+Luther Blissett Totally agree...Hillarys excuses are sheer insanity since she is a very poor candidate and a polarizing figure who turned people away from voting.
I have watched Mark Blyth many times and I think he is remarkably insightful. Mr. Luce, however, reminds me of my younger vastly more arrogant years where I thought anyone who is not in Silicon Valley vesting options idiocy justified their plate of shyte they were eating. I have to say, I disagree with his take on the election and the level in which the Democratic Party is responsible for the thinning of the middle class. The politics of California are aligned around systematically removing the middle class and most Americans see it. I openly admit to a bias perspective, but I think Ann Coulter put it well, that 2016 was the last election to pull back from the brink of the country turning into California. I truly believe the "deplorables" journalist like Mr. Luce love to ridicule was more afraid of what is California represents than anything else. Other than the grooming rings and some of ISIS bombings, most flyover could give two bits about the politics or happenings of Europe.
I completely disagree with the continued implications that liberal centre left/right is the best possible; for instance he refers to Merkel 1 million immigrants as a "moral gesture"; whenever a neo liberal does something good, it's a "moral gesture". Merkel's immigration policy is just economically rational; it's more damning of the UK and US than it is good for the the image of Merkel.
Mr. Luce is indeed an intelligent man, but I noticed a subtle dismissal of the power of the common populace. Luce speaks of the many political problems in the US and UK and in none of his observations does he mention the progressive, grassroots movements that are currently taking place. It feels that he does cater to the "powers that be", perhaps even places his faith in the powerful political figures/parties a bit too much. It could be that he does spends much of his time within political circles, and not nearly enough with the grassroots and that colors his views. Also, I noticed that he, and quite admirably, says that he doesn't have any real concrete answers, which is the mark of a true journalist, but the answer to many of the questions can be answered by an engaged, activist population, which again, he say very little of.
He comes from the British ruling class, which I think puts him at a disadvantage in figuring out why the working class does what it does, or indeed what it is that we are doing, aside from reading microtargeted ads and fake news on Facebook. Which is a thing and a real problem, but it is also the kind of top-down influence that a man like him would focus on, with less of an attention to our ability to think and organize for ourselves.
+Ben Warhurst Don't mistake education with intelligence...Bush Jr went to Harvard and got a degree from there and he has the intelligence of a bowl of soup!!!!
Society will accept inequalties, but only to a certain degree. The ability of a government to be everything to everyone is a pipe dream and apart from utopians people understand this. The real problem for governments is its inability to represent vast swathes of its population and this is what has happened since the 1980,s, in the west. The fallacy of trickle down economics is really trickle up economics. The rich becoming richer the poor becoming a larger and larger proportion of society and the middle class no longer feeling comfortable or actually dropping from their economic class. The political class is business centric, generally looking at the emerging nations and how to compete with them therefore they,ve given business carte blanche to do what they like. They are reliant on tax received from banking and financial services and even now haven,t put in place regulations to stop their excesses. With the rise of the far left and right isn,t it logical, if another financial collapse happens, that extreme governments will come to power. Can anyone see the e.u. surviving such an event. Anyone with knowledge of the market realises that it is gerrymandered and does not honestly reflect the real state of play. The bubbles are still there and when someone steps outside of the group think and decides to burst those bubbles then the shit will hit the fan
23:00 Plz don't mention Austria as part of Germany. If we have one common denominator here, it is that we do not consider ourselves as Deutsch. We are not Germany. Even if this complicates things. We have a functioning welfare state. We didn't go along with the HartzIV reform. Our pensions still enable decent lives. Our social democracy has been defending itself against an onslought of neoliberal ideas, yet most Austrians don't even fathom how hollow e.g. the US notion of welfare is compared to our system.
I think he was referring to East Germany as the "most deindustrialized part of Germany" (which it is), he just mention Austria as also viewing themselves as victims of nazism
"There is no return to intelligent policy..." Astute observation regarding today's politics. It's quite apparent in other countries, too. Many interesting observations here. The last one, regarding Citizens United and billionaires, caught my attention. Will Barack Obama be remembered as the last non-billionaire President? The activity of "billionaires" in the public space is now quite marked, with the more "progressive" ones being actually the more visible and personally outspoken (Buffett, Soros, Cuban, Bezos, Gates, Musk, etc.), even if most are not openly partisan. Certainly in other countries the role of billionaires often extends to public office (e.g. Berlusconi, Petroshenko, Babis, Ivanishvili etc., not counting those who enriched themselves mainly after attaining power). The question arises: are we naturally headed toward direct oligarchic rule around the globe? The Westminster countries seem to be relatively immune, but even there the very rich wield a lot of clout.
From Urban Dictionary: " *chocks away* term used by british pilots in ww2 to indicate that they were ready to take off and therefore required that the blocks placed in front of the planes wheels be removed so the plane can take off... the blocks were placed there origionaly to stop the plane from rolling away. said with a stiff old fasioned british accent (don't go thinking that all british people speak in a "posh" british accent u arrogant americans. _chocks away old boy, got to go and beat jerry so we can all be home before christmas!_ "
@10:07, Mr. Luce refers to the May, 2016 French election with Macron as the victor, "...the sort of glass of champagne half-full result...". He fails to address the abstention numbers or the blank/nullified/spoiled ballots cast in that election. Out of an electorate of 47.5 million registered voters, 12.1 million abstained. Out of the 35.4 million ballots cast, 4 million were blank/nullified/spoiled. Macron received less than 21 million votes, roughly 44% of the electorate. Compare that result with those of the 2016 US presidential election. There were 200 million registered voters for that election with 63 million abstaining, a voter participation rate of 69%. In 2008 the participation rate was 90%, and in 2012 it was at 85.5%. I smell something burning.
The "champagne half full" will soon be empty as Macron seems to be sticking to the failed neoliberal guns of failed centrist governments, cutting taxes and reducing worker protections. His "movement", which is basically just a bunch of people going for the second least favorite option, can evaporate as quickly as it appeared. Voters will figure out that this is the same old story with a more handsome face on the cover. Next time, it's either Le Pen, or Mélenchon. It was Mélenchon's base that largely ended up voting "neither" in the second round. Next time, don't be surprised if you smell something Berning.
Nathan Fielure ~ And what of Obama's endorsement of Macron last early May? Surely, the sum of those two factors would be more than enough to excite the French electorate and energize the voter turnout. Oops.
I didn't deny the lack of interest have something to do with the lack of representation by the government. As the first reply has covered, macron is doing the same shit as previous administrations.
