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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-231
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Palestine:
Ukraine:
Empire:
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Other issues:
Japan:
Europe:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
cortomaltese@9 wrote “Trump and the Republicans oppose the system, like anti-war, anti-migration, etc. (the Democrats ARE the system), and therefore Trump is constantly bashed and attacked by all (system) media, Hollywood, and all systemic institutions.” The Republicans are part of the system. This is outrageously false. The system include rivalries and policy conflicts within the ruling class and Trump is merely an expression of a faction that wants more brutal economic policies even at the expense of previous bourgeois democratic norms, forms and laws. Fox News, Sinclair, etc. are all mainstream media thus the claim that all the media attacked Trump is also outrageously false. “Hollywood” includes religious broadcasting/cable and Christian media and Christian movies and they are not promoting anti-Trumpery. They are mostly promoting right idpol, where “the people” are apparently imagined to be “people like me. I don’t know is cortomaltese is any more correct about Austrian politics but this suggests cortomaltese operates with an worldview centered on falsehoods.
By the way, some polls are indeed “rigged,” partly because they are aimed at donors, who are being invited to invest in the winner. Other polls mean to create a bandwagon effect in news coverage for their preferred candidate. Others aim to tag their enemies as losers, also aiming to affect news coverage, which is designed to emphasize the so-called horse race. Some local polls may even be interventions, paying political professionals and consultants on the ground, making them de facto recruits. Finally, there is the fact that all polls are exercises in statistics, thus hard. And the best polls are expensive. Who wants accurate information out among the public? That’s why so many campaigns keep their polls secret. Releasing the results is a political act too.
Honzo@26 is being using “fallacious” there, those banks could have made more money elsewhere. It’s called opportunity cost and they no doubt think they have lost money, or will at least. The cautious hypothesis is that it’s Musk who wanted a more right-wing X as part of his personal political use value and he got the banks to give him the money for it, which is the correct part of the comment. The principle of billionaires with political hobbies is widespread, from Koch and the Heritage Foundation, to Bezos and the Washington Post. Musk and X is the same so far as I can see. The thing is, it is fallacious to conclude the banks losing billions don’t matter. How much I don’t know either, but too scents was right on that point, not fallacious. The “realists” holding the bag are “broke-ass fabulists.” In my view just as much as “realists” who think election campaigns can be engineered like marketing campaigns while ignoring that marketing is quite fallible. Or also in my view, just as much as “realists” who believe in Fortress America.
Honzo@27 is worse than silly. Apparently the most reason for the decision to go to war on a particular day is the prospect of an easy victory (often delusional, but even so.) That’s why Hitler went to war with the USSR. But another is desperation, seeing no other way out for the rulers, who are not experienced with losing. That’s why Japan went to war with the US. The assumption that Americans are incapable of national unity in wartime seems to stem from contempt for the people in general. It’s certainly not supported by any historical experience. Americans are against losing wars but that takes generally takes a long time to sink in. Lastly, the notion that Fortress America is a realistic path to preserve capitalism is highly dubious in itself. The notion the American ruling class, which includes Wall Street (!) can be satisfied with an imaginary “Near Abroad” which would require serious intervention (aka wars) in much of Latin America is something of a counterfactual unsupported by anything. The political survivability of the CPC which has seriously damaged its bureaucracy that would run its “command economy” in the event of a blockade like that waged on the DPRK is an issue too. That’s doubly so given the existence of a large petty bourgoisie and a Chinese bourgeoisie, both in the PRC but also in Taiwan. Such a blockade would mean “reform and opening up” had failed spectacularly, and it would involve a major theoretical/practical rearming of the CPC.
Honzo@29 continues the silly (illness? or hungover?) From what I remember, commenting on a Norwegian post is a waste of time, for a start. The last election was not stolen in the sense of vote falsification. Trump like all conservatives, Republican and Democratic, have benefited as well as suffered from the multitude of hardball/shady political tricks that are depressingly familiar in actually existing democracies. So much for ludicrous notions of election “interference,” a meaningless charge. In practice, Trump’s army of supporters being all over the polls is a call for a nationalized voter fraud, aimed against poll workers and voters of the wrong sort. Even nuttier is the notion that half the nation supports Trump. There’s a reason he lost the vote in two elections.
