Getting elites attention
What the right wants from its followers is for them to be riven by hatred of any difference, thus making them easy to manipulate and willing to sell out their economic values in exchange for seeing brown people beaten, and women and trans people losing control over their own bodies.
What neoliberals want is for their followers to be convinced that each group, even each micro group, is on its own, unable to understand each other and thus that solidarity is impossible and all one can hope for is that some member of the identity group is allowed to join the elite, while most of all groups remain in poverty.
They’re very similar, really. In both cases hatred of other groups is inculcated as the core value, as a way of making manipulation easy and avoiding having to actually deal with broad issues of well being.
Both of these are variations on “divide and conquer”. It costs a lot less to give a few people something than to give many people something. “Want some women and minorities in power? Sure. Costs us almost nothing.”
“Want women to be forced to bear rape children and die in pregnancy due to lack of necessary abortions? Sure, costs us nothing. Our women can still get abortions.
“Want trans people excluded and denied health care? Sure, they’re a tiny part of the population and rich trans people will be fine.”
On the other hand giving everyone healthcare would cut a lot of profits. Giving everyone a liveable wage or assistance to those who can’t work or find jobs: that would cost a lot of profits.
“You can have anything you want, as long as it doesn’t make elites poorer.”
On that the right and center are unified.
bruce wilder
No one is more easily conned than a skilled salesman.
Political leanings were once called “persuasions” and that was a telling term. I do not think most people are interested in or knowledgeable about politics as a realm of power and governance. If they participate at all by having opinions or voting (or merely intending to vote in their hearts if not on an actual ballot), they do on the basis of some or another fraud. The sociopaths who quite invisibly exercise power may disregard the consequences to others, but I am not convinced that most people are so much callous as politically ignorant and ahistorical. They may echo slogans and memes manufactured on behalf of billionaires by scholars and pundits, but their foundational political attitudes are less informational than simply the social psychology of ambivalence, dependence and precarity.
Mark Level
A concise description of the Elite “acceptable” parameters of discourse allowed. They’re called a Ruling Class, after all. Their donors (or blackmailers) are kept happy, the majority are screwed. DC was called Hollywood for ugly people. But those ugly people get lots of perks at the table, at the Club (that you’re not in, as Carlin noted.)
Think Starmer, Macron and Merz riding the train back from “Keev” with their little cocaine baggy and spoon. “Democracy” & “values”, what a sick joke!! Cake for the Nobles, shite for the peasants.
Seattle Resident
Speaking of elites, how does AIPAC and Sheldon Adelson’s wife feel about the news of an impending nuclear deal with Iran? They’ve been pouring zillions of dollars into Congress and the Presidency, only to get backstabbed like this! Netanyahu was looking to bomb Iran with the U.S. holding Israel’s hand, and now it appears that he has been hung out to dry and may end up getting convicted in an Israeli court.
Ian I know you said that elites don’t fight you or try to destroy you unless you’ve done something that detrimentally affects their interests. The blowback, if any, will be something to see.
Adam
And what the left wants from its followers is for them to be riven by hatred of any difference, thus making them easy to manipulate and willing to sell out their common sense in exchange for seeing gender critical people beaten, and women and children losing control over their own boundaries.
Ian Welsh
Ah yes. Transwomen suffer terrific levels of violence, “gender critical” (transphobes) hardly any, and “boundaries” = not being allowed to make one’s own choices.”
Amazing.
bruce wilder
The new “divide and conquer” has such completely silo’d informational space that everyone can believe in their own virtue.
What “people on the right” are told is that “gender-affirming care” is giving hysterectomies to 15~year-olds. What kind of insane person would be OK with that?
I think most of us are just pawns for elites to manipulate.
Oakchair
for seeing gender critical people beaten,
—–
How many “gender critical” people have been killed? How many years of life expectancy has been taken of this group?
The ruling class is killing millions. The poorest regions have 20 year life expectancies gaps. 20 years.
And people are ranting self righteously about what exactly? The horror of what? Being lectured about using the “wrong pro-noun”?
Seriously, in what way is this rage about gender not just a distraction so the ruling class can rape and pillage easier?
