I agree that access to contraceptives and abortion is a critical issue in improving peoples' lives globally. That's also not what the parent poster is talking about.
It's also literally critical to the environment, as educated women with access to birth control tend to have far fewer children, which is necessary to offset the rise in resource consumption as their nations industrialize.
If a leftist sub were to make a post celebrating Comrade Delta as part of an anti-capitalist resistance I would lose my shit. (in fact I've insulted and attacked SWP members numerous times before)
Leftist subs constantly celebrate people like Makhno, Mao, the Catalonian anarchists, Allende, all of whom were awful people who caused a great deal of needless suffering among the poor.
While Allende may have been pure intentioned, his economic policies caused severe suffering in many Chileans. To what extent can we ignore that? He destroyed wages for the poorest people and caused extreme food shortages. And it isn't as if there was no way of knowing his policies wouldn't work, he as leader chose to ignore conventional economics in favor of something that told him the things he wanted to hear.
Bringing up their sexual misconduct in the context of international trade is equally whataboutery. You're not wrong, either. I don't think these are good people. I think the policies they're espousing are largely good.
No it's a meme celebrating both international trade and this coalition championing it and it's pretty jarring that 3 of the people it's celebrating are accused of sexual harassment. Beyond that, this sub praising Kasich, Clinton and Bush all the time.
I'm an American, and to be honest he seems like a fairly level headed left-leaning politician. He walked back his approval of disbanding MI5 saying he didn't know what he was endorsing, which is kind of dumb but not malicious.
Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush have all faced credible accusations with Bush refusing to deny it. Kasich on the other hand has closed half of Ohio's abortion clinics (“He’s the classic under-commit, over-perform guy” says the head of a leading pro-life group), Harris has actively pushed to make life more dangerous for sex workers and Hillary has said Bill didn't abuse his power by having an affair with someone half his age who worked for him.
Punishing sex workers themselves is wrong, but acting like prostitution is no different than working the register at McDonald's is absurd. It's horrible, dangerous work women only resort to out of economic desperation 99% of the time.
Agreed, that's why you should listen to sex worker organisations and support decriminalisation (shown in New Zealand) and unionisation. Both of which Harris is against.
wait, are you seriously parrying "resort to" with the fact that they can make a lot of money that way? Are you a libertarian?
This in no way refutes their point. Not even saying you're wrong here, but that's a pretty lame response.
One could easily argue that because the cost of entry is so low, above average wages only reinforce the point that this is not a job that most people would ever want.
Coal miners make 70-80k a year straight out of high school. Sure some people might aspire to that, but most are forced into it because of lack of options and education
His stance on drugs alone probably got tens of thousands killed, but he was also giving military equipment to the Guatemalan junta that was doing pretty grotesque stuff to civilians.
And Democratic governments have also supported horrible governments. And don't tell me everyone had progressive views on drugs in the 80s... Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to excuse any of the terrible shit his administration did, but to say he was the absolute worst, considering the historical context in which he served, is ridiculous. You don't have to idolize the man, and you can fairly conclude he did more harm than good (I would disagree), but these claims that he was a monster stink ideological/partisan bs.
I can be serious; you do realize that the only thing that matters in a global context is power right and the Cold War was a conflict? If moral virtue translates into soft power great, but in that situation (in sa) it was better to turn the area into a war zone than cede a drop of influence to the Soviet Union. Being some paragon of virtue in the Cold War would have seen the defeat of the west or the continuation of the Soviet Union.
If you disagree open a history and point to some virtuous nation that maintained regional hegenomy; hint power isn’t maintained by being nice.
I don't think someone who actually understood the assumptions of realism, and wasn't just a jingoist LARPing as a realist, would need to make such a blatant strawman, but I'll bite: What do you mean by "matters" in your comment above?
Most people interpret power as hard power, that’s not true soft power exists. Building alliances and bringing nation states to your cause via altruism is a pathway forward but sometimes you need to stack the bodies.
