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[Reelya]

Don't the right wing generally point the finger at guys like George Soros and Saul Alinski as being behind everything? They're the epitome of conjuring up fake enemies to channel the understandable rage of the conservative working poor against false enemies and away from the actual powers that be, that actually fund the right-wing populist movement. Think Koch brothers and Haliburton: the huge oil and military contractors. They're backing the anti-corporate stuff, but making sure it's deflected away from themselves.

[Helgoland]

Dammit, I meant the left-wing populism. Progressivism? They're so specific on names anyway, why don't they have a different name for right-wing versus left-wing populism? Or is it because neither really exist anymore?

Hey, I like to think of myself as progressive, but I'm certainly no populist. Why not call the child by its name - populism? That's really just a description of methods, not of goals or overarching ideology.

[Sheb]

So you're a conservative progressive atheist catholic? 

[Descan]

Any attempt to call populism by another name would merely be describing a subset of current populism. Fascism and communism were populist by various metrics in their time, but no one would call them populist now, outside certain settings. You can't just say the Tea Party isn't populist because it isn't the right kind of populist, they're still populism of a different sort from progressive populism.

Populism. Populism populism. Populism populism. Populism. Populism populism populism.

[RedKing]

Dammit, I meant the left-wing populism. Progressivism? They're so specific on names anyway, why don't they have a different name for right-wing versus left-wing populism? Or is it because neither really exist anymore?

Hey, I like to think of myself as progressive, but I'm certainly no populist. Why not call the child by its name - populism? That's really just a description of methods, not of goals or overarching ideology.

Anti-corporation? It might be the only actual name that relates to the ideology versus the method, but it doesn't seem... fluid enough. Oh well, close enough. Though honestly my anti-corporation mindset mostly stems from a "watch the world burn" perspective, but not really anarchist either in that the government holds the power to actually fulfill the anti-corporation goal. That, and watching a government burn tends to go poorly when you live there.

It's more than anti-corporate though, it's anti-elite (rich liberals, rich conservatives, rich Jews, etc). No matter what flavor you subscribe to, populism is all about creating a narrative of how power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of the few, and you're going to redistribute it to the whole (though if you're a right-wing populist, you will avoid the term "redistribute" like the plague, in favor of things like "restoring <your country here".

It's a powerful ideology, because there's always a grain of truth in it -- power *is* concentrated in the hands of a few. This is almost always true in every society in every time period.

Populism. Populism populism. Populism populism. Populism. Populism populism populism.

Being John Populism

[mainiac]

Corporate is the wrong word.  It's about corporate special interest.  The republicans actively court corporate special interest groups to a greater extent.

Almost all politicians are going to be corporate in the sense that they support large corporations running large sectors of the economy.  This is because large corporations are a vastly more efficient form of economic organization then small businesses.

[RedKing]

True, but they're also vastly more capable of abuses of the system. I think that's one of the core differences between liberals and conservatives in the US -- whether government should be policing those corporations when they fuck people over.

Though from the last 15 years, I haven't seen that either party is really all that seriously interested in getting serious about the policing. Republicans want ZERO policing, becuase "the invisible hand of the market" will correct all ills; while Democrats want a slap on the wrist, but not too hard of a slap, because then those corporate donors would stop funnelling that sweet, sweet green come campaign time.

I kinda lost any hope that either party would be serious about punishing white-collar crime after the banking meltdown and the fact that pretty much NOBODY went to jail. In China, those fuckers would have been lined up against the wall in front of a firing squad. It's sad when China does better on financial justice than the US.

[wobbly]

I kinda lost any hope that either party would be serious about punishing white-collar crime after the banking meltdown and the fact that pretty much NOBODY went to jail. In China, those fuckers would have been lined up against the wall in front of a firing squad. It's sad when China does better on financial justice than the US.

From what I can tell of how China handles these things the ones without the right political connections would end up in front of the firing squad & the ones with the right political connections would end up with a greater share of the profits in their pockets, but this might just be me being jaded & cynical.

[mainiac]

I kinda lost any hope that either party would be serious about punishing white-collar crime after the banking meltdown and the fact that pretty much NOBODY went to jail. In China, those fuckers would have been lined up against the wall in front of a firing squad. It's sad when China does better on financial justice than the US.

So how many trillions of dollars of lost output would it be worth to make you feel good about your political sausage?

Because the cost of not cutting a deal could have literally been in the trillions.  Let me write the zeros out for you:
$1,000,000,000,000.00  <---- that number a bunch of times

How many millions of unemployed would it be worth?

It's true we needed to fix the system.  But you cant fix it during the crisis.  You have to fix it before or after.  Before the republicans were in control.  After... the 2010 elections blocked any chance.

Sucks man.

True, but they're also vastly more capable of abuses of the system.

An individual corporation is capable of more abuses, then any small business.  But small businesses can be scumbaggy too, just in a more fragmented fashion.

[RedKing]

Please point out to me where I said "We shouldn't have bailed out the banks." I'm not a Tea Partier.

But once the banks were past the crisis stage, the Justice Department should have come down like a ton of bricks on the CEOs and senior management of the guilty parties.
That didn't happen. And you can say it's because those firms are extremely good at covering their tracks and obfuscating personal responsibility, and there's truth to that. In which case, you punish the corporate entity. HARD.


It's just like the Iraq debacle -- everyone wrings their hands afterwards and says "Well damn, somebody screwed this up bigtime" and then nobody actually gets called on the carpet for it.

Why do you think political apathy is so high in this country?? Because those in power are virtually never punished for their crimes/mistakes, no matter which side is in power. But the average Joe gets a $250 fine if he goes 10 mph over the speed limit. Or goes to jail if he's got a couple of ounces of weed, while Charlie Sheen walks around perpetually high as a fucking kite.

[mainiac]

Please point out to me where I said "We shouldn't have bailed out the banks." I'm not a Tea Partier.

But once the banks were past the crisis stage, the Justice Department should have come down like a ton of bricks on the CEOs and senior management of the guilty parties.

Why do you think I blamed the 2010 elections?

Yeah so when the dust has settled around 2011 or 2012 Geitner should have just gone to Congress and said "Yo Congress, you want to grant me new authority punish the Banks, right?"  I'm sure those Tea Partiers would have been delighted to wade through a legally intricate situation and put the blame on highly paid people who had just contributed money to their elections.  All in the name of giving the executive branch new power to oversee the financial sector.  That would have been a slam fucking dunk.

Why do you think political apathy is so high in this country?? Because those in power are virtually never punished for their crimes/mistakes, no matter which side is in power.

There was no indictments because the dumbass voters stayed home in 2010!

[Bauglir]

There was no indictments because the dumbass voters stayed home in 2010!

Do you honestly think that votes would have made a difference?

[mainiac]

There was no indictments because the dumbass voters stayed home in 2010!

Do you honestly think that votes would have made a difference?

Gee do I think that not electing the people who described regulating wall street in apocolyptic terms would have made a difference in whether we did a crack down?  Let me think about this one...

The problem with this world is that people turn on their cynicism and think it makes them Henry Fucking Clay.

[Frumple]

... legit question, was there actually anyone running that would have supported a crack down? I barely remember that election cycle.

[RedKing]

There was no indictments because the dumbass voters stayed home in 2010!

Do you honestly think that votes would have made a difference?

^^^

This. You can't convince me that Congress would have punished Wall Street, Tea Party or no Tea Party. It just doesn't happen. It didn't happen in 1987. Hell, it didn't happen in 1929. It rarely even happened in the 1800s when various speculators nearly killed the national economy on more than one occasion.