The ascent of right wing populism

Moonflower said:
We like talking about fucking women and it's Mott's thread so he can do what he likes with it. You, by contrast, just take any fucking thread and then start to turn it into yet another C&P crapfest, we are all totally fed up with your craziness.
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facts that you can not counter and then continue to support the idiot ideas you support are not crap.


Its the opposite of crap
 
evince said:
Fascism and power distribution[edit]

Benoît Mandelbrot writes:


One of Pareto's equations achieved special prominence, and controversy. He was fascinated by problems of power and wealth. How do people get it? How is it distributed around society? How do those who have it use it? The gulf between rich and poor has always been part of the human condition, but Pareto resolved to measure it. He gathered reams of data on wealth and income through different centuries, through different countries: the tax records of Basel, Switzerland, from 1454 and from Augsburg, Germany, in 1471, 1498 and 1512; contemporary rental income from Paris; personal income from Britain, Prussia, Saxony, Ireland, Italy, Peru. What he found – or thought he found – was striking. When he plotted the data on graph paper, with income on one axis, and number of people with that income on the other, he saw the same picture nearly everywhere in every era. Society was not a "social pyramid" with the proportion of rich to poor sloping gently from one class to the next. Instead it was more of a "social arrow" – very fat on the bottom where the mass of men live, and very thin at the top where sit the wealthy elite. Nor was this effect by chance; the data did not remotely fit a bell curve, as one would expect if wealth were distributed randomly. "It is a social law", he wrote: something "in the nature of man".

Pareto's discovery that power laws applied to income distribution embroiled him in political change and the nascent Fascist movement, whether he really sided with the Fascists or not. Fascists such as Mussolini found inspiration for their own economic ideas[citation needed] in his discoveries. He had discovered something that was harsh and Darwinian, in Pareto's view. And this fueled both the anger and the energy of the Fascist movement because it fueled their economic and social views. He wrote that, as Mandelbrot summarizes:


At the bottom of the Wealth curve, he wrote, Men and Women starve and children die young. In the broad middle of the curve all is turmoil and motion: people rising and falling, climbing by talent or luck and falling by alcoholism, tuberculosis and other kinds of unfitness. At the very top sit the elite of the elite, who control wealth and power for a time – until they are unseated through revolution or upheaval by a new aristocratic class. There is no progress in human history. Democracy is a fraud. Human nature is primitive, emotional, unyielding. The smarter, abler, stronger, and shrewder take the lion's share. The weak starve, lest society become degenerate: One can, Pareto wrote, 'compare the social body to the human body, which will promptly perish if prevented from eliminating toxins.' Inflammatory stuff – and it burned Pareto's reputation.

Pareto had argued that democracy was an illusion and that a ruling class always emerged and enriched itself. For him, the key question was how actively the rulers ruled. For this reason he called for a drastic reduction of the state and welcomed Benito Mussolini's rule as a transition to this minimal state so as to liberate the "pure" economic forces.[13]

To quote Pareto's biographer:


In the first years of his rule Mussolini literally executed the policy prescribed by Pareto, destroying political liberalism, but at the same time largely replacing state management of private enterprise, diminishing taxes on property, favoring industrial development, imposing a religious education in dogmas.[14]

Karl Popper dubbed him the "theoretician of totalitarianism",[15] but there is no evidence in Popper's published work that he read Pareto in any detail before repeating what was then a common but dubious judgment in anti-fascist circles.[16]

It is true that Pareto regarded Mussolini's triumph as a confirmation of certain of his ideas, largely because Mussolini demonstrated the importance of force and shared his contempt for bourgeois parliamentarism. He accepted a "royal" nomination to the Italian senate from Mussolini. But he died less than a year into the new regime's existence.

