> ...and that potentially meant that the government might force United Fruit to make costly changes, like raising wages.
[...] Ideally, Guatemala would back down and start praising United Fruit for being a job creator instead of a foreign plunderer.
Somewhat OT, but one of the feats of propaganda that impresses me the most is how "jobs" were successfully established as an end in itself instead of a means.
As a politician, you can easily run on the platform of "creating jobs" without ever discussing wages.
As an employee, it doesn't matter if the job is wrecking your health, making you neglect your family and pays less than living wage, just having a job on its own is something to be grateful of.
An employer is not needing services that employees provide, no, an employer is creating jobs and then in infinite grace giving them to the employees.
> just having a job on its own is something to be grateful of
Graber's book Debt challenged my worldview in many ways. For instance, the bits about the notions of employment. How the norm went from working for oneself to selling one's labor to another. Our predecessors considered employment akin to slavery.
Years later, it still stretches my incredulity. The gig economy is bad, right? I struggle to imagine an entire modern economy, contemporary society where most persons are not wage slaves.
Youngest me was obsessed with getting a good job, having a good career. Old burnt out me is wondering why I worked so hard to be make other people rich. What a waste.
I had not seen that book before. those more desirable kinds of self employment do exist too. It's hard for a person who is poor to build their skills and capital to get out of app gig work and into something better.
Its David Graeber, and the book is good. I had similar epiphany's with The Wealth of Nations, and Wealth and Poverty of Nations.
These things should be taught in public education but aren't, likely because of ideological indoctrination.
Unbacked debt breaks the guard rails for rational pricing of both products and labor. In the 1770s, it was recognized that the price of labor couldn't go below what it costs to raise 4 children with a spouse, which was necessary to have 1 make it alive to 18.
What about slavery? What if there is a spectrum between chattel slavery and owning the means of production? How would you determine where "job" exists on that spectrum?
Slaves still get fed and housed. If the only thing that a job offers is food and housing, how different is that from slavery? How free is a person who can only afford to house and feed themselves?
That was the precondition for the two worldwars in germany. Lots of "farmhands" with food and shelter, nothing to be proud of, no future, no family, so they got there whole pride from nationalism and race, and the farm owners talked themselves into believing they were basically nobility.
Then the whole situation spiraled out of hand, because everything was better then socialism. Turns out in the end, it was not.
Blockades used against "rival" empires made drastic measures rationalizable, like for example mass murdering populations to provide for your own population, that could not be fed without oil imports aka fertilizers. This whole madness we today remember, started out rational.
I thought we already went down this road and remembered were it leads.
> I thought we already went down this road and remembered where it leads.
This memory is written down on dead leaves and the majority of people don't read anymore, and aren't educated about cyclical things like this because of stage 7.
I think one big difference is that a job is something you have a choice in. A person who can only afford to house and feed themselves isn't free to have no job, but they are free to choose which job they do. In such cases, the parent's point of "more jobs are better" definitely applies, as it gives workers a lot more choice (even disregarding the bargaining power).
Ok, you are free to choose between shit unhealthy job in factory A and shit unhealthy job in factory B. Choice is an illusion, you still have no freedom.
Say you also had the choice to pick a square of land, build a hut and grow your food on it, now that would at least grant you some degree of freedom, but since it isn't possible you are forced to work for one of these factories or starve. Relocate? Where? With which money? Just to become homeless somewhere else?
I don't know how else to call this if not some form of slavery. You are not threatened with violence, but try to strike and see what happens.
The real illusion is that everyone has the opportunity to create a job for themselves. Who's going to work in the factories to produce the goods we all need then?
It is clear that this system is based on the exploitation of a large workforce that sits at the bottom of the social pyramid. Our society would literally collapse if everyone was able to escape wage slavery at once.
Few, if any slaves felt purpose, belonging, responsibility, and personal discipline - all generally positive feelings that are associated with working on something for a reason.
> purpose, belonging, responsibility, and personal discipline - all generally positive feelings that are associated with working on something for a reason
If you think this statement reflects in any way the reality of the majority of the global workforce then you have no idea what work is like for most people.
This has a slightly disparaging tone to it. Just because someone does a job you may not enjoy, does not mean it's not a good job or that it does not fulfill them personally.
All jobs provide purpose, even if that purpose is simply to feed oneself while looking for a better opportunity. Humans need to work on something, anything. Idle minds rot, figuratively, and having no reason to wake up each day is hugely depressing.
As some dude said: that's just, like, your opinion.
You should get out more and meet people from different venues of life.
Try telling this banality to my brother who used to be reposesion man and see what will happen. He has to go to therapy regullarly to get nightmares out of his head after years of literally taking money and stuff from crying people.
No, some jobs are economically viable and current system likes them - its really convenient for everyones conscience to outsource debt handling to some specialized thug like characters. But saing that all people can find purpose in them - that's too much.
That's interesting, I'm not much of an english speaker, so I always interpreted this text as a cool way to disagree without getting into conflict (and I shortened this a bit because I believe the whole quote does not look good when written)
What's your (correct?) interpretation of this quote? What dude meant retorting this way to Jesus?
"That's just your opinion man" is kind of disrespectful. Jesus was disrespecting dude by saying "I'm gonna kick your ass," and dude was responding "you're wrong, but it's not worth a serious response." It's casually dismissive. If Jesus had gone on further, the next response by dude might have been an exaggerated eye roll or "uh hu, sure buddy" communicated sarcastically.