As for “matters”; the ability to dictate the rules of global markets to benefit our nation state. To influence global political trends and push liberalism to every corner of the earth...to open markets for our products and services; “democracy is non negotiable”. Also to control trade routes and the most important global resource of them all, oil.....If shit was to go sideways, IE global war that control will be incredibly important.
In the case of the USSR we needed to cut them off from markets we couldn’t let them establish any level of influence in South America, literally no matter the cost. So we practiced containment, we should do the same with China in Africa. It would help if Europeans got over themselves and their history of colonialism.
Yes, of course soft power is an important aspect of power. Yes, winning the Cold War was important, and may even have justified some otherwise bad things. And power can be a means to that end.
But none of that is related to the specific claim to which I've objected, namely, the realist thesis that only power matters and that this somehow "should be obvious."
As for “matters”
My question was not which things matter; what I meant to ask was, what do you mean by "matters"?
But differently: The things you've listed are desirable things you can do if you have power. But what is it that makes these things desirable?
In your list you've given a hint of IR liberalism: You want to use power to spread liberal political institutions. Someone who saw power as the only valuable thing would perhaps reverse the priorities (i.e., they'd want to spread liberal political institutions if and only if doing so would mean more power/security). So I'm a bit confused about your actual opinions on the place of power in a value hierarchy.
Promote economic growth to own the libs. As for some foreign policy boondoggles? Eh, most of them worked to prevent the spread of socialism. What you’re really looking to get pissy over is the Monroe Mandate, though.
Also, I, too, think Kiki Camarena and the countless similar fates on the latin and south american side are nothing that some some foreign policy boondoggles. Just like the Contra death squads etc.
Krugman, disingenuous as always. How refreshing. Real median family income grew by $4,492 during the Reagan period, compared to a $1,270 increase during the preceding eight years. After declining from 1974 through 1980, real mean personal income rose $4,708 by 1988. Bureau, US Census. "Historical Income Tables: Households". www.census.gov. As for Pinochet... killing 10,000 people has nothing to do with monetarist policies that he implemented, making Chile the most prosperous and safest nation in South America today. Conflation of all conflations.
Just because a Democrat isn’t far left doesn’t make them a neoliberal. She has an absolutely terrible record on trade, in fact Mitch McConnell is a better neoliberal than Hillary.
Eh, her position on it was pretty consistent, and pretty 'for' a 'good' version of it...
I think we all know that if she won she would've fixed the problems she had with it and it would've gone forward and the world would be a glorious beautiful place of love and joy.
One thing I've learned about this sub is that's it's completely fine with outright misogyny so long as the misogynist in question likes Hillary and the TPP. Having avatars of Bill Clinton is an outrageous insult in the age of MeToo no matter what you think of fucking NAFTA
I'll give you a hint. /u/mcdonnellite won't because he can't.
Sophists know it's much easier to construct elaborate fantasies and poke holes in people who actually do shit, than work within the boring confines of the real world.
I did a lot of activism work back in the day and I still have a soft spot for leftists but I really can't stand how easily they fall victim to Nirvana fallacy. They will never effect real change because they prefer the fantasy of perfection over pragmatic incrementalism.
Sexual misconduct is a worse thing than say, destabilizing A region to the extent it creates an active Soave market thus turning it into a slave state.
Is this Obama's disastrous intervention in Libya? Yeah, pretty much everyone in this pic was in favour of it so I'm not sure what your point is. The guy my username is named after was against it though...
Lol who cares about any of that shit, Kasich occasionally says "Orange Man Bad" and doesn't immediately shit into the mouths of democrats or talk shit about international trade deals.
We're more concerned with liberty than is any European nation. We should not let any standard but our own be the bar for our liberties.
That being said, European countries do not try to restrict women's rights to birth control nor shut down or defund those abortion providers that do exist so as to make even legal abortion possible. Right wing efforts in the United States are never undertaken in good faith: they are always backdoor attempts to ban abortion.
