00 AM | | | | | | “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Ecclesiastes 1:9 |
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