3% of children have been inflicted with autism, 60% of Americans are so poisoned they have a chronic illness, millions are being killed and here we are raging about which pro-noun to use, and what the definition of male and female is. I do enjoy dark comedy, but how much darker will this one get?
shagggz
Oakchair: as dark as calling retardation progress? ;p
different clue
@Bruce Wilder,
As Jr. Dobbs once said, ” you first have to pull the wool over your own eyes before you can pull it over someone else’s.”
And wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump ends up being the President who is better on Israel, better on Syria, etc. ( or at least not as bad) as the last several Presidents?
different clue
The police certainly work for the elites. One thing that at least some non-elite mass-majority-member mere-citizens can agree on is that police should be encouraged to confine their actions to within the bounds of lawfulness.
Here is a video called Good Night taken with a doorway automatic audio-videocam showing a mere citizen doing just that very thing. But it requires having a doorway audio-videocam to be able to do it. Which is an argument for having a doorway audio-videocam. The mere citizen apparently knew just enough about law and police behavior to be able to wear these two policement out till they gave up and left.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/howtonotgiveafuck/comments/1kopq8s/goodnight/
About the wider issue, perhaps a Lowest Common Denominator Party could give the “shared interests” approach a try. What basic agenda would that Lowest Common Denominator Party have to narrow itself too in order to attract those people who might be attractable from their various psycho-political culture-identity/affinity groups? What might such a Party be called?
different clue
Upon reflection, I think the Good Night approach taken by the mere citizen inside his castle-his home worked because that policeman was a real policeman.
If it had been a magastapo ICEman, he would have just battered down the door, or shot the lock and handle off, or otherwise have broken and entered into the house.
The ICEnazi Magastapo will be doing more of that in the near future. If I were a real homeowner with a real home to protect against violent ICEnazi Magastapo home-invasion, who had the money to make my home defensible, how would I do it?
People with genuine construction experience/knowledge will have better ideas than I have, but i will offer my best and hope those with genuine knowledge offer better information/knowledge-based comments.
I would begin by strengthening my doors and windows. I would take off my normal door and put on a steel fire door, plus a battering-ram-proof doorjam for it. I would replace my windows with those bulletproof banker-teller plastic-resin windows, plus breakdown-proof window jams for them. Including on the second floor, if I had one.
I would then try surrounding all my exterior walls with some kind of concrete hard-to-break-through wall. I would then try strengthening my roof/ceilings to make them harder to chop through.
Of course that would not stop the Magastapo ICEnazis. But it would slow them down enough for me and my family ( if I had one) to retreat into a Safe Room inside the house. Somewhere semi-hidden if possible, behind a convincing looking fake-wall or something. Made out of the kind of Ultra High Performance Concrete the Iranians use to try making their underground nuclear facilities resistant to the biggest deep-penetrating bunker buster bombs. The air vents would have to be too concealed for the ICEnazis to be able to find them ( to poison the air inside the Safe Room).
Of course, then the next steps are something I would never ever do or even suggest because they would be some kind of illegal. I would merely fantasize about them. I fantasize about having microwave elements taken out of microwave ovens and all facing towards where the Magastapos would be when they first get into the house. But I would never ever actually do it. That way I would never ever be able to soak down the Magastapos with oven-grade microwaves. Nor would I use ultrasonic multi-hundred decibel soundwaves designed to melt eardrums/cochleas/etc. Nor multi-hundred decibel infrasonic speakers designed to to resonate internal organs to the point of unbearable discomfort or spontaneous rupture.
I would never ever do such a thing, so don’t anyone ever ever do it. Never ever.
Many decades ago in Upper State New York I had a summer job mowing lawns as part of a lawn mowing crew. One time the business owner named ( Ohhh . . . we don’t worry about that . . . ) took us out to his father’s retirement home building project to move some rocks around. I noticed the standing walls of the house-to-be were poured concrete and the wall we were facing had several “windows” in it about 3 feet tall and 4-6 inches wide. I remember saying something like ” those look like rifle ports” ( though I didn’t know what actual rifle ports would actually look like). I don’t remember exactly what he said in reply, but it was something like “yes they do” or “yes they are” or something like that.