Kaikoura, Te Wai Pounamu, Aotearoa (Kia Kaha, Aroha to all) Superthread
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Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
On foreign policy alone, most Americans here are so far to the right it's ludicrous. Wallowing in a kind of implicit exceptionalism and right to intervene anywhere, anytime. Which wouldn't perhaps be so obnoxious if not so clueless and disastrous. Moral panics about Russia notwithstanding, I see little likely difference under whatever US administration, on that front.
As for identity politics, it's got its place I suppose, but it is also a very neat divide-and-rule tool in the right/wrong hands. See for ex. Hillary's rhetoric about how reining in Wall Street wouldn't fix racism or whatever. No duh, but it might affect some of the underlying structural issues.
The Trump campaign certainly did a surprisingly effective end-run around the Democrats on that front. But if people won't talk about class, or even accept that it's really a thing, then it's going to be about perceived identity. I doubt a lot of the hardcore Trump vote (a subset of the GOP vote) really think Trump is going to do anything for them; they just want revenge.
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Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
At least it's got a time limit on it I suppose, but still. Can't say my respect for the moderation 'team' is much boosted by this.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
I don't really believe that anyone who is really paying attention in America, or in Australia, is a 'swinging voter'. They say they are, but I don't buy it in most cases. And if they really have no ideological continuity, what the fuck is the matter with them?
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
The centre has certainly drifted right since the seventies, that whole Overton Window concept has some truth to it. That's the endgame of 'lesser evil' politics (not that I'm saying I have any better answer than 'force the lesser-evil party to be better' <heythat'swhatberniesanderstriedtodo>).
The Americans are really over a barrel with their life-appointed Supreme Court constantly held over their heads like the sword of Damocles, always on the brink of the end times, always up against the state gerrymanders and the electoral college and the unashamed, even gleeful voter suppression.
In the US arena, you only have to look at the peace liberals have made with the security state and foreign-intervention regime implemented or expanded during the Bush era. Hey, Obama's on the watch now, it'll be ok (to be clear, I doubt he ever had the wherewithal to wind this back en mass even if he wanted. On the other hand, do we know if he tried?).
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Vlad n U 2
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There would need to be a destruction of the American political system in order for positive developments to emerge, much more so than in other countries of a nominally liberal democratic nature. They're both so deeply entrenched but, I wouldn't mind seeing the destruction of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
I also think that as the years go by the more that the Democrats truly disgust me. Fair enough, the Republicans are more incomprehensibly vile, but we already have known this.
I also think that as the years go by the more that the Democrats truly disgust me. Fair enough, the Republicans are more incomprehensibly vile, but we already have known this.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
Well parties can and do implode, and realign. I've seen it argued fairly convincingly in some quarters that both US parties right now are ripe for collapse. I guess there was a sense for a while in 2016 that this was it for the GOP. Federally, at least. And it still might be, I don't really buy that the GOP congress and the crowd in Trump Tower fit quite as well as a hand and a glove. But it's hard to even know anymore.
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Many on the left made the mistake of thinking that identity politics was their domain and comprised the assertion of the rights of women, LGBTI, people of colour, etc., and took opponents on the right to be "culture warriors" on the defensive, fighting to retain their privileges. I get the impression a lot of people have been broadsided by the rise of far-right identity politics, which are by no means defensive, nor concerned solely with retention but with expansion and power. I felt there was a returning far-right but I was certainly broadsided by its popular success - my fear was that it would be this annoying lunatic fringe, a 10% counterweight to the 10% of the green movement, able to drag centre-right governments in annoying directions but incapable of forming government in and of itself. And now we see an energised "alt-right"/neo-fascists on the charge. Just fucking great.
It's funny to see the right explicitly call for "safe space" now that they're on the receiving end of things that make them uncomfortable.
I can buy it if you're just totally disengaged. I suspect so much of it is lazy politics of personality, people who voted for Peter Beattie because he seemed charismatic and had a good smile, but then voted for John Howard because SAFE HANDS!, and then voted for Rudd because CHANGE!, and then voted for Abbott because LABOUR INFIGHTING!, etc. Some of it, of course, is from those prats who are simply never happy and will always vote for the main opposition of the day.
But seriously, if you voted ALP or Liberal in 2010, the issues had not changed come 2013. Changing your vote from one party to the other is incoherent (unless you had a major shift in your personal politics).