It's like saying "your opinion isn't worthy of attention/response."
It's appropriate if someone is being aggressive towards you, but not in a discussion and certainly not in any kind of setting where there's a hope to reach consensus or change someone's mind.
Alupis isn't understanding that the slaves in the American south had a "job", it was being a slave. Anupis can't get past the idea that "job" is a description in the same way that "slavery" is a description and if you look at what it means to be a slave (to not have freedom), and what it means to have a job (to get things in return for work), you can get resources for your time (having a job) while also having no freedom (being a slave).
The original post I was responding to made the assertion that all jobs are good, but failed to understand that wage is not a measurement of labor or value produced but a measure of relative power. The original post I was responding to was asserting that a laborers power increases as there are more jobs and therefore more demand for labor, which is true. They failed to understand that unionized labor has all the same benefits, but a better distribution of wealth and more freedom. Unionization values labor while "more jobs" framed discussions values capital.
The top post in the thread was saying we are having a discussion with "job" based frame rather than a "labor" based fame.
Does the job provide value, or does the labor provide value? If labor is where the value is then why is the value of labor so low?
By choosing to frame the discussion around jobs, the person has chosen oppression of workers as a consequence whether they understand why that is or not.
It's not fulfilling, that's why I assumed he's looking for other work. But the person I replied to has added that this job requires a lot of study to get into - which means he would have to accept that study as a sunk cost.
Sorry, that was sarcasm. You were replying to someone that thought people worked crappy jobs because of some other reason besides they literally can't get anything better. Kind of mind-blowing that someone could delude themselves to the point where they can believe folks work miserable jobs for any reason other than trying not to go broke.
As usual life is more complex than any idealistic simplification - I do not believe thath you can sum up his situation in one sentence.
But it would be probably a lot easier on him if he did it becesue it kept him fed (that would at least give him feeling of necessity).
The story of his tragedy began when he was finishing highschool and could not decide what to do with himself. He literally had no idea about future, so our father, a legal council of 30 years, choose for him - he paid for five year law degree. And after my brother finished the university, he still did not have any idea what to do, so my father forced him to take law application (I'm not sure how you translate this into english - in my country lawyers are legaly obliged to take additional high level degree after law degree to specialize in being legal council, judge, prosecutor or bailiff).
There are yearly limits of applicants in my country and since my brother was quite bad at this whole law stuff (once again - this was not his thing, it was choosen for him) he could not get legal council application, so the father forced him to choose the only that left, the one that no one else wanted to do - bailiff application.
So he did it and after two years of hard work he finished the application with bailiff title but without bailif practice (which is also limited here in Poland - you are literally nominated by the government to do this here, you are legaly forbiden to practice on your own without the nomination).
Not having government nomination he had to work in local bailiff office (which was only possible because our father used to know some people) - once again this was not his own idea (he had no agancy of his own - from his perpective he would be glad to just sit and play games whole day).
He worked there for five years, and the stuff he did, the people he met, the clients he had to handle, broke him. After office was closed due to his boss retiremen he could not get another job, because once again he was psychically devastated, and people who interviewed him could sense this. And for last few years he just lives with our parents and goes to thereapy and tries to gather what left of his life together.
And the tragic part of all this if you look at cost of his education it would probably be a net gain for society, my parents, and my brother to just forget this whole law degree, bayliff application and few years of work at office and just lay down and play video games.
Each time I think about all this forced idealistic stuff where we are all supposed to find purpose in jobs, because jobs are good (TM), I think about my brother and his wasted life.
To warap this up, I just remembered a quote from song by Polish artist "Kazik" about steelworks worker who wasted his life in job in one of polish factories that were bankrupt from the get go (as the whole communistic system was also):
"Cała jego ciężka praca, wszystko było c**a warte
Gdyby leżał całe życie, mniejszą czyniłby on stratę"
Which, according to ChatGPT, can be loosely translated to:
"His entire hard work, everything was worth s**.
If he lay his whole life, he would make a smaller loss to me."
While not a positive tale, I think the the point you are trying to make is more about coercion/compulsion (i.e. generally what you see as a lack of agency), than it is about specific things like poor parenting (which is also very common).
Also, arguably if regulation wasn't so draconian the requirements wouldn't necessarily be so high, and if debt wasn't so easily available to pay for it, it would be cheaper, and more opportunities would be available. Overregulation can be a stifling thing.
This should not be interpreted as a history about bad parenting - our father meant well. He wanted to give fighting chance to my brother in our brutal society the only way he known how and my brother really did not had any idea what to do with his life and was totally passive.
This can be read as a story about overregulation, but in this context I believe it only exacerbated the real problem.
I think that this all is more a story about our society pressure for everyone to be sucessful and have ever growing social status and material posessions.
It would be nice if somehow there was a place for people like my brother to be himself and not be a failure in game of life because he cannot handle the pressures and really does not want to do more than playing games and doing some simple job to sustain this (and this is whole other story - at this moment he is not able to find any job, because our capitalistic system does not have idea what to do with people like him).
Well, almost all fathers mean well and by that point I mean, you can mean well, and still have poor outcomes (i.e. be bad at parenting).
Mine certainly did, but he still ended up using the money set aside for my college education to buy a Porsche and then sell it at a complete loss years later. He meant well because he thought of it as an investment, but it really wasn't. He believed it though, even though any reasonable person would not classify that as an investment.
As for playing games and not being able to find jobs. There's something to be said for creating a livable future which almost every parent today has failed.
