Chaos and the Anti-Thread

[Aragorn]

Dreamtimer,

According to this the Right is still the sole problem here. What can't you just admit that this is how you see things like NAP?

Also, perhaps the international news stations in Belgium didn't inform Aragorn that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote here this go around, a black guy entered the White House in 2009 with a 68% approval rating, and his fellow Dems owned the House and Senate for his first two years.

This hardly sounds like America is mostly Conservative. That's because it isn't.

Well, it is conservative from the European and even the global perspectives, because both the US Republicans and the US Democrats sit firmly on the right of the political horizon — which shouldn't surprise anyone, given that both parties are owned and controlled by the corporate world, and not in the least by the bankers.

Just because there is a movement of so-called social justice warriors — American culture is really good at coming up with buzzword monikers that can then be abridged into acronyms — who are most likely not going to vote for the US Republican Party, doesn't make this movement left-wing yet. It's a step in that direction, yes, but it's not quite the same thing yet, given that social justice warriors are more about ethics and social equality than about economics and political liberation. Apples and oranges both count as fruits, but they're still different types of fruit.

True socialism is a negligible political orientation within the USA, and those who were accusing Barack Obama of being a socialist were invariably all to be found among the adherents of the US far right. It was just a hyperbolic knee-jerk reaction to Obamacare, because the US far right is simply so self-absorbed that it considers anything outside of their own ideology as socialist or communist, and those two words are still considered expletives in the USA, given that the anti-Soviet propaganda of the (first) Cold War has made sure that there are nary any US Americans who understand what socialism and communism really are.

In addition to that, if political orientation were to be mapped out on a two-dimensional compass with a North-South axis representing authoritarianism versus libertarianism respectively, then both the Democrats and the Republicans would be located in the North-East corner of the compass, i.e. authoritarian and decidedly capitalist-corporatist.

The Democrats are more globalist than the Republicans, but for both parties, the conditio sine qua non is that it must be the USA which sits at the top of the globalist food chain. Or otherwise put, it is actually imperialism shrouded in globalism, whereby the Republicans carry a thinner globalist shroud than the Democrats and allow more of the underlying nationalism to shine through. George H. Bush for instance was a US Republican, but he too was a globalist, albeit with the same underlying principle that the USA — and specifically, the US banking world — had to come out on top of that New World Order.

This nationalism is also reflected in US American culture, in part because of American Exceptionalism and in part because the vast majority of middle class Americans hasn't got the faintest idea on what living in any other type of culture is like, courtesy of the poor US American education system, which was itself engineered to stimulate nationalism and American Exceptionalism.

So the bottom line is that, yes, as a nation and as a society, the US is actually far more conservative than what meets the eye. It's engrained within US culture itself, even though it has gotten there through artificial means — through the stimulation of consumerism, through an insular education system, and through pervasive nationalist propaganda during the (first) Cold War.

Lastly, what the US is now seeing in terms of societal unrest, is that you've now got a far-right president again — similar to how it was under Bush Jr., but with (so far) less beating on the war drum — and that therefore the relatively peaceful middle ground between Republicans and Democrats is starting to disappear because of the extreme polarization. The only ones who are happy with that situation are the far-right bigots themselves, like Alex Jones, while the rest of your country is in turmoil.



Just my two Eurocents, for whatever they're worth. It's all I can spare at the moment, because my government is trying very hard to mimic yours.

[Fred Steeves]

I get ya Aragorn, and I've always appreciated the more overall global view from cruising altitude that you offer on US politics. However, here on the ground not many people give a rat's ass about the overall view of things, as you well know this is a very arrogant and self centered nation.

Here on the ground, inside the confines of this arrogant and self centered nation, as I've mentioned before, is a virtual holy war ramping up between Our Right, and Our Left. Both sides see it as a life and death struggle against pure evil, both sides are deepening their polarization and hatred of the other, and both sides feel perfectly justified in doing whatever it takes to vanquish the other.

The latest shining example is the ridiculous food fight in the US Senate over this Supreme Court nominee. So far as I'm concerned anyway there ARE no good guys in this, and both sides are full of shit.

