Yes, and they do.

I remember the summer of 2016, when I was playing Pokemon Go in the parks and people I had never talked to and that lived nearby were playing it next to me. We were all celebrating when we caught a pokemon when we were after, and comparing which ones we’d caught with each other.

At the time I thought…who would buy Trump’s conman routine? Who actually thinks that the country is in a terrible enough place that we need to elect this person who seems to actively hate the country and seemed to want to set the entire thing on fire?

I left my Californian home and went back to my original state to visit my family. We went to several different areas of the state in fall of 2016 because my wife was from a rural area and I originally grew up in a slightly more suburban area. I saw the signs in the yards, I saw the discontent, and I saw how people did not seem to be reacting the same way to his craziness. I saw how casually they would put on his rants in the background while talking about other issues. I saw how some of them were amused by his antics. It had been a couple of years since I had last been back and it once again struck me how much worse the area appeared to be from the last time I was there. I was in a rural area when the “Access Hollywood” tape dropped. People seemed to visibly shrink at even the mention of the news. I thought he was done for, and that this was a bridge too far for his supporters to cross. That people would vote third party, or not vote at all. I did not get the sense that my thoughts were shared by those around me.

When I came back to California, people were talking about the debates. It was sunny and nice out, and people would talk about the projects they had going on in their houses, or they’d talk about work related affairs. People were sometimes amused by Trump’s antics, but everyone uniformly thought it was impossible for him to win the election. Having seen what I had seen in the weeks prior, I was no longer one of these people. “They’ll never let him win”, one of my co-workers said. I was stunned…who are “they”? Does the rest of the country actually believe this?

It turns out quite a few of them did. Many people thought there was just simply no way that Trump would win, because either the system was already rigged against him and would not allow him to win, or because the country was just not in dire enough straits to elect such a madman (as I once thought).

Hindsight is 20/20 but when I thought it was bizarre that he was even a viable candidate at one point in 2016, and I saw the decaying state where I grew up, I thought “if he wins the election, then we are in a much worse state as a country than I thought”. And we undoubtedly are.

Of course he won, but the reason that I have this somewhat rambling response to this question is that the answer to “why is he still in the race?” ultimately comes down to the overall state of this country.

He is in this race because this is where we are as a country: barely able to imagine a possible future that is brighter than the present, because we are still caught up in degenerative non-sense that keeps us thinking that our broken down towns, and our poor social bonds are caused by some horde of “others” instead of their true causes: our ever-widening wealth inequality, our ever-decaying moral responsibilities to each other, and our national instinct to absolve ourselves of our responsibilities by claiming that not only is it correct to be forever self-serving, but that even the idea of altruism is a lie.

You’ll get all the Logan act violations you seek if you act now!

It was obvious as hell that he wants Russia to win.

I hate that I even know who this disgusting asshole is.

Is it an option to not? Cuz if so that’s what I’d choose.

Tech company management loves the idea of ridding themselves of programmers and other knowledge workers, and AI companies love selling the idea of non-productivity impacting layoffs to unsavvy companies (tech and otherwise).

How do you measure the wealth or power of a sovereign king, or any other kind of dictator?

This is also borne out in practice as you watch the purportedly “most powerful man on Earth” constantly tap dance for Putin in lockstep with the GOP. As a kleptocratic dictator, he informally adds the entire country’s economy to his personal net worth.

The GOP is foaming at the mouth to form a right-wing dictatorship in this country for precisely the reason you are addressing here. A person with powers of complete dictatorship over the world’s biggest economy would definitively make them the most powerful man on Earth without a second even deserving mention.

“We will coup whoever we want!”

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/

Germany is a stable liberal democracy with stable instutitions.

For now.

the Foreign Ministry is gearing up to issue visas to true patriots as soon as September! It’s time to stand up for spiritual and moral values!

My God these people are fucking idiots.

True patriots leave their country for Russia, and to flee your country is to “stand up for spiritual and moral values”. /s

I know you think you’re the smartest person on Earth giving unthinking Americans lessons or something but you haven’t taught me a damned thing here at all except what the German word for neoliberal is.

(But, I know, don’t dare call them that!!! 😡🤬 😤)

😆

Separately, even frequent users of the habitual be wouldn’t write a sentence like that.

Inequality doesn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

Why would anyone post this? Of course it didn’t just turn up out of nowhere.

