The history of the left

This is a relatively short recap of Moldbug on the origins of leftism.

Leftists like to trace leftism to the people who sat on the left hand of the French assembly, which traces back the left to its very first pretense to be something other than a religion, and then traces it no further.  The French left, before they were “the left”, were Gallicans, and before they were Gallicans, were adherents of the false Popes of Avignon.

Yet no sooner did they give themselves a secular name, than they proceeded to fight bloody holy wars in the Vendée and in Spain, as though the false popes were still seated in Avignon.

French leftism expired with Napoleon.  Today’s French left is a muppet manufactured by Anglosphere leftism, which originated in Browneism, which became Puritanism.

Today’s state is the left, and the left is the state, as is apparent when one traces the funding of Occupy astroturf to itself.

If we trace back the American left through the years, decades and centuries, we find the roots of today’s distinctly anti Christian and disproportionately Jewish left are nominally Christians, the super protestants of the 1940s, who in turn have plausibly Christian roots – the prohibition movement, the early feminist movement, the movement to raise the age of consent, the movement to give women the vote, and before that, the anti slavery movement:  “Onward Christian soldiers”.

The Anglosphere left, the left of Puritan origin, now dominates the world, all other lefts having expired, and been reduced to muppets of the Anglosphere left.

In Spain, a church was fined two hundred thousand euros for heresy, the heresy being an ad that featured some of the grosser and more self parodying elements of the gay pride parade.

This does not confirm Mencius’ account that Europeans are ruled by muppet governments.  What does confirm Mencius, is that in Spanish “gay pride day” is called “día del Orgullo Gay” – revealing that the theocracy being enforced in Spain is American, is Massachusetts, is Harvard.

Similarly “Pussy Riot”, wherein Russian protesters in Russia wear protest signs written in English.

The French Revolution would be an obscure dusty footnote in the history books, were it not that the Anglosphere left likes to dress itself in foreign clothes to facilitate the rule of foreign nations.

The French left originated in Gallicanism, became atheistic in the same way and for the same reasons that progressives became atheistic two centuries later, and dead ended in Napoleon the First. The modern French left is a creation of, and in substantial part a muppet of, the Anglosphere left, manufactured after Napoleon was defeated. Today’s left has no organizational or institutional continuity with Rousseau’s left. The modern French progressive is influenced by Rousseau’s ideas, and likes to dress himself in Rousseau’s ideas to make himself look less like a US State Department tool ruling over Europe through NGOs with their headquarters in New York and their branch offices in Brussels, but his organization and institution is organizationally and institutionally descended from English Puritans.

Anti colonialism is imperialist, and imperialism was anti colonialist:

Consider the path that Alassane Ouattara took to power: Educated in the US, career in Washington, raised to high position in the IMF. In due course jointly holds high position in the IMF plus high position in the Ivory government, despite the fact that he seldom visits the Ivory coast, briefly flying in from Washington from time to time, Election rigged in his favor in the Ivory Coast by UN troops, large numbers of native thugs imported from neighboring country. Population replacement and ethnic cleansing of the native population. Alassane Quattara then flies in from Washington to take power, despite the fact that he had not bothered to show up to his high Ivorian government job for six years. Clearly, the power that installed him over the Ivory Coast was located in Washington, not the Ivory Coast. Imperialism is still going strong today, and it still spouts anti colonialist rhetoric. Similarly Aristide and Mugabe, installed from without against the wishes of the locals.

The colonialists were piratical, and sometimes, as in the west indies, were indeed deemed pirates, but generally the Imperial approach, as with Clive of India and Raffles, was to disapprove of their piratical acts, and use them as justification for more centralized power, without actually going so far as to call people like Raffles pirates or bandits.

In practice, of course, empire, centralization of power, and the abolition of slavery, does not seem to have been all that popular. The Indian mutiny was in substantial part caused by do-gooder land reform – it was in substantial part a revolt against do-goodism by meddling outsiders far away in London, though it was deemed by London to be a failure of the colonialists, and grounds for even more centralization of power in London and even more unpopular do-gooderism.

