There once was a time in history where political parties and agendas - at least in old timey Europe - were cognizant of our material needs and interests, as well as the need to moderate between social contraditions. People formed around farmer's parties, worker's parties, patronal parties, and so on. Or at least around parties which made overtures based on class or race. But it's been a hundred years since fascists took the nation-state fiction to it's logical conclusion, so we are limited to discussing, at most, the interests of the body politic as a whole. That is the existential dread that reasonably liberal people like Jon Stewart and Elizabeth Warren find themselves in. Like everybody else they are ensconced into capitalist realism. But unlike others, they find themselves denouncing the madness of the State, rotten to the point where it no longer fulfills its interests as an advocate for bourgeois social mores and corporate interests.
Yeah. It's actually insane that american soldiers are on food stamps. The budget balloons all the time and the US government doesn't even have to pay for it's deficit. And yet the warrior caste of empire often lacks health care and food. In a country where neither is in short supply. That's the real tragedy of Jon Stewart, aka the guy from the march for sanity. He's like Julian the Apostate for Capitalism. He's reduced to asking corporate lobbyists who the hell is gonna buy all the treats when everything is automated, nobody makes money, and everyone is indebted. The system can only spit and lie to their face. 'Excuse me I don't think it's tenable to say that corporations suddenly became interested in making money!'
But even Jon is not totally without options. He can still choose madness over reality. Which is why he thinks China made Covid. It's a mild cope compared to Qanon or becoming a libertarian cultist, but mild copes is all a rich liberal needs to keep going.
discussing [...] the interests of the body politic as a whole
Bit idea: derisively referring to libs who do this as "collectivists". :very-intelligent:
The sad thing is that nobody realizes that's what they are doing. Someone will say 'we can't do X because the Market says so'. They think they are arguing that a mass of individuals is sending the feedback that a given decision is bad. In reality they are arguing that the needs of the body of society are the needs of whoever owns its production chains and that their needs must be fulfilled. Regardless of also individualized consumer woes. Libertarian Long-termists have invented nothing. They just re-litigate their libertarianism in new ways.
The problem with the US military is the violent thugs it employs don't make :the-pigs: salaries
Unironically, causing a split between the enlisted and commissioned officers over pay is part of my personal Belden Program.
I'm not sure that it can happen, the US military can easily just throw out any dissenters and still be left with enough people who are there for the "love of the game" (=killing people for fun) to still have a functioning army.
I mean at this point the military is massively failing its recruitment goals (army by something like 22 percent) and have to draw from past servicemen and national guard, anything that reduces those numbers more is good
I just need soldiers. I don't care if they are officially part of the military anymore.
If Obama was like "I'm good at killing people" and then turned around and found out that the US military doesn't have any weapons left, because ALL the money went to corruption, literally millions of lives would be saved.
Back in the day when soldiers didn’t get fed they killed their commanders
He would actually so easily win the nomination if he ran in the dem primary
No he wouldn't.
MSNBC would have an hour long segment every day dedicated to how much he hates minorities, women, and the LBGT community. Then Pete Buttigieg would win South Carolina on the grounds that he high fives a black person once, and it would be all over.
