For at least the last decade, a persistent, recurring conspiracy theory has held that major oil exporters will stop pricing oil in dollars, which will then lead to a collapse in the U.S. economy as the dollar becomes worthless. According to some accounts, Iraq’s decision to price its oil in euros rather than dollars precipitated the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and Iran’s threats to move away from the dollar is the real reason the U.S. government is raising the alarm over the country’s nuclear program.
The latest item in this tradition was an article by Robert Fisk, a longtime Middle East correspondent, in the London-based Independent . The article warns of a grand conspiracy between the Arab oil states, China, Japan, Russia, and France to stop pricing oil in dollars by 2018. When this happens, Fisk says, the dollar will suffer a severe blow to its international standing and the United States might struggle to pay for its oil. The article apparently caused a shudder in the currency markets yesterday, as panicked investors unloaded dollars in reaction to the terrifying prospect of this alleged international oil conspiracy.
But they really shouldn’t be concerned. Fisk’s theory would make a good plot for a Hollywood movie, but it doesn’t make much sense as economics. It is true that oil is priced in dollars and that most oil is traded in dollars, but these facts make relatively little difference for the status of the dollar as an international currency or the economic well-being of the United States.
It does matter slightly that the trade typically takes place in dollars. This means that those wishing to buy oil must acquire dollars to buy the oil, which increases the demand for dollars in world financial markets. However, the impact of the oil trade is likely to be a very small factor affecting the value of the dollar. Even today, not all oil is sold for dollars. Oil producers are free to construct whatever terms they wish for selling their oil, and many often agree to payment in other currencies. There is absolutely nothing to prevent Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or any other oil producer — whether a member of OPEC or not — from signing contracts selling their oil for whatever currency is convenient for them to acquire.
Velocity my friend, not all theists are as . . . wise and open minded as you are. I agree those R’s are not voting for ‘bad’ governance – but many of them are voting for a theocracy based upon Christendom, and many, many believe by voting Republican they are doing “God’s will”. Governing well never enters their voting equation; they simply want to do what God and their religious leaders tell them to do and that is vote for the moral life affirming party-- not the Socialist party that kills babies, innocent babies!! I have several family members and other associates who make no denial to believing and voting that way. What is more, I am acquainted with the pastor of a small megachurch or a very large non-megachurch and he is an expert at skirting the Johnson amendment. He speaks about voting your values every week and he seems so doggone sincere. But he is a Republican shill from top to bottom and he makes it sound like he bleeds for you every time you miss an opportunity to vote Republican, any time you support any progressive notion.
Right now I am missing the ASU v BYU game so all other comments will have to wait for another day. I look forward to reading all the comments and seeing if I have anything to add.
You seem to be of the opinion that far-right people and Republicans are two distinct camps. In 1968, mostly, today, no.
Hmm, the quote doesn’t copy, the one about public opinion being the second superpower. How did that work out?
The Vietnam war protests were driven in no small part by the draft. Then the war affected or could easily affect you, if you were young and likely to protest. Today, not so much.
And I figured that back then too, but the reason why I posted that was to point out that it was not correct to say that there were no nationwide protests as the other poster claimed.
Projection would be if I were claiming that the opposing party has the faults that my party actually has. If you want to dispute my conclusion, then it would be being presumptive or something along those lines, not projection.
In any case, I dispute your criticism, as the Republican party is the party that has the “the nine most terrifying words in the English language”. The Republican party is the party that believes that the best government is the least government. The Republican party doesn’t want to involve the government in solving economic or social problems. The Republican party wants to remove government from all aspects of our lives, except of course, what happens in the bedroom.
I have phrased it slightly differently before, but in that post changed it up for variety and to be a bit more pointed, but consider:
The Democrats believe that the government can be used to solve economic and social problems, and wants you to vote for them to prove it.
The Republicans believe that the government cannot be used to solve economic and social problems, and wants you to vote for them to prove it.
They very much do believe that voting for this Republican will result in smaller government, lower taxes, weaker regulations, and fewer services.
