A breakdown between Capitalism and Christianity?
Before the sick and twisted union of liberals in the Democratic Party and neoconservatives, there was an even more unholy alliance between the Church of Christ and the Church of Mammon.
This unhealthy marriage has been troubled for a few years now, but Tucker Carlson has brought this split into the open.
“As long as I asked people to help the poor, I was called a saint. But when I asked the question: why is there so much poverty? I was called a communist.”
- cardinal Dom Helder Câmara
The establishment freaked out at Carlson.
The Inquisition has begun. Tucker Carlson is guilty of heresy.
His crime? Arguing free markets tend to erode, instead of promote, the overall well being of a country, especially its families.
..Carlson has violated the cardinal sin of the modern day Republican Party: questioning the infallibility of the market.
Carlson couldn't help but notice that what is happening to rural white families today is similar to what happened to urban black families two generations ago. Thus blaming the victims doesn't really work anymore.
Carlson approached this from a defense of Christian families perspective, which is very smart.
Predictably, Carlson’s apostasy stirred up a hornets nest of activity among the cult-like conservative commentariat, which, unsurprisingly, accused him of Bernie Sanders-type thinking.
National Review, a magazine that believes taxing soda is the equivalent of socialism, leapt into action as if the republic itself were on the verge of collapse, publishing multiple articles that basically amounted to telling Carlson to shut up and stop acting like a victim. “The market cures all!” the outlet seems to think.
Ben Shapiro, the keynote speaker for the 2019 March for Life, was similarly apoplectic, regurgitating the tired consequentialist trope that more people have been lifted out of poverty thanks to capitalism than any other invention of mankind.
If that was all there was to it, then Carlson's piece above would be the end of it.
A heretic get's crushed and we all move on.
However, some on the right actually spoke out in defense of Carlson, and that's new.
In the days since Carlson’s monologue went viral, right-wing pundits like J.D. Vance — and institutions like the National Marriage Project — rallied to the host’s defense. Meanwhile, Ann Coulter (never to be outdone) announced her support for a 70 percent tax on concentrated wealth.
“It is the bourgeoisie which has turned religion into an opium of the people by preaching a God lord of the heavens only, while taking possession of the earth for itself.”
- Frei Betto
Of course no one on the Christian Right will ever do something like embrace socialism. They would rather see their children starve to death (and I'm not exaggerating).
It's unlikely that they would embrace liberation theology either.
But the fact that this faith-based worship of capitalism is finally being questioned is extremely important.
If even those on the right are asking questions about our sick, predatory form of capitalism, then it's a lot easier for those on the left to offer solutions. The easiest place to start, and the easiest to understand, are the monopolies.
The battle for competition is being lost. Industries are becoming highly concentrated in the hands of very few players, with little real competition. Capitalism without competition is not capitalism.
Comments
Shared, thanks.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I agree with much of what he said.
What I found interesting, however, was when he discussed marijuana. He made marijuana sound like the opioid crisis. Dumbass.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
He's probably thinking
of the effect that opium had on the Chinese. But there are considerable differences.
On to Biden since 1973
I'm amazed it took so long
but local, small fry capitalists have discovered that cartels are much more secure than competition. Everyone but the consumer benefits. This is especially the case with "regulated" industries, where suborning the regulators is far easier and profitable.
The only problem is that cartels lead to monopolies, which are fatal for all but one of the members of a cartel, but even then the process of monopoly formation is highly profitable for those that are "bought out", as the consumer pays the purchase price.
On to Biden since 1973
$23.50 to Ship One 10 oz Book to Europe. $16 to Canada.
Completely absurd. Not at all competitive for small businesses.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Oh, Tucker! You came so close!
But your sad and pathetic biases prevented you from reaching the heart of the matter. First, he was so close to establishing causation with the correlation between economics and broken families. It wasn't broken families, caused by moral failings, that chased all of the jobs out of the inner city in past decades! (The favored explanation of self-righteous Evangelicals and Libertarian "I Am NOT My Brother's Keeper" Randroids.) It was the conscious decision by corporations to move first to the suburbs, then to the South and then overseas, chasing tax incentives written into law by politicians willingly bought for that purpose, that removed the jobs from the cities, removing the ability to earn a living from their inhabitants and breaking the families left behind with a combination of poverty and depression! But, of course, while it was happening to people only slightly more tan than albino, Tucker was okay with it. But once the same fate was visited upon the predominantly white populations of Rural Red State America it suddenly had Carlson in a fury! And after spending 99% of his career arguing how Democrats needed to be more like Republican'ts vis a vis Capitalism, Libertarianism and the Free Market, now he gets to smuggly blame the disease on Both Parties and stand above politics! Please! Gag me with spoon!