[Chris]

This time I completely agree with Aragorn

It's in the name really, the Democrats are actually the equivalent of Christian Democratic parties in Europe, they are to the right of Angela Merkel or Theresa May on most issues. The Republicans have very few equivalents in Europe, they are quite unique in that respect. Even Sinn Fein, which is the Irish Republican Party, (front for the erstwhile IRA) is to the left of the US Republicans on most issues. On current form, the DUP (which is rabidly anti-catholic and anti-European), part of Theresa May's conservative coalition, is the closest thing we have and everyone considers them a bit mad.

I watched Bernie Sanders' campaign very closely. I really liked the guy, even though he considers himself a socialist (he's not, trust me. I grew up under "real" socialism, with the careful and loving tutelage of the United Soviet Socialist Republic). I really don't like it when politicians throw this word around carelessly, it is a swearword in my part of the world and we have the mass graves and concentration camps to prove it. What Bernie actually wants and he should be more clear about it, is a Western-European style social democracy. That is a very different beast and probably the best form of government currently known to us, in that it combines a capitalist market economy with heavy regulation and a rules-based system, to curb its worse excesses. In that regard, it is almost the opposite of socialism, which is about exploiting workers to the max and killing everyone who gets in the way of total control and exploitation by the military-industrial machine.

[Dreamtimer]

I just read the Best word. We (Americans) live in a ‘gerontophallocracy’.

[Chris]

I just read the Best word. We (Americans) live in a ‘gerontophallocracy’.

That's a good one! Although gerontoalbaphallocracy would be more accurate in the case of the US...

But gerontophallocracy would describe the whole world pretty much, I'm not aware of any exceptions

[Dreamtimer]

It's not hard to see that the 'both siderism' is a crock of poo. When you actually take a look you can see that "both sides" are not doing the same thing. It's been a one-sided thing for a long time.

I can't help the language. I could hang new labels on things but when people characterize themselves as conservative or liberal I'll use the terms they use. It make for easier understanding.

When I speak mere common sense and logic I get called liberal. Does that mean I really am? When I have the same person tell me for decades that I'm not as liberal as they thought I was, what am I then?

Answer? It doesn't Effing matter. What matters is the issues. And when a person can't talk about an issue without having a label hung around their neck, what are they supposed to do?

Answer? Keep on talking about the issues and pointing out the Bullshit Both-siderism.

Because that's what it is. BS.

[Aragorn]

This time I completely agree with Aragorn

Hallelujah, a miracle has come upon us!

It's in the name really, the Democrats are actually the equivalent of Christian Democratic parties in Europe, they are to the right of Angela Merkel or Theresa May on most issues. The Republicans have very few equivalents in Europe, they are quite unique in that respect. Even Sinn Fein, which is the Irish Republican Party, (front for the erstwhile IRA) is to the left of the US Republicans on most issues. On current form, the DUP (which is rabidly anti-catholic and anti-European), part of Theresa May's conservative coalition, is the closest thing we have and everyone considers them a bit mad.

In Belgium, one of the strongest parties at the moment is the N-VA — Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie, which translates to "New-Flemish Alliance". It is a strictly Flemish party, in that they have no counterpart in the francophone part of the country. It is a Flemish-nationalist and rather authoritarian party that strives for Flemish independence, and they are somewhat comparable to the US Republicans.

There is also another, somewhat similar party here in the Flanders, called Vlaams Belang — which translates to "Flemish Interest" — but this party is not allowed into the federal or regional governments by virtue of the "cordon sanitaire", which is French and roughly translates to "sanitary buffer". It is an agreement between all existing political parties that they would never enter into a coalition with Vlaams Belang, and given that Vlaams Belang, like the N-VA, is an exclusively Flemish party, they would never be able to win the absolute majority needed for the formation of a government without coalition partners.

The official reason for this "cordon sanitaire" is that Vlaams Belang was convicted of racism. Like N-VA, Vlaams Belang is an authoritarian Flemish-nationalist party, but they go even farther in that than N-VA by openly pleading for secession, whereas N-VA seems to want to settle with a reform of the Belgian state into a confederation, as opposed to the federal state it is now.

And, of course, Vlaams Belang is also highly xenophobic, with the occasional quasi-racist slogans here and there and the just as occasional chanting of Nazi war songs at their conventions. They are also known to have ties with Blut Und Boden — which is a neo-Nazi movement in Germany — and with the Ku Klux Klan in the USA. As per what Fred stated higher up about the holy war, Vlaams Belang is also engaged in a holy war against anything that isn't Flemish and of European ethnicity.