You are correct that when they mark their ballot, they aren’t doing it to "screw up the state, cause chaos and bankruptcy, destroy the economy and cause crime rates to soar”, but as that’s a complete strawman, you get no internet points for pointing that out. It is the effect of electing Republicans, but that isn’t their motive when voting, but rather, it is an acceptable condition so long as they become free to discriminate, have unfettered access to guns, and control the sexual and reproductive lives of others.
I vaguely remember those days too, but EVERY SINGLE THING was not in those days defined as conservative vs liberal. There was ideology which was a bigger tent with conservative thinkers in one corner and liberal thinkers in the opposite corner with most people somewhere in between. An over simplified version might include fiscal responsibility. One school of thought was to cut spending and keep taxes stable – a more progressive stand on fiscal responsibility might encourage raising taxes and providing more government services. A profoundly Republican administration refused to beef up the military in order to build schools and roads – that is by definition impossible these days.
One example from the Democratic Party who were supposed to like raising taxes was to keep tax exemptions for segregated “religious” schools because their ideology was stronger than their desire to raise taxes.
At some point the Republican Party went insane and decided to misapply the Laugher Curve so that Grover Norquist could oppose taxes in any form. Not only to never raise taxes, but to reduce the taxes that led to the greatest economy in history which occurred after the war. Now the party of personal and fiscal responsibility has been increasing spending and reducing taxes since the elder bush said: “Read my lips” while being as irresponsible as humanly possible with this pandemic.
There is no genuine conservative agenda any longer, being conservative in this day and age consists of:
Lowering taxes, especially at the top of the income and wealth scale
Being tough and independent minded (avoiding science while relying upon your own ‘horse’ sense [see what I did there, with the Ivermectin nonsense- rather cunning, don’t you think?])
Owning the Libs by opposing everything they attempt if it makes sense or not.
I have had this discussion with my megapastor friend and received no satisfactory answer although he routinely states his understanding of gender and sexuality from the pulpit on a routine basis.
I had many years ago, a young woman for a friend who was in fact a healthcare provider for me. She was really quite a woman and I would often think of her in terms of objectifying her. I became quite involved with her family and we became close friends. Over the years, it turned out she found out she could not have children and the reason was that she was genetically male. Her body was one hundred percent female and before DNA testing I do not believe anyone would have known (although I don’t know that for sure). Her male genitals never developed and she retained the female form she started as in the womb. We drifted apart after I married and moved away, and sometime later she died.
Here is the thing, this life is more complicated than it would seem. By any physical examination by any medical professional she was 100% female. By genetic testing she was 100% male. She was in her mid thirties and quite established as feminine before she ever knew. She was also an enthusiastic sports fan who played women’s sports in college (softball) which could be viewed as “a clue” or as a stupid stereotype depending. I thought about her this Summer when I heard an Olympic story about a woman athlete with a similar story.
The reason I tell this story is because the easy and obvious solution is (with respect to William of Ockham) not always correct. I am not sure what the one true and right answer is-- or even if there is one. But simple and obvious, good old American common sense is not an answer to every single question. Just because there is something for people like our 45th president to grab- - does not mean that is the whole story. Two simple unimpeachable sources of information which reach completely opposite conclusions.
For more than a decade I have realized that there is a difference in the thought process of the two groups. (Well, okay it occurred to someone else who wrote articles and books about it- but I believe it to be true and obvious.) Republicans are more paranoid and are trying to prevent perceived disaster around every corner. As the parent of a special needs kid who could cause serious medical and legal problems in the least likely of places, I can identify with that thought process. In some ways I am an expert at seeing potential threats and neutralizing them; in other ways, I was often guilty of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Point is Republicans see threats where there are threats, and where there are not threats. This is not speculation, neurosciences have done quite a bit of research on the topic since brain imaging technologies have developed. On the other hand, Democrats do seem to be able to overlook practical matters like costs and dangers when pursuing ideas. In addition, they tend to think of and consider the effects on the entire society better than Republicans who have a world view that at most encompasses their own clan (and has caused a great deal of the tribalism we now see in American and World politics in this poster’s opinion).