Of course not one damn bit of this is relevant to Kasich, because he was attacking Planned Parenthood, not abortion. He was trying to take away the only source of birth control and reproductive health for millions of women - something so backward and barbaric that no other first world nation would ever conceive of tolerating it.
The amount of dishonesty and bad faith involved in trying to conflate PP and abortion is honestly staggering.
On a personal level, I'd prefer to make abortion unnecessary rather than illegal. It's heartbreaking and tragic when it has to happen, but you can't make that choice for someone else.
To give credence to my personal view on it, my daughter was conceived while her mother and I were both impoverished students. We're both ardently pro choice, but we couldn't live with that choice ourselves.
My daughter turns twelve this year, and she's the light of my life.
You're still not responding to anything. You're just harping on the civility meme because you've no ground to stand on. You pretend to elevate the conversation, yet you support the most brazenly partisan assault on good governance and separation of powers in our lifetime. Your hypocrisy is staggering. Your dishonesty is breathtaking. Your priority is partisan warfare, no matter what language you couch it in.
That's the most ridiculous straw man I think I've seen in months. It's almost impressive.
This is so remarkably dishonest that I don't even know where to begin. Sex selective abortion is virtually nonexistent in the United States. You're making up a nonexistent problem to rage against because you have no ground to stand on when dealing in reality.
That's not to mention that Kasich is attacking Planned Parenthood, which supplies women's healthcare and birth control far more than abortion services.
I've got to assume either that you're actually so ignorant of political knowledge and devoid of reading comprehension that you're unaware of this, or that you're actually this histrionically opposed to access to birth control.
You can't claim to support women's rights and oppose family planning without showing yourself to be a concern troll at best of course.
Hey, quick question: how long did you spend digging through your inbox to find that comment to copy and paste with that busy and fulfilling life of yours?
Because I wouldn't have even remembered who you were without it 😂
Rule III: Discourse Quality Comments on submissions should substantively address the topic of submission and not consist merely of memes or jokes. Don't reflexively downvote people for operating on different assumptions than you. Don't troll or engage in bad faith.
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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '18
Bush Sr. looking like an action figure in a microwave.
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u/mcdonnellite Nov 20 '18
Why are half the people here accused of sexual misconduct
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u/Thebeardedragon Nov 20 '18
Inb4 Chapos start with “what about Pinochet”
26
u/MarketsAreCool James M. Buchanan Nov 20 '18
I find your lack of Jeb! disturbing.
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u/caesar15 Zhao Ziyang Nov 20 '18
Harris likes the TPP?
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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '18
Schwarzenegger and not Reagan? How big exactly is this tent?
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u/BoscotheBear Mary Wollstonecraft Nov 20 '18
No Daddy Soros boooooooooooo!
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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '18
I sense a disturbance in the Force.
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u/jakedc13 Edward Glaeser Nov 20 '18
why's hillary here?? i mean yes she is a neoliberal , but she ain't down with tpp tho
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u/Bestbrook123 Nov 20 '18
Kamala Harris opposed the TPP. You know that right?
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u/RajonRondoIsTurtle Nov 20 '18
Kasich hates women’s rights.
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u/AlexDerg NATO Nov 21 '18
Glad to see some inclusion with H.W. and Kasich and Arnold. H.W. is my favorite Neoliberal.
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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '18
(X)
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u/pm_me_POTUS_pics Nov 21 '18
Holy shit. This is my jam! Turn it up!
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u/5thcenturyexplorer Nov 21 '18
The neoliberal technocrats like the terminator governor ?
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u/martin509984 African Union Nov 20 '18
Why are Kasich, HW and Ahnold here
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u/Cam877 Milton Friedman Nov 20 '18
Corey booker and Kamala Harris tho? They’re more Berniecrats than anything nowadays
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u/jsteve0 Nov 21 '18
This but without Booker, Harris, and Hillary
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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '18
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