Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Time for some Radical Progressivism!

JB Shurk, "Deep State Plutocrats Have Nowhere to Hide"
The worst mistake the Deep State ever made was to turn conservatives against Big Business [in the 1910-40's, we called them 'Progressives'...and if they were against Big Government too, we called them 'Radical Progressives']. Traditionally, fighting corporate power was the purview of the political left. Conservatives have generally backed “free markets” because they despise socialism’s predilection for choosing economic winners and losers. Conservative voters have long seen government regulation as more of a threat than Wall Street wheeling and dealing.
This makes sense. American conservatives largely embrace the principles of the Founding Fathers’ laissez-faire liberalism, and many share policy preferences that overlap with today’s self-described libertarians. For conservatives, the left’s “politics of envy” is unappealing. The left’s desire to redistribute private property within some sort of Marxist system is seen as a dangerous impulse toward legalized theft. The left’s love for collectivism over individual freedom is regarded as insidious. Voters who support limited government do not tend to care how Sam Walton became a millionaire. They are much more likely to applaud individual success as the product of hard work and innovation.

Times are changing, though. Over the last forty years, middle-class Americans who put their faith in “free markets” have gotten smacked upside the head by corporate interests time and again. The savings and loan scandal, pension scams, derivatives-juiced market crashes, the housing collapse, the offshoring of good jobs, tech bubbles, predatory lending, reverse mortgages, and countless other corporate schemes have left working-class Americans in dire straits. All of these various gut punches have produced a kind of “awakening” among “live free or die” Americans: “free markets” are an illusion, and the economic game is rigged.

To be clear, freedom-loving Americans of every generation have known that powerful economic interests manipulate markets and take what is not theirs. When private bankers conspired with corrupt congressmen to establish the Federal Reserve over Christmas in 1913, many horrified observers predicted how the ascending oligarchy would distort markets, weaken the dollar, and instigate unnecessary economic crashes. Since the early nineteenth century, rural Americans have fought agricultural conglomerates committed to undercutting their family farms. Since the early twentieth century, mom-and-pop retailers have struggled to compete against business cartels, Big Box stores, and online behemoths. Landowners have pushed back against railroads, oil companies, speculators, developers, and industrial giants willing to take what they want through intimidation or force. Freedom-loving Americans have always understood that Big Business is a threat to freedom, too.

Still, more often than not, conservatives have found it easier to make peace with large corporations than with larger-and-larger government. At least in the sphere of private commerce, an ordinary citizen exercises some nominal free will: Will I work for this company? Will I buy from this company? Will I move as far away from this company as humanly possible? When it comes to anything within the government’s domain, however, what it wants is what it usually gets. Taxes, prisons, conscription laws, property laws, and business licenses provide Big Government with the tools to grab a citizen’s free will by the throat and squeeze it until it stops kicking.

What’s changed over the last ten years is that the vestigial boundary between private markets and government force has all but disappeared. Strangely enough, the corporate embrace of woke-ism as a social philosophy that should be imposed upon consumers has had the serendipitous effect of shattering the imaginary wall once separating Big Business from Big Government. Parents began asking why Target and Disney were shoving transgenderism and child sex changes down their throats. Moviegoers started resenting how Hollywood studios had replaced entertainment with divisive re-education seminars on “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” and “global warming.” Voters were forced to acknowledge that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and corporate news shows were censoring conservative speech and promoting far-left propaganda. Consumers realized that banks were systematically punishing them for their Second Amendment advocacy, religious affiliations, and political beliefs. All of these corporate provocations fell like sledgehammer blows upon conservatives’ heads, and Americans who once gave corporations a quiet pass became increasingly loud and angry.
Now the veil that has long prevented many conservatives from appreciating corporate tyranny has been removed from their eyes, and more Americans than ever before look at Big Business with suspicion. To be sure, some measure of suspicion has always existed. Conservatives listened to President Eisenhower when he warned them about the military-industrial complex. They experienced how NAFTA and other so-called “free trade” agreements eliminated their jobs and destroyed their once-vibrant manufacturing towns. Many rallied around Congressman Ron Paul when he demanded that the American people “audit the Fed.” But it wasn’t until formerly beloved companies began grooming their children with explicit sex talks and drag queen story hours that a huge swath of the conservative electorate finally had enough of corporate tyranny.