When British adventurers first started raiding and trading with distant lands they peaceably purchased spices, and they aggressively stole gold and spices. They attacked ships and seized cargoes because they just plain and simply wanted those cargoes, not out of any economic rationale about enforcing English monopoly. They did not think much about whether attacking ships full of valuable cargoes was good for England. It was good for the East India company, and what is good for the East India company is good for England. The trade rationale was something of an afterthought.

Over time, they tended to transition from mobile bandits to stationary bandits, becoming, without anyone particularly realizing it, governments, governments that enforced a local monopoly over trade in spices, among other things. Many of them became rich, and returned to England to buy respectability, disturbing those who’s wealth came through respectable channels, who called these upstarts “nabobs”.

Eventually, in the nineteenth century, the center, London, belatedly realized that these adventurers had become governments, and set to taking over from these colonialists, on the rationale both of benefiting England through trade monopoly, and the leftist do-gooder rationale of benefiting the natives.

The British empire was not conquered by imperialists, but by eighteenth century merchant adventurers, who mixed honest trade, piracy, conquest, and state formation. The nineteenth century imperialists took it over from the colonialists, and immediately the empire went into decline. In the nineteenth century, Colonialists right wing, Imperialists left wing and anti colonialist.

Today’s anti colonialism is still imperialist, as illustrated by population replacement in the Ivory Coast.

It was in the anti slavery movement that the predecessors of today’s left began to distinctly depart from Christianity:  For the New Testament takes a very tolerant attitude towards slavery:  The New Testament gently suggests that Christians free their own slaves, but does not require it, and clearly prohibits Christians from freeing other people’s slaves, though they are perhaps permitted to close their eyes to other people’s runaway slaves and look the other way.  The civil war conspicuously and spectacularly exceeded not only what the New Testament requires, but also what it permits.

Similarly, with the emancipation of women, they really had to ditch Christianity and started doing so, for while the New Testament is mildly disapproving of slavery, it endorses stern patriarchy in no uncertain terms, and thus, with women’s suffrage, we begin to see the familiar anti Christian modern left, though it was only in the 1940s or so that large numbers of Jews were permitted to join the modern American left.

Tracing the English speaking left all the way back to Browneism, we see continuity of personnel and ideology, the ideology slowly changing from Puritan Christianity to Unitarian Universalism to modern leftism, but changing slowly and continuously without any abrupt change, though over time every detail of the ideology changed, except for the war on Christmas, desecration of marriage, and the emancipation of women, which remained the whole time, even though sometimes justified by the argument that Christmas was too pagan, and at other times justified by the argument that Christmas was not pagan enough, and sometimes, strangely, both arguments simultaneously, while the desecration of marriage never got an explanation, for they never admitted that that was what they were doing, nor did the emancipation of women for as long as they thought themselves Christian, for Paul unambiguously tells the Church to socially enforce male authority over women.

In the long and winding path between Browneism and today’s left, there is one strong unchanging thread.  The left is holier than thou.  They were holier than thou when they were Christian, and they are still holier than thou now that they are anti Christian.

 

51 Responses to “The history of the left”

  1. […] sometimes also has a special wider use. Jim speculated that much like Progressivism is a recognizable outgrowth of Anglo-Christianity that has resulted in […]

  2. […] Of course, reality is quite messy and complicated, so the current situation in the West is a highly complex interplay of all of the factors I have raised here, and then some. One of the other more notable aspects that I have yet to cover is that of endo-colonisation, and what I believe should be called endo-imperialism in light of Jim’s History of the Left. […]

  3. […] sometimes also has a special wider use. Jim speculated that much like Progressivism is a recognizable outgrowth of Anglo Christianity that has resulted in […]

  4. […] Of course, reality is quite messy and complicated, so the current situation in the West is a highly complex interplay of all of the factors I have raised here, and then some. One of the other more notable aspects that I have yet to cover is that of endo-colonisation, and what I believe should be called endo-imperialism in light of Jim’s History of the Left. […]

  5. […] usual, explains horrorism and nemesis. James Donald shows us black privilege and recapitulates the history of the left. Frost lists seven ways the red pill will improve your life. Cane Caldo identifies a strength of […]

