Comments by "josh fritz" (@joshfritz5345) on "Ryan Chapman"
channel.
-
This video doesn't mention that some of the founding components of socialism are based on flawed premises. For example, the labor theory of value is flatly wrong. The labor theory of value claims that the value of an item is based on how much labor was put into making it. By this standard, a bowl of rice made with many hours of labor through manual farming is much more valuable than a bowl of rice from a factory farm using tractors which produces fifty times as much rice for the same amount of human labor. In reality, both bowls of rice are identical and have identical value. Value is subjective, and few care where the rice came from, only it's quality and price.
For someone who believes in the labor theory of value, some terrible practices may seem like good ideas. For example, price controls and minimum wage laws make sense only if you believe that prices can be set, or that an item's value should be tied directly to the labor going into it, and disregard the consequences of said assumptions. Minimum wage effectively bans low-skill labor, making it very difficult for people with little job experience to find a job. Price controls force down prices below the actual value of the item, forcing the businesses to operate at a loss, and worse, leading to a shortage of the commodity since people will buy it all up since the prices cannot rise in response to scarcity. Additionally, if producing this commodity is no longer profitable since the businesses is being forced to sell at a loss, less if any of these goods will be produced.
53
-
34
-
20
-
11
-
10
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
9
-
8
-
7
-
@HobanProduction No, fascism is a variation of socialism. Communism, fascism, corporatism, all are derivatives of socialism. Mussolini, the founder of fascism as we know it, actually started out as a Marxist. What set apart fascism from other forms of socialism is that it "privatized" parts of the economy, allowing a handful of government selected actors to have monopoly over these industries.
In fascist italy, these "private" entities were the trade unions, in modern America, these would be the corporations. In either case, the "private" entities are effectively arms of the state, they are distinct entities in name only. Corporations wield just as much government power as an official branch of government, and politicians hold similar power over corporate actions as do CEOs.
Fascism is, like all other socialist systems, very much an economic system. The likely reason you believe this not to be the case is because you've always heard "fascism" used in the modern, coequal sense, a meaningless smear against any vaguely conservative ideology. This is a blatant misuse of the term. It is no more accurate to call Trump a fascist than it is to call Putin a Nazi. You can dislike either or both men, but they have no relation to the ideologies of midcentury socialists.
The modern west is very, very far left in the grand scheme of things. This has brought a mix of both good and bad things. It's a long list and I'm not going to get into it now, but the modern neo-liberal is in some respects to the left of Stalin. This is not a value judgement, this is a statement of fact. Sexual liberation is an example of this. Even the modern conservative is more in favor of women's rights and gay rights than the average Marxist of the 1930s.
If you want a modern example of a genuinely far right government, look at the Taliban who currently run Afganistan. Republicans are nowhere near as conservative or as authoritarian as them. If you broaden your scopes either globally (past Europe and North America) or through time, the entire western world of politics takes place within a neo-liberal framework that is rather far left and moderately authoritarian.
7
-
6
-
5
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
4
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
3
-
As a populist libertarian, I'd say this is a fairly accurate representation of my perspective. I appreciate that you kept your pollical bias to a minimum here, often those who talk about populism are only there to bash anyone who embodies it.
Populism can be somewhat binary in nature, and I don't deny that. It necessarily simplifies things because populism is focused primarily on dealing with the problems caused by a corrupt political establishment. That doesn't mean that all populists are stupid and have a poor understanding of politics, although that is the stereotype. Some populists are very well informed, but the inherently binary nature of populism means that we need to work harder than usual to maintain a level of nuance.
One of the greatest issues that populism faces in practice is replacing a corrupt establishment with something better. Frankly, that's a pretty hard thing to do no matter your ideology, and there is a very diverse array of populism ranging from far left socialists, to far right fascists (although there is a surprising amount of overlap with socialists, leading to speculation about horseshoe theory) to more centrist libertarians. Personally, I'm a slightly right leaning libertarian, and I don't think very highly of socialists or fascists, because I believe they'd create an establishment even worse than our current one given the chance, and we'd be back to square one.
