tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post9177690358596768397..comments2024-01-08T04:16:25.601-08:00Comments on Ché (What You Call Your) Pasa: "Faux-gressives"Ché Pasahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-66747645429441809162011-08-22T07:37:39.764-07:002011-08-22T07:37:39.764-07:00True that.
The scope of the con this time is so e...True that.<br /><br />The scope of the con this time is so enormous they like to claim: <i>Nobody's right if everybody's wrong...</i>, so laugh while you can...<br /><br />Somehow I doubt the White House is in a mood to listen to people like you or me if they send out their polemicists and propagandists to slice and dice someone like Brother Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman -- who has long offered the gentlest suggestions on matters economic. <br /><br />Chop-chop!Ché Pasahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-53600082581548197682011-08-21T21:02:13.669-07:002011-08-21T21:02:13.669-07:00"The technocrat serves Power. And if Power is..."The technocrat serves Power. And if Power is only recognized to be in the hands of one or another faction of Rightists/fascists, then the technocrat finds a way to serve -- while trying to maintain some sort of "leftist" cred for the day when the pendulum finally swings back that way.<br /><br />Practical to a fault."<br /><br />Can you send that to the White House? <br /><br />:>)<br /><br />That is very well put. <br /><br />As in, if we were magically somehow in lefty land, Obama and other technocratic Dems would be serving <i>that</i> power instead. <br /><br />Kinda like salesmen. Say, car salesmen. Their absolute favorite all time car is the one made by the owners they serve at that moment in time.Cuchulainnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-28593241285244006242011-08-21T16:44:05.169-07:002011-08-21T16:44:05.169-07:00I'm sure that all those who are joining in the...I'm sure that all those who are joining in the debate over "Left Neo-Liberalism" know that the matter under discussion is self-contradictory. Well. They must. They can't be that out of touch. Like the rest of us, they have Teh Google. <br /><br />But it's clear enough that part of the exercise is intended to reconcile opposites, something like the Obama White House is trying to do. Shouldn't it be possible to maintain an adequate <i>market based</i> social safety net -- hey!*idea!* -- while hobbling democracy so that the wrong sort of people don't get it in their heads that they have power and authority?<br /><br />In other words, their argument devolves into finding a means to doll up capitulation to Neo-Liberal Power, since the only alternative to it is Neo-Conservative.<br /><br />Put another way, there is no Left. <br /><br />The technocrat serves Power. And if Power is only recognized to be in the hands of one or another faction of Rightists/fascists, then the technocrat finds a way to serve -- while trying to maintain some sort of "leftist" cred for the day when the pendulum finally swings back that way.<br /><br />Practical to a fault.Ché Pasahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-91036849902866267422011-08-21T11:51:17.881-07:002011-08-21T11:51:17.881-07:00I had never seen the term until I read the piece i...I had never seen the term until I read the piece in Crooked Timber. It makes zero sense to me as well. <br /><br />"neoliberal" is a rightist economic vision. It's Thatcher/Reagan/Chicago School, etc. <br /><br />Slash taxes, subsidize business via the tax code, privatize the hell out of everything, deregulate everything in sight, and when it all goes south, blame the government for not following this very prescription. <br /><br />That's another stunning aspect of it. Its advocates believe they can fool the public whenever it fails. They're mostly right, tragically. <br /><br />I keep bumping into people who actually think Greece, Ireland, Portugal, et al, got into trouble because they had too much Keynesian stimulus. And when it comes to America, these same people confuse and conflate deficit spending (due to massive tax cuts and endless wars) with Keynesian economics. They don't ponder <i>how</i> the money was spent or who got to spend it. Did it go toward "demand" or "supply"? To them, it doesn't matter. If it failed, it's Keynesian. If it succeeds, it's just capitalism doing what it is supposed to do. <br /><br />We have all of this access now to a wealth of knowledge, with the click of a mouse button, but it seems like people are more ignorant now than ever before.Cuchulainnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-81337845945926056572011-08-21T09:19:57.807-07:002011-08-21T09:19:57.807-07:00Oh dear. Drum and Yglesias pontificating. The mind...Oh dear. Drum and Yglesias pontificating. The mind congeals. <br /><br />How on earth did "neo-liberalism" become conflated with any version of "the left?" This is just absurd on its face, and of course the conflation is what fuels the endless dispute among that effete class of... well, I wanted to say "idiots," but that would be rude; after all, most of them have their doctorates! <br /><br />Now questions of who should be first against the wall, though, that's another question altogether... <br /><br />What I can say in defense of many online "progressives" is that they can and sometimes do acknowledge the potential that actual people are likely to be affected by whatever policies they are advocating. <br /><br />There are no people at all in the airy confections being inflated and deflated among the the cognoscenti pondering the "question" of Left Neo-Liberalism.<br /><br />It's stunning.Ché Pasahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-26774432054933802932011-08-20T19:58:20.164-07:002011-08-20T19:58:20.164-07:00Ché,
