This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America’s economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America’s economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
Yes looks bad, but lets export this system, the “liberal international order” all around the world. It’s a good thing. Lets support the liberation of any other system and welcome them into our blossom on inequality based on wealth.
The irony is that most leftists will agree with OP, but then be happy to support sanctions and attacks on countries like Venezuela. Were happy to support anti Maduro propaganda.
They STILL something think that this US system of liberalism is better than what the enemies of the US empire do. Like Socialism in Libya - Wikipedia under Ghaddafi and nobody gives a shit when NATO bombs it.
So I’ve started to hate these memes not because I don’t think they are not illustrative, but because they somehow do not translate into anything resembling a rational world view on policies or foreign policy based on solidarity. I hate it because like 90% of the people upvoting this are liberals and secretly US imperialists.
They’ve exported unimaginable horror and trauma and then blame the people lashing out against it for being not morally pure.
This system that consumes billions like a biblical winepress for turning labor into capital needs to be stopped. It’s gonna kill us all. I’m on the side of anyone against it.
Libya is not a good example of socialism. unless you like autocracy with massive violations of civil liberties which neuter any benefits of welfare.
Better off Bombedtm
How do group liberalism in with imperialism and indiscriminate bombing? The two are unrelated. Gaining capital at the expense of all else is not “liberal” it is capitalist
So you can understand me as talking about classical liberalism or what you would call neoliberalism. But MOST people on the “left” are fine with many aspects of capitalism, including the moral belief in inequality based on class / wealth. If I make more money, I deserve better healthcare, my kids better food and education. Most “leftists” are closer to classic liberals than socialists (I think).
The other view on this is that “liberal values” or “the liberal international order” means that there ARE no ideological values that are inherently better or worse. It’s all just a question of voting for them or not. A personal choice. Except it’s not.
First people do no or can not accept how much of mass opinion is manufactured (e.g. “manufacturing consent” is in hyperdrive today). If you invest in private media and PR campaigns and fund the right groups you can completely manipulate and interfere in the affairs of other countries. This is the playbook for the color revolutions, what is done today overtly by the NED which used to be done covertly by the CIA. It’s the same thing though.
Second is that because there is no “definite ideology of the state” except “anything goes and greed is good” (e.g. commercial property enshrined in fundamental law) there is no counterweight. This does not have to be spelled out, it is an inevitable outcome of the starting conditions. The power to influence ideology does not rest with the state and it does not rest with the people: It rests with those who have the most power outside of the state.. Those who have the most money and influence. The plutocrats and institutions and corporations. THEY are what have power in a “liberal democracy”. Because there is nothing to oppose these powers because the state is liberal, permissive of all ideology. What remains is powers like Koch brothers, Musks, Murdochs, Think Tanks, bla bla institutes, churches. In a bygone era there used to be unions, but even in social democratic countries they are at least partially captured.
So the idea of “liberal values” as being different from classic or neoliberalism is shaky at best. It’s one of the “big lies” of western democracies. There is only power (Sith axiom). And all political power derives from economic power (homebrew axiom / headcanon)
Or maybe like this: If you could run a computer simulation of a western liberal democratic country based on initial law and wealth and power distribution, you would always get capitalism.
At least this is my latest hypothesis to explain the complete collapse of the pluralistic western civilization.