Gee, where did the weird populism come from?
A weak entry in the thematic tech area.
Sometimes one article sets me off on a tangent. Today it was this one:
Financial Crises as Drivers of Populism
…we argue that the 2008 financial crisis and the associated Great Recession were a major factor in the spread of populism in Europe in the 21st century.
Not just Europe. Anyone paying attention has been aware of this for over a decade.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that the 2008 crisis ended–it never ended...In Germany it takes the form of negative rates that are eating into the pension funds of the average middle-class person who then turns against the political system and votes for the fascist." - Yanis Varoufakis
A few examples of things that might possibly have led to the dreaded “populism”:
Let’s define our terms:
“Populism seems to mostly be defined by the MSM as "not automatically agreeing with people like Tom Friedman and Martin Wolf."“
- yours truly, September 2019
If you use the Google, “populism” is defined as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”
I’d guess 90% of Americans would - by that definition - say they support populism. Our horrific mainstream media always tries to portray populism as synonymous with Nazis, or similar bad things. The MSM is very good at their propaganda, and have to be, because the elites they work for are terrified that regular folks might figure out the scam.
That’s a lot of what I try to do here and elsewhere - shine a little light on their scam.
It’s not just ‘right wing’ populism that came out of 2008 either…
More great Yanis Varoufakis quotes from 2018:
“Even if you have fantastically scripted Constitutions, beautiful Congresses with wonderful procedures and so on, power is going to shift away from those processes. They’re going to become fig-leafs for a system where power lives somewhere else.”
“They [the Greeks] didn't just become left-wingers; our party went from 4% to 40% in two and a half years because of the Great Depression.”
“Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy." - quoting the German Finance Minister
“Capitalism is being overthrown. Not by the Left...capitalism is overthrowing itself."
“Progressives, left-wingers are a catastrophe...has anyone seen "The Life of Brian"? Remember the opening scene, where they all hate each other?...We are sectarian, we hate each other more than anything else, and when we did overthrow capitalism we created the Gulag."
“They [the Germans] don't have unemployment, but they have the sense of "deflation" of their hard-earned savings, that creates the rise of xenophobia, racism and the ultra-right. In my country, we have a Nazi party in parliament, because we have a Great Depression."
"The United States today, which is celebrating growth-what growth? You have 2 1/2% growth, all the things that shouldn't grow, grow. The things that should grow are not growing. You do not have any serious investment in good quality jobs in this country. You have wage stagnation"
"Come on, wake up! You can not say to Trump voters that they are idiots, and Putin duped them. You can say that, but then that's it - you lose them forever. And it's also not true."
As I said in January 2019, I haven’t voted for Yanis Varoufakis, and I am certain that he and I probably disagree on many "solutions," but it is refreshing to hear someone - anyone - identifying causes instead of complaining about symptoms.
(If you’ve forgotten my pinned tweet, here it is.)
Which leads me to a bigger point: People need to look at the truth or falsehood of what someone says or writes, not who wrote it.
So I sometimes get grief - from left and right - for quoting Varoufakis and others.
If I quote Elizabeth Warren’s excellent FCIC testimony (and overall I think she’s a total poser), “the right” (whatever that means now) yells at me.
If I quote, for example, Thomas Jefferson, idiots on the woke “left” get triggered and block me (right Heidi?)
Stop it.
Anyway, I said in 2016 that Trump was a symptom, not a cause. We never addressed (or even recognized) the main causes of America’s dysfunction, which I think I covered succinctly in my pinned tweet - the endless wars, and the endless kleptocracy - led by the Fed.
Until the MSM recognizes these root causes, and the public throws out people like Yellen, McConnell, and Pelosi, we’ll still get idiots like George W. Bush Cheney - whose horrific Iraq (and Afghan) Wars, and asleep at the switch bank non-regulation did far more harm to most Americans than anything Trump did.
We’ll still get utter phonies like (now mega-millionaire) Barack Obama, who was the banksters’ best friend, allowing all the scoundrels to get off scot-free to kill again, all while talking a good game and droning wedding parties.
We’ll still get buffoons like Trump, who when running in 2016 railed against the warmongers and banksters and the Saudis, and then proceeded to fill his administration with warmongers and banksters (as he kowtowed to the Saudis!) And you don’t get any more “deep state” than Bill Barr, and Barr unforgivably let/ordered Epstein get suicided (as Ben Hunt said, "A non-corrupt state has one job when Jeffrey Epstein's in jail - you keep him alive for trial.")
I suppose Bill Clinton needs a mention here - out of order - since he fostered the explosive rise of taxpayer-backed kleptocracy with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, cheered on by the execrable Larry Summers, the disgusting Alan Greenspan, and Bob ‘Nobody on this planet represents more vividly the scam of the banking industry’ Rubin. Gramm-Leach-Bliley made Sandy Weill a billionaire, before Bill got distracted by all the charitable Clinton Foundation work he had to do on Jeff Epstein’s Orgy Island.)
Finally, until we wake up, we’ll still get embarrassments like Joe Biden, who would likely have been 25th Amendment-ed by now if not for the disturbing fact that his VP is even more brain-damaged.
While I’ve probably offended everyone here just now, I’m weird in that I don’t care at all what letter is after someone’s name.
Great, I love tragedy that makes you laugh.
I still watch the archived Yanis Varoufakis YouTube videos being interviewed on how to fix it all up, when he was running shotgun for what's his name Tsipris. Dude was spot on, after they ran him out, he's gone Hollywood.