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Separate message for the purpose of length. On your listed tendencies of populists, I'd say 1 and 3 are mostly true, and 2 is with a huge caveat. I think you're not necessarily wrong on 4, but honestly, political parties tend to be self serving entities, and that doesn't seem unique to populism. Also, part of being a populist is having little political power, if the populist movement has a lot of political power, they're well on their way to becoming the new establishment. Anyways, here are my perspective on populist tendencies 1 through 3
1. Removing intermediaries. This is very much true, and for good reason. The political establishment, in the case of the libertarian movement in the US, tends to have a lot of editorial power, and consequently, censorship power over what gets published. In order for the populist message to get out, it is necessary to bypass establishment controlled media. Considering the number of libertarian and non-mainstream conservatives who have been censored on Twitter, had their names smeared on the likes of CNN and MSNBC, and even FOX, using mainstream media really isn't an option for a populist movement. Establishment media won't host anyone critical of the establishment for obvious reasons, so we're forced to use podcasts and other ways to share our perspective.
2. Externalizing blame. Sure, we do that. But question: what political movement doesn't? Few political movements will outright admit that their policies have failed, and on the very rare occasion that it does, it nearly always tries to push the duty of repentance onto someone other than the actual perpetrator of the failed policy. Actually, being burdened with someone else's failures (high taxes to pay off national debt) is often a core component of populism.
3. Conspiracy theories. Yes, populists are conspiracy theorists. I'm a conspiracy theorist. And frankly, I've been proven right on several of them lately. Populists are what they are because they are very critical of the political establishment, and if the establishment engages in things like insider trading, corruption, human trafficking (Epstein's island), black market dealings (CIA funding rebel groups), and other shady activities, yes, populists tend to be very suspicious at any hint of shady activity by the political establishment.
2
-
@yordideleon6627 I'd say that in the US, the Democrats are the progressive movement, and Republicans, who are the conservatives, have actually come to embody liberal values rather well. The Overton window has shifted to where the Republicans, who are conservative by default, happen to be working to preserve liberal values at the moment. As a libertarian and classical liberal myself, I find myself aligned, somewhat apprehensively, with the more populist leaning Republicans in the hope of getting some actual positive change and restoring some of the core values of liberty that the US was founded upon.
I've heard leftists claim that Republicans are "far right", but I think that comes from their far left perspective. Europe as a whole tends to be extremely far left to the point where classical liberalism is dead, speech is censored, rights are trampled, and dissent is punished. It's kind of strange since in the past, the dictatorships always used to hate gays or jews or something, but the modern equivalent in the far left progressive movement just seems to hate anyone who isn't both a member of the movement, and anyone who isn't a minority of some kind. I suppose that speaks to the marxist origins of the modern progressive movement of framing everything as oppressor vs. oppressed, and assuming that anyone with any semblance of privilege is evil. This socialist type of tendency is rather populist in origin, but it goes to show how quickly populism can turn authoritarian if the ideology behind the movement is rotten.
2
-
@yordideleon6627 The Democrats may be more liberal in the modern sense of the word, but they have completely abandoned classical liberalism as a school of thought. The term "post-liberal" refers to classical liberals who have abandoned the increasingly far left Democrat party and find themselves politically homeless, but perhaps slightly right leaning. Some identify with center-right Republicans or Libertarians, as they share many of the same classical liberal values.
NPCs do exist on the right. Some hardcore Trump voters for example are not very politically informed, but as a general rule, large portions of the Democrat voter base tend to be relatively uninformed. They get most of their information from a handful of establishment or establishment aligned sources. Some less respectful stereotypes include welfare queens and blue haired university students, and slightly more respectful stereotypes include old boomer and Gen Xers who were never really politically involved but who have always voted Democrat mostly out of tradition and nostalgia.
As a whole, the majority of both Democrat and Republican politicians are rather corrupt and worthless, and neither party is universally better than the other. There are a handful of good politicians on both sides, but until a large portion of well informed voters vote in primaries to get rid of establishment swamp monsters, neither party has much hope of reform. There is a recent push for more populist candidates on both sides, but the push for populist Republican candidates has been slightly more successful overall. They can count Trump, DeSantis, Ron Paul, Amy Comey Barret and others among their ranks. Populists among Democrats have been much sketchier. AoC and Bernie are notable examples of populist Democrats who basically sold out to the establishment, but Tulsi Gabbard is a Moderate populist Democrat who is well liked by moderates from both parties, even if her policies are slightly more left leaning. I almost forgot to mention Andrew Yang. He's so steadfast in his honesty that he's been sabotaged by his own party for not selling out.
2
-
I have to say, the modern left in the US has largely abandoned liberalism. The progressive movement is decidedly collectivist and anti-liberal in nature, and even appears to have strong socialist and even fascist tendencies. The result of the abandoning of liberal principles by the left has led to "post liberals" fleeing the traditionally liberal, but now increasingly illiberal Democrat party and forming an alliance with center-right conservatives. Indeed, it could even be argued that conservatives are now synonymous with liberals as modern conservatives are fighting (albeit not always effectively) to preserve liberal institutions from the illiberal progressive movement.
