“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
You leave my boi Bastiat alone. His views on rights are what allowed me to be led me out of a strict propertarian mindset. There’s always a ‘but’ in reactionary rights analysis that fucks them out of not just funneling money up to capitalist or political classes.
I originally come from a right-libertarian (ancap) background with personal ethics much closer to the left. Still feels awkward admitting I’m just a weird left anarchist of some sort.
Any honest analysis of our system based on individual rights should agree with most of your conclusions, even without the left analysis. You can’t have laissez-faire markets in an economy tuned towards capital accumulation. You also can’t do much by shooting a single CEO in a system tuned to turning people into sociopaths while calling it career advancement.
Elon might do some good with the USAID shit, but only unintentionally. It’s hard to tell what’s humanitarian aid and what $50m USD for condoms is just CIA money laundering imperial shit.
I’m rambling now.
If you have been watching what Elon is doing with the USAID, it is not getting rid of it, it is placing it and what it does more directly under the executive branch’s control and purview. As some would say, ‘taking off the mask’. This is of course, because he is too stupid to understand how politically useful having NGO slight-of-hand is for the U.S.
It does make sense if you believe the era of U.S. soft-power domination is completely over (or is in-efficient/woke/ineffective, take your pick of the buzzwords). What we are seeing is a complete buy-in on traditional fascist ‘efficiency’ propaganda, without the savvy that the neo-liberal post-fascists displayed in earlier times. As far as I can tell the belief is that the facade costs money and has no benefits so it must be discarded. No good will come of it, but it was no good to begin with.
It’s just fascists shooting themselves in the foot because they don’t actually understand where modern fascism gets it’s power and stability from, the obfuscation of power. They seem to have this deep need to not just be recognized as powerful by the silent elite, but to be seen as powerful by people on social media platforms (who they likely see as ‘the masses’). The follow-up question is if they will try to run with the old fascist ‘clash of civilizations’ narrative after shooting themselves in the foot, or if they will just content themselves with just fucking things up for workers and bullying their reluctant allies. It is unclear at this point.
Trying to take it over is at least fucking with the establishment. I’d rather them waste political power going tit for tat than fucking us.