Further, a huge fraction of his supporters profess to believe that Trump won’t do what he has said he’ll do (for good reason,) and another large fractions pretends he can’t do anything but Harris can, so it’s essential to elect Trump anyway…regardless of the vote, though that part doesn’t said out loud very often, except by proclaiming “the people” are Trumpists without any evidence. The assertion these people support Trump is BS. The offhanded dismissal of the humanity of urban areas (we know who they are to a lot of people) ignores that rural areas—usually ruled in my judgment by a corrupt system of local bigwigs, not “the Peopel!”—is accompanied by a disdain for mere suburbanites. Too much college education? I am baffled at how the PMC/Deep State/cultural Marxist crowd can manage to convince themselves midlevel bureaucrats and college professor run the country and there is no bourgeois ruling class. Well, motivated reasoning.
As to the notion that PTB control the Generals neglects that the Generals are PTB, especially in a militaristic country like the US. They would be card-carrying members of the Deep State, if the phrase “Deep State” wasn’t contrived to pretend that a conspiracy magically runs/ruins the country. Also, the armed forces are an organized hierarchy. That’s why it is indeed the colonels who are most likely to overthrow the government. See the depressing history of military dictatorship world wide for decades. Calling for a military dictatorship is not a good look. Another also, the fascist influence in the police forces and security services is matched by a fascist influence in the officer corps. When they train fascists in Ukraine, they also train themselves in fascist politics. Again, calling for fascists to defy a popular is not a good look. Lastly, despite the officer corps and the rank-and-file are two different creatures. There seem to be nearly systematic efforts to cultivate both a Christian army and a mercenary force (yes, incompatible goals but who said imperialists are rational…that’s Honzo, not me.) I say what Made A Great America was the Revolution, the Civil war and yes even the New Deal and the civil rights revolution. It means nothing to say MAGA if you don’t say when America stopped being Great. I don’t think, despite Honzo’s wishes, to assume the black soldiers and Latino soldiers and the women soldiers and even the confused gay soldiers who didn’t get they’re on the list too, to sign on to MAGA when it comes to storming “urban” areas.
Peter AU1@31 is too categorical. Of course, the president has tremendous agency. The system was designed that way, back in 1787 and the role of commander-in-chief of the empire has gotten even more important. That’s why the bourgeoisie spends billions on presidential election campaigns. If who was president didn’t matter, they wouldn’t waste the money. It is true that no president does all the work himself. That’s usually done by lower level people, the kind of ass kissers who actually read stuff like Project 2025, to get ahead. But it is simply absurd to insist that whenever lower level people tell you something is impossible, it just means the boss is being “blocked.” When the boss of a firm is told by IT or the engineers something is impossible, are they just “blocking” the boss? No this is too simplistic, in a bad way.
Peter AU1@34 doesn’t realize the Hunter Biden laptop’s computer could have had exculpatory evidence deleted, clearing the senior Biden of legally actionable charges. This is even more true given how long it was in the hands of private parties with unknown motivations. Everybody realizes Hunter was trying to peddle influence, but that’s not even illegal, given the pervasive corruption of the legal system here. The true corruption is what’s legal. The official nonsense is the notion that unwelcome intelligence cannot be simply dismissed until the upper levels cough up a suitable justification for the desired policy. The intelligence community dutifully offers up evidence of atrocities or nukes or whatever, as needed for justification. Saying they directly control policy is simply wrong. The CIA and others feeding stories about Biden’s dementia being incapacitating is a much better example or the New York FBI office promoting another emails server. The Steele dossier was for the FISA court, but such shoddy work is, as far as I can tell, pretty typical for everything but before FISA, which is mostly a rubber stamp. The implication government officials shouldn’t ever be the targets of criminal investigation is a shoddy principle to uphold. The fundamental problem there is the use of gossip in mass media. That is to be laid to the owners of the mass media (rich people) and their customers who buy advertising (also rich.)
Honzo@35 continues the losing streak, managing to claim finance capitalism has a rational interest in Fortress America. Finance capital has an interest in the entire planet. Building Fortress America requires destroying finance as it is. That’s not Trump’s policy, never was, and never will be. “Fortress America” is an idiosyncratic excuse for Trumpery, so far as I can see.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 29 2024 19:10 utc | 52
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