I think the Citizens United decision was truly the death knell for a government that represents the people. It has made our system completely irredeemable and essentially incurable of corruption. You cannot expect a government of people who are funded, really bribed, by big moneyed interests to ever represent public interest. Due to this fact, those who benefit from this corruption will never write legislation to undo it. They will never be in favor of shutting off their access to unreal amounts of money. This system needs to be broken apart and redesigned.
National socialism is socialism and 100% marxism, it differs from mainline bolshevism and leninism in that it adds a singular master race on top of class conflict as well as having an end goal of state socialism not communism. it also differs in the fact that it’s socialism is not internationalist or globalist but rather extremely nationalist. So National Socialism is basically just marxist socialism applied to only a single race and culture and nation with the end goal of an all powerful state socialist government under an all powerful leader or fuhrer. therefore we can simplify National Socialism down to anti communist marxism/socialism with racialism and nationalism, which ends up being in practice a state socialist society so inclusive that only a person of a single race and culture and spirituality and sexuality etc etc can be a member. They are a step closer to us marxist-leninists but still fall under little f fascism at the same time. Fascism is also nationalistic and exclusive marxism/socialism however following a more corporatist or state syndicalist path instead of a command economy yet still following marxist principles. both are also non-revolutionary and are reformist, believing power of the proletariat can come from reformism instead of revolution alone. they also follow social conservatism and socially reactionary policies and marx also describes this as petite-bourgeoisie socialism. you can easily find this information for yourselves if you just read literature by marx, engels, lenin, stalin, mao, hitler, mussolini, hall, etc.; they all lay it out for you in their own books, don’t just further research and learn about a single ideology or form of marxism, learn as much as you can from as many sources as you can and come to your own conclusions after hearing all sides personal accounts using historical dialectics and scientific theory and facts to come to conclusions and don’t be afraid to challenge your own beliefs. also put yourself in their shoes not in how you would be now in their position. you can’t beat an enemy or opposing theory without understanding them! think for yourselves and help others to also! don’t be sheep! true utopian democratic communism turning slowly into anarchism and a perfect society will only come when all the masses understand how to get there collectively, this is why ideologies like National Socialism are so dangerous, because they can take your fellow proletarians down a path of racist and imperialist versions of marxism due to lack of understanding of both sides of the whole picture and desperation instead of uniting worldwide as a collective class and true equals, which only harms and confuses the movement which delays communism, hence why capitalists would fund a hardline socialist to divide the working class by race to prevent a communist world. Keep learning and question everything!
We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it? Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. - Carl Sagan
Good essay, but it's incomplete. We also have to factor in the increasing militarism and corruption that are fed by Capital's interests. They're long term trends that have done tremendous damage.
"the founders where worried a small groups of elites could come together and claimbdisproportionate power" the founds *were* a small group of elites claimingndisproportionate power. thats why only white, land-owning (rich) males could vote or hold office.
There’s a lot of evidence that society itself is becoming too complex to understand in the individual level. Technology is advancing at a logarithmic rate, complex social macros and economic systems are no different. The question is, how should we structure our government to handle this logarithmic increase in complexity? Surely we can’t have multiple presidents, as having 2 head chefs in the kitchen is never a good idea. But what about a president per issue? Like you were saying, “presidents were expected to tackle a particular hot button issue and they were able to proceed through these issues thoughtfully.” What if we had a person in charge of improving specific areas of the economy, and have a different person tackle existential threats, a different person tackle the school system, etc.? Then have a committee in charge of tying the proposed solutions together/keeping them in line for possible changes within limitation of the greater context. But that definitely introduces a metric shit ton of issues. The bottomline is that society of today is too complex for 1 figurehead. But it’s too dangerous to split power, as it’s never ended well historically.
thank you so much man for speaking on chinese non-militarism. there is an upsetting upswing of nationalism in china currently, but the CCP has not itself begun warmongering. i highly doubt that it will, and anyone who sees what direction they are aiming in will understand this with clarity.
Trump played 256 rounds of golf in his 4 year term. Thank god no one told him about the president’s time being a precious commodity. Imagine the havoc if he was actually busy.
America is just such a diverse place right now I think so to only have two parties seems kind of ridiculous. (I haven’t seen the video yet I’m about to watch it just how I feel currently)
I don’t think we should take “breaking the system” as lightly as we are…not that we’re at all taking it lightly. The Founding Fathers had something great, and continues to be great to this day. We need to preserve their core principles, but modernize it. When we do change the system, we must be extremely careful not to alter the core recipe that the Founding Fathers put forth.
Taiwan and Penghu are leftover issues from World War II. See Treaty of San Francisco. At the time, the U.S. government helped the Chinese Nationalist Party (Republic of China), which had been defeated in the Chinese Civil War, escape to Taiwan, which was then a Japanese colony. Look at Formosa betrayed. Formosa is the original name of Taiwan. After the Chinese Kuomintang came to Taiwan, it still maintained dictatorial rule, but moved towards democracy under pressure from the United States, and the Taiwanese entered the Republic of China to fight for their rights. The Chinese who lost their privileges in Taiwan united with the People's Republic of China to steal Taiwan and Penghu.
I like your presentation a lot. Nevertheless, you never mentioned the decline of the elites who fail more and more to uphold a democracy until they become oligarchy. This issue had been stated all along since antiquity and is the driving force of decline. The institutions can only be as good as the people behind them.
10:24 Did we forget Obama had a Super majority at the start of his first term in office? He could have passed single payer healthcare legislation and instead we got Romney Care. Later on, in an interview, Obama himself said that he was more of a Moderate Republican than a left leaning Democrat. The leadership problem in this country is due to money and lobbying. They don't pass legislation that is in the public's interest that people want because they are legally bribed to not do so. Pretending that the problem with the Presidency is due to an overly critical public is textbook gaslight, victim-blaming. Am I supposed to feel bad for a man that now owns a villa in Martha's Vineyard with the wealth he acquired after being President?
You cannot forget about the HUGE role the media plays in the popularity of presidents. Equally contributing to the polarization as politicians do with their Rhetorics. Aswell as presidents no matter how much the people prefer them can only be elected twice.... Thanks FDR. So now the american people are forced to cycle through liars and crooks and pray the person they elect have their best interest at heart...... AND that Congress can remove presidents and impeach them if the president doesn't want to send money abroad which the president could do before 1970
Ah yes, the man who gave is the new deal, the man who got us out of the great depression and started America on a road to something better I wonder how jfk's thing doing tho, this trickle seems real slow
FDR’s polio and resulting disability couldn’t possibly injure the dignity of the office because it’s not shameful or a reflection of his character in any way. I can understand a lot of people still taking issue with it especially back then but that should be absolutely evident to any civilized society.
If the president doesn’t control the government, and if the congress does not control the government, then there is only one goal for the president & congress: reduce the government.
Politics fundamentally changed after the 19th century. I think global events have shown constitutions, and even entire elite castes can be wiped out by modern mass movements based on some kind of bigotry or ideology. The US has already been touched in this way by Trump. I dont think constitutions merit the discussion they did in previous centuries. Its just too easy to use the executive (in the modern day in any country regardless of constitution) to hire your mass movement into the government as enforces of your authority and your supporters as snitches. The only real way to stabilize government since WW2 has been through focusing on economic growth and social safety nets. With social media now though even that is not enough. Everywhere you see ethnic or religious or, in the case of the left, ideological extremism rising.
America's leadership problem is because of the Buckley V Valeo Supreme Court decision that made money = free speech, and Citizens United which made (corporations people). This lets big business buy all are election through super packs by flooding money into their political campaigns.
