On Trump's media persona and his attitude toward "fake news" and the media as "the enemy of the american people":
My sense is—this is just a guess—that this is a media strategy, that it’s the Bannon-Trump-Spicer strategy to try to keep attention focused on one or another form of lunacy, but not look at what’s actually happening. And what’s actually happening is that Paul Ryan and his associates behind the scenes are systematically and carefully dismantling every element of government that is of any benefit to people and that doesn’t maximize corporate power and profit.
On attacks against worker solidarity, to make workers insecure about their job and future to quell political activism:
People had been—some of the reasons were explained by Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, who was in charge pretty much of managing the economy. He testified to Congress that part of the success of the economy, the low inflation and so on, was due to what he called growing worker insecurity. Working people were insecure. They were intimidated. They knew that they were in a dangerous situation, precarious situation. As a result, they didn’t press for increase in wages and—for decent wages and benefits. They were willing to accept, in fact, an effective decline in their living standards. And Greenspan, who was a close observer of the economy, pointed out that this continued, even when jobs were increasing in the late Clinton period. It was deeply embedded in the nature of the policies being carried out, that working people are intimidated, they’re living precarious lives, many of them are part-time, they’re losing security, their unions are being destroyed, and their wages are declining.
When you impose on people circumstances of this kind, you have to make sure that they have no way of responding politically. In Europe, it’s done pretty straightforwardly. The main decisions about socioeconomic policies are made by the so-called troika—IMF, European Central Bank and the European Commission, which is unelected. So three unelected bodies, they make the decisions. They do listen to voices, the voices of the northern banks, mostly German banks. And the people suffer. And they get—they are angry, frightened, often reacting in dangerous ways. We see similar phenomena here.
So what you have to do is marginalize them in one way or another, turn them against each other, aim—turn their anger against vulnerable people—that’s standard technique—get people to—don’t look at the people who are really doing this to you. Look at the ones who are more vulnerable: immigrants, the poor, you know, Muslims, blacks—anybody. We’re familiar with that, too. There’s not a slight history about it.
So, sure, that just—it’s like—it’s like an almost logical consequence of the socioeconomic policies, which have been imposed and lauded, in fact, by elites, including liberal elites. A lot of this was done by—say, by the Clinton administration. It was hailed, the deregulation, for example, which very quickly led to one after another financial crisis. That was initiated by liberal economists, who were telling us how wonderful it is. And there’s actually, you know, a theory, neoclassical economic theory, which says, "Yeah, it’s fine."
Some great nuggets in there.
On Trump's media persona and his attitude toward "fake news" and the media as "the enemy of the american people":
>My sense is—this is just a guess—that this is a media strategy, that it’s the Bannon-Trump-Spicer strategy to try to keep attention focused on one or another form of lunacy, but not look at what’s actually happening. And what’s actually happening is that Paul Ryan and his associates behind the scenes are systematically and carefully dismantling every element of government that is of any benefit to people and that doesn’t maximize corporate power and profit.
On attacks against worker solidarity, to make workers insecure about their job and future to quell political activism:
>People had been—some of the reasons were explained by Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, who was in charge pretty much of managing the economy. He testified to Congress that part of the success of the economy, the low inflation and so on, was due to what he called growing worker insecurity. Working people were insecure. They were intimidated. They knew that they were in a dangerous situation, precarious situation. As a result, they didn’t press for increase in wages and—for decent wages and benefits. They were willing to accept, in fact, an effective decline in their living standards. And Greenspan, who was a close observer of the economy, pointed out that this continued, even when jobs were increasing in the late Clinton period. It was deeply embedded in the nature of the policies being carried out, that working people are intimidated, they’re living precarious lives, many of them are part-time, they’re losing security, their unions are being destroyed, and their wages are declining.
>When you impose on people circumstances of this kind, you have to make sure that they have no way of responding politically. In Europe, it’s done pretty straightforwardly. The main decisions about socioeconomic policies are made by the so-called troika—IMF, European Central Bank and the European Commission, which is unelected. So three unelected bodies, they make the decisions. They do listen to voices, the voices of the northern banks, mostly German banks. And the people suffer. And they get—they are angry, frightened, often reacting in dangerous ways. We see similar phenomena here.
>
So what you have to do is marginalize them in one way or another, turn them against each other, aim—turn their anger against vulnerable people—that’s standard technique—get people to—don’t look at the people who are really doing this to you. Look at the ones who are more vulnerable: immigrants, the poor, you know, Muslims, blacks—anybody. We’re familiar with that, too. There’s not a slight history about it.
>So, sure, that just—it’s like—it’s like an almost logical consequence of the socioeconomic policies, which have been imposed and lauded, in fact, by elites, including liberal elites. A lot of this was done by—say, by the Clinton administration. It was hailed, the deregulation, for example, which very quickly led to one after another financial crisis. That was initiated by liberal economists, who were telling us how wonderful it is. And there’s actually, you know, a theory, neoclassical economic theory, which says, "Yeah, it’s fine."
Some great nuggets in there.
On Trump's media persona and his attitude toward "fake news" and the media as "the enemy of the american people":
On attacks against worker solidarity, to make workers insecure about their job and future to quell political activism: