[smallmancontrov]

Rewind a bit over 100 years and the robber barons had an iron grip over the US economy, US politics, and people who understood the mechanisms despaired at ever prying it away from them.

Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.

Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.

[voakbasda]

Can we though? There is marked difference in how the government reacts to populist demands. Notably, they learned from Vietnam how to manipulate the population to divide public opinion. I am not sure people today can overcome such organized machinations.

[smallmancontrov]

Of course we can.

Using foreign wars to prosecute domestic agenda is a strategy that predates written history, let alone Vietnam. Rulers have always understood which levers were available to them, this is not a modern discovery. Classical history in particular is full of this sort of thing and worse in a democratic context, which is comforting in the sense of where we stand and concerning in the sense of where things could go.

Machinations were always organized. I'm reading about Louis Brandeis and I'm struck by how familiar the robber baron talking points are; they are exactly the talking points I heard from neoliberals growing up. Time is a flat circle when it comes to antitrust. Also: they tried to coup FDR! They got themselves a strongman figurehead and everything, it just didn't work.

I'd actually give us the advantage today: the information environment is messier and more difficult to control and machine politics is barely starting to form rather than firmly established everywhere at every level.

[voakbasda]

I would say the information environment makes it easier to control the population, because the goal isn’t necessarily to get everyone to agree on a desired agenda but rather to prevent us from reaching consensus on pursuing any opposing agenda. The goal is to divide and prevent unity.

[mingus88]

I am not saying it’s impossible. I am saying the means to achieve would cause me to be banned if I spelled it out