There's a growing body of research that the number of jobs today that would normally have been available during critical time periods were reduced, where older workers, who were more productive because of their experience, ended up taking positions that would normally be held by people developing entry-level skills in careers when they couldn't find the skilled jobs they'd trained for.
In the book, 'The Pinch'; this references a lot of material and is discussed in great detail. Its arguably much more difficult today to get by than it has ever been; and its been driven by changes that were largely outside the current generations control (political power is supposed to transfer every 20 years, but in many places hasn't and is still dominated in majority by the boomer generation).
As for not being able to find a job, that has more to do with the jobs not being available; and potentially other ways monopolistic behavior have created for limiting the job pools to drive wages down.
This behavior is actually a common trend in capitalism when wages fall below certain key thresholds; and I don't mean any specific amount of wages, but the cost of living (in purchasing power) and mobility. It historically has kept to a ratio, but fiat has cause this to deviate like any great ponzi creating this disadvantaged environment today (which was predictable).
You also see these issues in any highly regulated society like in China with the Bailan (摆烂), let it rot movement. Yes its socialist, but the difference between capitalism and socialism when both have high regulation is almost negligible. Socialism relies on exploitative labor force, and elements of a centralized power structure, and lack of property rights; they also have concentrated business sectors (oligopoly) in terms of the means of production.
The main difference between the two is the division of labor, which breaks down under heavy regulation and lack of price discovery/stable store of value.
Ironically, if you have no hope of being able to do any of the major life milestones you're taught at a young age, you get your enjoyment where you can; and limit suffering.
Capitalism knows what they need to do (get out of people's way), but they don't do it because it would involve ceding power and control.
This has happened before, just not on such a global scale; and its fairly predictable what happens next (given a certain level of study in historic subjects).
Thank you for posting this. I think there must be even more back story but of course you are not obligated to share it.
I am astonished it takes two years of study to be a bailiff in Poland. As I understand it the job requires a basic understand of a very narrow area of law, plus the 'soft skills' to avoid escalating difficult situations into violent ones. Is the long study some kind of gatekeeping?
I have rahther limited knowledge on why this occupation is so regulated here - but the regulation is rather brutal and encoded into law. Here you can see law (bill?) on court bailiffs applicants:
Two first points of article 66 regulates maximum number of yearly applicants (which cannot be bigger than 15% of current count of bailiffs). And first point of article 93 sets the study length at two years. I also forgot that my brother had to do additional obligatory two year practice after this two year study (as "assesor komorniczy" - this is also regulated in article 11 of bill mentioned above).
The rationalization behind it all seems to be that being court bailiff gives you quite large amount of power and potential for earning lots of money eventually - if they (the government) will let you at some point start your own practice/office the money will start pouring in (you get a percent from each confiscation! most old bailiffs becomes millionairs eventually).
My brother never got to this point - he was at the lowest possible position, doing all dirty work, earning a little bit above national minimum wage, and then he burned out.
As as side note - I work in IT, and each time I feel burned out, I remember my brother and this somehow puts into perspective what does it actually mean to be burned down (this of course does not mean that there are no real problems with overworking, work-life balance and depression in IT industry, but still - we have it really good).
I am amazed when self-proclaimed do-gooders hear about some poor person in India or Africa who works long hours for just a few dollars per day; and puts all their effort into eliminating that job to 'help' that individual.
Boycotts, mandates, laws, and other forms of political pressure manage to put the employer (labeled an exploiter) out of business. Then everyone pats themselves on the back about what a good citizen they are for righting the injustice.
Afterwards, the poor (now unemployed) person goes back to scavenging through an unsanitary garbage pile looking for their next meal.
Germane: there can be no green new deal without a robust manufacturing sector in America. Some sort of higher-tech revolution could be possible, though.
Most people have heard about Allende/Pinochet, and Regan's illegal war in Nicaragua, but I don't think that many people in the US have heard about this. I certainly hadn't.
This series is excellent, especially in the many references to decassified documents. Agencies denying operations for decades, only to have those operations confirmed after declassification is a repeating pattern.
Seeing how powerful this media based campaign was in the 1950s also sheds some perspective on how overwhelmingly powerful modern fake-video can be in persuading a population.
All rolled up, this really spells a very hard road ahead for democratic government. How are ordinary people supposed to pull back the deception and understandd the truth, in the face of highly-funded media campaigns to deceive them? It becomes less and less possible with every new technical development.
for that we all must drop the pretense that a centralized government is not for the preservation of status quo, i.e. maintaining existing privilege.
all ministerial positions are about positioning, not effectiveness.
china has this spelled out in some laws and govt practices. e.g. they assume rural resources will be abused by a central group until they can get a stronger state law presence. but accept it and keep dumping resource till then and then work with those corrupt entities to ease the region absorption into proper state mechanics instead of "fighting corruption" or some other grand but disconnected goal
for and older but more comprehensive view on the article points, there's: Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook
Its more about indoctrination prior to the age of reason.
Kids biologically can't discern lies prior to that age unless they've had some form of trauma (from what I've been told), and often accept what's read and written as truth. Few re-evaluate those beliefs later as they become part of their identity.
Its why that Florida education issue was such a hot-button topic. They tried overtly embedding some of that junk into math problems.
Well indoctrination is one of those things that's hard to believe unless you see it in action. Its hard to teach about too because it is something that you don't really believe is happening until you've seen it from experience. There are a number of things like that, and to undo the damage you have to have reached a certain level of self awareness which many never get to.