While this does not come close to answering the bigger question posed in the OP, I hope it can be a few valuable data points that contribute to an answer. I tend to think that elected officials within the two parties are in many ways much more similar to each other than they are to their constituents who are quite different in my view. The example I use is this: after the first Dream Team returned and started playing NBA games – even though they were rivals on the court, Jordan would spend the TV time outs talking to Drexler or Barkley rather than his own teammates. The super elites had more in common with each other than they did with the bench warmers on their own team.
I agree with everything in this post (not just the part I quoted).
I am sure I have read something similar. Perhaps a review of the book if not the same book itself. I do not believe it is any of the Freakonomics books, I have read all of those as well. Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point or Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide?
Again this whole post resonates with me quite strongly. But only recently, ten years ago I would have said it was only half true and twenty years ago I would have said it had everything backward.
I know I am as unlikely to be able to judge my own objectivity as anyone else, but I am quite certain the change has not been entirely within myself. I am pretty damn sure both parties have evolved with the Republicans doing the huge majority of the changing. (And all for the worse in this man’s opinion!)
Accurate!
Okay, I have run out of time and need to skip over a few posts I wanted to comment upon today. maybe just one more. . .
Okay, this seems like a very big jump to a very narrow conclusion to me.
I am beginning to think your points are going over my head. Would you be willing to focus on only one small portion at a time before you create a grand unified theory? Perhaps take one paragraph at a time and expand it into a more fully fleshed out description with numerous examples and a better explanation? (Sorry, I do not have a degree in PoliSci or Global Economics or apparently anything else that helps me understand what you are trying to say.)
You are drawing conclusions I would not never draw, but perhaps that is because I don’t understand your points or what they might mean in a global context. Perhaps you could start by explaining what you mean by “both parties”; are you talking about voters, elected officials, platforms and ideologies, historical precedents? I feel like I am trying to step into a race car in the middle of a championship race when I read your posts. At first, can you find a boring family sedan and pull it over to the curb so I can step in safely and THEN we can start the discussion?
Can you explain this to me like I am an advanced sixth grader or a remedial eighth grader? Sadly, that might be most fitting.
[quote=“Temporary_Name, post:27, topic:950829”]
I am sure I have read something similar. Perhaps a review of the book if not the same book itself. I do not believe it is any of the Freakonomics books, I have read all of those as well. Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point or Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide ?[/quote]
Thank you.
(Does not sound familiar, I have never read it but perhaps I heard an NPR interview with the author or picked up the concept elsewhere. Will surely see if my local library has a copy.)
At the risk of sounding simplistic, given recent news regarding the Eastman memo i would be very interested if someone would be able to cite an equivalent memo from a Democratic administration that didn’t have the fingerprints of Jefferson Davis on it. (Meaning a lawyer officially working for a sitting president and endorsed at least behind the scenes if not publicly.)
Yes there are very real differences between the parties. Moreso now than at any point since the civil war.
The only real way to deny that is to separate traditional conservative values from Trumpism which is a vanishingly small prospect.
I have been watching the Woodward and Costa show for a couple of days now (the answers are identical no mater who the interviewer happens to be, even in the same order like they gave the moderator a script to follow so they could just roll out the stock answers). They talk extensively about General Milley and the potential crisis that needed to be averted. And since it is hard to think of Bob Woodward without thinking of Nixon, it is worth noting that the only two times they needed to hide the nuclear codes from a Commander in Chief – it was a Republican.
As bad as the Republican Party is, Trump is worse. The fact that my former party covers for this personification of worst case scenario is galling. As much as I believe Mitch McConnell is a hypocritical ass, Trump is worse and more dangerous. During this week he has still been working to overturn the election in Georgia (according to Brian Williams).