For anyone who believes that progressivism is liberal, keep in mind that the progressive movement is pushing racial segregation (segregated dorms, race based hiring practices) censorship, and restriction of a wide swath of rights such as the rights to privacy and freedom of speech. The progressive movement seeks to use the power of state institutions to enforce the woke ideology, and punish those who dissent from it. It's not quite nationalism, and it's not quite religious zeal, but some strange hybrid thereof. Indeed, the progressive movement has become so ruthless in upholding it's ideology that it seeks to punish severely anyone who engages in otherwise minor crimes such as misgendering a trans person or simply not caring about the category (race, sex, orientation, etc.) of others. It's a strange perversion of harm reduction that has become a religiously upheld dogma, held together by a common sense of unity among the far left progressive movement, and rigorously enforced.
2
-
1
-
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit Unfortunately, Youtube is censoring most of the comments on this chain. I have very little faith in "democratic socialism," socialism of any kind leads to a strong central government, which invariably leads to corruption and oppression. That isn't unique to socialism, but socialism is one of the most reliable ways to create the circumstances for totalitarianism. The USSR, Cambodia, China, Germany (fascism is derived from socialism), Korea, Venezuela, Cuba... all of these places suffered under socialism.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit Free market doesn't necessarily lead to tyranny. It can, but monopolies don't tend to last long due to market competition. We have plenty of monopolies today, but nearly all of them have one critical thing in common: they are in very heavily regulated sectors of the economy. Government regulation creates the conditions for monopolies. Monopolies, the purest form of market tyranny, struggle to survive in a free market.
I find that most often the harshest critiques of capitalism are often targeted at the least capitalistic parts of modern capitalism. There are a few industries which present issues, and there is room for some regulation (environmental regulations can be important for example,) but as a whole, less market regulation actually tends to lead towards better output, better products, and often even better wages.
One example: Minimum wages. A minimum wage might sound like a great idea. It protects the worker from having their labor exploited, right? Well, here's the problem. If you're doing unskilled labor, and your labor only provides around $15 of value to the company, your employer can't afford to pay you $15, so the position never opens up, and there is no job created. Higher minimum wages reduce the number of low-skill jobs, and result in higher unemployment among less skilled people. It might not be ideal working for $12 per hour, but getting that first job can create the conditions for you to work your way up. Minimum wage earners work their way up to more respectable earnings rather quickly, but without entry level positions, that option isn't available to them. Minimum wages are an example of government legislation designed to make people feel good and get politicians elected, but which causes more harm than good, both to employers and to workers. It can drive smaller employers out of business, and cause larger companies to replace workers with automation, thus reducing the number of jobs available.
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit No offense, but that was a little hard to read. A little punctuation and use of paragraphs would go a long way.
To some extent I agree that the free market isn't perfect, because the ultra wealthy tend to use their wealth and influence to lobby government to create laws which favor them and suppress competition. But that isn't a product of the free market in action, that is an example of government working in conjunction with a corporation to subvert the free market. That kind of thing becomes increasingly difficult to address as government grows in size. But in general, more regulation will result in a less free market, and a less competitive, more monopolistic industry. Some of the most heavily regulated industries (food, medicine, international trade) are the most heavily dominated by monopolies.
I understand your idea of capitalism being exploitative, there's some truth to it. Yes, corporations are greedy, and they would love to minimize the amount they pay their workers. But if those workers are free to leave their jobs at will and join another, better paying competitor, the corporations can't risk losing skilled workers by under-paying them for their work. As long as we have some basic worker protections in place, and as long as the industry isn't too heavily regulated, there is effectively a market for skilled labor, and employers will try to out-bid each other for more skilled employees. Skilled workers will bring in more money, and employers know this, thus are willing to pay more for workplace experience.
Also worth considering. Some employers willingly offer extra incentives to reliable, profitable workers such as paid sick leave, holiday bonuses, and a break room stocked with free drinks. While not free to the employer, the company realizes the value of skilled labor. These perks are designed to attract and retain skilled workers who bring in profit for the company. Skilled labor is NOT expendable, and any successful businessman knows this.
1
-
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit The DeBeers diamond monopoly required massive cultural influence campaigns and a huge organized crime ring to enforce. A well organized cartel operates very similarly to a government, and in many of those diamond rich countries, diamond cartels were the defacto governments. They used this immense power to corner the market and were ruthless to shut down any potential competition. Yes, powerful criminal cartels are bad too.
