“Professionals” in traffic engineering still religiously cling to “standards” that are largely based on BS served up by auto companies pre 1940.
Many such cases of this, it seems.
Many such cases of this, it seems.
It was never between the left and the right or any other false dichotomies, but always between the Epstein-class and the actual human beings.
The question now is that do the normal people realize and act on the fact that the elevator to Epstein class was never working. Or even better, they don't want to become the zillionaire class husk of a human.
Now the right all around the world is hijacked by narcissistic greed that punishes any voicing of conservative moral.
In the US some republicans are daring to challenge the extreme narcissistic greed and a lot more are thinking about this privately.
I also mentioned the other dichotomies and perhaps the "right" could be hopelessness and the the "left" false hope.
As in "no point trying to curb the emissions or addressing any social causes, because the zillionaires choke hold of the planet" vs. the "eternal green growth and economy will save us and make us rich".
The Trump humangod class is not the right IMO.
I believe that power (via money or absolute power) corrupts and thus me must find a way to prevent individuals from becoming human-gods.
The left (without the "") pretends to know this but ends up being corrupted anyway and the right (the one that has some moral and spine left) seems to believe that they will not be corrupted by power.
Hope that explains it a bit better.
> The Trump humangod class is not the right IMO.
Basically the problem with American education is that they started using the wrong words to describe things. American libertarians are right wing and not anarchists, American liberals are right wing, American right wingers are religious ethno-fascists, and American "communists" are neoliberals. Or democratic socialists. Or just protestors.
Trump is absolutely on the Right Wing of politics, specifically he's a populist fascist: obsession with masculinity, hearkening to the culture of a mythical "before times," referencing national strength coming from ethnic purity, huge emphasis on marketing over policy, support for centralization of power around a dictator, militarism, and suppression of opposition through force. Verbatim fascist ideals, he's just not as powerful (yet) as previous fascist leaders.
Fascist ideology is pretty much as far-right you can get, if we use useful definitions of "left wing" and "right wing." Anarchism would be as far-left as you can get, for comparison.
Regarding the current discussion, those who are making critiques of a narcissistic greed class overriding morality and buying politics, are making, even if unintentionally, a leftist, anti-capitalist critique. A right-wing critique of the current USA government wouldn't be a class-analysis (Marxist analysis) like you did in your previous comment comparing "Epstein-class" (ultra wealthy) and "actual human beings" (the working class).
A right wing critique would be more along the lines of: the government is incompetent, it's putting the needs of a few individuals above those of the state, it's not cracking down hard enough on leftist opposition, it should jail all opposition leaders, it should pass apartheid laws against members of the non-chosen ethnic group.
So basically, if your issue with the USA is that power can be purchased with money, welcome to the Left, I promise we're not all as cringe as the ones you've seen on Twitter. Just kidding, it's perfectly possible to make leftist critiques without being a leftist, of course. You see American liberals do it all the time when they make right-wing critiques of the Left, in e.g. their opposition to anti-fascist and anti-capitalist elements of the left.
> The left (without the "") pretends to know this but ends up being corrupted anyway
Yes, absolutely, this is often a critique anarchists make of revolutionary communists. I think one American politician that will be very interesting to pay attention to for the next decade is Zohran Mamdani. He's already significantly softened his stance on Israel, I'm curious how far away from his original values he'll move.
But the both show (at least to me) the corruption by power thus compromising. Either consciously or un.
I'm seeing as the natural solution, something that has been a bit field tested here in Finland, that we start the discussion on what is the safe limit for individual power or money before the risk of corruption. After the latest year almost everyone agrees that this is a conversation we must have to stand a chance.
Maybe you have some personal difficulty identifying with the left? You're not wrong in your characterizations, you just seem to be using different labels to me.
Maybe this is a US thing? Because there barely is a left wing in US politics. Democrats are right wing, for one.
I'm trying to distance myself from though as I'm currently seeing everything as merely corrupt (by power) elite vs. normal people.
But yes, perhaps the thing I'm looking after is something like the real equality side, which to me doesn't seem to exist as even the left here in Finland seems to disregard the laws of physics and nature in terms of the impossible eternal growth.
Vas. definitely has degrowth as a part of their platform, and is often speaking against eternal growth and trying to get climate laws passed. They're only one party, and the last govt's more left-leaning SD was the best partner they could have had here, but Kesk. dragged down their efforts. Of course now, with Antti Lindtman, we have a right-wing SD, I agree that they aren't very clear on policy, and are fine with sitting around waiting to win the election on the current govt's failures.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't recognize your picture of the left within Finland. Which to be clear is something like Vas. + some parts of SD (Mäkynen, Kiuru e.g.).
I guess I'm thinking anything that doesn't hilight the tax free global narcissist pedi meta-zillionaire class tax evasion scheme to be one (or THE) root causes and also the easy fixes.
I talked to a lot of candidates from different parties during last spring campaigning and what I drew from proposing a "global fix the zillionaire-issue" was that new candidates saw this as a, perhaps unlikely, but a mandatory step in gaining a future for normal people.
And I talked to few front line politicians from the left and sdp and they didn't see any need for fixing the issue with individuals who've accumulated enough power.
Perhaps some of the top politicians also think this way but haven't realized that this is what the actual human beings want.
Or wanted a year ago, things are significantly worse for the normal people on both sides of the aisle.
But if you read Vas.'s party programme, you'll find a proposed millionaire tax, and a proposed progression to capital gains taxation.
I don't remember if an exit tax is a part of the current program, but it was at least discussed during the previous govt. (iirc, Kesk. killed it).
But I get your frustration, certainly the oikeistodemari -block is just a "nicer" Kok., and doesn't actually question any of the current frameworks.
Kiitos ajatustenvaihdosta, ja hyvää alkanutta viikonloppua.
Ihmiset ovat ihan kypsiä eliitin elosteluun ja sen varjolla tavallisen ihmisen kurjistamiseen.
Hyvää viikonloppua :)
If people have rights, then they are unequal. If they have no rights, they are equal.
The Soviet Union didn't create wealth? It put a man in space before the USA - that took "wealth" by some definition of the word, perhaps just not "personal wealth."
In order to prevent famine, the Soviets decided to allow farmers a portion of land where they could sell what they grew. It kept the country from collapsing. Every historical attempt at collective farms collapsed from starvation or was propped up by government money.
Some inequality will always exist, but it should at the very least have a healthy balance point where the poorest get to live a decent life.
Currently, inequality is a labile runaway process, where the Gini-index is running towards a value close to 1.
The rabble is just taken for the ride, fooled by left vs right show and exploited along the way.
Left & right is too imprecise, there is left/right on economic issues (worker rights, curtailing power of monopolies), and there is left/right on cultural issues (abortion, gay rights, ...).
The big coup of the rich elites has been distracting and redirecting the Democrats from economic issues to cultural ones (along the way losing the culturally conservative worker class).