Some fascist writers were much enamored of Pareto, writing such paeans as:


Just as the weaknesses of the flesh delayed, but could not prevent, the triumph of Saint Augustine, so a rationalistic vocation retarded but did not impede the flowering of the mysticism of Pareto. For that reason, Fascism, having become victorious, extolled him in life, and glorifies his memory, like that of a confessor of its faith.[3]

But many modern historians reject the notion that Pareto's thought was essentially fascistic or that he is properly regarded as a supporter of fascism
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In the first years of his rule Mussolini literally executed the policy prescribed by Pareto, destroying political liberalism, but at the same time largely replacing state management of private enterprise, diminishing taxes on property, favoring industrial development, imposing a religious education in dogmas.






interesting huh
 
1) because it is the same conversation every time

2) because you can only copy & paste and cuss; you can't have a discussion using your own words
 
Mott the Hoople said:
No Shit Captain Obvious but you're not helping!!!
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cawacko said:
Here you go Mott. To make up for you not banning Desh I offer you this (imo) excellent article on the two different GOP's. I think this does a great job describing the split in the party and why it will stay fractured.


http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433163/two-gops-resentment-republicans-aspiration-republicans
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I like the term "illiterate populism" to describe Trump's movement.

This is a pretty historic time - a time we'll look back on as being a catalyst for a major change in our national politics. Who would have thunk it back when Trump was coming down that escalator, and everyone just thought "oh, this could be entertaining for awhile"?

I think a 3-party system has always been a natural evolution for the way the country is politically. Maybe it's my own perspective, because I like elements of both current ideologies, but you do see it nationally when pundits talk about areas being "purple" instead of red or blue. If the GOP truly does splinter, maybe it will give rise to a more centrist party that appeals to voters who feel alienated by the extremes on both sides.

Here's hoping.
 
Thing1 said:
I like the term "illiterate populism" to describe Trump's movement.

This is a pretty historic time - a time we'll look back on as being a catalyst for a major change in our national politics. Who would have thunk it back when Trump was coming down that escalator, and everyone just thought "oh, this could be entertaining for awhile"?

I think a 3-party system has always been a natural evolution for the way the country is politically. Maybe it's my own perspective, because I like elements of both current ideologies, but you do see it nationally when pundits talk about areas being "purple" instead of red or blue. If the GOP truly does splinter, maybe it will give rise to a more centrist party that appeals to voters who feel alienated by the extremes on both sides.

Here's hoping.
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For the sake of discussion where would a third party come down on issues? Someone with a personality can lead a movement for an election but for a full movement how does a party find a "middle" for instance on issues like abortion which so many people vote on and find no compromise on?
 
cawacko said:
For the sake of discussion where would a third party come down on issues? Someone with a personality can lead a movement for an election but for a full movement how does a party find a "middle" for instance on issues like abortion which so many people vote on and find no compromise on?
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It's hard for me to not be biased by my own perspective, but I've met so many people in my life who self-describe as "fiscally conservative/socially liberal." By nature, a 3rd party would really have to fall somewhere in the middle on many issues. I get that a lot of the "aspirational republicans" (as the article describes) would still be pro-life, but if that was one of their top priorities & they took a hard line on it, the "new party" probably would not be for them.

In general, I'd see the new party as being more practical, and less ideological in nature.
 
Thing1 said:
It's hard for me to not be biased by my own perspective, but I've met so many people in my life who self-describe as "fiscally conservative/socially liberal." By nature, a 3rd party would really have to fall somewhere in the middle on many issues. I get that a lot of the "aspirational republicans" (as the article describes) would still be pro-life, but if that was one of their top priorities & they took a hard line on it, the "new party" probably would not be for them.

In general, I'd see the new party as being more practical, and less ideological in nature.
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You hear a lot of people describe themselves that way politically which you would think could lead to a movement. However ask ten people who describe themselves as 'fiscally conservative' what that means and I bet you'll hear at least eight or nine different responses with some not even being close. (not meaning to be cynical although I guess I am)
 
cawacko said:
You hear a lot of people describe themselves that way politically which you would think could lead to a movement. However ask ten people who describe themselves as 'fiscally conservative' what that means and I bet you'll hear at least eight or nine different responses with some not even being close. (not meaning to be cynical although I guess I am)
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I'd call it a relative thing. I think anyone who describes themselves as "fiscally conservative" is certainly somewhere to the right of where most of the Democratic party is, and certainly the liberal wing of that party. I think there would be a lot of agreement among that group as to what constitutes reasonable taxation, and also a general feeling that the government spends too much and that we have to push for a smaller, smarter gov't overall.

There won't be universal agreement on specific policies, but at least it would be a more moderate 3rd option. Since both parties have moved toward their extremes, it seems like a natural evolution for a centrist party to spring up.
 
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