- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
- cross-posted to:
- europe@feddit.org
The United Kingdom shamelessly prostrated itself at the feet of Donald Trump on Wednesday, throwing a lavish welcoming party for his state visit to Windsor that resembled less diplomacy and more fealty.
In doing so, the U.K. has revealed something deeply unflattering about itself—in the scramble to keep America close, it will debase itself and its values completely.
It will silence dissent, empty out its traditions, and rent out its monarch like a sex worker, deployed to flatter the ego of a man who has spent much of his political life suggesting he should be treated like one, a monarch, not a sex worker, that is.
As stage props go, the monarchy is unbeatable. But if this is what the “special relationship” between the U.S and the U.K. now means, it looks to many in Britain less like a partnership and more like groveling, feudal servitude.
archive article: https://archive.is/DxOAv
There’s Liberalism the Ideology and then there’s the “Liberalism” practiced by politicians - those two are only a bit more similar than Socialism and the ideology of the National Socialist Party Of The German Worker (i.e. the NAZI Party) were similar.
If there’s one thing I learned from inside the Finance Industry during the 2008 Crash and subsequent rescues, after having read The Economist for years, is that (Neo)Liberalism isn’t at all the flat-playing-field meritocratic free market ideology they portray themselves as.
They’re in fact very much the opposite of that: they’re an ideology of maximizing the gains of pre-existing advantages, so wealth and asset ownership - which not only preserved but extends those advantages - hence they’re 100% in favor of current Land Ownership legislation and preserving the status quo in that, which was created well before proper Democracy and has nothing to do with merit of a flat playing field.
And historically that endeavor to preserve a broken playing field was always what liberalism was about, neo or classical. It was a key plank for the levelers in the English civil war. It’s always been a naked attempt to jump mental hoops to preserve their power. Conservatives forbid the question as to why power structures exist, they exist and are therefore good. Liberals try to justify them.