Critical thinking by itself isn't really enough in my opinion either. It only impresses how much additional work is needed, on an ongoing basis, to defend yourself. Its often overwhelming, and rarely are things like negotation and credibility taught in a way that kids can understand.
It's patently evident that the current social and political instability in the West is caused by ideological subversion carried out by their political enemies. The internet and social media have provided the perfect weapon to deliver disinformation and propaganda to manipulate the masses, and create a state of internal conflict and confusion. Modern warfare is no longer carried out by soldiers and artillery, but by words, videos and troll farms. Why waste resources investing in physical offense, when you can undermine your enemy via ideological means, using the same tools they built for you, and watch their political and social systems crumble from within? If nothing else, it makes the eventual physical offensive much cheaper and more effective.
This has been known for decades[1], yet the West has done little to stop it from happening. They engage in the same psyops, but information in the countries of their enemies is much more strictly controlled, so it has much less of an impact.
I think without the adversarial subversion, the states would be in just as bad of a place. It would be less clear in policies implemented, but the root cause is a lack of engagement in politics and use of the tools from modernity and the enlightenment.
People aren't sold on debate and discussion, and aren't aligned on goals, and don't have a way to align on goals
The middle of both parties are getting older and older. Newly elected politicians tend to be populistic culture warriors. Consequently, we’re not able to elect anyone that gets anything done. Gone are the days of electing the most serious and responsible public servants. We’re not able to replace aging incumbent politicians with grownups. Or so it seems.
This is a very easy intelligence trap to fall into, but it neglects internal bad actors that are doing the same things for profit. That interview is structured to set you up into a subtle us vs. them mentality. If you look at what he says and how you feel when you find out (if you agree, which itself is a subtle lever of influence with consistency [Cialdini]), its hard to argue that he isn't doing exactly what he says they do (creating a demoralized state).
You always have to remember the source, and he is not a good source for this. There are much better sources.
We value freedom of speech, because proper communication enables debate which allows us to come to a fuller understanding of certain issues than in the absence of this.
This understanding often allows us to save lives, whereas those mistakes that would never normally be addressed would result in deaths in a system where this doesn't take place.
That being said, you can never have a debate where the number of real people is less than fake people, and they have some motive to amplify or de-amplify what's being said which is ineffable ahead of time.
Where things have gone wrong is in treating corporations as dual entities. When it suits them they are people, when it suits them best they are a corporation, and in some industries when it suits them they act as arms of government without any of the mandates from the constitution, and are immune from legal repercussions.
>"It's patently evident that the current social and political instability in the West is caused by ideological subversion carried out by their political enemies."
I call utter BS on this. You are basically shooting a messenger here (whether said messenger is a baddy is not really relevant). If you had healthy society where fucking lefties and asshole righties were not at each other throats and where poverty, ever progressing lack of education and other social issues were not so rampant political enemies would have no grass to feed on.
There's some hyperbole in what Bezmenov claims will be the consequences, but psyops and information warfare are very much real, and have been in use for decades. If he defected from the USSR and worked as a propagandist, he would be very familiar with what these tools are capable of. And if you take a look at the current state of many Western countries, it aligns well with the effects of psyops. Whether it was done by internal or external forces doesn't matter much, but it would be naive to think enemies of the West aren't engaging in it, just as the West is[1].
There's a very interesting read on the USMC University website that covers political warfare (which this would arguably fall into). Its freely available.
> The internet and social media have provided the perfect weapon to deliver disinformation and propaganda to manipulate the masses, and create a state of internal conflict and confusion.
Yes, unlike the good old day when legacy media (tv/newspapers/radio) served the people and told them the truth, without trying to manipulate the masses.
Ideological subversion has been happening since the Frankfurt school fled to the US: “critical theories” festered in academia for generations until they could permeate and rot society.
Social media, however, accelerated that by allowing individual manipulation of vulnerable young people with that messaging by both foreign adversaries and subverted citizens. Boosted by things like economic warfare, where China funds these radical groups and promotes their agendas.
That wouldn't have happened if the legacy media and local state actors didn't discredit themselves with blatant lies, open bias and non-stop propaganda. Foreign adversaries have gained some meaningful ground only because local sources of information stopped even pretending to be an objective source of information.
Eg, as a recent example, we saw major media institutions subverted to run propaganda cover for an organized terrorist campaign which saw over a billion dollars in arson attacks across dozens of major cities — and dozens of murders, including Antonio Mays Jr and David Dorn.
I see the role of social media as accelerating the subversion of traditional institutions, eg media or academia.
The Frankfurt school is a set of communist revolutionaries who promoted “critical theories” as their methodology of fomenting civil unrest and social breakdown to bring about Marxist revolution. When the Germans chased them out by preferring literal Nazis, they settled in the US and performed the same schtick — most recently with “critical race theory” and “critical queer theory”, both of which have increased division in US society and undermined social progress, such as civil rights. Eg, “critical race theory” promotes continued organized racism against Asians while promoting grievance myths which encourage terrorism. As seen in the burning of dozens of cities and dozens of murders and institutions such as Harvard arguing before the Supreme Court they’re allowed to discriminate against Asians.
Hang on, you’re claiming that no less than 24 US cities have suffered significant fire damage by critical-race-theory-espousing arsonists? What are some examples?
For level-setting purposes, personally speaking, I do not consider one or two buildings burning to be equal to a “city” burning — that wording evokes major widespread arson on par with 70s race riots.
