US Presidential Election, Nov 5th 2024

MillionMilesAway said:
I think you're aware that I was more thinking of "I will do such and such" under Moron's Maxim is meaningless and shouldn't be a basis of decision. Any policy put forward in that manner is irrelevant as it shouldn't be considered to be truth.

I do agree that the detail of what policies mean or did is lacking as news channels have been cut and cut (see Newsnight for a recent example); this obviously suits the politicians who know that they will rarely get a deep analysis.

Audience is the only metric of interest. The focus is more on soundbites and shock headlines - several minutes on something by someone else said or done, rather than ask a minister about his actual department.

It does still happen in some newspapers, but it's much harder to find.
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100%.
 
My takeaway is despite our own individual beliefs and principals the majority of us are hypocrites.

A political leader could be right of Gengis Khan. A serial rapist, nonce and fraudster. But if they guarantee you get to keep more of your money to spend how you please people will vote that **** and his party in. The same people will grumble that they are a **** but I've got a brand new whatever consumer product I'm a slave to that I've paid for.

Maybe we do need to break the world again to start again.
 
The perfect fumble said:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In establishment circles, both sides of the Atlantic, the Nazis were in vogue with a number of high profile individuals in the 1930s, but this was more a product of those politically chaotic times, the old certainties gone, where the fear of Bolshevism gripped figures like 1st World War Prime Minister Lloyd George "the man who won the war"

In 1936, Lloyd George visited Germany and met with Hitler twice. He admired Hitler's ability to reduce unemployment, and by the country's overall economic and social conditions. He was impressed by the "universal adoration" of Hitler throughout Germany. He said he had never seen the Germans "happier". He called Hitler "one of the greatest of the many great men I have ever met". He also described Hitler as the "George Washington of Germany".

I'm no expert on US politics of the 1930s, but if you believe, as I do, that capitalism in America has two political wings, the Democrats and the Republicans, then communism has always been seen as a greater enemy than fascism, and that includes the war years. It's a myth that the USA, or the UK for that matter, fought the second world war primarily to defeat fascism. In the post war years we were more than wiling to turn a blind eye to fascists if they were a useful bulwark against communism, particularly in the newly independent nations of the post colonial world.

Those inter war years are greatly misunderstood and viewing them through a post war prism is a waste of time.

A Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden, February 20th 1939​


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Fascism is what capitalism does when the conventional 'democratic' system fails them. It is their last bolt hole.

Capitalists will always prefer fascism to communism, and often they prefer it to even the most democratic forms of socialism.

To be honest, if Adolf had played his cards a little bit differently, the UK and USA would have been his best mates. The problem was that the Great War was only 20 years back (easy to forget that) and everyone who was anyone had lost relatives and friends in it. So there was an abiding suspicion of Germany. (We still see its ghost in certain quarters to this day.)
 
TinFoilHat said:
My takeaway is despite our own individual beliefs and principals the majority of us are hypocrites.

A political leader could be right of Gengis Khan. A serial rapist, nonce and fraudster. But if they guarantee you get to keep more of your money to spend how you please people will vote that **** and his party in. The same people will grumble that they are a **** but I've got a brand new whatever consumer product I'm a slave to that I've paid for.

Maybe we do need to break the world again to start again.
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Speak for youself, I have never voted based on which party is promising I keep more of my money.
 
I honestly do not think Trump is a fascist. To be a fascist would require him to have an ideology, which I don't think he has. He just does not come across as that kind of character. If socialism was in vogue, Trup would be advocating leftist policies. However, he is driven by self interest and supported by ideologues primarily of the Christian evangelical type and alt right bad faith actors linked to nefarious funders. This is what may well drive the policy approach of the Trump government.

I think Labour and other centrist parties need to learn a lesson from what has happened in the US and other countries where the right have had success: listen to the issues of the working class and act on their concerns. The more centrist parties simply offer retention of the status quo minus some minor tweaks, whilst asking the electorate for patience.

Hopefully, further recovery of economies, including improved public services, will lead to the marginalisation of populism, alt right, far right etc.. Goodness knows when this will happen, if at all, in the medium term.

When I think about the current state of politics I cannot help but think about what Plato once said about democracy: it is one of the later stages in the decline of the ideal state. It is so bad that people ultimately want a dictator to save them from it.
 
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