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> Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over lab

> Major civil institutions of power and culture had been monopolised by the left; there had been a "default preference" for wealth over income, capital over labour. I am not from the US, and I watch with mild amusement its slide into full blown banana republic dictatorship with a sprinkle of last century European fascism - I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past. But you thought that Trump was an answer to "wealth over income" or "capital over labor"? Even without knowing that much about the intricacies of US politics this sounds pretty naive.

mjburgess 2y ago
Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market. Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner. It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him. I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart. > It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
- eli_gottlieb 2y ago
  > Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market. Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.
AlexandrB 2y ago
> I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past. Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen or murdering someone? If not, they're nothing like the Stasi or the Gestapo. It's a bad idea to cry wolf this much, because the wolf might actually come.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents. The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
  - AlexandrB 2y ago
    The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy. > Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts. The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison. It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about. The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on. He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets. Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.

mjburgess 2y ago

Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market. Whether his solution works or not isnt relevant to whether Trump's real preferences aren't, "by default", the american corporate owner. It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations, and to call any ascription of a non-evil one, "naive". It has been this manner which has made the left entirely unable to communicate beyond its self.

surgical_fire 2y ago
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class His preference seems to be to favor those that suck up to him. I mean, that is why all the top billionaires are all very cozy to him nowadays. They may be assholes, but they are smart assholes. Psychopathically smart. > It's very unhelpful to reduce trump down to basic evil motivations I didn't reduce him to evil motivations. I just said it was naive to think he would somehow benefit labor and not capital or wealth.
eli_gottlieb 2y ago
> Well the tarrifs do very much show that Trump has no "default preference" for the capitalised class -- he's very willing to wreck the american stock market. Yes, Marxist-Leninist governments also wreck their local stock markets. That doesn't mean they, or Trump, are engaged in building a superior economic system for prioritizing labor over capital.

AlexandrB 2y ago

> I mean, at this point ICE is basically a secret police that disappears people, not unlike Stasi or Gestapo from years past. Do you have an example of ICE "disappearing" a US citizen or murdering someone? If not, they're nothing like the Stasi or the Gestapo. It's a bad idea to cry wolf this much, because the wolf might actually come.

mjburgess 2y ago
The problem is that there's no mechanism to prevent that. And there's a pretty clear route to it happening: first mistaken immigrants, then mistaken murders, then mistaken "domestic terrorists" -- and you have the federal gov. disappearing political opponents. The issue with these extrajudicial renditions to foreign prisions is the extrajudicial part. The rest of it is just immoral -- the former part, a catastrophe.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  The extrajudicial part has been around since the Clinton administration[1]. Somehow neither Obama nor Biden chose to get rid of this policy. > Within days of his 2009 inauguration, Barack Obama signed an executive order opposing rendition torture and established a task force to provide recommendations about processes to prevent rendition torture. His administration distanced itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques but permitted the practice of rendition to continue The new part here is that it's foreign nationals being taken from US soil instead of another country's soil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    Yes, the new part is that it's extrajudicial. The rendition of foreign citizens can be done without a court, because they aren't covered by the US constitution. Only those "under the power of the united states government" are granted due process by US courts. The line being cross in taking persons unknown to courts from the united states, to a forieng country, isnt "a new part". It's to suspend the constitution and grant the president the power not merely to arbitarily detain, but to do so in a foreign prison. It's hard to understate how serious this is. If it were only this, and nothing else, we might hope it will stay bounded by the "hopefully" diligient ICE. But coupled with the assault on all rival systems to presidental power, there's nothign to be hopeful about. The constitution has been suspend, the president has sequestered the force of the federal government to bring under his private power the whole of american society, begining with the most powerful rivals: the courts, the media, the universities, the law first, and so on. He will next suspend the broadcasting licence for media outlets. Optimistically, the supreme court could suspend his emergency powers -- as they ought, since there is no war or emergency. This may make the federal government unable to execute his wishes -- but if they've replaced enough workers there already, it might be too late.