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> All Republican congressmen are idiots.
This is a dangerous attitude. They may do idiotic things, and certainly some of them are absolutely anti-science loons, but every single thing the GOP does is in service of the overriding goal of regulatory capture. And there is a lot of brainpower behind all of this.
They don't want to fix anything. They want to break our government so that the GOP can point to the shambles and yell "See? It needs to be drowned in the bathtub, like St. Grover Norquist says!" and then attempt to hand the whole shebang over to their billionaire master/donors as private enterprise.
Regulatory capture is the goal. That's the true endgame. But they need to break democracy to do that.
They do that in a million little ways, by a thousand cuts, and it's a plan that's not only backed by billions of dollars from American oligarchs but is orchestrated and anchored by hundreds of think tanks. It's an ideology of pure greed that is propped up by shady organizations like the Federalist Society (to train up hyperconservative/extreme libertarian justices), REDMAP (to gerrymander everything), and ALEC (to allow corporations and lobbyists to directly write bills that benefit the wealthiest members of the corporate world).
What's going on with Walker and in several state legislatures is about breaking democracy. The GOP-manufactured deadlock over a ridiculous wall we don't need and subsequent shutdown are more ways to pretend that democracy doesn't work while in actuality it is simply being subverted by the bad actors in the GOP.
edit: for the "this is some kooky conspiracy theory" scoffers: no, it really isn't. This is all observable stuff that is being done openly at this point. A very good recent book on the topic is Jane Mayer's <em>Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right</em>.
Just want to encourage anyone who hasn't yet read it to tuck into Jane Mayer's amazing book <em>Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right</em>. It's easily one of the most important books of investigative political reporting released in the past decade.
She's one of our very best. If our system survives this stress test, it will be in large part because of the fearless and comprehensive journalism done by her and others like her.
edit: needed more coffee to write rite
EDIT: Just got permabanned and muted from this sub specifically for this comment. Speaks volumes, I'd say :/
r/kochwatch
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904
https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/aa6fb1/we_need_term_limits_for_congress/ecr3gmm/
TP USA, Ben Shapiro, and others are all funded by the Koch Brothers.
Big money and cronyism is paying for these right-wing nutjob cockpuppets to "own" college students and drum up fake support for "classical liberalism" and "preserving western civilization".
Lauren Southern's in on it. Jordan Peterson's in on it with his "intellectual dark web", gimme a fucking break. Steven Crowder's in on it as well.
It's all a marionette puppet show, and the Kochs are pulling at the strings.
Jane Mayer's Dark Money should be assigned reading for all Americans. Koch's are the architects but by no means are they alone!
In all seriousness I want to plug <em>A Legacy of Ashes</em> by Tim Weiner. He published it right before Obama took office, and goes through a detailed, ~700 page rundown of the history of the CIA and its many abuses. And not just abuses, but historic failures too. The CIA is a fairly incompetent organization in many ways and this book takes them to task. I highly recommend getting it or borrowing it from a library, it's a hella good read and really exposes the worst of the CIA.
And that's all before these last 12 years.
Sure. There are two books that are worth reading on the subject: Dark Money by Jane Mayer and Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean. Basically, for the last fifty years, a relatively small group of obscenely wealthy Americans has been pouring money into pushing the overton window to the right so that their libertarian ideals would become mainstream today instead of radical. It was essentially a response to the New Deal and what they saw as the spread of government totalitarianism. Through non-profit groups, university grants, SuperPACs, and other channels, they spread their ideas by educating new generations of young conservatives and getting radical right-wing politicians elected.
It has been depressingly effective. Right now we have wealth and income inequality worse than it's been in 100 years, but people are still afraid of "socialism," even when such policies would help the vast majority of Americans. But the wealthy have a lot of people convinced that the government can't be trusted and should have as little control over the economy as possible. So they can pay their workers peanuts, ignore environmental damage, avoid taxes, and spend billions on lobbying because they have people convinced that they should be allowed to because that's what liberty means.
This isn't some conspiracy theory either, this is actually happening. It is well documented. It's honestly terrifying and it is going to keep going until more Americans realize just how badly they're getting screwed. This has happened before too. The Progressive Era came after the Gilded Age and the New Deal came after the Great Depression, so we may be seeing such a shift happening already, but it's still going to be an uphill fight.
That's when the Koch noise machine kicked into high gear and hammered down on moving goalposts and gaslighting.
I encourage everyone to read or listen to <em>Dark Money</em> by Jane Mayer sooner rather than later.
If you want to hear more about this I recommend "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right". Unfortunately - seminars like this are only the tip of the ice-berg. There are huge ideological enterprises set up with goal of establishing "beach-heads" at prestigious universities by setting up private organizations that are attached to the university but paid to publish certain results. Their role is usually to promote free markets and encourage the inclusion of economic costs in law (not just public good). The Mercatus Institute is another example of one of these privately-funded-but-publicly-housed organizations. They're the guys who made news a few months ago when they published a study on Bernie Sander's medicare-for-all plan that showed that even though it was expensive - it was still cheaper than what we're spending now.
I am a capitalist and made good money in business. I hate what has happened at the top of the economic ladder.
Some of the ultra-wealthy have used their money/power/influence to corrupt our systems. The Kochs are a prime example. For decades now, they have been creating think-tanks (hundreds) that promote their propaganda, anti-environment, anti-welfare, pro-fossil-fuel. They have also bought many of our elected officials by paying, through PACs, for their election. Those who don't play ball get "primaried" as the Kochs fund their replacements. It's largely been responsible for the lack of integrity of our elected officials today.
Their efforts have also helped to change the court system in America, by helping fund the appointment of numerous lifetime appointees who are beholden to their causes.
