The First Domino

The British people tipped the first domino this week as, in a nominally shocking outcome, they have voted in favor of leaving the EU in a public vote.

Image courtesy of www.frenchentree.com

 This is of course a purely "advisory" vote from the public, and carries no particular legal consequences for the oligarchy whom rules over them. Parliament has the power to ignore the vote if they please. With that being said, at least one of them must see the writing on the wall. Britsh Prime Minister David Cameron resigned after learning the consequences of the vote.

Image courtesy of www.economist.com

We don't pretend that Brussels and its counterpart oligarchs in Britain will just roll over and die just because the majority of British people expressed an opinion contrary to what their masters recommended. This is just the beginning of a long political process, a catalyst of events to come. This vote will have far-reaching influence in the EU. There are already movements underway in six other European countries for a similar referendum. The winds of change are blowing, and Europe is once again front and center stage.

The people are stirring. They are beginning to sense there is something wrong. Their friends and neighbors are suffering, and they wonder what happened to the Brave New World which was to come by means of social and economic engineering. Britain is just a symbol of the failure to accomplish this goal. Indeed, it is a symbol of the impossibility of attaining such a naive vision of utopia.

Governments around the world are approaching the limits of their abilities to influence outcomes. Their subjects are, for the most part, still too uneducated (by design, of course) to recognize why they are discontent, but they just know they are. Nature has its own way of sorting out extremes and other imbalances, and human nature is no different. Everything changes when the average person realizes their expectations for the future are false, and that's when things get unpredictable.

Soon people will be faced with a choice: liberty or totalitarianism. Only one of these is compatible with increasing social welfare. We only hope the people recognize which one.

Happy San Patricio's Day!

Here's some fun and interesting information about Saint Patrick's Day, Saint Patrick himself, the Irish, and... huh? Italians?! What the hell -- why would I bring up Italians on such a well-established holiday of Irish Pride, you ask? Well, despite Ireland and modern-day Italy being on complete opposite sides of Europe and being geographically isolated from eachother, they have quite a bit of interesting history with eachother.

First, let's get this out of the way. Saint Patrick was actually Italian. Heresy, I know, but it's true. Ole Saint Patrick was born to Calpurnius (a Roman diplomat) and Conchessa, who lived on a British estate within the then-Roman Empire. Of course, you have the history of him being taken prisoner by pagan Irish pirates when he was 16, made into a slave where he lived for six years, escaped, and returned to his family. He later returned as a cleric and 'drove the snakes out of Ireland', which really means that he converted the people from paganism to Christianity. 'Snakes' are referenced because the druidic priests had tattoos of snakes on their forearms.

Why does any of this matter? Why bring it up? Well, because it's interesting and I find it funny regarding the whole 'Irish pride' thing mixed with Saint Patrick, being that he was actually Italian and not Irish. But it doesn't end, there. There is actually a lot of interesting recent history between the Irish and the Italians. There's basically like this quasi-joke that goes on between Irish and Italian circles of a kind of 'cold war' between them, that they 'can never get along', or are 'so much alike and yet so different and so hate eachother for it', et cetera.

You won't hear about any of this amongst European Irish or European Italians, though. It'll be the first they hear about it if you mention it or try to joke about it. But it's not them I'm talking about. This is in America. New England, specifically. Well, mostly the Boston area, actually. It's really all but faded for all practical purposes, to the point of it being a passing joke that Irish and Italians these days laugh about and get along great, but we love to make fun of eachother over it. So why is this? Well, it has little to do with Saint Patrick's Day, I'll tell you that.

I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the history of the Irish and Italian immigrants going back about a hundred years. About a hundred years ago, right before Italians really started migrating in, the Irish had already migrated over a lot and were a lot more accepted than they were when they first came here. They finally integrated more after they stopped trying to hopelessly rely on racist local officials and police to protect them and look out for their interests, and so started with their own Irish mobs to do it for them. Eventually, it kind of worked and people mostly stopped causing as many issues with them, and they started getting more involved in local government, and especially becoming the police force in the area. 

