They do stuff differently in other countries
I know I keeping banging this drum, but I think it’s important to point out the vast differences between conservatives in other countries and wingnuttery in this country. Here’s the latest example:
Tory leader David Cameron details plan for bank tax
Tory leader David Cameron has announced plans for a new tax on banks – even if other countries decide not to do so.
Mr Cameron has dropped his condition that he would only introduce such a tax if other countries did.
In a speech in London, he said the levy was “necessary” and the banks were one of the “vested interests” he was determined to confront.
Labour favours such a tax but only with international agreement. Lib Dems say banks must pay for taxpayer protection.
It is of course perfectly fair to question Mr. Cameron’s motives:
The Tories, who have not yet provided any details of how their scheme would operate, hope that by adopting a more limited measure if the UK acts alone they will avoid driving banks into exile.
But this really isn’t about whether or not Cameron is being sincere or not. It’s about what the general public accepts as legitimate discourse. Over here in the U.S., any tax on the banks will be immediately dubbed a communist plot. Over there it’s framed as a matter of basic national survival and financial security. Compare and contrast this to some of our esteemed conservative leaders:
Boehner’s comments come as bankers prepare to descend upon Capitol Hill to press for changes to the bank-reform legislation, which they wouldn’t support in its present form. Boehner said he urged bankers not to be shy when meeting with the lawmaker staff members and to send a message that new regulations and taxes translates to into banks having less available for lending.
“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner said.
See the difference? In a halfway sane political culture, John Boehner would pay a major price for encouraging Skeletor to thwart financial reform. But in America it’s always considered cool to kiss up to our Corporate Masters, even if they’ve wrecked the entire economy. I don’t know quite how to fix this — between the accounting scandals of the early part of last decade and the epic Wall Street meltdown in 2008, I thought we would have learned not to trust these assholes. What the hell will it take?
What the hell will it take?
Blow up a few “business news” channels.
What the hell will it take? Heads + pikes?
I thought this was going be be about the PENIS! and vagina festivals in Japan.
Being fair, Cameron is just being a populist to get elected (like all politicians do). He is certainly no left winger, especially when you consider he is cozying up to genuine neo nazis in the European parliament etc.
Here in Britain, he is seen as being another insincere twat who will say anything you want to hear, and gets compared to Blair a lot. He might still get elected though, just out of sheer dissatisfaction with the status quo.
But the point about the Overton window remains valid. Anyone in the USA suggesting a clone of the British NHS would be told to go back to France.
I know I keeping banging this drum
Leave Kevin Alone!
*sniff-sob*
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Here in Britain, he is seen as being another insincere twat who will say anything you want to hear, and gets compared to Blair a lot.
Oh I know. But you guys want to hear normal stuff. We want to hear “LEAVE THE BANKSTERS ALOOOOOOONE!”
It becomes obvious that politics, especially as practiced by reactionaries here in these United Snakes, has nothing to do w/ rational decisions, reason, logic or whatever, but is merely psycho-drama wherein the ninnies act out their deepest fears, resentments, & problems.
Considering non-political Yankee culture*, why would you expect there to be a sane political culture here?
*Of course, everything’s political anyway; why even differentiate?
The limeys have better education and Rupert Murdoch only owns a fraction of the country’s media as compared to here.
I say its past time to repeal the Declaration of Independence: let’s give ourselves back to England. Or surrender to Canada.
The limeys have better education and Rupert Murdoch only owns a fraction of the country’s media as compared to here.
I honestly think the BBC and CBC make a big difference. America has PBS/NPR, but they’re grossly underfunded. The CBC gets more funding than both, and has 1/10th the population to serve.
As far as I can gather, “real” Americans don’t have anything to do with PBS or NPR. It is just for liberals.
Whereas EVERYONE in Britain watches the BBC news. Only a few loonys think it has an unacceptable degree of political bias.
I know I keeping banging this drum
If that’s what the kids are calling it now, then OK, carry on.
I honestly think the BBC and CBC make a big difference.