Second, shaming women who suddenly made more money (and only because men were making no money) for not wanting to marry men who made no money was the most blatant exhibition of outright sexism I've seen in a long, long time. Tucker really is a proud throwback to the Mad Men era, assuming he wasn't simply and deliberately pandering to his audience of catheter-wearing, male enhancement pill-popping, cheap beer-swilling limp-dick retrogrades. He reeks of entitlement if he believes that men deserve women to willingly marry their broke asses just because!
I tried really, really hard to listen with an open mind. I did. But he wrapped so much truth in so much neanderthal bullshit that he just couldn't close the deal. Sad! What a waste of so much potential to go transpolitical.
I want my two dollars!
A lower bar
My attitude is better late than never. At least he had the courage to see the connection, even if he didn't have the courage to admit being wrong.
If men had that attitude no one would have been getting married, and we'd have had a crisis long ago. It's a statement of entitlement that women feel differently.
Actually, if a certain income level is a requirement for getting married in this society, then this superficial society isn't worth saving. Good riddance.
The fact remains,
That the REPUBLICAN PARTY is moving toward, or at least flirting with the possibility, that socialism has some aspects worthy of consideration today one hell of a lot more than the neocon run Democratic Party.
Wasn’t there a time, long ago, when the Republican Party was the party of the people? Perhaps today’s Republican Party sees an opportunity here to “pants” the Dems, who clearly have no intention of reclaiming any of FDR’s eroding accomplishments.
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes
Ken in MN,
as a person who never watches mainstream media news or commentary, except for the portions excerpted here and at other sites I respect, I will say I have begun watching Tucker Carlson when he goes after the Deep State, when he criticizes NATO, when he criticizes Antifa, and when he criticizes the FBI for warrantless wiretapping. Here, he criticizes Mitt Romney and the ruthless financial cowards who claim to believe in "markets."
The reason I'm watching him is that he's more conservative than I am, and yet he agrees with me on some of the crucial points he's addressing. That is why I'm listening. He's not Ralph Nader. He's not Peter Dale Scott. He's not Chris Hedges. I don't agree with everything he says, but where we do agree, I see strength in the fact that we agree. I also like the anger in his voice. It's important. It's why I listen to Chris Hedges.
This part of his talk was most startling and important to me:
It would take a lot more time than you or I have today to discuss this subject. But for me this is something that no politician I'm aware of currently cares about. I am startled and happy that he said it, and I agree with him.
@Linda Wood I went round and round
I went round and round with this on JPR a few months back. Lady thought she had some innate right to pursue her career over raising her newborn. I asked "So your husbands going to raise the child?" Oh no.
Well, SOMEONE has to.
It's such a huge subject.
And like other subjects that have the potential to cause disagreement and friction in our discussions, it's complicated. But there are several parts, I think, to what Carlson was saying. One is what you talked about, whether taking care of one's own children is important or worthwhile, and whether we have a responsibility to do it ourselves. Another part is whether the model of what women hope to do instead of full time childcare is exclusively corporate or commercial success.
These subjects get to whether taking care of family members, whether our children or our elderly parents, is as important as financial success. That's an over-simplification, but it's kind of basic to the questions we're asking.
Working women know there are vast differences between being a corporate lawyer or a physician and being a clerk in a big box or working in a daycare center. Men and women work across a huge spectrum of kinds of work. But I agree with Carlson that the power structure goes out of its way to present feminism as corporate power. There's no honoring of people who work as cooks or craftsmen or delivery drivers or pipe fitters.
Tucker has certainly mastered the art of talking out of
both sides of his ass. Sure, he sounds reasonable here, but then a few minutes later he probably went back to bloviating about brown people at the southern border. At the end of the day he's still a mouthpiece for the very same people as the muppets at MSNBC and CNN.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.