Comments by "Dale Crocker" (@dalecrocker3213) on "How Dark Money Convinced You to Vote for Monsters | Peter Geoghegan" video.

I hate to be picky, but does it mention funds given to BLM or to ensure the elections of mayors and DA's in US cities where these officials have encouraged violent BLM and Antifa riots, and where these officials have freed rioters caught burning and looting? I only ask because I'd like to know.
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@fredfredrickson5436 I don't know. I find it hard enough to identify the nature of problems. Coming up with solutions is something that doesn't sit that well with me. I suppose I would have to say national sovereignty seems the best way to combat globalism, or at least counteract its worst excesses. Small units of government, independent but interacting with each other as reasonably as possible is as good a way of conducting human affairs as any, it seems to me. As to imperialist expansion the time for that has probably come to an end, at least in the old meaning of the term. Today's empires are going to be financial rather than territorial, and achieved through manipulation rather than direct conquest. Soros is building his using reflexivity and bribery, and the Chinese are building theirs by buying real estate and infiltrating institutions like the UN. Competition without regulation is often dangerous, but it is difficult to see who will police the brave new world.
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In his book "The Alchemy of Finance" Soros decries both Fascism and Communism and all kinds of "isms". He is one of the most intelligent men in the world, but a failed philosopher who has instead utilised his brainpower and analytical abilities to make incredibly vast sums of money. He does this by sowing discord and reaping the consequences of it through financial manipulation. His strategies are beyond the ken of normal mortals, let along left-wing loonies who regard him as some kind of Marxist Santa Claus, but to imagine he does it just to be nice is a bit of a stretch. Why one of the most intelligent men in the world should invest money in making some of the most stupid people in the world mayors and district attorneys in the US is certainly puzzling at first sight,. but when we look at the anarchy this has engendered we might get some idea.
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@Robin Sherwood Absolutely. He is a very dangerous man. I defy anyone to work out where he's coming from these days, but since all his early years were devoted to making money more or less for the fun of it I don't think that's changed much. Money is addictive, and so is fun! He is far too intelligent to be a Marxist. His support for extreme left wing causes must be part of some huge feedback loop strategy. He might want to end his time on earth having shorted the mighty dollar, but the trouble is as soon as you think of something he might be doing, you can be sure that's not it. When I put my tinfoil hat on I even see him manufacturing the entire global warming crisis in order to create a world currency of his own, based on carbon bonds. Trouble is, now I've thought of it, it can't be that either.
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@fredfredrickson5436 Two sentences. Two sillinesses. Well done.
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@fredfredrickson5436 A Marxists with a sense of humour! What a very rare thing. Is it allowed?
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@fredfredrickson5436 But Karl Marx wasn't. Did you know that?
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@fredfredrickson5436 I once wasted an otherwise pleasant month or so in Goa trying to wade my way through Das Kapital. I don't actually know anyone who's read it though. Do you? The Communist Manifesto is easy enough, but the trouble with Marx seems to be that he is so dreadfully dull and difficult that people are always trying to tell us he meant things that perhaps he didn't. I think people tend to confuse Marxism with the idea of being terribly nice to the working classes. From what I understand of it, it is something rather different to that. His analysis of history seems to leave out a great many important factors, which I suppose is the main reason Marxism fails so miserably when brought into practical application.
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@fredfredrickson5436 I gather all schoolchildren in modern Russia are required to read a cut-down version of Sollzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. It is a practice which should be introduced in this country. The successes of the centrally planned economy depended upon the death and misery of millions. Your social safety net might owe something to Socialism, but nothing to Marxism. And Socialism itself has its roots in Christianity. Marxism is a busted flush. Only muddle-headed idealists or cynical opportunists can see any advantage to it.
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@fredfredrickson5436 The deliberate starvation and working to death of millions cannot be compared to the occasional errors of capitalism. Marxism and its centrally planned economy could only be sustained through slavery, corruption and terror. American prisoners are in prison because they have committed crimes, not because they have been arbitrarily selected or denounced. They live in conditions which would make citizens of the mid 20th century Soviet Union salivate with envy. Marxism corrupts Socialism, which is why until comparatively recently the British Labour Party forbad all relations with it. The fact that it now welcomes its various unwholesome manifestations into its midst is the reason for its constant rejection by the electorate. I disagree with Marx's critique because it is wrong, It fails on many levels, but predominately it fails because it does not take into account the fact that there are a great many utter bastards in the world, and the bastards will win whatever system is operational. Capitalism recognises this fact but imposes restraints on the worst excesses of the entrepreneurial psychopath through a system of financial regulation. Marxism refuses to admit differences in personality and insists we are all the same and equal and that our behaviour is governed by purely economic forces. They soon find out they are wrong when the psychopaths rise up through the ranks of the various committees and local soviets necessary to run their clumsy system and impose a regime of terror. It always happens this way and always will. Only societies which evolve through time survive and prosper. Those which attempt to impose a system thought up by some bloke with a beard and a pencil are doomed to fail. The only question is how long will it take and how many people will die in agony in the process.
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@fredfredrickson5436 Show me your pile of bodies. We can compare its height with those left by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Capitalist imperialism is exactly the strategy being followed by China right now. It has retained the repressive structure Communism needs to make a centralised state work and is busy colonising the world. It has its concentration camps too. There is no "late stage capitalism." There is just capitalism. Economic success certainly leads to imperialist expansion and it always has done. Once spears and chariots, guns and gunboats were needed. Now they are not, We have grown more sophisticated in our methods. This has led to the unlikely marriage we see today between Marxism and capitalism so typified by the Chinese phenomenon. Communism needs strict state control over individual behaviours in order to even begin to try to succeed. In China it has not succeeded but the control of the population has remained and is now being applied very successfully to the expansion of state capitalism. China's economic success is dependent upon the slavery of the proletariat. China's model is now actively being pursued by Western capitalism in the form of globalism, which requires centralised control and the subordination of the individual to a bureaucratic elite. Marx was quite correct in seeing labour as a form of capital, but he did not envisage how the administrators of his creed would be forced by economic realities to spend that capital. Marx was always wrong. Now he is both wrong and irredeemably old-fashioned. Your attachment to him is romantic and naive. This discussion began with George Soros. As I said, his gigantic intellect is beyond the comprehension of lesser mortals but it provides a rich territory for speculation. It seems to me that what he is doing is very similar to what China is doing, Based upon the principles of reflexivity he influences outcomes by acting in several roles, one of which is the infiltration of political structures and ideological movements and using them to pave the way for the expansion of his strategies. China builds roads. Soros builds BLM and puts puppets in charge of US and Canadian cities. China and Soros are both utilising Marxism, but neither is Marxist.
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@fredfredrickson5436 What was the question again?
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@fredfredrickson5436 The sovereign right of a nation to govern its own affairs,
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@fredfredrickson5436 Not sure I understand you. I see globalisation as an effort to subsume national identities, and over-rule the will and interests of individual nations by a process of homogenisation. National sovereignty must be a casualty of that process.
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@TAP7a He isn't - unless he's changed his mind quite a bit! He escaped Communist Hungary (as well as Nazi Germany earlier on) and is on record as despising all political creeds. His guiding principle is a thing called "reflexivity" which you will just have to look up. It's very complicated.
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@fredfredrickson5436 I quite enjoy their films myself. "Duck Soup" was rather good as I recall.
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Good. Can I live in your house while you're gone?
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