And if you are referring to protests in response to a police-involved killing incident, the protesters cannot automatically be assumed to have any tie to “critical race theory”, it needs to be a firm provable connection to make this claim.
Big difference: legacy media was far less accessible to foreign enemies. Not that disinformation didn't happen from within, but certainly not with the force we've seen in the last two decades, and without the intent to destabilize their own democracies.
Very interesting take. In order to keep a democracy functioning properly, education is required. The lines between education and propagandalf wizardry become blurry when economic incentives and dearths of ethics enter the field.
(2) claim that its party members represent the people, while
(3) they actually represent
its political party, and therefore, of course, prioritize its interests.
In my country, every major oligarchs have its own / is a member of a political party.
So our "Council of People's Representatives" actually works as "Council of Party's Representative" - and therefore work very diligently to fight for the interests of our oligarchs.
And yet no one is upset, not even our "democracy activists" - because they're already conditioned / believe that, political parties are a requirement for a proper democracy.
Nope, they're not - and they're actually the way to subvert democracy, and enabled the oligarchs to create massive profits AND control the people at the same time.
Parties are an inevitable feature of any representative democracy for the simple reason that MPs who pool their votes will consistently beat those who do not. Even council democracy - where the delegates vote according to instructions of their electorate and can be instantly recalled - is not immune to this.
It's a pretty simple equation if you abstract voting into a competition. One can think of political parties as miniature states themselves. In a world of individuals trying to survive - the ones who survive will not remain individuals. They will form alliances and have power over those who are alone. A small state has little power, but a stateless individual has orders of magnitude less, roundable to zero. Likewise an independent member of a voting body will control the discussion among large parties.
Parties could only be avoided by explicitly outlawing them - and not just by name, but by proscribing specific behaviors which could create de facto parties. Sounds incredibly difficult and would be amazing to watch attempted.
I read the Narratively's seven stories, which were certainly an interesting read, but I think they simplified things a lot. To begin with, I am not sure how well we can draw from the Cold War era lessons to analyze the present day. Nor am I entirely sure how successful these information operations were even back then.
Regarding Europe, I think you are on the right track about the role of political parties in democratic backsliding. While heavy disinformation and propaganda (both domestic and foreign) are certainly involved, there are all sorts of other dynamics involved. Oftentimes, things really start to get awry when a dominant party succeeds in capturing state institutions (including the judiciary) and the media sector. It is also noteworthy that such capturing may occur both through "pure" political actors and corporate powers, the latter often in the form of corrupted oligarchic structures, as you pointed out. Also recessions and economic hardship have played significant roles, as they have always done. People's apathy and disengagement are also a factor. In Europe we also have the further issue of backsliding spilling to the supranational level.
That said, I disagree with your conclusion: even with the dangers, political parties are clearly necessary.
As for the Narratively's focus on "fake news", I think a central question is in which stage of the backsliding these play a role. A hypothesis would be that these are particularly important early on. Later on, the entity that has succeeded in capturing can use the fire-hose strategy at its will.
Indeed I agree friend, the creation of the Republican party was the worst thing that ever happened to the US, and only the creation of the Democratic party kept the US from falling into complete fascism, at least for a time.
Arbenz's fault was not knowing the nature of the state. When he chopped off a tentacle of the US state, the United Fruit Company, he didn't know that the only way to survive the inevitable rage of the US is to create his own state - an oppressive and controlling creature who is only good at making war. Arbenz thought that by saying true things on radio he would stop the demon. Democracy is just a way to confuse and domesticate the state.
> Similarly, much of the Russian disinformation campaign of 2016 — especially in the beginning — was not about convincing people of falsehoods. It was about sowing seeds of discredit and doubt about Hillary Clinton, and about the U.S. electoral system generally. It didn’t matter what was actually on Clinton’s email server, so long as talking about it cast doubt on her integrity.
This tactic of fear, uncertainty and doubt has been addressed by numerous authors in recent decades. Science historian Naomi Oreskes pointed to the deliberate cultivation of uncertainty about climate change by Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer to slow down and stop regulations on fossil fuel companies.
In 2012, Jay Rosen, journalism professor at NYU, described this cultivation of uncertainty on the right as a process of "reverse verification", with the example of the question, "Was Obama born in the United States?”
Rosen: "Verification is taking something that might be true, and trying to nail it down with facts. In reverse verification, you take something that’s been nailed down and try to introduce doubt about it."
This is the primary way that American democracy is being subverted now, in 2023.
Are you referring to the disinformation campaign that promoted the conspiracy theory that Russia somehow influenced the 2016 presidential elections, or the conspiracy theory itself?
Anyway, why the big fuss? US has meddled in the affairs of other countries via media/grants/other types of funding, public and covert, for over a century by now. Why being so sour because some countries influence you back?
If it is the citizens who do the voting, your compatriots, and you should respect their choice. Or you think they are too stupid and too easily influenced by misinformation, that they are too naive to make a rational choice? How about stripping the voting rights from such people? They clearly need to be steered by more competent leaders!
> I wonder if strict and short term limits would inhibit the ability (for any entity) to condition the masses.
No, it would do exactly the opposite. Short term limits mean you perpetually have a revolving door of inexperienced and naive legislators who are much more prone to a) manipulation by experienced and cut-throat lobbyists and b) grabbing everything they can for their district with no regard for long-term sustainability, because they'll be gone before they can see any consequences.
