Pill Pod 173 - Biden v. Trump & The Economy of Fear
Added 2024-06-30 01:25:05 +0000 UTCWe recap the Trump-Biden debate and then discuss the politics/economy of fear. Sources include Armageddon, Strauss, Hegel, and Durkheim.
Comments
It’s the movement of capital which promotes the stoking of fear, to keep the focus off capital accumulation in order to maintain systemic homeostasis. Tbh I’m just glad Erik at least is still trying to keep a radical edge to his analysis, because Victor remains perennially insufferable, being condescending to people who actually realize that you’re not going to change shit with d20 politics as long as you don’t do anything about the power of capital.
anacidcommie
2024-07-13 17:37:20 +0000 UTCThe road to hell is easier because it’s easier to feel than to think, and the masses don’t want to think because it takes too much effort.
anacidcommie
2024-07-13 17:13:49 +0000 UTCUK Conservatives just received their lowest ever number of seats, Conservatism has been dead for a while though. When their public irreverence combines with economic hardship they implode and Trump could accelerate this for America. What is more dialectical than first-past-the-post politics?
Alex B
2024-07-08 11:33:17 +0000 UTCWhat’s the ideology of skibidi toilet
Jack
2024-07-04 20:25:14 +0000 UTCI don't know how you play the role of a calm philosopher quite well. But I could not do that when a senile old man is being said to be an active competitor. This is what I call pure comedy. Americans think they are voting for their survival but instead for a death god looming over either of the candidates. It will take them a while to recognize this. No eject button in this hyperreality. Maybe philosophy about facades and rituals for a future episode?
TheUltimateBird
2024-07-03 05:45:00 +0000 UTCWest Coast Straussians > is the name of my new math-rock ensemble
Melophrasis
2024-06-30 23:33:42 +0000 UTCThe OAN debate would just be a mini golf competition
Revoloisier
2024-06-30 23:08:10 +0000 UTCIn for my angry Marxist response :) I enjoy the show a lot. And hope Matt McManus is doing okay. Sorry if I spelled his name wrong. First, I asked before, so I'm sorry to repeat - do any of you speak French? Either way, do you have an opinion on the translation issues of Beauvoirs "2nd Sex" into English? I don't speak French btw, but I do like putting maple syrup in my milk Second - the primaries of the parties use some weird rules. Gerrymandering is more an issue of the main elections, but big money is a factor in both (altho it's possible, I guess, to gerrymander a party election...). I think Victor's argument that the GOP is more open at least is very on the head, although the Dem party isnt, to my knowledge, in principle closed (Bernie had been an independent since forever; I'm not exactly sure if he even became a Democrat in 2016 and 2020). The 2015/2016 GOP debates are still hilarious IMO. Although the funniest are the Libertarian party debates from 2016 - if driver licenses should exist was a source of heated contention. I recommend both, and the one where Marco Rubio starts repeating himself about Obama and Christie mocks him. You say that this last debate broke our fairy tale - well, you can watch those to re-live it. Okay, for angry Marxist response - the main thing you are ignoring here is class and specifically, relations to production. Actually I don't doubt any of you would disagree in the main, so Idk if I'm missing something or what (that is, if a conservative said it was human nature, i believe you'd reply that there is an important social context to consider). Felt I should throw something out there. You do touch on something towards the end, when you discuss the increasing role of business sponsorship in elections constraining what politics looks like. But overall it just struck me as a big elephant. You observe that a reactionary style is shared by both parties, and is currently the prevailing approach - but why isn't this a result of the social context, rather than "human nature"? Constructive ("altruistic") politics, which necessarily entails taxation, is deeply hated by the donors. So people like Bernie have to be killed in the cradle (I'm not entirely sure on Obama, but clearly Wall Street was much more vulnerable and disoriented, since they were having the biggest meltdown in almost a century). While Trump might have a unique stubbornness, it's also the case that no matter how disgusted they were w him, he's ultimately a decent deal for the donors (compared to Bernie) - tax cuts for the rich are among his only legislative victories, despite controlling both houses for two years. So the donors never needed to entirely worry about them - I imagine their concerns w him were more practical (can this guy win an election?, although he proved he could pull that off). That's not necessarily the only reason Bernie lost and Trump won their primaries, but certainly a big factor to keep in mind. And at the end, all we got were two types of reactionary, not constructive, politics. Keep in mind here, Obama ran and won on constructive politics of "hope and change", with healthcare reform as his message. And this was in the midst of financial meltdown. Bernie ran and had large popularity on constructive politics. So not even Roosevelt and Johnson, but we have some recent examples of constructive politics having genuine momentum - Obama and Bernie didn't need to explain the program, and it still electrified people (arguably the "explaining" problem lies more w liberal wonks like Buttigieg). If we see the landscape is only full of reactionary strategies then, this has to be judged in our social context. It's not to say that humans are automatons - clearly, reactionary politics has an emotional appeal - but that's a far insufficient explanation, if at very least by the counter-evidence that constructive politics have worked, even recently, despite the wasteland of American politics. Reactionary politics aren't simply succeeding in general. The voter base distribution skews towards upper incomes. That is, people who have something to lose. On the other hand, constructive politics has an appeal to people who have less to lose, those with a more proletarian relation to production (and likewise, those least attracted, by the numbers, to the do-nothing reactionary electoralism of the US). Those who want to tax the rich and get healthcare - their constructive hopes then not only fly in the face of bourgeois interests, they can even directly evoke reactionary politics. I feel like Erick was trying to get at this, but I think like its easier to put clearer in written word, when pondering the whole discussion. Basically yes, there's gonna be something "human" about almost any human activity. There's something deeply human about a Muslim voter in a swing state deciding not to vote, for example. Maybe there's a fancy Marxist analysis here, but I think it's fair to say there is a genuine act of free will in *not voting* for Biden here (whether one agrees or not w the rationale) (and despite my rantings, I dont think of myself as a vulgar materialist - I do enjoy your podcast after all). Yet there's also the issue of our different relations to production and thus our goal being to change (constructive politics) or protect (reactionary politics) this system, how this not only constrains what choices are pruned for us (leaving *only* reactionary politics), but also narrows or clouds our scope of individual action. I'm not saying this is *all* there is to the analysis. Far from it. But it seems like a big elephant in the room regarding the relative emotional cost of reactionary vs altruistic politics: the "prices" were rigged from the start
Revoloisier
2024-06-30 23:07:17 +0000 UTCLmao should I have watched that?
Jack
2024-06-30 12:51:26 +0000 UTCI liked the part where they argued about who's better at golf
Ashley H
2024-06-30 04:30:07 +0000 UTC
