
A dying America is raging against the capitalist machine - MollyR
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/03/neoliberalism_gave_us_trump_a_dying_white_america_is_raging_against_the_capitalist_machine_partner/
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thescriptkiddie
This article was a dense read that seemed to ramble through several different
points. I'm not sure I wrapped my head around the author's intent (especially
with the Nazi references), but I really liked the last two paragraphs:

>Trump is, of course, a conscienceless demagogue, serial liar, and nihilist
with a belief in nothing save himself. Sanders, on the other hand, means what
he says. On the issue of economic justice, he has been a broken record for
more than a quarter-century, even if no one beyond the boundaries of Vermont
paid much attention until recently. He is now widely trusted and applauded for
his views.

>Hillary Clinton is broadly distrusted. Sanders has consistently outpolled her
against potential Republican opponents for president because she is indeed a
limousine liberal whose career has burned through trust at an astonishing
rate. And more important than that, the rebellion that has carried Sanders
aloft is not afraid to put capitalism in the dock. Trump is hardly about to do
that, but the diseased state of the neoliberal status quo has made him, too, a
force to be reckoned with. However you look at it, the age of acquiescence is
passing away.

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woodandsteel
The author seems to be arguing for socialism. As he explains, liberalism is
based on the idea of preserving capitalism through social and economic
reforms. However, for decades now American capitalism has done fine, enriching
the %1, but the general population has done poorly, and that has lead to a
situation where much of the public, both Republican and Democratic, is
revolting.

I agree with this analysis, but I don't see where socialism, at least in its
classic sense of having the government own the means of production, would be a
solution.

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AnimalMuppet
I started skimming, then gave up. Anybody got a TL;DR on this?

~~~
notthemessiah
My (biased) interpretation:

The author previously wrote a book about how Limousine Liberal vs Populist
Conservative is a false dichotomy that has polarized political perspectives
ever since Nixon invented the term. Back then, the progressive/socialist left
opposed liberalism for it being intimately connected to the war machine (where
war in Korea was engineered to serve aggregate demand for American goods). As
we entered into the bold new (Post-Nixon Shock) era of the 1970s where the
failure to replicate the "success" in Korea caused economic turmoil,
liberalism co-opted the efforts & reforms of the left when it came to social
equality, and then liberalism and the progressive left became conflated under
assault from the resurgent right for decades to come.

Around the time of the 1990s, the Clintons realized that you can form a
bulwork against many forms of discrimination without "disturbing the
equanimity of the 1%." Until both the Occupy Movement and Tea Parties arose,
as responses to the damage of neoliberalism, whereas the former was motivated
by similar ideals as the 1960s left, the latter was motivated by "fantasy of
older capitalism, one friendlier to the way they think America used to be".

Later in the article it talks about how Trump and Sanders camps have been
damaged by neoliberalism, where Sanders is a New-Deal style social democrat,
whereas Trump is a "conscienceless demagogue, serial liar, and nihilist".

(By "biased" I mean that I would prefer to bring more attention to the
economic paradigm shift precipitated by the Nixon shock rather than the
particular propaganda method of the concept of "Limousine Liberal")

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> war in Korea was engineered to serve aggregate demand for American goods

What The Flatulence? Did people actually believe that? Do they still?

~~~
notthemessiah
I guess I was over-simplifying in the interest of brevity. I only meant to say
that after the Chinese Communist Revolution, the western world lost a huge
market when it came to revitalizing Japan's economy, so many saw the
opportunity to invest in Japanese factories that built things for the US war
effort.

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dmfdmf
Who represents Capitalism in this country? No one.

~~~
benbenolson
What do you mean by "represent"?