On the discussion of the two main US parties, I am hoping that this is the last gasp of the Republicans - the sort of victory that actually shows up division when they try to govern. My optimistic long-term view is that there will be serious discord within Congress between Trumpers and Never-Trumpers, between moderates and Tea Partiers, etc., and that even if they paper over those cracks for four years, the inevitable loss to Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/Kanye West/Crooked Hillary in 2020 will lead to a reckoning.
But the Democrats themselves are far too much of a broad church to be sustainable long-term. On the one hand you have those willing to accept a neoliberal "consensus" who are Democrat more because they find Republican religiosity and racism repellent than anything else. They are America's equivalent of the Turnbull Liberals or of John Key's besties. Then you have a young pro-Bernie crowd who don't have a problem with social democracy-lite, a large but potentially fickle vote from various minority groups mainly there because of Republican racism/white nationalism rather than any loyalty to the left (and who need to be courted for ongoing ideological allegiance), and everybody on the mid to hard left not willing to flee in a system without preferential voting. How do you keep together those groups? In the long run you don't.
There will be another repositioning of American politics - but whether that is a shift in the parties, as has happened in all the major post-Civil War realignments, or the emergence of new parties, is hard to say. My money is that it will remain within the D/R system, because the DNC and RNC possess resources far beyond that of a new party. More preferable to take control of one of those, or at least exert a guiding influence, than build from the ground up. But maybe that's the overly conventional political game-player in me, and times are changing fast.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: now is a very good lesson in historical contingency. Predictions have never looked less certain, so take this mindset back to 1860 or 1920 or whenever you want and you lose your preconceptions that events were inevitable or predestined.
But the Democrats themselves are far too much of a broad church to be sustainable long-term. On the one hand you have those willing to accept a neoliberal "consensus" who are Democrat more because they find Republican religiosity and racism repellent than anything else. They are America's equivalent of the Turnbull Liberals or of John Key's besties. Then you have a young pro-Bernie crowd who don't have a problem with social democracy-lite, a large but potentially fickle vote from various minority groups mainly there because of Republican racism/white nationalism rather than any loyalty to the left (and who need to be courted for ongoing ideological allegiance), and everybody on the mid to hard left not willing to flee in a system without preferential voting. How do you keep together those groups? In the long run you don't.
There will be another repositioning of American politics - but whether that is a shift in the parties, as has happened in all the major post-Civil War realignments, or the emergence of new parties, is hard to say. My money is that it will remain within the D/R system, because the DNC and RNC possess resources far beyond that of a new party. More preferable to take control of one of those, or at least exert a guiding influence, than build from the ground up. But maybe that's the overly conventional political game-player in me, and times are changing fast.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: now is a very good lesson in historical contingency. Predictions have never looked less certain, so take this mindset back to 1860 or 1920 or whenever you want and you lose your preconceptions that events were inevitable or predestined.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
This thread has it too? ?
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
Politics?
It's gonna happen with people like me, Kieran, and Vlad around.
I don't mind a generalized discussion, but to talk about US politics right now is bleh.
Let's talk about far left progressivism and Abraham Lincoln.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
I have stuff to say. My hand is damn near broken after constructing furniture for a good 10 hours straight last night. My new apartment is aight.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
Well parties have been taken control of before, and that seems to me to be the model in modern times in America. The long march of the 'Conservative Movement' between the time of Goldwater and the election of Reagan, organising in basements, taking over school districts and so on. This reached its apotheosis with Bush II.
On the other side, the realignment of the Democrats under Roosevelt was not preordained, nor necessarily predicted. It was also - to touch on your other point - an unstable coalition. We all know what happened to part of that coalition in the 1960s.
Yes, predictions have never looked less certain. I trust myself on fundamentals of what I consider right and wrong, but as to actual prediction? I'd be filing for bankruptcy by now if I were a betting type. Though if I were a betting type, I'd say the Trump presidency turns into the Pence presidency sometime in the next four years.
I start see to the neoliberal consensus, or whatever name you want to tack on it to persuade someone of what you're trying to convey, as like a big ice rink, the kind that people skate on. And it's cracking up. Neither actual fascism or strongman-populism or new social democracy or any other thing is inevitable. It's just really dangerous right now.
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Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
While I'm Glad I Won, I Personally Believe Abraham Lincoln Deserved To Die
- By Daniel Day Lewis
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
I'm rewatching 'Boardwalk Empire', so I have politics, and ultraviolence, on the mind even more than usual.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
If the Republicans lost the ethno-nationalism and made a convincing play at being a rainbow whatever, they'd be really dangerous. That's my opinion. But they just can't seem to manage it.
