Posted on 06/29/2018 8:39:03 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
If you haven’t already noticed, let me be the first on your block to point it out: The big mainstream political parties across the industrialized world are all blowing up at once. It’s quite extraordinary.
The U.S. Republican Party has blown up in all but name, going overnight from an internationalist, free-trade, deficit-hawk party to a protectionist, anti-immigrant, deficit-dove party — all to accommodate the instincts of Donald Trump and his base.
Italy’s last election ended with its mainstream center-left getting crushed, bringing to power instead a coalition of far-left, far-right populists, whose focus ranges from guaranteeing minimum income for Italy’s 11 percent unemployed to rebuffing immigrants and the European Union.
Britain’s Labour Party has gone from center-left to quasi-Marxist. And the Brexit-loving Tories, having pushed Britain to exit the E.U. without any plan, are now divided and paralyzed over how to implement the economic suicide they’ve promised voters.
The U.S. Democrats are fractured between a Bernie Sanders quasi-socialist wing and a center-left wing, but are glued together for now — thank goodness — by the overriding need to defeat Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel took four months to form a barely coherent governing coalition, after her ruling party got hammered in the last election — and that fragile coalition may soon implode over immigration tensions. And French President Emmanuel Macron leads a centrist party that did not exist three years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’m certainly not as SMART as Thomas Friedman, but I’m just going to throw this out there:
SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM DOES NOT WORK! Never has, never will.
In the Democrat party today, please identify the “center-left” wing of the party. Do they hold their meetings in a phone-booth?
Thomas Friedman is a waste of neurons to read it, a waste of electrons to transmit it, a waste of ink to print it, and a waste of paper to distribute it. Other than that, he’s a really really smart guy.
Methinks Tom is wrong on the Democrats, based on Crowley getting bounced. The Bernie acolytes have wind in their sails.
Don’t sell yourself short. Friedman makes you look like a genius.
Friedman is so predictable.
these people are so blind they’re pathetic. if they had any idea of what the tea party was all about 10 years ago...or perot before that, or Ronald Reagan for that matter.
Friedman you idiot! Sanders and his quasi-socialist army is the center of your party, but the rest want to go full blown communism. Talk about more MSM spinning!
But between 2000 and 2010, thanks largely to digitization and automation, “manufacturing employment plummeted by more than a third,” in the U.S.
Wrong, this was largely due to outsourcing overseas and Mexico. I work in manufacturing and most of those jobs replaced by humans.
By some weird coincidences, I knew Tom Friedman’s mother. She was heartbroken over his anti-American and anti-Israel views.
The establishment refused to represent the citizens and the rule of law.
Both parties could not continue to represent illegal aliens and their employers leaving the citizens unrepresented.
Bush League Republicans thought they had US in a box and we would have to vote for their amnesty candidates endlessly because the Democrat was always worse.
Maybe enough ‘members’ finally wised up to the fact that those parties were more for their executives and cohorts and less for the actual membership.
Just look at how deaf the Republican Party leadership has been in this century (2000). Even going back to the days of Hastert, Frist and Lott, they were indifferent to the ‘membership’ as they pushed such unpopular topics as comprehensive immigration. Note that about 70% have opposed comprehensive immigration because it is little more than another attempt at amnesty. Since the year 2000 about a half-dozen immigration/amnesty bills have been defeated in the House or Senate.
Look at how many run as conservatives and Tea Party supporters, only to change their positions as soon as they crossed the Potomac.
Think back to Whigs and Tories. There is a reason they no longer exist in the US. Parties should die after a few decades, especially when they become more self-serving for the leadership and elite and ignore their ‘members’.
Republicans aren’t anti-immigrant. Republicans are anti-human trafficking.
“The U.S. Democrats are fractured between a Bernie Sanders quasi-socialist wing and a center-left wing, but are glued together for now — thank goodness — by the overriding need to defeat Trump.”
The Democrats are, indeed, fractured. But the fracture is between the Bernie Sanders Mensheviks and the race-baiting, anti-white, anti-heterosexual Bolsheviks. Both are angry and not only don’t mind the violence in the streets, but encourage it. Note that the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were both Communists who fought to overthrow the Czar, and then fought each other for control over Russia (the Bolshies won, for those that don’t know - that’s Lenin, Stalin and the rest of that crew). As for the center-left wing...it is a corpse. That’s the Bill Clinton wing, which recognizes that there are at least SOME rules, and that pissing off a majority of the country is not the way to gain or maintain power.
Not going to click on it but...
Political parties in the west are not listening to their constituencies and acting on the best interests of their citizens.
People are getting frustrated with this and looking for alternatives.
Democrat party was the poster child fo this phenomenon when they rigged their own primary to nominate a proven liar and obvious criminal over Bernie Sanders and his millions of supporters.
Opinion polls in the U.S. show overwhelming support for border control, even among Americans of south/central American heritage, but the politicians won’t do anything about it. The politicians make promises to look tough - and then they do the opposite.
Seems simple enough to me; the old parties failed to react to the mass migration coming out of the Middle East and Africa and so are being replaced. Clumsily, awkwardly, but that’s the way these things go.
Western civilazation being invaded by hoards of violent and ignorant people who will stupidly vote in the very same shiiithole practices of thier former lands of oppression they left, probably has a lot to do with it.
I don’t closely follow the guy nor do I read the NYTimes. I initially noticed Friedman over his articles touting the wonderful efficiency of the ChiComs, and he got much of his notoriety over those claims and that story.
At the time, perhaps a decade ago, I wasn’t quite so aware of the extreme leftist bias of the NYT and did not especially make the connection that, if TF was proudly emblazoned inside the NYT, he must have the same kind of flaming liberal views we all know the NYTimes of today has.
Somehow, TF seems to have backed off his ChiCom bandwagon a tad, but, as I said, I don’t really follow him in real time...or any other way for that matter. Actually I think he’s kind of a complete idiot, and an especially irritating one at that because he believes he’s possessed with some special insight. Well, yeah, he figured out a way to marry into astounding wealth.
Now we know that TF resembles nothing so much as the kinds of folks from the thirties who thought Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin ran really cool, efficient countries with their imposed disciplines and wouldn’t it be great if we emulated them.
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