Feels like linear analysis always relies on cherry-picking of issues.
Depending on which lens you apply and to which topics, the entirety of society could be said to have moved left, right, up, down, in opposite-colored spirals...
Except usury, which is always up, up, up.
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There's been a fair bit of analysis done on this. On most metrics US society has moved right, and even the left has moved right. There are always outliers, of course, but that's the general trend and where the mass of the "left" and "right" are.
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One of the most legible things about this whole debate is the way that "left" and "right" are constantly framed as social issues, while the economic trends are almost totally ignored.
US has been turbocharging right in the dimensions of usury and financialization for decades.
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not just the US. You can see the same thing in most Western societies, just starting from a better place, or moving somewhat slower, or both. Macron just got elected on a promise of increasing the retirement age by 3 years.
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Well, yes, try to impose nationalist or protectionist policies in any EU country and watch yourself and your family get GLADIO'd out of existence extra pronto.
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It's not just about that. Most of your rulers desperately believe in neoliberalism. They mostly aren't being forced to be internationalist technocratic neoliberal assholes, it's their religion (there are exceptions, but they are exceptions.)
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Yes, but, this is just people being products of their environment.
Elites are carefully cultivated for ideological consistency. Exceptions are pruned, mercilessly.
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In the old Chomskian sense of manufactured consent, they would not be around to be "leaders" if they weren't of a certain spineless disposition.
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sure, but that no longer requires things like Gladio. It's self imposed, and not done so out of fear but of belief.
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All I see in this is the success of the program.
You get to Corbyn being ratted out by his own party through years, decades, of removing every single effectual person from power.
When all that's left is careerist cowards and softies, control can take on forms less overt.
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If there were a European revival in the sense of strength of belief, nationalism (or regionalism), etc., you can bet we'd see the return of annual mysterious deaths among prominent politicians.
Market forces, innit?
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Europe is powerful enough to stop that, if they were serious. It's time to stop pretending you HAVE to bow down to America. At this point, it's a choice.
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which your leaders just made again, by the way. The EU response to Ukraine was to crawl spinelessly to America and beg to be ruled and impoverished.
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