Manual labour? Good lord, I'll sit that out.
Up until let's say 2014, it seemed fairly easy to predict the general direction of politics, if not the precise events. There were certain unspoken rules and commonplace conventions that were rarely breached, and even those who "should not" have won functioned within the same universe. Dubya was an idiot, but he was an idiot firmly within the system. The rules are obviously changing now, and it's easy to diagnose the problems but so what if you struggle to anticipate where to go. And it's hard to avoid the suspicion that the left is unsure what to do and lacks a sense of common purpose. What are we fighting for now?
That ethno-nationalism seems far too ingrained into their sense of being.
But they've always had a foothold in the Latino demographic through the Cuban community and in the long term I expect that to grow, not contract as so many of the demographic determinists think. Tone down the ethno-nationalism just enough to unite over other policies and they're in. I struggle to imagine them regaining the African-American vote without some whopping big transformation though.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
Note: my hands aren't supposed to be red
More important note: I spoiled myself with a 50" TV
Most important note: deep will file this one under C:/user/deep/images/interference/LuckyNumber7/bodyparts/extremities/hands
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
I call my folder 'tax returns' just in case I ever have to have someone else looking at my computer.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
As long as they're fighting the Civil War by other means, African-Americans will be the enemy in some form or other, so outreach is kind of hard to imagine. But sure, other demographics are a different story.
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
I would say that there is next to no common purpose where the left, however defined, is concerned. This is what I mean about the centre-left blowing it, particularly in the wake of what should have been an epochal discrediting of business as usual with the financial crisis of 2008 onwards. If there is a vacuum, it will be filled.
Consider: by all rights, the Rudd Government should still be in power right now, having smoothly transitioned at some point to Gillard or Shorten or whoever. Of course it turned out that Rudd was personally dysfunctional, and it further turned out that his power base in his own party was a mile wide and an inch deep. But we didn't know that at the time.
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Cue a bizarre debate on FYM comparing your hands to Trump's, seguing into some bizarre argument over the white privilege of having a large TV.
I love having the largest telly of anybody I know because it means I'm always the default host for any sport-watching event and people leave behind alcohol.
LuckyNumber7
Blue Crack Addict
Don't trust me, I have small hands.
You know what they say about small hands, eh Marco??!
You know what they say about small hands, eh Marco??!
Yep. We have an old school socialist left that is good at agitation but still thinks its goals of the 1930s are relevant and can't figure out why it has been totally eclipsed. We have a green left that has picked the biggest issue of our times correctly but is poor at politics and has been outflanked by the denialist right in the last couple of years. We have an industrial, working class left that perhaps never really was left-wing judging by their willingness to jump to the Howard Liberals and One Nation - or is, at the least, more concerned with social homogeneity and factory jobs than anything else. And we have a middle class centre-left - the one that has held the whip hand since social democracy gave way to economic rationalism and Third Way arguments - that accepts the business-as-usual mantra, or is only interested in modest results for social causes (racism bad! but no protests!).
I think the socialist and green left can work together in common cause for greater state intervention. Why they want it may differ, but if they can harness that as "here are two compelling reasons for this outcome rather than one", they could win greater support. That may win over the working class, though it's vanishing (be that in real terms or in self-identification). But outside of social activism where is the common ground with the centre-left? I no longer sense much sympathy from there for, let's say, state-operated enterprises such as railways or electricity grids. The welfare state architecture they will defend is what already exists and confers upon them tangible benefits, such as Medicare, but if it were dismantled I'd expect they'd cop it on the chin, accept and adapt, and soon forget why they ever wanted it.
Vlad, your take?
Kieran McConville
ONE love, blood, life
Perhaps self-identification is part of the puzzle. I know we've had this argument before, but 'working class' only denotes blokes with hammers in factories, and nothing else, if people say it does. It's humpty-dumpty stuff.
You see the same language at work in US demographic discussions about the white working class vs women, people of colour and so on. As if women and people of colour (!) aren't workers.
Far from disappearing, I'd say the working class is alive and well. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince people they were middle class.
You see the same language at work in US demographic discussions about the white working class vs women, people of colour and so on. As if women and people of colour (!) aren't workers.
Far from disappearing, I'd say the working class is alive and well. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince people they were middle class.
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