The unofficial reason for the cordon sanitaire agreement is of course that the existing political parties in the Flanders region are all aware of Vlaams Belang's massive success among the lower-educated classes, and that they were afraid to lose their age-old positions of power to Vlaams Belang. All of the tradional parties are thoroughly corrupt, and it has even already leaked out to the press that the three largest traditional parties had already been making coalition agreements and dividing the respective offices among themselves weeks before the elections.

Compared to the USA, Vlaams Belang would be the Belgian counterpart of Breitbart, and perhaps of the Tea Party. For most part, it is a populist and ultraconservative agitation party, condemned to an eternal existence in the opposition role. Yet, the insidious part of this is that many people have in the meantime left Vlaams Belang and joined up with the N-VA, which means that many of Vlaams Belang's ideals — such as the increase in surveillance and authoritarianism with zero-tolerance — are now seeing practical application already, in spite of said party not being in government.

I watched Bernie Sanders' campaign very closely. I really liked the guy, even though he considers himself a socialist (he's not, trust me. I grew up under "real" socialism, with the careful and loving tutelage of the United Soviet Socialist Republic).

Um, the USSR was not socialist. It started off as a proto-socialist regime, but it never actually reached the stage of true socialism, and it devolved into essentially a military dictatorship. And this is what has so far always been happening with each of the so-called socialist revolutions.

I really don't like it when politicians throw this word around carelessly, it is a swearword in my part of the world and we have the mass graves and concentration camps to prove it.

And those are the very best evidence you can find for proving that it was never socialism to begin with.

What Bernie actually wants and he should be more clear about it, is a Western-European style social democracy. That is a very different beast and probably the best form of government currently known to us, in that it combines a capitalist market economy with heavy regulation and a rules-based system, to curb its worse excesses.

This is essentially Keynesian liberalism, also known as neo-liberalism. And that's only marginally more to the left from the US Democrats.

In Belgium concretely, the Keynesian liberals are represented by Open VLD in the Flanders and MR in the francophone region. Both regions also have so-called socialist parties, but there is a difference between them.

The Flemish socialist party is called SP.a, and they are in essence closet liberals with the proto-socialist obsession of wanting to perpetually have a hand in everybody's cookie jar. They can be considered fairly authoritarian — less authoritarian than N-VA or Vlaams Belang, but more authoritarian than LDD, which is an economically right-wing but ethically left-wing libertarian party.

The francophone socialists are much more old-school and sit a lot closer to the original ideals of Karl Marx, while at the same time they are also fraught with all the corruption scandals that all proto-socialist regimes have so far always had to deal with. They don't need to have their hand in everybody's cookie jar because the corporations are lining their pockets already.

In that regard, it is almost the opposite of socialism, which is about exploiting workers to the max and killing everyone who gets in the way of total control and exploitation by the military-industrial machine.

Chris, if you honestly, truly, verily believe that socialism is about — and I quote — "exploiting workers to the max and killing everyone who gets in the way of total control and exploitation by the military-industrial machine", then I must unfortunately repeat that you do not understand what socialism really is. You are equating the behavior of the Soviet regime (and that of its vassals like the former DDR and other former East Block countries) with the ideology itself.

Socialism is an ideology in which all of the nation's resources belong to all people of the nation, and not to any government institution or any private entities — no more, no less. Socialism does not require that there would be a government or a political party, and even less a dictator. Perhaps the best way to visualize it would be to look at how the Native Americans used to live before The White Man™ stole the land from underneath them in the name of Manifest Destiny, except that the Native Americans never stuck a name to their type of society — it was merely what they considered the natural way of doing things.

Either way, none of the revolutionary movements that sought to bring socialism to their respective nations have succeeded, which is why all of them can at best only be described as proto-socialist. And of course, due to the corruptibility of the human psyche — whether it's megalomania, narcissism, dictatorial tendencies or just financial corruption — virtually all of these revolutionary efforts have always stagnated at the point where the old government was ousted and a new government was instated that would then seize control over all of the nation's resources, and that would then keep those resources to itself, thereby exploiting the workers to the fullest, as you say. ("All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." -- George Orwell, "Animal Farm")

This is why socialism has gotten a bad reputation in the West, but this has nothing, zero, zilch to do with the ideology of socialism.

