Why does the GOP hate capitalism?
From a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com:
“The walls are more a sign of desperation than power. A better way is to fix Central America so there is a larger buffer between the US and the problems in South America. Fixing includes making conditions in the continent prosperous enough for all that we don’t have hordes desperately attempting dangerous journeys.”
Exactly. Walls don’t work. But the GOP would rather spend billions on futility than spend it on foreign aid to stem economic and political migrants/refugees in the first place. Never mind that most foreign aid also creates jobs in America. Why doesn’t the GOP trust American capitalism?
“The walls are more a sign of desperation than power. A better way is to fix Central America so there is a larger buffer between the US and the problems in South America. Fixing includes making conditions in the continent prosperous enough for all that we don’t have hordes desperately attempting dangerous journeys.”
Exactly. Walls don’t work. But the GOP would rather spend billions on futility than spend it on foreign aid to stem economic and political migrants/refugees in the first place. Never mind that most foreign aid also creates jobs in America. Why doesn’t the GOP trust American capitalism?
I’m going to guess that it’s not Capitalism they loathe.
It’s Woke Capitalism.
The Puny Power of ‘Woke Capitalism’
NY Times – Lydia Polgreen – July 12, 2023
@Fred,
What, exactly, is the definition of “woke” capitalism? Is it just any decision by businesses that the GOP right-wing extremists don’t like?
Ross Douthat invented the term in 2015. He writes about in the NY Times fairly often. Stuff that your AI won’t allow me to post.
What It Means to Be Woke – March 18, 2023
You could look it up.
(He) personally like(s) the term “Great Awokening,” which evokes the new progressivism’s roots in Protestantism — but obviously secular progressives find it condescending. I appreciate how the British writer Dan Hitchens acknowledges the difficulty of definitions by calling the new left-wing politics “the Thing” — but that’s unlikely to catch on with true believing Thingitarians. …
The Great Awokening – Vox
@Fred,
Feel free to post the definition. Just don’t cut and paste the entire Douthat editorial. A definition should fit into a single sentence.
Perhaps that would be in Douthat’s op-ed op-ed of 2015. Nowhere to be found. I guess you’ll have to find it yourself.
It did seem that originally it might have had something to do with the NRA being picked on by corporate America. Go figure.
An op-ed piece is a short newspaper column that represents the strong, informed, and focused opinion of a writer on an issue of relevance to a targeted audience. It is a written prose piece which expresses the opinion of an author or entity with no affiliation with the publication’s editorial board. … The New York Times is often credited with developing and naming the modern op-ed page.
Op-ed – Wikipedia
(Technically, an editorial is a piece that a newspaper’s editorial board stands behind. An op-ed is just someone’s opinion.)
@Fred,
I have no interest whatsoever in anything Ross Douthat writes. You referenced him.
Nor should anyone else, apparently.
BTW, for those who wonder how I can say walls don’t work, Google “The Great Wall of China” and “Hadrian’s Wall.” Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Someone wrote a famous poem about this: ‘Mending Wall’, which won’t post.
‘Something there is that doesn’t like a wall.’
That would be by R*o*b*e*r*t F*r*o*s*t.
Ones and zeros: the atmosphere does not recognize the boundaries of nation/states, water goes where it will. So too the migrations. That’s exactly right: fix Central America so they’re not fleeing. Not exactly right but right enough. Ones and zeros
That they’re predominately fleeing climate changed as well as crime and corruption adds too much complexity, takes it from bits to bytes, 1s & 0s to ASCII, maybe even hexadecimal machine code and beyond. It’s beyond your average “American” …
One should presume that the Wealthy Wing of the GOP does not ‘hate Capitalism’ in the slightest. But the populists that comprise the bulk of their voting base probably do.
You’d guess that the WW will continue to behave this way, as long as they still get to fly from mansion to mansion in their private jets, those folks who aren’t already Dems.
(There has been a movement afoot in our area to expand hanger space at our local airport – not Logan – to better serve the needs of nearby wealthy folks who need to fly to Nantucket a lot. They will probably get their way.)
(And he would have us believe that only he can fix this… So much for Joe Biden’s efforts, successes even.)
American capitalism is failing Trump’s base as white working-class ‘deaths of despair’ rise
NBC News – almost 4 years ago (before Covid was a pandemic, even)
The astronomical costs of health care are draining jobs, hope and opportunity from working-class Americans.
Isn’t the primary cause of migration the desire for economic opportunity and/or improvement? That may be caused by violence and corruption but mostly it’s caused by economic failure for the mass of people in poor places.
@Jack,
There’s a useful distinction to be made between economic migrants and asylum seekers. Indeed, the federal government makes that distinction. Asylum seekers are most often trying to escape violence and corruption.
Jackd:
How is your memory today? 🙂
mike, mostly
it is all too easy to find “reasons” to prove what you desperately want to believe. your reasons are not very convincing to me, mostly because, like most “reasoning” they leave out a whole world of facts snd possibilities.
no need to belabor this. personally i don’t give a damn about the wall one way or another, except that it harms a lot of entirely innocent animals who die because they can’t find a way around it. that stunt with the razor wire in the river was pretty ghastly too. IS pretty ghastly.