My only hope is that he is trying so hard because he is desperate and knows far more than I do-- he knows the crimes he has committed and knows the facts and evidence has fallen into the “wrong” hands, by which I mean the hands that will finally hold him to some form of account. (The disgraced former president was found guilty of Sedition today and ordered to surrender to authorities as all of his assets are being seized by another court ruling in a separate jurisdiction. The overwhelming evidence was just too much for even his most loyal . . .)
I have not had a chance to read the article yet, but I want to ask a question and make a comment. Does the creator of this graph mention Nixon and the gold standard at all? Debt started to escalate after that time frame, but not that much after that time frame. And my observation is that the Financial Sector had the lowest debt burden of any group for most of the century right up until the repeal of Glass-Steagall when it surpassed all the other holders of debt. According to this chart, even during the Great Depression they had very low levels of debt which seems odd to me since I recall hearing about financial institutions crashing quite hard about then.
I don’t think so because the article is focusing on total debt.
Besides the drop of the gold standard (caused by increasing costs due to conflict in Indochina coupled with decrease in trust among allies?), there was also the petrodollar deal with the Saudis.
And besides both decades of what amounts to be war crimes (according to Chomsky).
I think the parties are pretty different these days, probably the most different they have been in my lifetime.
For example take the abortion issue, as it hit national politics in the 70s and 80s, there were significant numbers of pro-choice Republicans (both voters and elected officials) and pro-life Democrats. Virtually every New England Republican and a number of Republicans elected out of California and some of the liberal areas of the Mid-Atlantic states were pro-choice. Other Republicans like George H.W. Bush tried to forge a middle ground where he opposed public funding of abortion, but never spoke of banning it (this was his 1980 Presidential run), by 1988 he was more firmly pro-life as he had seen where the political winds were shifting, but he was still much less vigorously so than later Republicans of national status would be.
Now that is virtually over, there’s very few Democrats elected from any State who are pro-life, off the top of my head you have Joe Manchin (Senator-WV) and John Bell Edwards (Louisiana Governor) and I think that’s frankly about it. Even black pastor turned politician, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia–a man whose racial, religious and geographic background would very likely have made him a pro-Life Democrat in years past, was firmly pro-choice in his campaign.
On police brutality/reform, up until about 2010 both Republicans and Democrats were largely indifferent to complaints that police were “too rough” with minority suspects. After 2010 the Democrats started to shift rhetorically to being police-skeptical in some circumstances, but frankly not until really 2018-2020 did Democrats move to being more forcefully in favor of serious policing reform. Now such reform is the mainstream position of the party, and massively out of sync with Republican views on the matter.
Up until the mid-2000s there was a lot of bipartisan agreement on at least the need for immigration reform, sometimes it even manifested in legislation being passed, but the high water mark of that bipartisanship was Bush’s failed effort in his second term to pass meaningful immigration reform–largely torpedoed by hardliners in his own party, after that the GOP has steadily moved towards embracing “replacement theory”, or the idea that non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants are “ruining America.” This is part of the GOP’s broader embrace of white supremacy.
That’s another one–prior to the last 5-6 years while both parties had at times troubling histories on race, true white supremacy was pretty denounced by the mainstream leaders of both parties since at least the early 1970s–aside from a few regional Democratic holdovers from the Dixiecrat era who were still lingering around in some of the Southern states. Since then the GOP has largely embraced white supremacy.
I agree one-hundred percent with every point and every example.
I should leave it at that, but I am going to (once again) recommend two books which in the future will be viewed as absolutely accurately capturing this time in our history, and the forces that have been leading us to this time.
Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (and) The Power Worshipers by Katherne Stewart
They are both historians with pretty darn good credentials and they cover some similar ground from different places. One starts around the time of World War Two, the other a bit more recently, and show how underground religious slash political operatives set out very deliberately to change and create demographics that favored their preferred outcomes. After decades of behind the scenes work, these operatives are hugely influential not only in The United States, but overseas.
Both works resonated with me because I had about a decade ago read Franky Schaeffer’s book Crazy For God where he went through the details of working alongside his father Francis in the 1980’s to influence America’s most famous religious leaders to little avail. I had long been familiar with the book his father had written with US Surgeon General under President Reagan, C. Everett Koop and the several hour long movie series Franky made from the book. All of those religious leaders who were reluctant to address abortion in the early 80’s have changed their tune since then.