This “awakening” is significant. Conservatives have long understood that the State is not their friend, but now they understand that corporations are not their friends either. For financial elites who prefer pulling the strings of government from the shadows, this change in social consciousness is alarming. In the past, their emissaries in academia could say a few words about the liberating influences of “free markets,” and most conservatives could be counted upon to support Wall Street’s position. Politicians could defend the offshoring of blue-collar jobs by talking about “marginal costs” and “comparative advantage,” and opponents of socialism would get in line, even as their hometowns died. Now there is a new understanding taking hold: Big Government and Big Business are two sides of the same coin. Whether tyranny arises from the boardroom or the committee room, its impact is the same.

All of this is bad news for the Deep State. Why? Because its existence depends a great deal upon nobody quite knowing what it is. We talk about “the powers that be” running things in D.C. We often say “they” did this or that because it’s difficult to know who exactly did what, where they did it, or when. Confusion is the key. Nobody with long-term power really wants to be known. Presidencies last four to eight years, but bankers and corporate heavyweights wield power their whole lives. It’s much better for them if everyone is more concerned with Kamala’s cackle than what all the BlackRock alums in the White House are doing with trillions in discretionary spending. It’s much easier for central bank gangsters to make money from “black swan” events when their servants in Congress, the CDC, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the Oval Office are in the position to fabricate new “black swans” whenever necessary. The same éminences grises who profit from weapons of mass destruction and endless wars profit from mRNA “vaccines” and endless health emergencies. The financial oligarchy rules over Americans with ease when Americans bicker about unimportant things.
The Deep State is prima facie evidence that self-government no longer exists. In its place, extremely wealthy people use the Federal Reserve as their personal piggy bank, the Intelligence Community as their personal spies, the DOJ and FBI as their personal police force, the corporate press as their personal public relations team, and the U.S. military as their personal resource acquisition division. The president and Congress are nothing more than the organ grinder’s dancing monkey — there to distract the public while doing the bidding of those with real power. When their influence extends to international institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, or the World Bank, we call these Deep State shell games the “rules-based international order.” It is all farce.
No wonder the plutocrats call President Trump an “authoritarian.” He wants to be president, rather than play president.
He’s a direct threat to their unaccountable and unconstitutional Deep State. And now that they’ve exposed themselves, there is nowhere left for them to hide.

10 comments:

The Prophet Dervish Z Sanders said...

Washington Monthly: After AT&T announced plans to acquire Time Warner, Trump (while predisent) declared in October 2016 that the proposed merger would be "too much concentration of power in the hands of too few" and promised to block it [but] the judge criticized the prosecutors for resting their case on a highly technical, unprovable claim that the merger would harm consumers, and ruled in favor of the merger. [the FTC under tЯump failed].

...disillusioning to antitrust reformers was the question of Trump’s motives. Trump had a long history of criticizing CNN, which was owned by Time Warner. He had even once publicized a doctored video that depicted him body-slamming the CNN logo. After the DOJ brought its suit, a New Yorker investigation confirmed that Trump had personally told deputies to have the merger blocked as punishment for CNN’s unfavorable coverage.

Adding to doubts about the sincerity of Trump’s opposition to monopoly, the DOJ soon afterward waved through Disney’s acquisition of the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox, a deal that drastically consolidated media markets. ...the sale inflated Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch’s personal fortune by billions of dollars, for which Trump offered his personal congratulations.