This is true. People in Canada and Britain go to the CBC and the BBC for news and turn to the private media for opinion, analysis, entertainment, and well, whatever else is there, which includes criticism of the CBC and the BBC itself.
“News” has a very specific meaning for Canadians and Britons; what’s important to know in terms of public interest.
You WILL be hearing from our lawyers: Alfred, Tenny, & Sons.
~
People old enough to remember the USSR/Cold War all dying off?
…between the accounting scandals of the early part of last decade and the epic Wall Street meltdown in 2008, I thought we would have learned not to trust these assholes.
Or the Great Depression (brought on by stock and credit speculation), the Panic of 1872 (brought on by an attempt to corner the gold market), and God knows what else has been wrought by these useless greed-engorged fuckheads. What is it with them? They get insanely rich by not producing or facilitating a goddamn thing. Remember the scene in Bonfire of the Vanities where the Master of the Universe tries to explain to his little daughter just what he does?
And Spaghetti Lee, to answer your question: I remember the Cold War quite well, and I don’t plan on going anywhere for awhile, assuming I don’t lose my job and starve. What does the Cold War have to do with this post?
There are indeed some halfway-sane Tories in Britain, like Phillip Blond and the Tory Reformists (who are actually further left than Nu-Labour on a number of issues). But the f-you-i-got-mine Conservative Way Forward types still sadly hold sway over the party.
… Egggh. What I’d really like to see is Labour stop acting like the corporatist and militarist tools they’ve become under Blair.
People old enough to remember the USSR/Cold War all dying off?
Um, I hope not.
The USSR’s fall isn’t old enough to drink yet, at least here in the States.
I have a Russian coworker who remembers the USSR quite well, and she’s just over 30. She seems very healthy, not ready to die off just yet.
“News” has a very specific meaning for Canadians and Britons; what’s important to know in terms of public interest.
A phrase ranking alongside “social justice” & “economic justice” as code for communism/socialism according to Professor Beck.
What the hell will it take?
Guillotines.
(I’d get banned over at Atrios’ place for that. Well, not for that, but he’d pretend that was why.)
I have been watching the BBC news on PBS lately and it is really weird. Don’t these people care about the missing white women in Aruba and other exotic places. Did you know that there are foreign governments and stuff who have like real issues with each other?! Learn something new every day I tells ya.
Sockpuppet.
You are so very wrong about the BBC, The Sun and The News of the World have told me numerous times that the BBC is biased and essentially the worst thing to happen since death was invented.
The Daily Mail. Also.
I like guillotines. They are simple and elegant. Americans would never adopt them, however, because they symbolize equality, if only in death (i.e., the rich no longer got “nicer” deaths than the poor); plus it’s painless, and the United States of Sadism is all about making people suffer horribly.
So, when Texas/Virginia/Oklahoma/YadaYada finally secede, are they going to bring back breaking on the wheel? I’m betting Texas will, since their history textbooks now deny that the Enlightenment ever existed…
Given Texas still has strong pockets of horse culture, I’d imagine that quartering and/or dragging would be more popular with the locals.
Shoot the fuckers!
A phrase ranking alongside “social justice” & “economic justice” as code for communism/socialism according to Professor Beck.
I know. It was mentionned last week during the banter on CBC Ottawa’s All in A Day.
Seriously, aren’t these wingnuts worried that if concepts like communism and socialism cease to have real meaning, the real things (in particular,their excesses) won’t be recognised when they finally come along?
Wunderkid-
I’m pretty strongly reminded of that poll they did months ago which showed a rather large minority of people not only didn’t have a negative response to socialism, but rather a positive one in this country owing to the insane actions of the far right.
Downside, the entire media has been terrified of calling out actual fascism for the last umpteen years because of the right’s giant campaign of calling everything fascism.
