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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Quote: | | What do you think Blair got right? |
Simple. You don't win friends with salad, you don't win elections pushing fringe views that penalise or disenfranchise the majority. |
But by avoiding confronting economic reality, you will be the one doing all the disenfranchising by creating a permanent new underclass. And Blair is almost universally blamed for disenfranchising the counties and North through a London-centric finance economy, so it's a first to see him cast as a standard bearer of enfranchisement.
The zero-sum idea that for one person to succeed another must be 'penalised', in a world of so much possibility, is a fundamentalism incompatible with negotiating life in a complex world. It's the sort of stuff the Taliban claim in their context, and is arguably the textbook definition of fundamentalism; the essence of its hopelessness, the means of its desperate need to control others, and the engine that inevitably drives it off a Trumpist cliff.
Among the things that put lie to the culture wars being depicted as a left problem: (a) they are driven ferociously by the right as much as the annoying left, but the right culture warriors are far more heavily funded by grifting right billionaires, corrupt right opportunists in industries such as the war machine and fossil fuels, and powerful self-perpetuating right religion; (b) they involve a moral element of protecting the vulnerable from right violence, the turning away from which essentially means throwing a human sacrifice to the mob, which would likely account for David's reaction on the one hand and Blair's susceptibility on the other; and (c) they are rooted in hard economic reality in that the inability to cope with a complexity is precisely why a new backward right culture is falling behind, unable to learn and adapt quickly enough even as it is robbed blind by grifters and demagogues.
Morally, this view also tacitly gives the nod to throw queers, Muslims, refugees, clean rivers and endangered species to the mob to have their way with them, much like Lot threw his daughters to groping savages to save his skin under some dubious cultural pretext (Genesis 19). A morality without protection for the less powerful is a tyranny.
Such a grim and depressing moral concession will only make the backward right less employable, and incite an uncontrolled ugliness beyond even Trump's efforts, worsening the situation no end. No one doing business in a genuinely competitive sector of the economy — no one vaguely intelligent and worldly with an ounce of ambition or sophistication who relies on the best talent to succeed — is going to undermine their organisation, clients and markets with people five decades behind who wave guns around; think governments and corporations are walking conspiracies; repeat Fox and Pastor Fred slogans; believe vaccination is a Soviet oppression; think wearing masks to protect others is an Orwellian nightmare; hold that the end of the world is nigh and war in the Middle East can only help realise heaven on earth; can't cope with the brain hurt of trans identity; struggle with multinational and multicultural identity; take an foreign client's gain as a personal or national economic loss; disruptively confront minority or foreign workers for their peculiar habits; think that intelligent and creative colleagues are a menace to be rid of as their technology replaces workers; and on and on undermining business success.
And that's just scratching the surface of what being culturally backward means in a contemporary workplace and economy.
You also have to feel for the kids whose minds are being diminished even as the culture they're embedded in chokes the future out of them like a giant plastic bag over the heads, as anti-scientific, world-ignorant, limiting, infantile, psychologically destructive, career-destroying ideas and attitudes shoved down their throats day and night.
For similar reasons of dysfunction, isolation and inability to navigate complexity, much of the far left has also been unemployable and impoverished for decades now. Why anyone would want a much larger swathe of society to join them in that misery by not adjusting to the real world as it now stands is beyond me. It's no coincidence that rather than taking stock and adjusting to deal with the world around them, both would rather rip the world to pieces in apocalyptic nihilism. The Trumps of the world are the Jokers and cult leaders cheering them on and delighting in the ensuing chaos.
But this is cold hard economic reality long before we touch its moral and psychiatric dimensions. In immediate practical terms, right now, that backward weirdo culture is making those people unemployable, less-skilled and less competent, and generally entrenching the poverty, abuse and morbidity that goes with that sort of decline. Looked at from this perspective, the lambs being sacrificed to this backward fundamentalism are piling up at a frightening rate, which is why dealing with Trump was a matter of urgency — even as he still loiters around the GOP like foul stench.
This can be denied all anybody likes, but rest assured those leading the economy and major organisations domestic and international are voting with their feet as employers, as it is their right and mandate to select the best and most suitable talent available to succeed in business. And that's what matters most on the ground in people's daily lives. Queer sacrifice won't remedy this; on the contrary, it will accelerate it, which is the probably why it's so appealing to malignant wreckers like Tony Blair and Donald Trump.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| David wrote: | The Western left may indeed need to go back to the drawing-board right now, but the very last thing it needs is advice from people who are fundamentally opposed to everything they’re fighting for...... bad-faith contribution to the debate from a political figure whose credibility as a labour movement representative or even just a person of good judgement is dead.....
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That is great posting David. Nailed it.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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So basically the Truth is only acceptable if it comes from an acceptable messenger?
Does that then follow on that critical thinking is completely absent and any message is accepted if the messenger has sufficient credibility?
I would have thought people were adult enough to say "I think the guy is a #$*&#$%&@ but on this he's spot on. "
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^But he's totally wrong though. The problem is that a mega underclass is forming that is unfit for the contemporary global economy, and that fitness gap is growing by the day.
What are you going to do about all that unemployability and inability to compete? The right has done nothing about it for 20 years except encourage it and make it worse. Blair did exactly the same.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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We already dealt with that possibility, Stui. On the previous page. The message is bogus. I am more than willing to stand up and say "Person X is a tool but on this issue he is correct". Here in this forum I have, from time to time, backed some of the craziest and nastiest tools going around. Morrison. Abbott. Pauline Hanson. I can't remember ever saying "Donald Trump is right" about anything, but it could happen.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
fair enough, but you would hardly be representative in that.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Nick - Pie Man
Joined: 04 Aug 2010
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| Wow. You've all become so radicalised. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Hey Nick! Long time no see. 
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Nick - Pie Man
Joined: 04 Aug 2010
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| Quite so! I heard the news about Nathan Buckley getting shafted and thought I'd poke my head in |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Good thinking – the VPT Popular People's Front are, in fact, behind the coup and currently plotting to install our own candidate. 
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Nick - Pie Man
Joined: 04 Aug 2010
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| I support the coup and the EGM 100%, let's cause a ruckus |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| David wrote: | | Good thinking – the VPT Popular People's Front are, in fact, behind the coup and currently plotting to install our own candidate. |
Is that a splinter group from the Popular People's Front of the VPT?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4 |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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Campaign for Free VPT, suicide squad!
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Free VPT? Free of Mods? Free to go hell for leather?
I'm interested.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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