Tag: Neo-Liberalism

Trumpism Meets Neoliberalism

The election has me wondering where this country is heading……do we talk Trump at his word during the campaign or will he become more pragmatic in his approach to governing?

This is the same thing I did when Obama was elected…..I dissected his appointees to try and see just what to expect from his administration….why should I not do the same for Pres. Trump?

Will the neoliberals keep their stranglehold on our foreign policy?  Will Trump have his own version of foreign policy?

As Donald Trump builds his cabinet and staff, it’s already clear that the White House will host both neoliberal Republican elites and advocates of the racist ideology on which Trump ran his campaign. The merger of their two ideologies — each of them dangerous on its own — will not only result in horrific policies but could also prompt a dangerous transformation of the ideology that governs the center of power in Washington.

Source: The Cabinet From Hell: Trumpism Meets Neoliberalism

It is still early in his admin…..his decisions on the cabinet will go a long way to determine if there is a changer brewing or more of the same…..

Why Is Hillary Clinton Still a Hawk?

Our gal Hillary has learned NOTHING!  Her delusional foreign policy will get Americans killed….but I guess that is okay as long as we pretend it is for the greater good.

She had a opportunity to change her faulty thinking when she began her run for the nomination…….BTW I never thought she would be a true progressive to her it is a slogan to confuse…..

In the past she embraced the lousy policies of her hubby and then the crappy thinking of the DLC and her journey continued by buying into the neoliberalism of Obama……

She refuses to learn from every failed foreign intervention.

In an era of endless military conflict, anti-war sentiment abides among Democrats. In 2004, their presidential nomination went to John Kerry, who was strongly critical of George W. Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. In 2008, they chose Barack Obama, largely because he had opposed that war. This year, 12 million people cast ballots for Bernie Sanders, who voted against it.

According to Gallup, 68 percent of Democrats think the Iraq War was a mistake—compared with just 31 percent of Republicans. Two in three reject the use of ground combat troops against Islamic State.

Then there is Hillary Clinton, who will be this year’s nominee. Few Democrats have more consistently favored the use of military force. She voted for the Iraq War. As secretary of state, she urged President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Source: Why Is Hillary Clinton Still a Hawk? – Reason.com

If she is elected then our foreign policy will be pro-war and pro-intervention….

And as for an example of how hawkish her admin will be…….

Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state who is now a leading contender to be the next president, has called for a stronger response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria, saying Moscow’s objectives were “to stymie, to confront, and to undermine American power whenever and wherever.”

In thinly veiled criticism of President Barack Obama’s administration and its current approach to Russia, Clinton said that Washington should be doing more in response to Russia’s interference in Ukraine.

“I have been, I remain convinced that we need a concerted effort to really up the costs on Russia and in particular on Putin. I think we have not done enough,” she said following a speech on September 9 at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Source: Clinton Calls For Tougher Response To Russia On Ukraine, Syria

The voters need to familiarize themselves with her intentions if she is elected president…..her policies will guarantee more interventions and more war for a generation or more.

Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

I hate the idea that we have to tolerate neocons and neo-liberals…..I feel they have done more to put the US in the cross-hairs of every wacko with a grudge…..

These tools have done more to put the US back on their back foot than any time in our history….

Hillary Clinton wants the American voters to be very afraid of Donald Trump, but there is reason to fear as well what a neoconservative/neoliberal Clinton presidency would mean for the world, writes Robert Parry.

For centuries hereditary monarchy was the dominant way to select national leaders, evolving into an intricate system that sustained itself through power and propaganda even as its ideological roots shriveled amid the Age of Reason. Yet, as monarchy became a dead idea, it still killed millions in its death throes.

Today, the dangerous “dead ideas” are neoconservatism and its close ally, neoliberalism. These are concepts that have organized American foreign policy and economics, respectively, over the past several decades – and they have failed miserably, at least from the perspective of average Americans and people of the nations on the receiving end of these ideologies.

Source: Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill – Consortiumnews

And now we will elect even more people to try and carry on the lousy ideas of the neos……

Despite a painfully expensive and tragically wasteful record of militarized interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Libya, and many other countries throughout the greater Middle East, the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment persists in staying its presence course.  Sure, the tactics have changed slightly over the years.  Obama is less enamored of committing big battalions of ground troops than Bush/Cheney were, yet his administration is nevertheless committed to constant military interventions, misguided and one-sided relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and unwavering optimism that this time, maybe this time, we’ll finally build effective Iraqi (or Afghan) security forces while simultaneously encouraging liberty in the region by sending more U.S. troops and selling more weaponry (together with bombing and killing, of course).

Seems we can never learn from our mistakes…..why is that?

How To Gut Progressivism

Ever wonder just how the Democratic Party become the party of money?

Look NO further than the Clintons and their puppet masters of the now defunct Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)……these were the people that gave us the Blue Dog Dems…a wordless bunch of cowards that has ever been in Washington.

Finally the party has started coming to its senses and once again embracing progress over regress……

If you would like more on the Clinton tribe and the DLC the below article is a pretty good one……

Imagine there’s no Clintons. It’s easy if you try! Without pernicious DLC, liberalism is a stronger movement today

But Clinton is a skilled politician, so she’s artfully re-aligned herself to blur their differences, with overwhelming support from the elite punditocracy.  When the dark side of the Clinton record from 1990s is raised—NAFTA,  Defense Of Marriage Act, “welfare reform,” mass incarceration, Wall Street deregulation, etc.—two defenses come readily to mind: “Hillary didn’t do it!/Bill was president” and “times change/you’re forgetting what it was like.”

These are both effective narratives in the establishment echo chamber, which is designed and intended for horse-race politics at the expense of political understanding (as well as factual accuracy).  But Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be here today if she hadn’t been aligned with those policies—and with helping to create the environment in which they came to pass.  Even before entering the White House with her husband, who had promised voters  “two for the price of one” during the 1992 campaign, the pair had cast their lot in with those who moved the party to the right, most notably when Bill Clinton became head of the DLC—the Democratic Leadership Council, or as Jesse Jackson called it, “Democrats for the Leisure Class.”

Source: Clintonism screwed the Democrats: How Bill, Hillary and the Democratic Leadership Council gutted progressivism – Salon.com

America…..don’t look now….but you are about to make the same mistake…….. yet again……

Neoliberalism Is Destroying Almost Everybody’s Lives

Are you a liberal?  Maybe a conservative?  Probably you are neither but rather what we political scientists call neoliberal.

That is right both of our major parties are basically living under the tenets of neoliberalism…..

The main points of neo-liberalism include:

  • THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.
  • CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
  • DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
  • PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
  • ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

Our conservs live and die, at election time, by these tenets……our liberals are not as blatant but they also live by them.

Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology. But it cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Source: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Almost Everybody’s Lives—How Many People Even Know What It Is? | Alternet

Time for Americans to face up to what is happening in their name….it is not pretty and it is not healthy……time to look for an alternative…..time to put the country back on the track of prosperity.

Whatever happened to critical intellectuals? – Al Jazeera English

That is a damn good question.  Critical thinking is a thing of the past….today it is all along “party lines”….little “outside the box” thinking left.  We have proven that the thinking of today’s political climate progress is just not possible.

In my studies at university I was taught about the classical definitions of conservatism and liberalism…….there is nothing like them in American politics of today……basically we are confronted with the same coin only different sides of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism combined with the disappearance of critical intellectuals spell a bleak future for Western democracy.

Source: Whatever happened to critical intellectuals? – Al Jazeera English

Our society needs more critical thinking…….if it is to survive the crush of stupid that prevails in these days of…..whine and poses!

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