Though I see the socialism problem getting worse for the asshole brigade. For people of my generation, the Soviet Union might as well be a quaint fiction by old farts, something which in retrospect looked incredibly sad and frail, a desperate illusion trying to out-penis-size America in the most dangerous dick-waving contest the world has ever known, one which we won on credit cards and trading in all the benefits of FDR’s New Deal for momentary fictional cash.
Furthermore, socialism now is entirely thoughts of Sweden or Denmark. Often followed by thoughts of Scandanavians being inexplicably sexy.
The insane self-delusions of America during the propaganda blitz that was the Cold War looks ludicrous to my generation and it’s just going to look even more insane to the generations that come to whom socialism as a slur will look as archaic and meaningless as someone calling someone a Jap-lover would today.
They are digging their own grave as fast as possible. Which is good in my own vaguely socialistic opinion, a country needs socialists as a simple counter to the power of corporations and the general rich fucks. Keep them from fucking us over as badly as well, they’ve been doing.
“What the hell will it take?”
What it usually takes. Direct experience of fascism. All European countries have this somewhere in their past. The US has never experienced a true dictatorship. Some people only learn by failing.
David Cameron is a gigantic cunt and I genuinely hope he and his entire party ceases to exist within the next two weeks or so, but it’s true, he’s still not in the same league as your genuinely insane, genuinely evil fuckwad right-wingers. In fact, it’s really fucking depressing that Cameron seems OK by comparison.
Oh, and “what the hell will it take”? Revolution.
Seriously. That’s basically the only hope, and probably inevitable by now to boot. All societies need a revolution now and then. Second law of thermodynamics. American society is essentially untenable in the long-term by now.
Scandanavians being inexplicably sexy.
There is nothing ‘inexplicable’ about the combination of nudity and good beer.
Oh, and “what the hell will it take”? Revolution.
Wouldn’t a better news media be a little less…er…disruptive? And easier to achieve?
For example, couldn’t the FCC insist that, as part of its licensing arrangements, the private broadcasters commit to a self-regulating process to maintain certain standards, in particular those with respect to journalistic good practice?
Actually Britain has pretty much the same broken political system as America: New Labour have essentially been the neo-liberal party since 1997(think milton friedman and ronnie raygun double teaming maggie thatcher and you’ve summed up tony blair’s wet dreams) and the Conservatives are old school racists who want to bomb all brown people and make being poor a capital crime. This means you’ve got a choice between Social conservatives and Fiscal conservatives, which aint no choice at all.
also, the media is just as fucking terrible here. I’ve seen at least 3 documentaries in the last month that presented the BNP in a favorable light, and an extended news report about david cameron that was basically a vigorous tug-job from supposedly respectable journo-turds.
That being said, it wasn’t always terrible, here is clause 4 of the Labour party manifesto, that was only removed in 1997:
“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”
They may have been namby-pamby social reformers, but that sentence still warms my Marxist heart. It may not exist anymore, but there are still some Labourites who believe in it. Tony Benn springs to mind, and the sadly deceased Michael Foot certainly did. Its not much, but I’m not sure if there are any comparable figures in the political mainstream of the U.S. so I guess we have that.
So the teabaggers, who supposedly oppose big government largesse as exemplified by the bankster bailout, are basically a wing of the republican party, whose congressional leader just urged the banksters to stand up to any regulation. And they think Obama and any democrat that proposes even the mildest regulation is a socialist fascist anti-constitutional traitor who must be resisted by violent force if necessary. Mussolini’s Italy seems like a positively utopian paradise of reasoned discourse by comparison.
They want the bankers and insurance companies to fuck them in the ass harder and with less lubrication.
Scandanavians being inexplicably sexy.
“There is nothing ‘inexplicable’ about the combination of nudity and good beer.”
Scandahoovians make good beer? I see no evidence of this here in Minnesota. The only reason we have any decent beer here at all is due to us Germans. There is Schell’s in New Ulm and Leinenkugel’s in Wisc. but no Swedish beer and the Norwegian bachelor farmers stick to drinking kerosene.
I don’t think that lutefisk makes for very good beer. Though the lye might be useful in cleaning your pipes.
