A far bigger concern than the number of people who believe in a god, are the numbers of people who believe that first world democracies work for them. Free trade means foreign investors, and every politician in the English-speaking world being a Capitalist means that their own sales prices guarantee that partisanship as well can be bought and sold like anything else. Differentiation and controversy have nothing whatsoever to do with flags or political ideologies. Demonizing entire countries and populaces, where the reality that their most greedy and gluttonous are endangering their own hapless and helpless citizenry no differently than do our own. The most stupid people siding with the competition doesn’t explain why “the good guys” cannot beat them. The us versus them mentality of partisanship and nationalism is so flawed, conservatives shouting libtard and liberals shouting redneck with all flavors lost in the facade. Corporate interests surpass the authority of courts and legislation today. It was a slow and gradual process to get here, and as all the evidence in the world supports this, any persisting insistence to the contrary means nothing more than that voices have been sold on advertising.
Consider how the colloquialism of mansplaining presents automatically derogatory presumption inferring balls of differing opinion. Deregulate social conventions! They are the epiphany of static cancel culture, private interests caring so much about what audiences think or feel that the audiences aren’t given the opportunity to decide for themselves as independent individuals whether to support a thing or not. This is a fine example of Capitalism’s inevitable over the hill phase, when demand is manufactured by monopolists for pre-ordained supply instead of the versa vice, limiting both profiteers and options. The public, forbidden from forming their own thoughts/feelings.
I think when deplatforming is done by corporations or governments it’s still mob rule, only in business suits. Of course legal protections must exist for all forms of expression, but allowing for real social ramifications of people empowered to defend themselves obliging everyone to mind their footing. Realistically, for free speech rights to hold no contradictions, then even responses to speech cannot be regulated, because whether for or against a thing, it’d be mandating opinion, which is still censorship. Everyone wants a free pass for their team though. Authentic freedoms come with great responsibility, and nobody wants to be held liable for deciding for themselves what is good or bad, not when it’s far easier to allow marketing to consider it on their collective behalf. This is the populism used by headlines today, but not the populism of Howard Zinn, which opposed Capitalism and thus makes the notion of billionaire populist leaders improbable. I’d say Democracy is all at once a chain gang, lynch mob and orgy, where populism is a bucket brigade. Or, Democracy is populism as interpreted by lawyers.
What filmmaker James Gunn went through a couple years back is a good example to this effect. Rightwing billionaire Ike Perlmutter didn’t care for his unrelated political views, so a lackey dug up ancient social media posts of offensive content. But anyone who saw his film Super knows he long ago publicly expelled those demons. The man who scripted this has *probably* given some consideration to morality in his time. Not to defend any celebrity, but the mentality of Gunn’s old posts is clearly the voice of the villain there. The hero, willfully choosing to not rely on the same social norms which permit and uplift ego-centrism to settle his own stomach. I was equally opposed to the firing of Roseanne Barr under separate circumstances, while her politics are very different, viewers were denied the chance to decide for themselves whether to support her work or not, the company informing them what content they should want. It is the polar fucking opposite of how supply and demand is supposed to operate. But everyone would prefer to argue partisanship rather than the “free market” Capitalism underlying it all.
An entire culture long conquered.
Worth reminding is that on the same exact day Trump reneged on the TPP, TISA and TTIP, he met with a collection of CEOs, assuring them deregulation and lower taxes, when the global trade treaties were ultimately purposed with empowering multinational corporations to rewrite even international law at liberty, themselves subjected to less and less. Dead in name only, those deals quietly persist in the USA with less transparency/accountability allowing for more authority, more pull than the federal government, especially as politicians require millions and billions in backing to even run, which non-corporate citizens have no access to. On paper, unbridled tech corporations of Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple could be reined in, *if* they genuinely existed only as for-profit enterprises, but on paper our federal antitrust laws should be working against monopolists rather than openly enabling their wishes for mergers. takeovers and the like. In practice however, hoarders such as Bezos can go consecutive years “legally” paying zilch in federal taxes while traditional welfare programs like food stamps, depended on by millions of households, are being surreptitiously shuttered for lack of funds. Power and money obviously became synonymous before my lifetime, and just as obvious is what breathing room Uncle Sam permits Big Data amounts to the gift packaging of something beyond money alone. Even were regulation democratically possible, it’s long past any possible point for efficacy. Neocon billionaire Robert Mercer and Neolib billionaire Mark Zuckerberg aligned not for politics but for the continued profits assured by Trump’s business propositions, affecting both the 2016 US Presidential election and the Brexit referendum where foreign political influence continues to garner from corporate media any and all blame for the malfeasance. Politics cannot save us anymore. It’s yet another proxy war and nothing more.
Profit marginalists want to share as much as they want competition, seeing brand disloyalists as worse than deniers of Christ. Capitalism is the Highlander, in the end there can be only one centerpiece to the respective personality cult’s ego-centrism. The only partisanship in state- or national-level politics being over who gets to enjoy the larger payday, competing financials are not simply between the parties but within the parties themselves, egos clashing only over who might connive and contrive the largest fractions of the whole for their masters.
It is a fault shared by the public that value in the ego-centrism of demagogues continuously evades them, because the public will not fight back, preferring fantasy to freedom. It’s reminiscent of the adage that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, and yet radical centrists, anarcho-Capitalists and non-alcoholic beer enthusiasts all exist in a profound state of self-conflict. Decaff coffee is like gloves on boxers, as pointless as a social media profile set to private. We can be under no moral obligation to love or even to like anybody. We only have to refrain from lying to them, cheating them or stealing from them. No using or abusing others. That is what free will means, and it is absolutely a give and take thing. Respect me mine as I respect you yours. Only automatons are denied peculiarities, and only fascists care to assert their peculiarities across the wills of others.
Likewise are all militaries of first world nations Hessians in the service of private financial interests. There’s only about 30 or 40 nations on Earth left without an active USA military presence in particular. Popular consensus rebranded school segregation as safe spaces, colonization as gentrification. So many Americans live in denial of the hundreds and hundreds of USA military bases outside our borders. Plato’s shadow-puppets are so gratifying why would anybody want to leave their caves? Lives and livelihoods are prematurely ended every hour of every day around the planet, for no better purpose but that all resources are compelled and obligated into privatization. Especially our very own personal, ever-diminishing time.
How fucking dare anyone anywhere rationalize a cost of living. The ultimate sin of branding.