The Core

 
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  • #39701

    Jerome Liebling May Day Union Square Park New York City 1948     Dr. D. peels the American political onion to get down to what it’s all abou
    [See the full post at: The Core]

    #39713
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    This re-localizing will re-establish the balance of power in the Periphery where most people live.

    Do you honestly believe that is possible in today’s USA?
    I do not; the incline down, exceeds the angle of repose, IMO.

    #39716
    zerosum
    Participant

    ” … Mr Liu is on a “dishonest personnel” list … “

    We are all on some kinds of LISTS.
    Think about it.
    We have been evaluated, judged and listed.
    Listing is required to make a social/economic system function.
    I’m on the non-elite list.

    #39720

    “This re-localizing will re-establish the balance of power in the Periphery where most people live.

    Do you honestly believe that is possible in today’s USA?”

    Try on inevitable for size… Plus, I’m no expert on the topic, but there are plenty places in the US where this could work well if done well. Colorado, Vermont, upstate NY, Appalachians, tons of spots.

    #39721

    BTW, I couldn’t understand why for the longest time there were zero comments on this, because I think Dr.D. exposes a real nerve here that had escaped most of us. Euan Mearns of energy fame mailed me to say this is brilliant writing. I think so too. I told Dr. D. by private mail that he does here what I did earlier this week, i.e. using people’s own words against them. He does it with Hillary’s words, as I used the EU claim that their ag subsidies are meant to safeguard people’s food supply, and Theresa May’s notion that she expelled dozens of Russians for reasons she never cared to provide any evidence for.

    But anyway, what Dr. D. says here is powerful. Hillary’s words tell you exactly what’s wrong in America, but she tries them on to make a 180º different point.

    #39723
    Ken Barrows
    Participant

    Well written piece. But everybody, and I do mean everybody, Democrat or Republican, believes in infinite growth on a finite planet. If you don’t believe in that nonsense, politics is probably not for you.

    #39725
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    I may be as wrong as two left shoes; but that’s my assessment. The N.E. U.S. is in a serious heroin/opioid epidemic as are some S.E. states.
    That was indeed some good writing by Dr. D.; however, I question the viability of his conclusion in todays U.S..

    #39744
    John Day
    Participant

    “Since large, concentrated societies contract to the Core to protect themselves and their critical assets, those in the core historically won’t offer time or resources to help anyone but themselves: the army, the police, the roads, the tax officials. When that is true, you may want to localize, decentralize and maintain your own Core, with your own people, at home. This re-localizing will re-establish the balance of power in the Periphery where most people live.”
    Thanks, Dr D. I think people are confused by the magnitude of difference of the scale you are addressing here. We can be effective at the scale of a small agricultural community of the year 1900. That is also a good fallback scale for the reset of the complex society to more stable and much smaller regional units. Here is Murray Bookchin on Municipalism, where the impetus of political power arises from the many small, local economic units, where it coalesces at a human scale. https://social-ecology.org/wp/1999/08/thoughts-on-libertarian-municipalism/

    #39785
    Stone Lodge
    Participant

    It is quite interesting, in both Dr. D’s post and the comments, how everyone understands that core-periphery concept in terms of the internal power structures in the U.S. I have often referred folks to the same concept in terms of global hegemonic power structures.

    So, for example, most people I run into simply do not perceive or recognize the collapse presently underway, globally speaking. Empires collapse from the periphery first. Here in the U.S., we are at the center of empire, and so none of the constituents (Core, Periphery, plutocrats, elites, rednecks or cowboys) see the collapse, its nature and its extent. For some, such as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump alike, their role demands that they think, that they act, that they BELIEVE in irrational ways. They must – are compelled to – see no link between impoverished refugees marching into the U.S., and the sanctioning of those folks’ societies so as to impoverish them further. The murder of 500,000 Yemeni civilians offers no glimpse of civilizational collapse here in the U.S.

    This myopia is not organic. It is induced. It is endemic, and it is terminal.

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