What it is, and what I expect people with a modicum of knowledge of the English language to understand it as, is vaguely gesturing at the overall situation and saying “this thing here that be the way it do”.

That quoted phrase you have there is pure hot nonsense.

What are the reasons those pointed-at reasons persist? Why does is that persistence more pronounced is some places, but not others? Can there be a symptom without underlying causes?

Read theory if you’re actually curious and not just posting to post. Personally, I’ve come to think of inequality as being at the center of it all.

But the reason is certainly not “because <<country>> is <<country>>”.

Those kinds of difference goes all the way back to rugged individualism and whatnot. Or, less detailed but not less accurate: Because the US is the US.

“I heard a phrase once about Americans, so that must be why they’re sliding towards fascism. It definitely can’t be for the same reasons people have pointed to for a hundred years.”

The fuck would race have to do with anything you really are American.

Right, right, it’s not that Somalia is Somalia, it’s something in their “culture”? Right?

I said it before and I’ll say it again: The American mind can’t comprehend European social liberals.

Oh so smug, and yet still “European social liberals” are constantly on the brink of having their own outbreak of fascism.

I think that one of the few reasons the Nazi party hasn’t re-emerged in Germany is that it’s strictly forbidden by law.

But you’re talking about the US, specifically. Complaining about regulation not working in the US is like complaining that rule of law is a non-starter in Somalia: The issue is not the idea of the rule of law, but Somalia being Somalia.

Oh yes, it’s simply because the US is the US, and has nothing to do with the fact that we’ve had neoliberal politicians for approximately 50 years. All of that stuff I mentioned at the end of my last post was describing mid 20th century US politics.

Also, comments like “rule of law doesn’t work in Somalia because it’s Somalia” show me you have exactly nothing to add to any conversation about geopolitics and borders on racism.

The stuff I described was not a neoliberal rule at all, they abhor any kind of regulation that’s not securing property rights for the affluent.

Don’t agree with your definition of “neoliberal” really at all, and especially not within the context of American politics. It’s too narrow and wouldn’t fit most any politician.

This “regulate away market failures to approach the ideal of the free market better” thing is ordoliberalism.

Do we really have to have yet another esoteric term for what is largely the same school of thought?

I am not really sure what point you are trying to make other than arguing definitions. Much of or even most of prominent American politicians in the last half century or so could be classified as neoliberals. They favor “market”-based solutions to everything and “public-private” partnerships. Many of those still consider welfare necessary as well so they’d be “ordoliberals” in your book.

Ordoliberalism is the German variant of economic liberalism that emphasizes the need for government to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential but does not advocate for a welfare state. Ordoliberal ideals became the foundation of the creation of the post-World War II German social market economy and its attendant Wirtschaftswunder.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism

Actually, maybe not because that just sounds like German for neoliberal.

The concept of regulatory capture is the fundamental illustrating concept in modern US politics. Industry groups and the wealthy sit on our politicians until they get exactly what they want. Traditional and increasingly even social media serve as the persuasion arm for the wealthy, industrial class. Simple rules added in good faith and followed by industry groups via “self-regulation” simply do not work here. Even if you pass the rule and then later try to enforce it, enforcement is made toothless by our Supreme Court.

There are a few places in the country where politicians can hit back at industry groups with some degree of success, but even in our most “ordoliberal” or “liberal liberal” or “neoliberal” or “choco-moco-latta-yaya-liberal” states, industry mostly wins.

And we’re just ahead of the curve in the slow slide toward fascism. Exactly as the Nobel laureate here is saying, neoliberalism is just another mechanism used to hollow out the government from within and make it ineffective until it serves mostly no one, and then that disenchantment with material conditions over time leads to right-wing populism (a.k.a. fascism).

The Marxists have been saying this all along, and I am not a Marxist though I agree with a lot of Marx’s analysis on capitalism and industry. I think there is an alternative, and I think mid-century American politics illustrated it…strong unions, a welfare state, tax policy that levels out wealth inequality, and a government capable of regulating industry.

My point is that it’s not as simple as setting “common sense” neoliberal rules when the corporations actively evade them. The problem in the US is also more complicated than you’re making it, here we need to basically redo a court which is full of people on lifetime appointments in order to roll back their ruling that political corruption is basically free speech.

I dunno if I were in Germany I wouldn’t be so smug about electing politicians that prevent a slide into fascism.