I cannot recommend the two history books highly enough. Schaeffer’s book is also worth reading, but moreso if you are interested in the evolution of Christian thought throughout the recent decades.
I have had time to read it now, and it does not. The gold standard it seems had little to do with the matter. However my good close personal friend Charles Keating (okay I had cocktails one time in a swanky place at a table adjacent to his) and his savings and loan scam, along with the repeal of Glass-Steagall did seem to have a profound influence upon debt and the economy overall.
At this point, the Republican party is an openly fascist, anti-democratic, white supremacist/nationalist party. You might disagree on how to describe the Democratic party, but one true statement you can make is that there is a major difference between the parties in that the Democratic party is not an openly fascist, anti-democratic, white supremacist/nationalist party.
The Republican party is truly dedicated to preserving the privileges of the privileged and supporting the status quo hierarchy.
This. Also, the 2 parties have a different admixture of business interests they cater to and represent, and this leads to slight differences in policy. To use a simple imaginary example, we might see the oil industry more dominant in the Republican Party, the solar industry more dominant in the Democratic Party, which would have different implications for foreign policy, environmental policies, etc.
I think it does. That is, the gold standard, which is part of the system that allowed for the use of the dollar as a global reserve currency, made the U.S. very powerful but also very weak. It made many things that the country could buy from others cheap and made many dependent on the U.S. because they needed the same dollar. At the same time, it slowly made products from the U.S. too expensive.
As others adjusted and started making their own, the U.S. economic growth started to erode starting in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, the country started experiencing more trade deficits, and that together with allies’ concern over the costs of U.S. intervention in Indochina (which leaked classified documents later revealed took place to ensure control of natural resources in the region) prompted the U.S. to drop the gold standard, and later to be replaced with petrodollar deals with the Saudis and others, especially when U.S. conventional oil production reached a peak a few years earlier. By the end of the 1970s, it was noted that real wages were dropping caused by the same and by other factors, while throughout more U.S. companies were outsourcing to others to avail of cheap labor.
By the early 1980s, the U.S. started what would be around three decades of neoliberalism coupled with neoconservatism: they deregulated in order to free up more credit and thus encouraging more to borrow and spend and engage in more financial speculation, and then continue using the military and foreign policies to go against weaker countries that were trying to become less dependent on the U.S.
This culiminated in events like the 2008 crash, for which the rich recovered thanks to something like $16 trillion in mostly unaudited funds used for bailouts, and the two-decade Afghan occupation, which led to trillions in costs and something like a million dead.
In your view, is there such a thing as a purely domestic matter in American politics?
Everything you mention has a global orientation, and it is also presented as if it is a long term strategy implemented for one specific purpose only (which in your view is always to apply Neo conservative/liberal policy to international affairs). I don’t know if you are completely correct, or nowhere close, or someplace in the middle. Things will have to be explained in significantly more detail for me to understand your points. You make it sound like every act of the US government outside our borders is the result of a policy decided upon by a committee of the Illuminati.
But for the sake of this discussion (which has become quite interesting to me), in a domestic policy scenario-- do you see any difference between the parties? In the leadership? In the elected officials? In the registered votes, or likely voters? In purity of vision? In moral certainty? In manner of dress (no older Republican man will ever wear sandals- they are not that kind of disciples of Jesus. They wear cheap tennis shoes with khakis for casual wear while old Democratic men wear socks with sandals if they are going to the beach or to a shopping mall [back when there used to be shopping malls])?
So first, domestically- see any difference at all? Second, does it matter to you at all if there is a difference and/or what happens domestically?
Next, can you please-- for the love of all that is good and right in the universe, show me one example of an action or policy that makes sense in a step by step recounting of history in American international politics that does not sound like a conspiracy theory or a text book summary???
Maybe I am just an idiot, but everything you say sounds like the blonde girl from this clip:
