I wish to hell we had. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s still very much around.
But not in the White House.
Apparently standing a significant chance of getting back there.
ETA: ‘It’s all going to be all right, these tactics never work for long’ (not a direct quote) would be nice if it were true. Sometimes it’s not all right. Sometimes they work long enough to destroy a whole lot of people’s lives.
People minimizing and downplaying the risk is one of the ways those techniques do wind up winning. They have to be seen as genuinely dangerous in order to have any chance of stopping them.
Yes, but things are NOT back to where they were in early January of 2016. Brexit has still happened, and can’t be undone. It’s not just “oh, well, a couple of bad years, and then we’re back to normal.” These people break things HARD, and it takes a lot of long, slow work to build them back, all the while beset by the demagogues’ followers.
Quite. And the UK is still in the doldrums of government by a close-to-ungovernable party playing about with minority-blaming: the opinion polls do indeed point firmly to their being ejected at the next election, but the opposition is busy damping down expectations of any really thoroughgoing change of direction.
They are announcing today, it seems, a series of measures against street protests.
5th day in power.
You can really feel the freedom the libertarians bring…
Libertarians are never libertarians once they get power.
As mentioned elsewhere, “Libertarian” in popular politics so often is just a figleaf used to give ideological cover to Social Darwinists who fancy themselves to be the “fittest” who are entitled to be on top. (Or just to do their thing and not care about anyone else.)
Yes, isn’t it astonishing how wrong Social Darwinists get both Darwinism and Socialism and how wickedly Libertarians misunderstand Liberty? It is almost like they were doing it on purpose.
But worry not, everything will turn out fine in the end: The USA have promised to support Argentina in their struggle with the IMF, the IMF has vowed to support Argentina in their struggle with the USA.
Just for the record: the IMF, the World Bank and the USA have a 99% overlap. And Ms. Giorgieva, IMF’s president, used to be European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management (fitting, right?) and Vice-President of Jean-Claude Juncker’s Commission and before that she worked for the World Bank. So good luck, Argentina! You are in good hands. The best hands!
We had paid back every cent we owed to the damned IMF, every. red. cent.
No more “goals”, no more friendly recipes that somehow always demanded “one more sacrifice”.
Then, of course, the right got back into power…
I fear I’m about to lose my country
Remember to check under the sofa cushions.
And I am very sorry for that. But the powers that be are mighty. I wonder which taboo they are going to break next.
Allow me a financial question: the only Argentinian company that spontaneously comes to my mind is Mercadolibre. Do you know what their stance on the new president and his economic policy is?
Galperin, the founder, “exiled” himself to Uruguay to avoid paying taxes here, I seem to remember he supported Milei in the campaign.
Ah, that kind of libertarian… I get the idea. Thanks!
Fascism Watch, Day 10.
Today is the 22nd anniversary of the tragic events that led to the fall of the government in 2001, leftist groups traditionally demonstrate in the Buenos Aires city center.
Apparently police is stopping buses that go that way and checking the passengers for banners or other “evidence” that they are going to demonstrate…
Welp.
“They stopped a bus and made 30 possible demonstrators step down”
“They” being the police.
Los libertarios mas locos del mundo…
“The craziest libertarians in the world” per google translate, for anyone not knowing, unwilling to guess, or unable to use GT at the moment.
And all my sympathies @Frodo - yeah a lot of people claiming to be libertarians, or “free-speech-absolutists” or other arguably valid philosophies, but when seen in action, it’s 100% about freedom / authority / freedom from responsibility for them, none for anyone else.
Yeah sorry, I tried to write it in English but my brain was like “Nope, too worried to translate, let them use google translate”
Oh, I get it, absolutely fair, just wanted to put up the translation since it’s occasionally difficult to get GT to work with some mobile platforms where it isn’t native. Personally, I’d likely be drunk off my ass in the current situation, and I’m watching with fascinated horror as a possible preview to what the USA may be like if we (avert avert avert) end up with Trump v2.
Fascism Watch, Day 12.
The other day the new president derogated, modified or otherwise made toothless about 300 laws by decree.
Now this kind of decree “Decreto de necesidad y urgencia” (Decree of necessity and urgency), suppossed to be used only for emergencies when there is no time for the legislative process, has been abused somewhat regularily by presidents, of all parties, before, but never like this.
This affects all kinds of consumer and worker protection laws.
Among other things:
It makes easier to fire workers.
Derogates the law that forced doctors to use generic names when prescribing medicaments (so the patient could chose which brand to buy)
Derogates the law that regulated rent, so now the landlord can make you pay the rent in dollars.
Derogates the Argentinian equivalent of the “Buy American” law.
Derogates several laws that enabled the government to control prices in supermarkets (Something I never liked, but there are reasons to believe that prices will shoot significantly upwards without this law…)
Modified laws and regulations that controlled health insurance prices, the 3 main health insurance companies CEOs had a meeting and announced rises of bout 50% inmediately afterwards…
Changed the Law of Deportive Associations, to allow the football clubs to become private companies… (can you feel the urgency of that? god forbid we live another day without Boca Juniors being bought by a Qatari sheikh!)
Changes to traffic laws, allowing drivers to circulate in uninsured cars(!)
And that’s just the surface of it.
Basically he’s starting to take a wrecking ball to the country I described in my OP and (in his own words) this is just the beginning.
All this without passing through Congress mind you.
There are judicial and legislative ways to stop this and I hope they’ll work.
As soon as these measures were announced there was an spontaneous demonstration by thousands of people before Congress in Buenos Aires and protests throughout the country.
The demonstration in front of congress successfully violated security minister Patricia Bullrich’s (remember her?) newly minted protocol that pretended to outlaw interrupting traffic in protests. And this is only the 12th day, people are not really angry yet, the majority haven’t yet felt the consequences of the new policies, we’ll see what happens in the following months.