• taanegl@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Oh great. The liberals have been active in the polls. No wonder the liberals of my country are salivating to join.

    “It’s not our fault, it’s the EU! Now let me rinse off my sadness in this money pool…!”

    FYI, republicans are “classical liberals”… which is liberal with less taxes and less accountability, but still liberals. Same with “social democrats”. Shills, the lot of them.

    • WarmSoda
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      1 year ago

      What does liberal mean in this comment? Can you help me understand what liberal republicans are, and how social Democrats are the same?

      • taanegl@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        TL;Dr putting “neo” or “classical” in front of “liberal” is nothing more than pointless gesturing. It’s “emperor’s new economic model”, really.

        Liberalism is basically the individualistic economic model. Think Reagen, think Thatcher. The whole word “liberalism” is basically all flowery and sounds nice, but in fact it’s slightly right from centre. It’s a problem of the overton window in the US, or goal post moving, that makes it seem like a lefty ideology, when in fact it is in effect the economic philosophy that defines the US, the UK and Europe today.

        At the same time, “social democrats” (which I used to be) is like saying *I put a socialist hat on my liberalism", when in most cases social democrats will vote for exactly the same things liberals vote for, with the added benefit of seeming like they’re being a bit of a collectivist. In the end it’s all about optics.

        Republicans notoriously “hate” liberalism, calling the democrats liberals. Here’s the kicker though: there is no “conservative” economic model beyond liberalism, at least not nowadays. The only real difference there is that some actually want right-wing libertarianism, while others would be fine to return to a more nationalistic social policy, with the added benifit of access to international markets, because that’s where they can get their petroleum, uranium, blood diamonds, wage slaves, classic slavery, etc.

        In essence liberalism is all about pandering to corporations by harping on about small businesses, but also privatising welfare with “new public management”. The idea there was to to “decentralise government”, when really it is about shoehorning a fuckton of private companies and consultants into the tax system, making public services super expensive and eventually privatising (amongst other things) the health sector, once it is sufficiently expensive enough.

        Liberalist social policies may seem more left leaning, but actually adheres to republican concepts. Note; republican proper, speaking of right to vote, citizenry, congressional government, etc - ya know, creating a republic. But the republican party is everything but republican, in that they are nationalists with classical liberal economic model. Before when they were the democrats (party flip in the 50s) they fronted things like taking away voting rights from felons, justifying poverty by way of “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” and trickle-down economics. They shake their fists against democrats and call them “filthy liberals” to move the overton window further from the left. The democrats and republicans, at least the majority, are in essence following samy political economical values and vote for the same economic policies.

        It’s all a big dog and pony show, establishment politics in effect. They act all though and call names on camera, then go to a back room, soften their voice and it’s back to business as usual. Fill laws with holes, cut ribbons at ceremonies, yada yada yada.

        Do not fall for the okie doke. Black people in the US did, now there’s “black republicans” and the words “power to the people” has all but evaporated. It’s pretty much what you get when the constituency accepts outrage and reactionary politics. You can claim you’re doing something different, but in essence both the dems and the pubs want the same thing, except the pubs are even worse bootlicking, spineless shills than the dems. It also allows the dems more favourable optics so they can pander to the lefties, but make no mistake: economically speaking they want exactly the same things, with few qualifications.

        It should also be stated that philosophically there is no real conflict between collectivism and individualism. It’s a bunch of hooey invented by political zealots and romantics a couple of hundred years ago who waxed poetic about concepts they couldn’t understand at the time in fervent hatred against monarchy. Monarchies was seen as the old collectivists, as nationalism was seen as collectivistic. That’s why today we are in the situation we’re in, because American liberalists in particular masturbate furiously in the idolization of the “founding fathers”, because they too were a bunch of masturbatory liberals who made fancy speeches and had paintings made of themselves.

        Again, optics, dog and pony show, bread and circus, a bunch of anti-democratic nonsense to keep people busy thinking there is any real difference, when in fact there is none. The same people who talk smack against liberalism, immigration, missuse of public spending, subsidies, “the deficit” (which doesn’t matter in a fiat currency run country, it really doesn’t - it’s just more distractionary politics), etc, either don’t understand what they’re talking about or are just playing their part in the outrage machinery, because they all benifit from liberal economic philosophy and policies. They hold stock, they go to galas, they smile for the camera, they are in effect aristocratic in nature.

        • WarmSoda
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          1 year ago

          Thank you for the write up. I do appreciate it.

          I just have two thoughts to share. The article in question is about EU, not the US. And you should probably sit back from the screen for awhile man, it sounds like you’re really deep into this and that’s not healthy.

          • taanegl@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            My guy, the EU is liberalistic economic alliance. They want to become the US 2.0. It’s a slow moving coup of the various European nations sovereignty to streamline liberal policies across the board.

            In my country we’re losing collectivistic policies and public services because the EU is slowly shoehorning in more and more liberal policies. We have a “labour party” and a “conservative party” where I’m from, who are exactly the same economically speaking, but the latter shuts up when the former stands by the concepts of liberalism, only to vote for the exact same thing at the end of the day.

            Liberalism is the vehicle of capitalism.

            And yes, I am taking a break from “the screen”, when I’m not working with code and servers, but that doesn’t mean I should commit intellectual suicide.

            Like not even an upvote for all that. Just a false empathy. Thanks.

            • WarmSoda
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              1 year ago

              Did you seriously edit your comment to complain that I didn’t upvote? Wat

              • taanegl@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                Yes, I almost always edit my comments after writing them. In any case, though I wrote in frustration there are obviously good reasons why I was frustrated, which can be found in the text, which you dismissed with fake pathos and bad faith.

                Go away.

                • WarmSoda
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                  1 year ago

                  Man I’m sorry. I didn’t realize upvoting was important to… anyone.

                  If I upvote your comments will you feel better? I definitely don’t want you to have fake pathos and faith bags. Looking at your tiny amount of Internet points I guess I can see why it upsets you.

                  • taanegl@beehaw.org
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                    1 year ago

                    It’s not a question about points, it’s more like you read the frustration, and you could have thought “geez, dudes straight up not having a good time” and just leaving it at that. But instead, you feeder to dismissal via false patios, and now instead of leaving it be, you continue with bad faith.

                    And why do you continue to harp on about it? Is there some reason why you continue to defend your dismissal? Do you get anything from that? Think about it…