The favoritism bore an obvious resemblance to an infamous episode from a half century earlier: Richard Nixon's interference in International Telephone & Telegraph’s purchase of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, at the time the biggest merger in American history. In June 1969, when the DOJ was preparing a suit to block the sale, Nixon ordered his deputy attorney general to back off. As reporters soon uncovered, ITT’s CEO was a close friend and ally of Nixon's, and the company had secretly contributed $400,000 to his reelection campaign.

...selective application of the law was endemic to Trump’s antitrust operation. Makan Delrahim, the head of the DOJ antitrust division under Trump, gestured toward populist criticisms of the long-standing antitrust status quo. But in summer 2019, when Sprint and T-Mobile were working toward a merger that would reduce the number of major cell service providers from four to three, Delrahim not only declined to intervene but actively worked to ensure that the deal went through, lobbying other regulators and members of Congress and fighting an antitrust suit brought by a group of states. His motives were apparent: Sprint is majority owned by SoftBank, and SoftBank’s chairman, Masayoshi Son, is a known ally of Trump's. [end article excerpt]

d0n-OLD tЯump isn't antitrust, he is a corrupt Turd who did (and will again if he regains power) use the levers of government to benefit himself and his allies.

What happened was that tЯump cut himself in for a piece. What you said about the Biden FTC G00gle lawsuit. Though you didn't say how. I say that was projection -- accusing Biden of what tЯump did (and will do again if he regains power).

Joe Conservative said...

What have Biden/Harris done to combat the BIGGEST trust of all? The US Government? "Oh look, I'm fighting mini-trusts and slapping their wrists...."

Anonymous said...

"There can be only ONE!" (c) ;-P

Joe Conservative said...

Yep. And it has to have a (D) on it!

Anonymous said...

D as in (D)opes? ;-P

The Prophet Dervish Z Sanders said...

Minus: What have Biden/Harris done to combat the BIGGEST trust of all? The US Government?

Government, the "We The People" trust should be the only trust allowed to exist. Though I can understand why you want to get rid of it. There is nothing more hated by rightturds than "We The People". Get rid of it (or depower it bigly) and all the corporate trusts will be able to gouge and rip off consumers unimpeded.

Biden/Harris haven't done anything about the government "trust" because they are on the side of "We The People", unlike rightturds.

Joe Conservative said...

The 2-tier lawfare party hearts Government BIGLY!

The Prophet Dervish Z Sanders said...

Yeah, you're right. 2-tier lawfare republicans do love big government bigly. republicans love big government so much -- they want it big enough to track all women's periods and monitor what takes place in everyone's bedrooms.

Joe Conservative said...

Especially the tampon machines in the boy's rooms! Boys get pregnant, too! @@

The Prophet Dervish Z Sanders said...

CNN: Trump said at his ... press conference: "He signed a bill that boys’ bathrooms -- all boys' bathrooms in Minnesota -- will have tampons".

Facts First: Trump's claims are false.

Walz didn't order Minnesota schools to put tampons in boys' bathrooms or sign a bill requiring tampons to be put in all boys' bathrooms. That's not what the bill signed by Walz in 2023 actually says -- and it's not how the 15 Minnesota school districts that spoke to CNN on Friday say they have implemented the law.

The law, intended to make sure students of all income levels and gender identities have ready access to menstrual products, says school districts and charter schools must make menstrual products like tampons and pads available at no cost "to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district".

The law never specifies that the menstrual products must be put in "boys' bathrooms", and it allows school districts to decide what counts as a bathroom "regularly used by students". Districts are permitted to provide menstrual products in bathrooms for students of any gender, which are often single-stall rooms, rather than in their traditional multi-stall bathrooms for boys.

Kevin Burns, a spokesperson for Mankato Area Public Schools, the district where Walz was a high school teacher before entering politics, told CNN that schools there are satisfying "the letter and intent of the statute", which Burns called "very clear", by providing menstrual products in "traditional female and gender-neutral restrooms" as well as school nurses' offices, not boys' bathrooms. link