[Aragorn]

Given that this is the anti-thread, I'll just throw in a US-political joke I've just received via email.

Donald Trump is on an official state visit in Israel. While visiting Jerusalem, he suddenly has a heart attack, and he dies. The Isreali government informs Trump's American entourage that they can either have Trump's remains buried in Jerusalem for a mere USD $100, or that they can arrange for his body to be flown back to the USA, which would cost USD $50'000. The Americans think things over carefully, and then they inform the Israelis that they've decided on having Trump's body flown back to the USA. When the Israelis ask the Americans why they have opted for the most expensive offer when their president could have been buried in the Holy Land for only USD $100, the American reply was this...: "Two-thousand years ago, a man was buried here in the Holy Land, and three days later, he stood up from the dead again. We've decided that the risk is too great."

[Wind]

As I've often said before, here in Scandinavia we have social democracy and that has been so far probably the best form of governance in the world.

However, that doesn't make this place a paradise or an utopia, it's very far from it. Life is just as rough as anywhere else if not more and many people like me have had to live in (relative) poverty. That being said, at least we have the basic things covered. Free healthcare (almost), food to eat and roofs over our heads. The system could be much more better, but as the politicians are as they are, the system remains the same or is actually getting worse.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99DY1jcGqI

[Fred Steeves]

Hearing about the different forms of parties does nothing to alter my view of politics in general: No which one you vote for, you're voting for corruption.

When someone figures out how resolve that inherently unavoidable problem I'm all ears, but I really don't think that's possible though, I think the only way to solve that problem, is to transcend the problem.

[Aragorn]

Hearing about the different forms of parties does nothing to alter my view of politics in general: No which one you vote for, you're voting for corruption.

When someone figures out how resolve that inherently unavoidable problem I'm all ears, but I really don't think that's possible though, I think the only way to solve that problem, is to transcend the problem.

I agree. Unfortunately here in Belgium, one cannot boycott the elections by not showing up. They've covered themselves in, because we've got compulsory voting, and while there have been several proposals over the years for doing away with this medieval practice, the system still remains in place as we speak. And as it just so happens to be, we've got municipal and provincial elections coming up again on Sunday 14 October 2018 — that's less than two weeks from today. I hate it, but I cannot afford the fine and I have no desire to go to jail.

The best you can do is cast a blank vote, which would allegedly be the same thing as casting an invalid vote, even though I'm not so sure that it would be. But it's all done by way of computers, so there are no other options anymore.

Your vote itself is anonymous, so they cannot ascertain who voted for what, but you do have to show up — they check your identity card against a list. Likewise, the people who man the polling stations — which are always school buildings — are neither public servants nor volunteers. They are drafted from a certain age group within the local municipality's population by a computer.

The fines for not showing up on election day are quite severe, and even more severe for the people summoned to man the polling stations. The only ways out from underneath the voting or manning the polling station are if...

• You have a doctor's voucher — to be sent in in advance — that you are too ill to leave the house;
• You are at work and you are either not in the ability or not allowed to temporarily abandon your job in order to go and vote;
• You are either on vacation abroad or you are working abroad;
• You are in prison; or
• You've died in between the sending of the summons and election day.

In order to make sure that as few people as possible have an excuse for not showing up, elections are always held on a Sunday, and the polling stations are open from 08:00 until 15:00. I'm not sure how long before and after that time slot the stations are still manned.

I've been voting blank for many years already.

[Wind]

I haven't even bothered to vote in years, next election of the parliament is coming in the spring.

I ask myself, why bother? By not voting I'm voting against the system which isn't really working.

[Chris]

These remarks about voting reminded me of Russell Brand's appearance on Bill Maher's show a while ago, where he put it rather more eloquently than I ever could. I don't know if there's anyone alive today who can talk his mind so freely and with such effortless poetry than this guy.

His bit about voting starts at 3:00

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkFJvHepN2g


This other clip from the same appearance is also worth watching:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NaJdHZSPqM

[Dreamtimer]

"Government of, by and for the People".

Sounds like a phrase which could easily be spun into "horrible evil" socialism.

[Aragorn]

"Government of, by and for the People".

Sounds like a phrase which could easily be spun into horrible evil socialism.

Why is everyone here condemning socialism as something evil when they obviously don't even know what socialism is?