I believe public opinion is fairly left leaning. Just looks how popular Bernie and AOC are. It’s just that corporate media discourse is very good at suppressing left wing views.
That comes from dishonest politicians and media, who twist things for their benefit. They frame certain acts like they are coming for your 2 chickens, when in reality, they are coming for a rich fucks’ 100000 chickens. Such people have a vested interest in fooling the people with 2 chickens. Hence, they campaign by equating such measures with ‘scary’ words like ‘communism’. Propaganda works. These kinds of tricks are bread and butter of advertising industry. So why not politicians and media?
there is technique and whole ideologies and entire categories of political theory in the left all literally dedicated to taking control off oligarchs and implementing it with varying levels of irl success.
there is more to the left of liberals and they address a bunch of these things.
In Nordic countries, they do have something along the line. Although it ended up being democratic socialism, which is left-center instead of far-left authoritarian.
nordic countries exploit countries like mine for our natural resources and human capital in a brutal way. their capitalism just succeeds in neatly hiding away the suffering abroad. their government is not leftist, and that model is not sustainable for everyone to adopt.
The Nordics aren’t Socialist in any capacity, heavy industry and large firms are squarely in the Private Sector, and they earn the bulk of their income from acting essentially as a landlord in country form, from predatory IMF loans.
Moreover, all Socialism is democratic in some form, the idea that there is a niche of Socialism that alone is Democratic is a misnomer. Democratic Socialism is better described as Reformist Socialism.
What I mean is taking the opinion of the public seriously. I mean, people believe in a lot of weird things and that includes me. As an example, lot of people are anti-vaxxers, that doesn’t actually make vaccines dangerous. Should their opinion matter? If so, how much?
I think the quote is meant to consider that sometimes we must ignore public opinion and do what is right. But, I agree some nuance could be lost. But sadly, the quote has no context because it is from a list of quotes Oscar Wilde wrote. Maybe, we should supply our own nuance.?
So glad I’m regular and not like ‘the others’. Politicians should just be regular like us too and ignore the opinion of their constituencies. They should instead only represent ‘the better’ people. /s
“Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.”- Oscar Wilde.
I think public opinion is overrated. Too many fools in the public. Just look at MAGA idiots in US.
I believe public opinion is fairly left leaning. Just looks how popular Bernie and AOC are. It’s just that corporate media discourse is very good at suppressing left wing views.
You can describe socialist and communist policies and people generally love them. You just can’t use those thought terminating trigger words.
That comes from dishonest politicians and media, who twist things for their benefit. They frame certain acts like they are coming for your 2 chickens, when in reality, they are coming for a rich fucks’ 100000 chickens. Such people have a vested interest in fooling the people with 2 chickens. Hence, they campaign by equating such measures with ‘scary’ words like ‘communism’. Propaganda works. These kinds of tricks are bread and butter of advertising industry. So why not politicians and media?
Describing it is one thing.
Actually implementing it is another.
there is technique and whole ideologies and entire categories of political theory in the left all literally dedicated to taking control off oligarchs and implementing it with varying levels of irl success.
there is more to the left of liberals and they address a bunch of these things.
In Nordic countries, they do have something along the line. Although it ended up being democratic socialism, which is left-center instead of far-left authoritarian.
nordic countries exploit countries like mine for our natural resources and human capital in a brutal way. their capitalism just succeeds in neatly hiding away the suffering abroad. their government is not leftist, and that model is not sustainable for everyone to adopt.
The Nordics aren’t Socialist in any capacity, heavy industry and large firms are squarely in the Private Sector, and they earn the bulk of their income from acting essentially as a landlord in country form, from predatory IMF loans.
Moreover, all Socialism is democratic in some form, the idea that there is a niche of Socialism that alone is Democratic is a misnomer. Democratic Socialism is better described as Reformist Socialism.
But I have 2 chickens
they have a couple of hundred of thousands of them in each of their facilities
That’s our chicken, comrade.
What I mean is taking the opinion of the public seriously. I mean, people believe in a lot of weird things and that includes me. As an example, lot of people are anti-vaxxers, that doesn’t actually make vaccines dangerous. Should their opinion matter? If so, how much?
I think the quote is meant to consider that sometimes we must ignore public opinion and do what is right. But, I agree some nuance could be lost. But sadly, the quote has no context because it is from a list of quotes Oscar Wilde wrote. Maybe, we should supply our own nuance.?
Public opinion has a pretty big influence on who is getting voted into public offices. Ignore at your own peril.
Yes, but that is the problem of politicians. Regular people like you or me can safely ignore public opinion. Because we know how dumb public is.
Politicians are very much our problem.
So glad I’m regular and not like ‘the others’. Politicians should just be regular like us too and ignore the opinion of their constituencies. They should instead only represent ‘the better’ people. /s
Only works if you’ve got the “right” politicians in place. Right now there’s a guy in power doing just that in the US and you see what it looks like.