Forget Google - It's time to break up the payment processing duopoly of Visa and MasterCard

submitted by magnora7 from medium.com

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[–]dittendatt 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The SJW's / Woke people often get called the left. Because there is a surprising amount of collaboration, and because they are both represented by the Democratic party.

If you are an old school working class commie I can see how that is strange, but thats how the battle lines are drawn nowadays.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yes, but it is not coincidence that these newer battle lines are drawn in a way that makes it impossible to find historical continuity.

I think we need to actively redraw the lines, because it is the strategic or tactical equivalent of refusing to fight on the terrain your opponents choose-- in this case a terrain they design and landscape themselves. It's also a matter of "know thyself". For people who call themselves "progressive", I think they need to understand what that word means. To me the progressive reformers make very little sense, but progressive populists and populists got much closer to the right track. It means the difference between public banking like North Dakota has (or what we all had access to before Reagan eliminated savings accounts at the post office) and minor meaningless regulation of derivatives.

Besides how their terrain makes class discussion in and of itself impossible, it eliminates one critique of their uncritical embrace of critical race theory. Another way to critique it, that it creates a new religion around white's orginal sin of racism that is every present needing constant confessing and rebuking, is too easily dismissed by them as ignoring the problem, if these battle lines can not show via class analysis a clear world view going back hundreds of years that makes perfect sense of how the world works.

The left right thing is a lie, there is just a hill. Those atop the hill may see a left and right, but we need not accept their view, their terrain. We can fight up the hill together, or we can try to ignore the hill or fence it off so that they have no impact beyond their little hill and we go about creating a decentralized world with resilient communities.

[–]dittendatt 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There is a historical continuity to what is happening. It's unsavory but it's there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism

many definitions for clientelism have been proposed, according to the political scientist Allen Hicken, it is generally thought that there are four key elements of clientelistic relationships:

  • Dyadic relationships: Simply, these are two-way relationships.

  • Contingency: Delivery of a service to a citizen by a politician or broker is contingent on the citizen's actions on behalf of the politician or party through which they are receiving services.

  • Hierarchy: The politician or party is in a higher position of power than the citizen.

  • Iteration: The relationship is not a one-off exchange, but rather, ongoing.

I think the best illustration of the contingency and the hierarchy present, is Biden's statement 'If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black'. It's a really in-your-face power move. You're the cattle, I'm the shepherd, you fucking do what I say, and I'll keep the gibs flowing.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Interesting. Thanks for sharing that! It seems kind of obvious, but the breaking it down and parsing it out is useful and gives good ways of look at the problems. I agree, it is an example of those. It goes way beyond Biden, who as a person has done far more harm to those he was trying to appeal to in that interview than would give him a right to just grandstand for their votes. But, he's like Tilda Swinton in the Narnia movie donning the lion's mane. Biden is pretending to be heir to the New Deal/Civil Rights traditions, simply by his position in the Dem Party.

I really want national politics to collapse. We have no say in what the federal government does anymore, they are fully unaccountable in every single way be it immunity for judges and prosecutors to the fact that most house members and senators are multi-millionaires and secure in their reelection efforts by the collusion of the two parties, and it is all a distraction of real tangible problems we all have locally. So many communities can not afford to maintain their drinking water infrastructure, but we're still meddling in any country that has oil. To his credit, Trump is not as bad about it as Bush or Obama, but he's not proving to be an solution to anything and the circus that is DC is run by clowns from both parties.