Swedisn beer drinker
I rest my case.
Revolution? Probably not soon- the incoming Fascists (entering after the next lack-of-regulation bank disaster) won’t allow that. Might upset the corporate exploitation scheme. After the “Patriots” realize what happened, then, maybe a revolt. It’s got to get bad before it gets better, and it ain’t bad enough yet. The comment about other places’ histories of oppression and uprising are pretty accurate. Our turn is coming. When, hard to say. Dammit.
Yes, but Europe is also a continent where people who hold the exact same positions on race, religion, identity et al as the American right wing are sidelined to fringe nutcases like the FN, the BNP or the BZO. And if by some weird oddity of electoral politics the fascists actually find themselves with a shot at the top position (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_French_presidential_election#Results), the voters turn out in droves and send them home by a whopping 82%.
From the point of view of the frogs, it was simple; better a crook than a fascist. Unfortunately, at least a third of the American people can’t see anything wrong with being a fascist (even if they’ve been taught to hate the word without knowing why). The two-party system means they can exert a huge influence over politics (they can end the GOP simply by staying home). And the media (half of it a fascist agitprop organ, the other half terrified of offending the fascists) gives them hugely disproportionate means to get their message out. So the simple lesson that French voters applied in 2002 simply hasn’t been learned in America at this time.
Yet another way in which the U.S. political scene needs to process the 20th century before it can even think of moving into the 21st. Perhaps by the end of this century, we’ll have advanced to the stage Europe and Canada were at in 1960. Then again, maybe not.
More comments (was computerless for the last few days, just catching up);
“Actually Britain has pretty much the same broken political system as America: New Labour have essentially been the neo-liberal party since 1997(think milton friedman and ronnie raygun double teaming maggie thatcher and you’ve summed up tony blair’s wet dreams) and the Conservatives are old school racists who want to bomb all brown people and make being poor a capital crime.”
I think the biggest difference between Britain (or the EU in general) and the U.S. is that the welfare state is pretty much a fait accompli over there – the Conservatives accepted universal health care and the rest of that stuff in the 1950s because “the people voted for it” (something unthinkable over here), and while Thatcher may have tried to bring it back in the 1980s, she didn’t go nearly as far as Reagan.
Not true over here. Since 1980, the Republican Party’s been run by people who not only want to block UHC but also privatize Social Security and Medicare (against over 75% public opinion) and go all the way back to the way things were “before Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over.” From the point of view of a lot of Americans, we think it must be nice to have a country where the welfare state is at least safe.
As for “bombing brown people” –
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-02-14-eu-survey.htm
41% of Brits apparently opposed intervention in Iraq, with an additional 39% saying yes “only if sanctioned by the UN.” By contrast, support for the invasion of Iraq in America was prodigious. Seems to me that the majority of Britain’s people actually care about the lives of foreigners and little things like international law, even if your government doesn’t – and that also puts you a huge step above us morally, I’d say. It may not affect policy as it should, but it says a lot about who you are as a people.
“What it usually takes. Direct experience of fascism. All European countries have this somewhere in their past. The US has never experienced a true dictatorship. Some people only learn by failing.”
I think what calmed a lot of Europeans was World War One rather than fascism – people were forced to take their nationalism to its logical end and pay the price for it themselves (rather than just their soldiers and a handful of natives in a faraway land). The war ruined Europe’s economy, bled an entire generation dry, physically destroyed entire parts of the continent and force an entire people to look the ugliness of war in the face for four years straight. After that, it just doesn’t seem so glorious anymore.
It didn’t end right wing fanaticism straight off the bat (see Germany and Italy), but it was the first and possibly the most decisive blow. America never had to go through the horrors of WW1 or WW2 for that matter; the last time anything this bad happened, it was the Civil War and, except as a rhetorical excuse for Southern belligerence, that’s largely been forgotten. Which is why so many Americans view war as a video game and are really and truly unable to understand what it’s like to be a civilian living in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon or the Palestinian territories.