Yes, but the attempt to consolidate control of the market to one huge mega-corp can't work as long as it's possible for new small upstarts to enter the market. Dominoes can never have a pizza monopoly unless they lobby the government to make permits for opening a new restaurant too expensive for small upstarts to afford. One real world example, the reason why all toy manufactures in the US are huge companies is because Mattel, a very rich toy manufacture, lobbied for heavy and expensive regulation of the toy industry which drove independent toy manufactures out of the market.
Yes, bad bosses exist because bad people exist. You can't regulate cruelty out of the human race. But by limiting structures of power, we can reduce the capacity for it. And no structure of power is more unaccountable and prone to abuse than a government.
There has never been an economic system put into practice at scale that has resulted in equal sharing of wealth across society. Any system that promotes hard work and innovation necessarily rewards some people more than others, because not everyone has as much to offer society as each other. In a free society, rich people tend to be wealthy because they provide a valuable service to society. Engineers, scientists, economists, doctors, all provide valuable services that benefit society, and are well paid for their efforts. Even ultra billionaires who are quite easy to hate, like Mark Zuckerberg have done something huge for society. I'm happy to criticize lots of stuff Mark Zuckerberg has done, I think he's a pretty bad guy. But you can't deny that a lot of people use the platform he created, and in a sense, he got his wealth because he innovated how we communicate with each other.
1
-
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit I think GDP is a pretty good measure of prosperity, but I respect your take on collectives. I'm not a collectivist, but I can see the appeal of it. That being said, unions tend to evolve into corrupt lobbying groups, same as corporations. Maybe collectives wouldn't be so bad if the central government didn't wield so much power and bow down to special interest groups so easily. My criticisms of workers unions are very similar to my criticisms of corporatism. Lobbying to a central government subverts the free market.
Small scale collective bargaining? I've got no issue with that at all. I don't need it because I'm able to negotiate well enough on my own merits. That being said, if a union started screwing with me saying that I won't get a job unless I join the union, now that's another issue. That happens in some places, and I very much take issue with that. That being said, I won't attribute gross practices like that to all unions, I'm sure some are respectable. Personally, I've had mostly negative interactions with unions, but some people speak very highly of theirs.
1
-
@PolitictalDipsit The theory is that with GDP comes everything else. I'd argue that letting people keep the bulk of their money and spend it how they see fit is better than having a centralized government use taxes to spend people's money for them. People know what they need better than the central planners do. Some people just don't want a centralized healthcare system.
If you're dead set on taxes as wealth redistribution, well I guess I'm not going to convince you otherwise, but I would still argue that cash payments to the impoverished are better than systems like food stamps. People generally know what is best for them. They should also have a limited duration. Sometimes people need help getting back on their feet, but nothing destroys a community quite like creating a system of dependency. The only exception are drug addicts and the mentally ill who are incapable of acting in their own self interest.
I'd say the best way to do welfare checks is that you file for them once, and you receive a certain number of checks in the mail for however many months (maybe 3 to 6 or so) regardless if you have a job or not. If getting a job ends your welfare checks, why the hell would you ever get a job? After the checks stop, you can't reapply for a period of time, perhaps a year or so. Financial assistance should not necessarily be denied to someone who is employed, it should be provided based on income level. We want to avoid disincentivising employment as much as possible. For all the criticism on America, we have some of the best economic mobility in the world, and key to improving this further is to avoid making whole families, whole communities even, dependent on government checks. We can find ways to help them without crippling their independence.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@tuubi2783 The modern western urban monoculture is probably the furthest left wing culture in all of history. On social issues, the modern left is quite literally to the left of Stalin or Mao. You can try to frame yourself as the moderate position and everyone else as "far right", but it comes off as either closed minded or disingenuous when just about anyone outside of the urban monoculture bubble sees you as being crazy leftists.
It is true, it is possible to be further left on economics than the modern left wing establishment. Corporatism is a left of center system, occupying essentially the same space as fascism on the left-right spectrum, but it is to the right of fully socialist systems which seek to abolish private property and make corporations into government entities rather than have them be simply subservient to it. This isn't a disingenuous description of the socialist left's goals, it's an accurate description of what it seeks to do. The socialist left see the corporations as enemies only because they are not directly controlled by the government. If Amazon were a government service, nobody on the socialist left would be critical of them even if they were worse at providing services than they are currently.
