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More of the Same

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Clarissa

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Here’s proof that people love neoliberalism and wouldn’t let it go. The recent race for Mayor of Chicago was won by an ultra neoliberal BLMster, a fanatical proponent of de-funding public services, supported by the pro-lockdown teacher union that is in favor of dramatically downsizing public education.

After the Chicago riots of 2020, after the terrible increases in violent crime, after the worst lockdowns in the nation, after thousands of black kids in Chicago were thrown out of locked schools and into illiteracy / depression / gang life… people go and vote for more of the same.

Voter turnout was something like 35%, so most people couldn’t get assed to care either way.

4 responses to “More of the Same”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “a fanatical proponent of de-funding public services”

    My idea is that this is no longer classic neoliberalism (which wasn’t actively hostile to the left hand side of the income curve). Thatcher and Reagan (and even Clinton and Blair) may have over-estimated how the benefits of their policies on big parts of the population but there seems to be a qualitative difference between those policies and the stuff going on now…

    This is pure neo-feudalism… he’s making sure that a large part of Chicago remains mired in poverty and crime and the overwhelming majority has no prospects for anything but povery and crime.

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    1. PaulS Avatar
      PaulS

      Here is an article about how this works in France, which seems very similar.

      On the Yellow Vest insurrection

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “how this works in France”

        Well my position is that France is its own little universe of dysfunction and terrible policy (at least at the national and international levels). Maybe I should try to understand France better but…. it’s so….. French….

        My basic idea is that for a time, neoliberalism does deliver higher living standards for a broad segment of a society that’s not too terribly disorganized… (it fails miserably for more poorly organized places). But when it starts really impoverishing all but the very top then it’s mutated into something else and I think that’s what we’re dealing with now.

        Did early neoliberalism use the methods of the New Deal? I really don’t know….

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “an article about how this works in France”

        Thanks a lot for the link. It’s party stuff I knew but gives a lot of new context.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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