Hillary and Trump Are the Symptoms, Not the Cause

[LowDown]

Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. It's very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Crony capitalists and bureaucrats have been telling us that it's raining as they piss down the backs of the people. And the people have had enough. Here in the US we would hope for a statesman or group of statesmen or women who could unwind this crisis in a non-violent way. But instead we have politicians who incite violence and speak of their political opponents as "the enemy". People are just not in the mood to listen to calmer voices. Given the circumstances, being calm seems like a cop-out. The bureaucrats just pushed things one volume of regulations too far, and our leaders did nothing.

 

[Bob N]

Crony capitalists and bureaucrats have been telling us that it's raining as they piss down the backs of the people. And the people have had enough. Here in the US we would hope for a statesman or group of statesmen or women who could unwind this crisis in a non-violent way. But instead we have politicians who incite violence and speak of their political opponents as "the enemy". People are just not in the mood to listen to calmer voices. Given the circumstances, being calm seems like a cop-out. The bureaucrats just pushed things one volume of regulations too far, and our leaders did nothing.

Well LowDown it goes to show you. If someone would have told me 3 years ago that the candidates would not be an automatic Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton before the conventions, I would have replied you are crazy. But I really believe that people are getting tired of the orthodox politicians and are constantly searching for something else.

It seems to me that DC is always stagnant. :shrug:

 

[FieldTheorist]

Crony capitalists and bureaucrats have been telling us that it's raining as they piss down the backs of the people. And the people have had enough. Here in the US we would hope for a statesman or group of statesmen or women who could unwind this crisis in a non-violent way. But instead we have politicians who incite violence and speak of their political opponents as "the enemy". People are just not in the mood to listen to calmer voices. Given the circumstances, being calm seems like a cop-out. The bureaucrats just pushed things one volume of regulations too far, and our leaders did nothing.

Neoliberalism is evil, yes, and Republicans started it (and Democrats are sure as hell working on continuing it ad infinitum); openly fostered it when it was unpopular during the 1950's; and propelled it into indomitable power during the Carter/Reagan era. I'm glad that the poor and rural middle-class whites are starting to understand that they're getting ****ed, but try looking into the total history of all of this. And in order to do that, you're going to have to start reading the Left (the real Left, not this DNC/democratic horse**** --e.g. Noam Chomsky is a good place to start). If you don't learn from history, and you don't start learning that 95% of what Fox News tells you is bull****, you guys will back the wrong horse again and then do even more class damage to yourselves.

Again, I find it very bizarre that libertarians and populist conservatives are now so angry with neoliberalism --the literal cornerstone of their own economic platform-- and describe it --quite correctly-- as "pissing down the backs of the people." The only thing different than neoliberalism vs. libertarianism is the fact that they rake in huge government subsidies for research and development, and government contracts (privatization is a huge part of the libertarian platform, for the record, and it is supposed to be "good"). Otherwise, you lot were totally down with everything else --lowering corporate taxes, lowering taxes on the wealthy (this introduced retrograde taxation in the form of ticketing, fines, etc, and decreased services for the working class), deregulating the 1%'s enterprises even as they started to make the economy fail, and eviscerating social safety nets, all of which had predictable consequences namely that it would gut the middle-class and working class' economic opportunity, wealth, and mobility.

Do yourself a favor and start looking into real Left politics, which has always been to help "the people." Look up "Chomsky neoliberalism" on Youtube. You'll be doing yourself a huge service.