This is not capitalism. This is blatant abuse of the system and perversion of our government/society for their own benefit. They care not a bit about those below them except insofar as they manipulate them to cast their votes for the pawns of their choice.
Tons of details in two excellent books:
Hijacking top comment for extremely relevant obligatory plug:
Everyone should read Jane Mayer's <em>Dark Money</em> to better understand the Kochs and other ultra far right billionaires who have subverted our democracy
Speaking of the Koch Brothers, eeryone should read Jane Mayer's <em>Dark Money</em>.
It is absolutely essential reading for understanding what has happened to the Republican party and our greater political zeitgeist.
There's actually a decent amount of Academia dedicated to figuring out how the Irish transitioned from identifiable ethnic minority to other white people. The most famous example is about how the Irish came to become oppressors, which is oF cOuRsE synonymous with white.
But the most profound way in which they became what was... they assimilated.
Everyone should read New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's book about the Kochs and (to a lesser extent) other far-right billionaires, Dark Money.
For a contemporary view, Dark Money by Jane Mayer.
For a historical perspective, Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean.
Thomas Sowell and a number of others have argued African American hip hop culture is basically white redneck behavior, Sowell in "Black Rednecks And White Liberals" which I'm about to begin. Colin Woodward's "American Nation's" touches on this as well, as do other authors who've penned books on the topic, although his book is more about all of the regional cultures that make up our country dating back to the groups that founded those regions and how their beliefs are still resoundingly alive and well and how politicians actively exploit these differences we have between one another. There are other academics I've heard doing research like this but I'm having trouble recall their names, I heard about them in some podcasts. But, there's definitely more reading you can do to explore this idea more.
Amazon links to check out both titles I mentioned:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029
Not even remotely.
For a better and much more comprehensive view, read American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Collin Woodard.
Jane Mayer, <em>Dark Money</em>
Nancy MacLean, <em>Democracy in Chains</em>
This is well-documented and reported. Please do some reading, specifically on John Olin and the Koch Brothers and James Buchanan and the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society hostile takeover of higher education and public discourse in general. Even the Tea Party was astroturfed.
It's perfectly legal.
I'd encourage everyone to read this book who hasn't already.
Available on audiobook too if that's your bag. Very well researched.
Someone wrote a book in the 60s about it, so it's basically tradition at this point.
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170
Unfortunately, after having read this book, I don't know what to do to combat the current system. It's been decades in the making and is now bought and paid for.
In Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, the author writes that while the USSR found it pretty easy to recruit Americans or place agents in the US, the US was comically bad at placing spies in the USSR, due to the Soviets' skill at spycraft and the Americans' difficulty in penetrating the culture.
Sorry, can't find a direct quote. That's a good book, though. Like the title implies, the CIA has more failures than successes as far as its grand projects go, e.g. regime changes and intelligence operations.
Read Dark Money & Democracy in Chains. The capitalist class within the USA has been actively attempt to take control of the government and reshape it to benefit them. Trump is just stupid enough to make it obvious what he is doing.
> Mainstream liberals and Democrats have largely been unable to...understand the behavior of the Republican Party over the last few decades
Just finished Jane Mayer's Dark Money. It's very enlightening in this regard. It's a hard read in the sense that is perpetually depressing, terrifying, and enraging, but it clearly explicates the unseen forces at work, including how the Koch network pours money into cut outs that are made to look and sound non-partisan and legitimate (which also aids in their mission to cheat campaign financing and tax laws) and pairs the cut outs' "research" with the worst elements of society (e.g., racism, poverty) to frame their messaging in an eerily similar way as Russian propaganda. That's in addition to all the shell non profits they use to skirt campaign finance laws and funnel ungodly amounts of money to politicians.
Even if I had at some point in the past said "both sides are the same" with respect to donors, I will never fucking say it again after reading this book.
> "nation to nation" relationship
Warning - probably sounds pedantic. sorry.
'Nation' is often confused with 'state' - with states being legal, political entities with borders. 'Nations' being <em>cultural</em>, political entities, but no borders.
Add to that and the our constitution recognizes that bands have legal standing equal to the federal government, and nation to nation makes sense.
(Provinces, unlike bands, have essentially delegated authority. Even though areas of authority - health, education, etc are delegated. Municipalities have an even lower level of authority. Only the Federal government has the 'authority' to negotiate with the bands, regardless of issue.)
Being a completely separate 'nation' within a state is pretty much normal for most of North America.
If anyone hasn't read/listened to Dark Money by Jane Mayer you definitely should!
It traces the history of influence by conservative billionaire donors, and it's disgusting and infuriating -- but also incredibly informative.
In simplest terms, the Koch Foundation has put a poop ton of money into George Mason University and other colleges across the US. I highly recommend you read the book but GMU has been in the news this year because of the connections to the Kochs.
The book also goes into the Bush family and a lot of the Republican guard, shit I had no idea about. The Kochs made a shit load of money selling to the Nazis and USSR.
BULLSHIT. No offense, but you don't have any idea what you're talking about.
I'm not just talking about the usual corporate influence. It's much, much worse than you think on the right. Read Dark Money. I wasn't exaggerating or being hyperbolic when I said that a handful of right wing billionaires literally have usurped the RNC, and as we speak, control our entire federal government.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904
The Irish weren't always considered white. I haven't read the whole thing, but this book, How the Irish Became White, is pretty interesting.
>Novelist Larry McMurtry wrote that the book makes use of much recent research and is the most complete biography of Joseph Smith published to date, but that in reading Bushman, it is difficult to determine "where biography ends and apologetics begin.
and all its awards are from Mormon organizations, too
people who want an honest accounting would be much better served to read Jon Krakaur's masterful expose of the "church", <em>Under the Banner of Heaven</em>
Smith was a con man through and through, it's a good thing he died as young as he did before he could do even more damage