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saltypickles's avatar

Good post. Even if manufacturing came back to the US I'm highly skeptical that "good paying union jobs" would be resurrected alongside them -- nothing about the Trump administration's actions say that they are "pro-labor" outside of posting and virtue signaling.

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Tom's avatar

I like Slobodian’s definition of neoliberalism:

“The neoliberal state focuses on designing institutions—not to liberate markets but to encase them, to inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy, to create a framework to contain often-irrational human behaviour, and to reorder the world after empire as a space of competing states in which borders fulfil a necessary function. The aim, more broadly of American neoliberalism, is the ‘insulation of markets’”

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John caldwell's avatar

Quinn slobodian should get way more attention imo.

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Josh's Newsletter's avatar

Paglia warned about this in the 1990s. America doesn't have a high culture of its own so what little funding goes to the arts is acutely jeopardised by kooks and cranks which use government resources to deliberately prod at and provoke anger in others.

Taking over NPR is a long march through an institution which much of the Trump base really couldn't be bothered doing. This isn't like many European countries where the state broadcaster is disliked but, say, is seen as the steward of responsibly subtitling foreign entertainment into the local language. I really don't think there's a sense of vision for the way many of these institutions could service MAGAism, easier to starve the organisation of funding and deprive their enemies of a beachhead.

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Owen's avatar

Found a typo: "They want want to fire..."

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Zonker69's avatar

And you helped make it happen you fucking useful idiot.

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Tim Lieder's avatar

Hamas loving nazis really do hate liberalism. It makes their dreams of concentration camps seem so distant.

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Jason Rand's avatar

This was excellent Sean.

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