If you look at anywhere else in the world today, or anywhere at any point in history with a tiny handful of exceptions (France and Weimar Germany were quite far left socially), nearly every other culture is to the right of our current neoliberal establishment. Culturally far left societies tend to adopt the concepts of "total equality" and "total liberation". Practically speaking, their goal is to remove all stigma from people for attributes and actions. This means the abolition of racism, the acceptance of gay rights, and also recognizing the rights of "child lovers", "animal lovers", refusal to punish criminals, and many other things.
The only consistent moral standard the cultural far left still have is "consent" where anything is permitted as long as both parties consent to it. They also choose to disbelieve that people can be born different despite all evidence to the contrary. This means a total rejection of genetics as a field of study, with the only exception being if genetics as a field is butchered to comply with the ideology's claim that everyone is equally capable. Obvious examples of this include the denial that men and women's bodies are different. This leads to the abolition of women's sports, and further promotes transgender ideology, who are already supported by virtue of being a repressed group.
Being a "total liberation" ideology, the cultural far left sees any repression as its enemy, and anyone who is or claims to be repressed is a victim to be saved and elevated. The abolition of many forms of bigotry can easily be seen as a positive, but it leads to problems where groups compete to be the most repressed due to the benefits granted to them for the reason of them being repressed. It also incentivizes self interested, successful people who are members of that group to prolong the problems which allow them to identify as repressed since they disproportionately benefit from the aid compared to other members of their group who gain comparatively little benefit from this aid.
1
-
@yordideleon6627 Republicans are only really liberal because they're trying to conserve the liberal values of the US.
I'd disagree with you on the last part. The progressive movement is quite openly illiberal. They espouse racial discrimination, the abolition of equal opportunity, censorship of "offensive" speech and try to force others to live how they live. Just a few years ago, they represented a small minority of the democrat party, but recently they've gained enormous cultural power. Woke progressivism has become the new political establishment, and evidence of this is that corporations change their logos to black squares and rainbows for the respective progressive holidays. Further evidence is the blatant left wing bias of most mainstream media as well as the court system (with the exception of the supreme court.)
Part of the problem is that the center-right faction only asks for their not to be censorship, for their not to be bias. The left demands the censorship of non-left establishment voices. If only the left is calling for censorship, every single compromise will result in the censorship of the right.
We see a similar problem with courts. Very few courts, even in deep red areas, have blatant conservative activist judges. Conservative justices tend to be fair and rule on the letter of the law. Leftist judges and prosecutors tend to be activists who will let rioters and looters go free, but will lock up conservatives, and even politically neutral individuals for putting up any sort of resistance. Gun control only affects the generally law abiding centrist and right leaning citizens (and in blue areas, the penalties for violating gun laws is very harsh. Having a 15 round magazine in a place with a capacity limit is a serious felony.) Criminals who commit serious violent felonies, even murder, are often let out on parole, while anyone trying to defend themselves are locked up for decades and have their rights violated.
I live in a blue state, and I see the kind of unequal treatment that people such as myself (anyone who isn't a leftist) are regularly subject to.
1
-
@yordideleon6627 Kyle Rittenhouse. George Floyd. There are a few others I can recall but don't remember the names of the men involved. In one, three men tried to stop a burglar, and when the burglar attacked the three men and one of them shot him, all three men were arrested, charged and sentenced to prison, including the man whose only form of participation was filming the event.
Democrats have become increasingly far left, and increasingly illiberal. Far left activists have infiltrated the Democrat party and have mostly taken it over by now. More moderate Democrats are being pushed out of the party. The courts have not been thoroughly infiltrated yet, but there are a number of rulings that have been made by activist judges. The biggest disparity is in media. Mainstream media is almost entirely controlled by the progressive establishment. This can affect court rulings, and it encourages activists everywhere to engage in street violence over things they don't even understand.
Most leftist activists who were rioting over Roe vs. Wade being overturned don't even realize that abortion remains legal in blue states. It's an army of brainwashed NPCs, incapable of independent thought. Orwell had a different word for such people, but he recognized the same phenomena. He called them something to the effect of "phonograph minds", people who will play whatever record is installed onto them by the media.
1
-
1
-
@yordideleon6627 I think clarifying classical liberal is very important in modern politics. In the US, and to some extent, other western countries, liberal has come to be synonymous with left wing. Socialists are left wing, but they are very much opposed to classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is capitalistic in nature, and in the context of the US, it also tends to favor upholding constitutional rights. The neo-liberal establishment (of which there is much overlap with the neo-conservatives) is a warmonger party which wages war for profit and to spread liberal values around the world.
