dantesrevival wrote:
Hi mikey
So what is it they really want? Just to kepp people poor and them and their mates rich?
Hi Dante
I wrote this today on the Red Cross UK thread. It was meant to explain what I have gathered about the right wing on the level of Tory Mps and voters.
mikey mikey wrote:
Does anyone still believe that the return to pre WW2 standards of depravation is a consequence of the policies of the last three decades?
I can assure you that it is the main aim and that this can be found explicitly declared so.
The post-war dream and the vital liberties, rights and services that were hard won by the great generations of the first half of the twentieth Century that you and I consider the very hallmark of a civilised and developed country are to them revolting and infuriating.
Where you and I think of the 1920s and 1930s as a time of great economic hardship, they see a golden era of class and wonderful excess.
Where you and I are horrified at the abuse and effective slavery of domestic service they see Downtown Abbey and everything and everybody in its proper place.
Given the choice, you would see every family and individual well adjusted, healthy, educated and free to pursue happiness and fulfilment.
Such a world fills them with ennui.. Where's the fun in that? they say. Where's the drama? How can you keep score without winners and losers and how do know which is which without somebody in a palace and somebody else starving in the street? the concept of personal development and realizing ones potential is for them something that is given lip service to in boring PC speeches but nobody really believes, Most toys wins and the gap between winner and loser shows just how much one wins by. Big stakes are more exciting and there's nothing like luxury when you one of the few. Modern luxuries aren't luxuries at all now because too many people have them.
Where you see and I see egalitarianism as the logical result of mutual respect and fairness, not to mention the best use of a nations human resources, they see a horrible dismantling of a system of privileges and nepotism that they profit from, or would profit from given half the chance.
The policies of the right are driven by an ideology and not by any economic reality or necessity. That's just for the PR. And that is why so many decisions look stupid when they damage the strength and economy of the nation. Because they only seem stupid, if one assumes that they were made for economic reasons rather than ideological ones.
And by the way: this is why they think we're the stupid ones.
But I think in the case of the super-rich like the Kochs (70 billion dollars) it goes much further.
People who have relative wealth often desire absolute wealth (so much money one could never effectively use all of ones resources)
People who achieve absolute wealth desire more of what it grants them: power. After all, absolute wealth means increasing ones wealth achieves vey little in terms of more luxuries.
For the time being we live in an era where much of the poverty of the developed world is relative poverty.
Relative poverty still grants enormous leverage to the rich but in order to gain even more, one would have to create absolute poverty.
In such a situation of absolute rich and absolute poor almost unlimited power over millions people is granted.
In other words, if one has absolute wealth to the point where more money grants little more in terms of power, then it stands to reason that in order to gain more power the only thing left to do is to is move the vast majority of the population towards absolute poverty.
This leverage is already granting Koch and their colleagues enough power to shut down the US government. This threatens to overturn any democratic process not just in the US but in any country within their sphere of influence.
We are looking at a coup. An international one.
And if that sounds crazy, ask yourself this: if the Koch and co folks do indeed bring the US government to the point where they are shut down, default on their loans and effectively collapse or alternatively, if the administration is forced to capitulate, which other country's government will dare oppose them?
Win win for Koch bros and co.
And yes, the Koch folks are already "advising" Ian Duncan Smith. (see the who's who case file thread).