I'm not picking on you in particular because I see this all over the place, but it really makes me crazy when people default to their gut emotions and desire to punish, and so come up with non-solutions like "shorter term limits!" which actually make the problem so much worse.
I'm sorry you haven't made that case at all. All you have done is listed the costs of the "term limits" side, you haven't listed any of the benefits. A couple off of the top of my head:
1. Seats would be up for effective election more often allowing for democracy to perhaps function more effectively. Perhaps there would be more of a market of ideas instead of cults of personality.
2. Less time for legislators to establish "ties" (corruption) with regulators, business leaders, party leaders, and others in power.
Its a balanced scale, any good is equally weighed by the bad. Except the larger representative lobbyists often tip the scale towards bad more often than not.
Term limits seem like the type of thing that would not necessarily create positive or negative results, but modulate the system.
I think it is a thing that feels right to a lot of people, but if you ask "What will term limits achieve, and what are possible unintended consequences of term limits?" I think most proponents of it would have a very hard time coming up with a satisfying answer.
I would prefer age limits before term limits.
I think the real question to ask is: "If corruption were against the law, would people still want term limits?" or "Will term limits reduce corruption?"
I think the answer is no and I think it is obviously no for the latter (revolving door).
The US used to have media ownership rules for this purpose. On balance, they worked well until they were repealed (at each step, the politicians responsible for repealing them had ties to the companies that directly benefited).
How old were you then? (i'm curious, because i was small, and the subset of news i saw was more focused on the strategy of outspending the soviet union, but that's at that time in the news, i mean.)
No. Term limits have nothing to do with the overall strategies being used by subversive non-government organizations. They function in the background and direct the party to steer policy in their favor. All of the deep research required to apply stress to the weak points of an institution is done at NGOs and the execution plan is essentially handed over to the party members and officials.
1) This assumes that long-serving politicians are a major driver of this activity. Doesn't seem right to me, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.
2) The main downside to term limits is that it tends to put more power into the hands of actors who are not subject to elections—professional bureaucrats, lobbyists, interest groups, and party machines, basically. My perception is that those latter three groups, especially, are behind a lot of this kind of thing—if true, term limits would make things worse, not better.
Does this assumption still hold if the term limits are somewhat generous? For instance, 18 years (3 senate terms or 9 house terms)?
Almost all of the evidence detracting from legislative term limits centers around attempts to allow only 1-2 terms. But there’s very little about medium to longer term restrictions.
unfortunately political parties are machines to continue influence and power. It would change how influence was applied, but the team sport that is politics would continue with different spokepeople in office and the same people running the machinery of party in the back.
I expect lobbyists would be winners if short term limits were imposed. Inexperienced legislators would tend to rely extensively on party apparatus and lobbyists.
Interesting, I would expect the opposite: tenured legislators rely more on lobbyists and party apparatus. You don’t really see increasing independence over time; rather, wayward legislators get primaried by the party.
My suspicion is that the bills and amendments the legislature debates, and their direct and indirect impacts, are so complex that a young legislator will necessarily need help navigating.
So experienced staff, parties, and lobbyists will necessarily be strong influences.
A veteran lawmaker has better intuitions, and knows who both inside and outside the system they can trust for advice.
This style of writing is so unfriendly to readers. The text could have been 3 times shorter. The first paragraph where he is standing with wavy hair could just be thrown away. It does not continue anyways.
Anyone worried about foreign interference in the elections in your country, disinformation, etc: you simply do not respect your compatriots.
As long as the elections are fair, and people do the voting themselves, they do it rationally, judging the information available to them and weighting it according to their beliefs.
If you do not trust them to make a valid choice because they are unable to know what's true and what's not, you are on a path that will logically end with stripping voting rights from such dim masses and installing an enlightened Fuhrer (you) who would lead them to the better future.
Once you get down to it, everything in the US seems to be designed to benefit big business / oligarchs. Culture wars topics are intended to distract from things like healthcare, raising the minimum wage, solving the housing crisis in cities, taxing the rich, and so on. They create our pain, then dangle "jobs" as a salve.
I might assume that terrorism wasn't the "us versus them" issue that it used to be, so culture wars were something new to galavanize the in-group tribe of voters.
Or maybe contemporary culture wars came about after Obama was elected, the sense that the majority was loosing it's majority to the minorities.
The occupy movement didn't seem to be picked up by either political party, so was it really a threat to anyone in power?
I think that the occupy movement was a domestic threat that genuinely caught them off guard because they were so focused on international threats due to the war on terror.
This iteration of the culture wars is an over active response to that threat, which is ironic because the war on terror was a hyper over response itself.
One could just as easily argue that the neutering of the Occupy movement points to it having been a big deal to the elite since they quickly jumped on the identity politics train to atomize the masses.
You know, I've expressed the same idea over the years in different forums and I always get someone who responds like the person above did and it has always baffled me.
Then COVID happened and people who reticently got the vaccine and then had mild covid said "COVID was no big deal, I hardly felt anything" while conveniently ignoring the fact that the vaccine did something.
What is the name of this cognitive bias or fallacy? It's everywhere.
Your statements about "percentage of income taxes" are misleading. Two points:
1. Your 3% and 39% actually reflect how much more absolute income the rich generate compared to others. For example, if a rich person has $10 million in income and someone from the bottom 50% person has $100k in income, even a 15% income tax (for example) is $1.5 million and $15k respectively. Given our massive wealth inequality, your 39% income tax number tells us that the top 1% are capturing a massive chunk of the total income generated in the US. A quick quote from a 2021 Forbes article: "billionaires collectively hold two-thirds more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of all households in the United States, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies." - more wealth generates more absolute income.