When Italians first started coming here, they were treated worse than almost anyone else, including blacks, in a lot of ways -- racially, in the perception of their 'lower class' status, weren't trusted, etc -- like Mexican immigrants are today, unfortunately, but even worse. They were treated poorly even in more traditionally 'liberal' places, like here in Massachusetts. After some time, Italians started banding together more and looking out for eachother, and that's when you had the rise of the Italian mafia families from the 20s and decades since and the criminal enterprises that arose out of that. Naturally, this caused even more tension with now heavily Irish-dominated police and local officials, which were basically owned by the local Irish mafia families in the first place. Corruption was rampant. The Italian and Irish mob families were fighting constantly and agreed to a meeting -- but the Italians decided, instead, to show up with the intent of outright slaughtering the heads of the local Irish mobs in one fell swoop, leading to a massive boost in power to the Italians. From there on enters the era we all know about in movies and television regarding the Italian mafia.

To top it all off, the tensions and 'war' between the Italians who ran the 'North End' of Boston and the 'Winter Hill Gang' (Whitey Bulger) in 'Southie' (South Boston) just further adds to the whole Irish / Italian 'thing'.

It's all a very interesting part of Greater Boston history. As we all know, there's lots of great books, movies, and television on all of this. 

Now, let's bring on the obligatory nitpicking randos!

Bernie Sanders and his Supporters Need to Educate themselves on their own Ideology

I'm so over Bernie Sanders and Progressives spreading lies and misinformation about their unrealizable ideals regarding socialism and so-called 'Democratic socialism'. First off, there actually aren't many countries governed by democratic socialist parties. The ones that are, such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Brazil, and Greece -- are complete and total social and economic shit-shows. There actually isn't much difference between plain ole Vanilla Socialism and so-called 'Democratic Socialism' --  they share the same exact ends while differing merely in the strategy on how to get there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"No, no, no... I'm not a Socialist. I'm a DEMOCRATIC Socialist!"

As it turns out, I'm not the only one -- it also looks like Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen of Denmark is sick and tired of these claims as well...

Danes apparently have grown weary of Sen. Bernie Sanders insulting their country. Denmark is not a socialist nation, says its prime minister. It has a “market economy.”

Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a socialist, has used Denmark as the example of the socialist utopia he wants to create in America. During the Democrats’ first debate last month, he said “we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.” 

While appearing in New Hampshire in September, Sanders said that he had “talked to a guy from Denmark” who told him that in Denmark, “it is very hard to become very, very rich, but it’s pretty hard to be very, very poor.” 

“And that makes a lot of sense to me.” 

So because something makes sense to him, he has the right to force that system on people who don’t want it? Isn’t that what he’s saying? 

But we digress. This is about Danes being offending by Sanders using the word “socialist” to describe their form of government. And who can blame them, especially when the free world has had enough of national socialists and Soviet socialists and North Korean socialists and Cuban socialists? 

While speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he was aware “that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism.” 

“Therefore,” he said, “I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” 

Rasmussen acknowledged that “the Nordic model is an expanded welfare state which provides a high level of security to its citizens,” but he also noted that it is “a successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your life as you wish.” 

To that we’ll add that Sweden, another of Sanders’ inspirations, has for decades quietly moved away from its cradle-to-grave form of government welfare. And the Swedes are better off for having done so, just as the Danes will continue to be better off as their government overhauls its welfare state.

Source, here. You can also see the full youtube video in reference of the Danish PM, here.

In addition to this, if Sanders, his supporters and Progressives in general would like to move towards an economy more like 'the Nordic Model', then they should also be prepared to accept some, what they would consider, 'radical free market concepts' such as absolutely no government-mandated minimum wage, a far lower corporate tax rate than than the US, a majority of privatized roads like in Sweden, lower taxes on the wealthy, higher taxes on the poor, radically higher taxes on the middle class, and far, far fewer economic regulations in general. 

Of course, because Sanders and his supporters are more socialist than they'd care to admit, the vast majority of them would probably never be willing to accept such relatively low economic regulation and 'radical' free market concepts. These are a major piece of the puzzle as to why these countries can prop up such a system in the first place.

Another possible explanation of this behavior by Progressives and socialists is that many of them know all this, and that it's actually desirable and beneficial for them to have real, 'state ownership of the means of production' style socialism (which includes democratic socialism) be conflated and muddied up regularly with welfare statism (which isn't technically socialism). In this regard, it could be simply a matter of dishonest marketing through disinformation -- the ideological equivalent of a bait-and-switch tactic.