You might be interested in this exchange, ov...Ché,<br /><br />You might be interested in this exchange, over at Crooked Timber. I know they're just labels, but it may be that your "progressives" are similar to "left-neoliberals." For whatever that's worth:<br /><br />http://crookedtimber.org/2011/08/05/the-problem-with-left-neoliberalism/<br /><br />I also think you're probably correct that when this whole thing blows up, we on the left may just lose again. The energy is on the right, as you've mentioned. They're more determined, obviously better funded, better organized, and more easily led. Their goals sync up naturally with the existing power structure as well. <br /><br />The left, OTOH, has a tradition of being cats who won't be herded. I think Mario Savio complained about this in his day, if memory serves. <br /><br />(It's both a sign of our evolution and maturity that we won't be led by the nose, but it also makes achieving our goals rather difficult, if not impossible.)<br /><br />Anyway, great point about "progressives" being overwhelmed in government by the new breed of radical postmodernist gunslingers. Obama seems to be a hybrid of this to me. Both "progressive" in the technocratic, left-neoliberal sense, and postmodernist in his belief in his own above-the-frayness, in his ability to forge agreements between ideologies, without asserting his own, despite the fact that his belief <i>is</i> an ideology itself. <br /><br />Oh, well. Viva la Musica!!Cuchulainnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-10685856620536350902011-08-20T15:04:26.392-07:002011-08-20T15:04:26.392-07:00I don't believe in the old Marxist idea "...<i>I don't believe in the old Marxist idea "the worse, the better." I have a counter theory, "the worse, the worse, there's no bottom."</i><br /><br />More and more folks seem to be waking up to the fact that the Crisis of Capitalism that we're in is being artificially and strategically prolonged by people in the financial and the political sectors who hope to gain from the Opportunity (!) it presents. It's been obvious for a long time. I'm hearing rueful laughter, mordant chuckles as it were, from Marxists under the circumstances. They're still looking for the Crisis to spur The Revolution, but if it ever does, the chances are it will go the wrong direction.<br /><br />My hope is that the People will realize that there is no political Saviour. Ain't gonna happen. They will have to take matters into their own hands, and it will require shutting down the System of robbery and pillage they are being subjected to day in and day out. <br /><br />David Harvey in the first video linked below gets into what has to happen (toward the end, about 35 minutes in). But pulling the plug on the System is a huge risk, and not enough Americans are quite willing to take it.<br /><br />The political system is what it is. We want it to be better, but for sanity's sake, I can't look to it to provide a Saviour. (Meanwhile, of course, there are those who will point to Washington, Lincoln, TR and FDR, surely they count, don't they?)Ché Pasahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01926630891287949373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2304235862479840318.post-73739638495790071712011-08-20T06:54:47.226-07:002011-08-20T06:54:47.226-07:00Thomas Frank goes into this a bit in The Wrecking ...Thomas Frank goes into this a bit in <i>The Wrecking Crew</i> when Democrats are in power, they tend to appoint people to be agency heads who believe in the mission of that agency (an example would be Hilda Solis over at the Department of Labor). <br /><br />When Republicans are in charge, they do things like put someone in charge of the Department of the Interior who believes that pollution is God's will and it's blasphemous to try to interfere with it. "Reagan’s cartoonish Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, spoke publicly of Armageddon and the need to exploit as much land as possible before its coming," from the article <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/tokar04222010.html" rel="nofollow">"40 Years of Earth Days"</a> by Brian Tokar.<br /><br />Of course, the upshot of this is that Republicans should never, ever be in power. Electing them is a kind of madness. That's why Noam Chomsky gave a backhanded endorsement to the current President. He may be bad, but at least he's not a cartoon supervillain.<br /><br />One of the things I hate is making comments clouded with emotion. I'm angry at the president, but thinking logically maybe I shouldn't complain? Do I really want some Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula, like Perry or Bachmann in there? No. I don't believe in the old Marxist idea "the worse, the better." I have a counter theory, "the worse, the worse, there's no bottom."<br /><br />Of course, if I really have the courage of my convictions, I should register Republican, vote for the least horrible candidate in every primary, and then vote for the best candidate (likely the Democrat) in every election. I get upset when some amusing monster rears its head and Democrats pray for the monster to be the candidate of the Republicans. Republicans get elected occaisionally, we should want more Charlie Crists on their side and fewer Rick Scotts.vampyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14660319794133128873noreply@blogger.com