2. By focusing solely on income tax, you're ignoring Total Taxes, which for example include sales tax. Low-income Americans face higher payroll tax rates than rich Americans. There are also many more tax-reducing benefits for the poor in our tax code, for example, Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends overwhelmingly accrue to the rich.
Now reframe the above, normalising as a portion of wealth.
Tax analysed in absolute dollar terms is misleading. What should be analysed is the tax's effect on a person's quality of life. A person with a million dollar income paying 50% tax still has 500k to burn.
A person paying 30% at 50k a year has 35k left. That 30% means a lot more at the lower end, even though the dollar amount pales in comparison.
If you mean practically speaking, everywhere? At some point production incentives are eliminated, leading to quality of life reduction and inevitably revolt or external invasion. Additionally, as government controls a more significant percentage of buying decisions, we shift closer along the spectrum to a command economy which at some point is computationally infeasible, though perhaps ChatGPT will make command economies work finally (mostly kidding).
You probably would like to check out how unrealized capital gains work. When you're rich, your wealth doesn't come from "income" in the same way it does for 90% of us.
I think this line of thinking is unrealistic and rather unempathetic.
People on both sides of culture war issues really do care about them. I agree that there are a number of more important issues, but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's.
>People on both sides of culture war issues really do care about them.
That's the goal of every diversion. Sports fans really care about their teams too (in some cases to the point of mass hysteria, or beating other people over them).
>but the ordering of political priorities is basically subjective and nobody needs share anyone else's.
Not so subjective, since conveniently almost everybody ends up sharing the ordering of one of the two sides they are conditioned to chose among.
That's like saying "fashion is subjective" and then seeing 90% of the people wearing the same shit for the season, "mysteriously" the very thing promoted in fashion magazines and celebrity videos and advertised to death 24/7.
Everything in the US is designed to feed you the exact frame of mind that you are reflecting.
Which aside from entertainment messaging and your educational curriculum, should be obvious by the fact that its largely the marginal social tier that thinks as you do.
To see the edge of the actual discussion: think about the dissonance of a worldview that simultaneously sees the nation's problems to be inherent in enforced hierarchy as mediated by the government, as you state, and the solution to that problem being the same government's enforcement of taxation.
There's only room for one of those views in anyone's mind. They cannot logically exist simultaneously. The government will never be simultaneously a marauder and a beneficent tax collector. And nothing changes its stripes.
Culture war topics aren't intended to distract from any of the things that you mention. Your list is a litany of topics barely adjacent to the culture war.
The culture war is about legal control of people whose natural habits and views would otherwise preclude it. When control has reached its limit working through the channel of temptation, then the only avenue left is the one that legally forces norms that are so distasteful to the natural senses that they oppress most normal people.
You can't post like this here, no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We've had to ask you this at least once before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25773624 (Jan 2021), and unfortunately your recent comments have a lot of this kind of thing in it.
> Does criminally charging your leading opposition candidate count?
If it is on the same standards (or a higher bar) than that under which someone who was a political ally or uninvolved would be charged, no.
If it is on a basis on which someone differently politically situated with the same degree of evidence of the same kind of crime would otherwise not be charged, than yes.
So if one party doesn’t face charges despite documented foreign influence pedaling, selling classified documents, and subverting national constitution, but the other is charged on a campaign finance violation similar to those regularly committed by the first party — that would be a problem?
No one has been charged under such circumstances before. Non disclosure agreements are legal. Billing to pay fees for them is legal too. Trump was financing his own campaign. A candidate can contribute to their own campaign as much as they want.
Where exactly is the crime?
Attempting to save a spouse further embarrassment from a long past affair is sufficient reason on its own to make the payment too.
> Trump was financing his own campaign. A candidate can contribute to their own campaign as much as they want. Where exactly is the crime?
So the funds were reported as contributed to and expended by his campaign, and the specific payment, including recipient and purpose disclosed on Schedule B-P filed with the FEC and available to the public as required by law?
Or was it falsely characterized differently in Trump’s business records (a crime) to cover up that Trump knowingly failed to make the required campaign disclosures (also a crime) because the whole point of a hush money payment is defeated if you accurately report the payment and its purpose in public disclosures?
If the payment itself is not a crime (as admitted) just the alleged mis-accounting. Then how can the mis-accounting possibly be a campaign contribution, when the entry happened in 2017 and Trump won the election in 2016? Are they going to discern future intent of his accountants? And does "future crime" require Time travelling Trump?
Perhaps this legal theory that the prosecutor is basing this on is just political hackery as it appears to be? Is that possible?
I also think you're answering your own question. You can either have non disclosure agreements or you have to make them public, which would defeat the whole purpose of non disclosure agreements.
On a side note, normally...your past lovers can't threaten to expose your affair unless you pay them. Extortion is a crime.
> If the payment itself is not a crime (as admitted)
No one admitted that.
> just the alleged mis-accounting.
No one said that, either, in fact, two separate crimes were identified, not one.
> Then how can the mis-accounting possibly be a campaign contribution
No one said the misaccounting was a campaign cobtribution (how would that work?) You claimed that the payment was a campaign expenditure funded by a contribution by the candidate, and that that was perfectly legal. Whether or not the payment was otherwise legal, both contributions to a campaign and expenditures by a campaign must be disclosed in periodic campaign finance reports to the FEC (which are public records which are closely scrutinized), and, for expenditures, itemized at a level which includes the specific recipient, amount, and purpose of each payment. Wilfully failing to report donations or expenditures is a crime. So, if this was as you describe, there should be a public FEC filing for Trumo for the contribution and expenditure. Is there?
