rEvolutionist wrote:Warren Dew wrote:rEvolutionist wrote:Coito ergo sum wrote:You are kidding, right?
What is going on now is worse than anything since Watergate, at least. I'm not even exaggerating. I, of course, disagreed with his politics, but I never thought that he or his administration had nefarious intent - I just disagreed with their economic and social policies, most of them (not even all of them -- I'm with Obama on a fair number of issues).
This stuff is serious. The IRS, the AP, the NSA, Benghazi -- massive lies and cover-ups on a fundamental level and large scale.
Yeah, I'm starting to believe that he is a nefarious fucker. It's such a shame. I believed all the "change" crap. From pretty much all the measures that I can see, he is far more authoritarian than Bush ever was. He's also got a smaller government than Bush, with smaller spending. He's a massive let down, and goes to show your country is royally fucked. Two party dominated system where both parties are both neoliberals/neocons. Your country isn't going down some crypto-Marxist drain (like you and Seth would have us believe), it's going down a neoliberal plutocratic authoritarian plughole very quickly. Not sure what can be done to stop it. There seems to be no other option other than rank neoliberals all the way.
A couple of minor corrections.
The government is still bigger than at any time under Bush, with larger spending, even adjusting for inflation and what minimal growth has happened.
Hmm, not according to figures I've seen. Most analyses show that Obama and Clinton spent way less than Bush and Reagan.
spent less? Not possible. Maybe there is some metric like - spending measured against GDP or GNP or whatever, but in terms of dollars spent under administrations, it goes up every year. There is never a cut in overall spending.
Usually the metric they like to go by is some sort of "reduction in the rate of growth" -- so, if Obama cuts the rate of growth, then they just say he cuts growth....that sort of bullshit. That is not specific to Obama. That is always.
rEvolutionist wrote:
Also, Marxist government, in practice, ends up being elitist and authoritarian very quickly, so it's not clear that what you're saying is very different from what you think Seth and Coito are saying.
Marxism is socialism.
Communism, too.
rEvolutionist wrote:
That is so far from what you have, it's barely even worth considering. Your problems aren't collectivism. Your problems are selfish adherence to greed by an elite class backed by giant corporations and the rich. Essentially approaching fascism as described by Mussolini.
The big problem is the size of government and the alliance of government and corporate power; fascism. It's fascism with a smiling face, but it is fascism nonetheless, and it is NOT specific to Obama, although he is no exception.
George Carlin once said "Germany may have lost World War Two, but fascism won it." He is proving to be correct.
That's the thing that is missed sometimes. Every time there is a nationalization of industry -- when we get government motors and they bail out the investment banks -- with every merger of private banks into mega-mega-banks, we take steps closer to the corporatism that is fascism. Having only a few companies in an industry let's government pick up the phone and exercise control over the industry -- if the industry doesn't comply, they only have a few offices they need to send in agents with warrants and get the bean counters looking for the million violations that are bound to be there. So, the big company CEOs will always comply. They'll hem. They'll haw. They'll make political plays and pad their own accounts and whatnot, but they will ultimately comply.