To be fair, that wasn't meant to be a complete demographic analysis. It was a brief breakdown based on common stereotypes, which tend to have some truth in reality. Anyone of any political affiliation has the potential to be mis-informed, but in my experience, the modern left regularly and consistently gets so very much wrong. This really kicked off with non-stop lies about Trump and Covid. Before that point, the left didn't seem any more prone to blatant lying than the right, but something about Trump broke the left, caused them to adopt a more extreme ideology that rejected morality and embraced the idea of gaining power at any cost. It's a sort of "the ends justify the means" approach. Seize power no matter how many lies need be told and rules broken, then implement your party's policies which will fix everything, allegedly.
The problem is how utterly useless the establishment has been in implementing policies to benefit the general public. They are almost entirely beholden to the desires of corporate special interests with little concern at all for the wellbeing of the middle and working class. There are Republican establishment politicians, and I'd say they're even a majority. But the Democrat party is, more so than the Republican party, almost entirely establishment in nature. This is backed up by polls.
Middle and working class (of which there is overlap) Americans tend to vote Republican. There are exceptions such as state employees and union workers, but that's not important for this breakdown. Democrats tend to draw votes, and importantly, funding, from the unemployed poor and the very rich (top 1% people as well as corporations.) Tech giants, billionaires and upper middle class working non-labor jobs want stronger government either for political virtue signal reasons, or because they want more regulation in their industries to impair their competition. Tech giants lobby regulators to create laws that harm tech upstarts for example. The same is true of other industries like medicine and food. The unemployed poor want stronger government because they want to keep getting welfare checks.
On that we disagree. America is too divided to mend itself through non-violent means. We have politically motivated violence in the streets and activists infiltrating every branch of government, including schools. There are talks of secession on both sides, and frankly, it might not matter if a majority oppose a violent civil war. When states openly defy the authority of the federal government under the belief that they are wholly justified in doing so, nothing can prevent the fracturing of the nation. We are very clearly split into two factions. The US is no longer one nation, it is two separate nations grasping for control of the country and it's institutions. Some on both sides actively seek to force others to live how they do. Issues like abortion and election integrity are driving a wedge through this nation, and when we finally split apart, people will suffer and the damage caused will take years, maybe decades to mend.
1
-
@yordideleon6627 1. Classical liberalism is about, in large part, individual rights. If you don't have a right to private property, you can't have classical liberalism.
2. I'm sure there were crazy elements of the left, but Trump getting in completely broke the establishment left. There was a general sense that he shouldn't have won. Everyone knew Hillary was next in line, and when Trump won, everyone aligned with the establishment (including large sects of the Republican party) lost their shit.
3. Well, that's part of it. But there are studies that show that politicians have basically zero consideration for the voters. They only pass laws to help special interest groups. Also, mass shootings are an issue blown out of proportion and used as a political talking point. They account for a tiny fraction of violent crime in the US, unless you take what are basically falsified statistics from an activist group. Mass shootings are allowed to continue because they're a useful political tool.
4. I agree. I'm just breaking down that the Democrats are the party of the ultra rich and their serfs, while the Republicans are, to a degree, the worker's party.
5. You misunderstand, completely. I'm not calling for violence. I'm saying that violence is not only inevitable, it's already happening. The BLM riots, the January 6th capitol riot, the 2018 feminist capitol riot, several instances of domestic terrorism including running vehicles through crowds of people, politically motivated mass shootings, etc. I wish there was a peaceful solution, but it's too late for that. I really hope that I'm wrong and that everything simmers down, but I seriously doubt that it is possible to reunify at this point. The two factions in this country are split, and there is no way to reconcile them.
1
-
@user-tz6xl4yb4n Not necessarily. Not all populist movements are violent in nature, although as a revolutionary force, violence is a constant risk for populist movements. Fascism is a far right ideology that shares much in common with socialism. It seeks to nationalize large parts of industry, similarly to how communism does the same. A far right populist movement has the potential to turn fascist if it takes power, but inversely, a far left populist movement is likely to implement socialism or communism if it takes power. Also, not all populist movements are authoritarian in nature, libertarian populists are quite steadfast in their opposition to socialist and fascist movements even if they share a common enemy in the current political establishment. Personally, I identify as a libertarian populist, and if you're curious, I'm more than happy to share my side and have a discussion. I welcome all outside perspectives, even if I might not agree with them.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1