> You can either have non disclosure agreements or you have to make them public, which would defeat the whole purpose of non disclosure agreements.
Yes, I agree that campaign finance law makes it practically legally impossible for a federal candidate to make effective hush money payments associated with a campaign. (Other NDAs are, actually, fairly viable, and regular parts of cobtracts for services associated with a campaign.) This may be inconvenient for people trying to conceal things that would be material to the electorate, but that’s a feature, not a bug.
> On a side note, normally...your past lovers can't threaten to expose your affair unless you pay them. Extortion is a crime.
While the term is sometimes used more broadly informally, the crime of extortion involves obtaining money or things of value under threat of violence, not under threat of revealing true facts. You may be thinking of blackmail, but again, while informally used more broadly, as a crime that generally refers to getting money via threat to inform about a violation of the law. Unless the sex act was illegal in some way, threatening to reveal it unless paid wouldn’t be that, either.
1. No, the Second crime has not been disclosed, it's been with held from the defendant by the prosecutor. Imagine having to defend criminal charges, but you're not told of the crimes you've committed. Does that sound at all like a fair process, one that meets the US constitutional standards?
2. The equal application of law is what is at question too. Which other candidate needed to disclose their NDAs as campaign contributions? Or is this just Trump targeted.
You can take interpretation of the law to extreme's if you want to target someone: Surly Trump buying lunch for himself is a non disclosed campaign contribution too, right.
3. You're wrong about extortion requiring violence.
Too lazy, here's chatGPT summary.
" No, extortion does not always require violence. While the use of violence or threats of physical harm is a common means of extortion, it is not necessary for the offense to occur. Extortion can also involve the use of other forms of coercion or intimidation, such as threats to harm a person's reputation, property, or financial interests. In essence, any action or statement that is designed to put someone in fear of harm or loss, and to use that fear to gain something of value, can be considered extortion. It is important to note that the use of violence or the threat of violence can aggravate the offense and result in more severe penalties. "
> No, the Second crime has not been disclosed, it's been with held from the defendant by the prosecutor.
There were two crimes identified upthread (did you lose context of the discussion, again?)
And, also, no, all 34 of the crimes Trump is charged with were disclosded by the prosecutor (I mean, there could be more in sealed indictments, but then, we wouldn't know that or their number if there were.)
> Imagine having to defend criminal charges, but you're not told of the crimes you've committed. Does that sound at all like a fair process, one that meets the US constitutional standards?
It doesn’t sound remotely relevant to reality.
> The equal application of law is what is at question too. Which other candidate needed to disclose their NDAs as campaign contributions?
No one has said Trump is required to do that. If your description is true (not my claim, yours), that the payment was lawful because it was Trump purchasing an agreement on behalf of the campaign, with hia own funds, which is he permitted to contribute in unlimited quantities as the candidate, then Trump would be required, as is any federal candidate, both the contribution of funds, and their expenditure (including the amount and purpose) in campaign disclosures. Every federal candidate is required to do that, for every NDA or other service purchased. Normally, campaign-related NDAs aren’t separate purchases as hush-money for past acts, though, they are parts of employment contracts for campaign-related work. Disclosing them isn’t much of a problem. The law is inconvenient for hush-money payments, but, again, that’s a bug, not a feature: it is not intended to conveniently accommodate them.
> You're wrong about extortion requiring violence
You are free to try to find a federal or state criminal statute that would be applicable to the event in question to support your argument, but, on top of using the worst source on the planet for reliable information, you again are failing to note that there are mant senses of extortion, but the one you specifically invoked upthread by claiming that asking for payment to keep quite about sex is a crimen is the narrow definition in criminal law, not the broader definition the word has in other contexts. Asking for money to keeo quiet about true, legal acts, for which the party involved has no prior legal secrecy requirement, is not a crime, extortion or otherwise.
If you refuse to see the system investigating your chosen candidate as legitimate, then I suppose you could describe the process of the rule of law in hostile and bad faith terms, yes.
They're legitimate, in that they "hold the reins of power". The legitimacy of the election by which they came to hold that power, is still disputed by a significant portion of the population.
> The legitimacy of the election by which they came to hold that power, is still disputed by a significant portion of the population.
No, it isn't. Even Fox News was caught out admitting they knew the "stolen election" conspiracy was nonsense, they just pushed it for ratings. It being "still disputed by a significant portion of the population" is delusional.
1. I don’t think he is Alvin Bragg, Jr.’s, leading opposition candidate, unless the news has misreported what position he has declared he is camapaigning for, and
2. I am unaware of any signficant debate over the legitimacy of the 2021 election for New York County District Attorney.
[...] Ideally, Guatemala would back down and start praising United Fruit for being a job creator instead of a foreign plunderer.
Somewhat OT, but one of the feats of propaganda that impresses me the most is how "jobs" were successfully established as an end in itself instead of a means.
As a politician, you can easily run on the platform of "creating jobs" without ever discussing wages.
As an employee, it doesn't matter if the job is wrecking your health, making you neglect your family and pays less than living wage, just having a job on its own is something to be grateful of.
An employer is not needing services that employees provide, no, an employer is creating jobs and then in infinite grace giving them to the employees.
It's crazy, but it works.