The Gerontocracy Strikes Back
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Egon Schiele Self-Portrait with Lowered Head 1912 Regular Automatic Earth guest writer Alexander Aston this time comes not from Zimbabwe
[See the full post at: The Gerontocracy Strikes Back]Alexander Aston: Is there any more perfect metaphor for a society in terminal decline than the senescent Joe Biden?
Kudos to Alexander Aston for a well written post.
I found it a clear vision of today’s United States; a morally bankrupt relic of past glories and historical mythologies……on further thought; I’ve been a machinist (master class), blacksmith, coppersmith, and CAD design engineer (by experience, not degree) and fail to see how this, may I say, Utopian vision, can come togeher under the present reality of the U.S. society.
I love the concept, but utterly fail to see any possible implementation, given the fractured nature of today’s U.S. society.
The skills I spent a lifetime learning and perfecting were, in the end, worth didly squat every where I looked for work.
That and the utter travesty/barbarity of the U.S. dealing with Iraq were the last straw.
So, Alexander Aston, the best of luck with your dream…but don’t count me in…While Biden is slipping, at least he isn’t dead set on removing all regulations which attempt to protect the environment and consumers. Harris is strong and sharp. The powers that be will pull strings, but I suspect Harris will counterbalance that to a degree. To opt for four more years of DJY-Pence is to guarantee that the Supreme Court will be set to let Pence & Co. create a Theocracy in the US, with continued Corporate Welfare.
I liked this very much but agree with V that having the civilization skills are a bit over rated when there is a world of junk money and left over tools already out there.
” Is there any more perfect metaphor for a society in terminal decline than the senescent Joe Biden? ”
It ‘matters’ not?
“Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page
Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics—which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, and two types of interest-group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism—offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. “
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdfI live in a swing state (Wisconsin), and my conscience tells me to vote no more for the institutional duopoly, and that holding on to false hope by voting for likes of Biden and Harris is but a form of enabling. The Democratic Party faithful really only care about preserving the position and perks of the big-city, blue-state neo-liberal elites, who are singularly indifferent to the sufferings of Flyover Country folk under aegis of economic globalism.
If I’m going to be completely honest, Biden could have my vote if he would pledge to sponsor legislation that would put a cap on how much Big Pharma can charge for insulin. But I know damn well that his campaign and the DNC are so beholden to moneyed interests such as Big Pharma that this would never happen, despite the fact that such a little demand would be considered perfectly reasonable and moderate in a western European country.
But what it really boils down to is that our politics are hopelessly sick and broken because the societal context in which they exist is hopelessly sick and broken and offers nothing worth trusting or believing in. That’s why despite how much I hate what Trump is doing to the US Post Office right now, just to give one example, I can simply accept that “it’s all over except for the shouting” and realize that whatever is going to happen will simply happen. That said, if voting for Biden makes it a little bit easier to sleep the night of election day, then go right ahead and do that with my blessing, for whatever little that’s worth. 😉
Those saying it makes no difference are wrong. Do you want a theocracy which thinks poisoning the environment is fine as long as the elite get richer? Do you want a Supreme Court which will suppress women in various ways and a justice system that will continue to expand the numbers in prison beyond what is by far the largest % in the world? Do you think privatizing water and sewer systems is in the common interest?
Pharma is just one industry that gets fat at our expense. Enviro regulations have been gutted, and that will continue if DJT remains.
Wouldn’t get too worked up, everything is going the way it goes in such times.
Leaders are useless and now, demasked. They are self-serving, as mostly, only finally we know it. Parties are useless and self-serving, only finally we know it. They serve the wealthy who have time to build access, only finally we know it.
People are less unified than they were last year, but not hardly as divided, tribal, violent, or suspicious as nearly any other time in history. Daily human rights are generally better than any other time in history. Crime is still nearly as low as any other time in history. There are what? 30 people killed in 3 months of violent, city-burning protests? That’s a miracle. Nobody’s interested, nobody’s trying…especially those “smooth brained liberal killers”: they go out 14 hours in the cold and dark and just to shoot things for pleasure, and don’t miss. So if they miss, they aren’t shooting. If they’re not shooting, given the violent antagonism and slander put on them in the last 30 years, what makes you think they’ll start now?
Anyway, so the nation “breaks up”. What does that mean? “They” have no vision, no legitimacy, and the experts who were always helpless, trampling everyone they could find, but now have no money, no violent force, and no centralization to push their plans.
What does that tell you? We’re going into a dream of the “smooth-brained” right. Decentralization means re-localization, and we can stop being trampled by a bunch of nit-wits who inhabit 10 square blocks, 500 miles away. States reclaim their power, their law, and their individualization. Their unique culture and story. That is, their diversity that everyone hates so much. Their centralized, expensive, hare-brained plans never came to any good anyway, as in Vietnam, Iraq, and 3-Mile Island, and now we can happily do without them, thank you very much.
“Breaking up” the nation therefore, is just turning back to what it was always supposed to be, what works, and the confederation of States that is the actual, written, but ignored and trampled law. The one the Right, the de-centralists, and generally ruralists, have been trying hold up and keep stable, out of empire, out of monopoly, out of oligarchy, for the whole 100 years since the Progressives joined up with the KKK and central bank, and started.
So what’s the problem here? Who’s losing? Cities. Busybodies. Warmongers. Oligarchs. Bureaucrats. Rentiers. The unworking complainers who they keep like housepets and pat on the head, send out to bite. Not salutary.
Who wins? Well, the high is made low, and the low made high. That’s not planning, just the way of things. The Tao says the best run country has the least laws, the least enforced. No one can do it, no one can pay to have it done. Therefore, without idiot experts, without self-serving helpful trampling the earth, the people must then regulate themselves. And they will, and they do. …But it takes a while. Things are ragged first. But we don’t NEED them, they need US. So the only possible outcome is that we, the poor and trampled, get richer and freer. They the rich extractors, get poorer, less able to pillage and trample. And this is all bad how?
Sounds great. Been saying we should do this for years. Nicer, of course, but nobody’s going to give up pillage, murder, rape of endless 13-year olds from camps in Minnesota, without a fight. So a fight we have. They lost. All you have to do is wait. No energy + no money = no centralization. No centralization means no Lords. No Lords = no Peasants. No peasants is all for free men. Free Americans then. Again. And? Good. Thank you.
As V says though, skills are for rot right now. Nobody cares. But we each our own, in our corner. As I am in mine.
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