Tuesday, February 5, 2008

A More Polite Way of Saying It

I gave a brief overview of the forces behind "Reaganism" and all the subsequent "conservative" bullshit in the USA and the Western democracies in general in my post "Us versus Them."

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 is a convenient signpost for the movement represented by the goons of our present times. The significance of Ronald Reagan is that he represented a conscious decision to embrace fantasy over reality, to celebrate ignorance over inconvenient reality, to use simplistic slogans over nuanced deliberations, and to engage in naked agression over the pretence of diplomacy. Reagan was not so much different from Jimmy Carter insofar as the outcomes were pretty much the same (see El Salvador for instance), but in the inane justifications, and the abusrd evidence he and his handlers would use as arguments for his destructive policies.

Ronald Reagan was an actor, and a simple-minded individual as well. He was therefore perfect in acting the role of a heroic American president, in a simple-minded fantasy just perfect for all the simpletons who had been mourning their lost privileges and shattered delusions since the 1960s.


Here's a more polite version. With some unfortunate praise for the Democratic Party:

It took 40 years because, as standard histories have it, Democrats imploded in the late 1960s by supposedly taking liberalism too far. In a sense the standard histories are right. America’s essentially conservative sensibilities turned reactionary as blacks got too free, women too equal, students too questioning and war protesters too effective. To the white male minority that had had its way since the founding of the Republic, the majority of the population wasn’t supposed to take its rights so literally. Hence law-and-order-Nixon’s victory in 1968 (before lawless-and-delusional-Nixon’s unraveling in 1974). Hence the “Reagan Revolution” of 1980, that dyslexic homage to 1890s America and the re-flowering of capitalism without a human face.

...

The Republican ascendancy was fill-in-the-blanks opportunism. Conservatism since 1980 has been an era of reaction and regression — a dismantling of the American experiment as an ideal of egalitarian opportunity for most, of positive freedoms from want and insecurity for most, and a re-branding of America into the land of the opportunist, the selfish, the Gordon Gekko-admiring greedster. There is a void this time, not only of leadership but of humanity.

5 comments:

DarthStar said...

Usvsthemism:
There are over 200 isms. Anarchism, Reaganism, Collectivism, Communism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Feminism, Environmentalism etc. etc. all the adherence believing that they hold the one truth and only truth.

The people who have succumbed to the ism let the ideology do their thinking.

Ideology is a very pseudo intellectual way of looking at and dealing with reality. The ism pre determines the views of the followers and sets them up to not have to think, just follow the doctrine of the ism. The ism is all thought out for them and those who follow said ism fail to look critically at it because they are too close to it. The ism gets a free pass because the advocates of the ism dominate the intellectual field of the ism.

The ordinary joe is easily lead into an ism and blindly follow because they are too busy with day to day life to get all the information they need to make a proper decisions. They also vote, if they vote, the way thier fathers, fathers, father voted. The ordinary joe is not at fault in any of this. The media and governments do not let people get the facts and truth of things in a scientific manner. They are all stuck in their own isms. Lying and exaggerating for the ism for the good of everyone, which is extremely immoral. They can’t and don’t even live by their own ism, that is to be forced on everyone else.

There is no Us or Them, only ordinary people caught, up in everyday life. Isms delude, inspire dishonesty, fanaticism and spread fear.

“America’s essentially conservative sensibilities turned reactionary as blacks got too free, women too equal, students too questioning and war protesters too effective. To the white male minority that had had its way since the founding of the Republic, the majority of the population wasn’t supposed to take its rights so literally.”

Conservative sensibilities turned reactionary because “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” From the book Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Blacks, and women received special treatment in getting jobs and schooling, students were questioning based on an ideology and war protesters lived the “violence is non-violence” ideology.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Karl Marx

Good intentions drove the reaction by the public in the Reagan years. In other words people got what they wished for and received the consequences they had not foreseen.
Unlike slavery in other parts of the world at the time, American slavery was pure racist. This fact is a huge problem.

“capitalism without a human face” is better than any other system I've seen:

I have been to nearly 60% of the countries on the face of this earth. I can tell you capitalism is the best system going even with all of its faults, and there are many, many, many.

A good friend of mine who immigrated from China was sick and tired of starving, eating rats etc.. Through very hard work, and a credit union willing to give him a loan he now owns 5 restaurants, a 4000 acre farm and a service station. Try doing that in a country that is not democratic or capitalistic.

Ooops, hope this was not too long. ;)

thwap said...

After all that trashing of "isms" you then come down firmly on the side of capitalism?

Your comment deserves more consideration than that, and I hope to get to it this evening after work.

DarthStar said...

Quick Note: Then lunch and back to work.

"After all that trashing of "isms" you then come down firmly on the side of capitalism?"

Glad you noticed that.

This is the major dilemma of all dilemmas, capitalism works in reality, not just theory.

This drives me crazy.

Have a great day.

thwap said...

Well, you know, you're continuing to be guilty of the same slavery to an "ism" that you decry.

What do you mean by "capitalism"? The pristine, theoretical constructions of perfectly free markets conjured up by the fanatics at the Von Mises Institute?

The gigantic oligopolies formed through competition, bullying, and out of sheer power, such as that formed by John Rockefeller?

The hand-in-hand managed corporate order of the USA circa 1950?

There are elements of capitalism that make it an effective generator of wealth. Even Karl Marx accepted that. But what you're talking about has to be made more precise.

Furthermore, I don't think that it would be too hard to find people from non-socialist countries who were also forced to live in rat-eating squalor, who would have blamed "capitalism" for their horrid conditions.

"Imperialism," spurred on to a great extent by "capitalism" [see: The Opium Wars] brought a great deal of suffering to China. Mao's communism, for all its faults and disasters, managed to bring basic literacy, medical care, and at least minimum-level calories for more people than did the previous regime.

What works? What doesn't work? As you say; you have to go beyond the narrow confines of any particular "ism" to find that out.

DarthStar said...

"Well, you know, you're continuing to be guilty of the same slavery to an "ism" that you decry."

Guilty as charged. I'm a slave to my stuff.

I just don't want to reinvent the wheel. Things are not that bad compared to other spots in the world, we need equality and compassion.

Guaranteed minimum income with a flat tax would make things more equal and take the edge off our capitalist society.

But an idea like that would take leadership that gave a shit, about people.

""Imperialism," spurred on to a great extent by "capitalism"[see: The Opium Wars] brought a great deal of suffering to China."

Very true.