  6. […] Jim’s Blog has an interesting take on the origins of leftism–that it originally derived from Christian Puritainism (namely, a virulent form of Calvinism). That it set itself on a course to save the world from sin, working, progressing towards a bright and shining future where members of the elect could celebrate their exclusive connection to righteousness. Those who rejected their message would be deemed heretics, and feel the full ire of the group- they would be ostracised, condemned, even physically attacked. The Puritans over time,  grew ever more earnest about converting others and grew ever more holier and holier in affiliation, until they found themselves one day at a crossroads, where they discovered to their dismay that they had become even more holier than God Himself! […]

  7. VXXC says:

    congrats Jim. NRO Kevin Williamson

    “You do not need to install a dictator when you’ve already had a politically supercharged permanent bureaucracy in place for 40 years or more. As is made clear by everything from campaign donations to the IRS jihad, the bureaucracy is the Left, and the Left is the bureaucracy. “

    • jim says:

      Forty years?

      Lord Cromer was nearly prosecuted for being insufficiently PC, and in due course fired, in 1907.

      • Reakcionar says:

        James Burnham wrote in The Suicide of the West that someone in Harvard in 1929. got in trouble for not giving the blacks additional points on tests. (I might have mistaken Harvard for something else, but I’m pretty sure the year was 1929.)

        It would be interesting to draw how fast these ideas spread. In 1907. it was probably just a handful of elitists. In 1929. only top academia. In 2013. a catholic priest is getting in trouble for saying bad things about gay marriage on Facebook.

        • jim says:

          In 1906, people stopped daring to mention that the people who built the Great Zimbabwe, claimed to be descended from Hebrews who came to Africa to mine gold. Recent genetic testing has confirmed their claim, but all polite society continues to reject their claim, regardless.

  8. VXXC says:

    O/T

    Jim what do you think of Wickr? Among other things [as billed] there’s nothing to back door or subpoena or seize…

    https://www.mywickr.com/en/index.php

    • jim says:

      Wikr fail to describe their protocol. Big red flag.

      They kind of sound like they are doing what Skype used to do, but they refrain from actually saying that that is what they are doing, in which case we should probably conclude that they are not doing what Skype used to do, but rather are doing what Skype now does.

      • VXXC says:

        Is Wickr HIPAA, FIPS and NSA Suite B compliant?

        Our product uses AES 256, RSA 4096, ECDH521, TLS and SHA256 to protect the data in transit and at rest. Our hashing protocol is much stronger than a plain SHA384 as we do numerous rounds and other cryptographic enhancements when using sha256. This meets or exceeds the HIPAA requirements for encryption and privacy. Wickr is also FIPS-2 compliant for military grade encryption and exceeds NSA Suite B compliancy for Top Secret communication.

        • jim says:

          That they are using NSA approved encryption would worry me, but that they don’t tell us what they using it for renders the issue moot.

  9. […] The history of the left « Jim’s Blog […]

  10. […] The history of the left « Jim’s Blog […]

  11. […] this reminds me of Jim Donald’s latest post. He talks of Alassane Ouattara, which is some guy from Ivory Coast who’s educated in the US […]

  12. […] The history of the left « Jim’s Blog […]

  13. sunshinemary says:

    Similarly, with the emancipation of women, they really had to ditch Christianity and started doing so, for while the New Testament is mildly disapproving of slavery, it endorses stern patriarchy in no uncertain terms, and thus, with women’s suffrage, we begin to see the familiar anti Christian modern left, though it was only in the 1940s or so that large numbers of Jews were permitted to join the modern American left.

    And now, with the emancipation of Christian women to fully unleash their inner feminists, we are beginning to see an anti-Christian modern Church, which busies itself not with the Gospel but rather with social “justice” issues which are almost exclusively defined by progressives.

    • jim says:

      I am a big fan of your blog. I consider one of the most important jobs of religion is to preserve ancient wisdom and back it with divine authority.

      As I said when discussing Pussy Riot

      Progressives have done to Christianity what Christians did to pagans. Christians would convert the elite by some mixture of economic pressure, evangelical persuasion, and, sometimes, the threat or actuality of state violence. The elite ran the pagan religious institutions, and continued to run them. When ordinary lower class pagans showed for the customary pagan festivals, they found that the festival had been Christianized. They continue to do pretty much what they used to do, but now it was Christian, and not only no longer pagan, but gradually came to demonize pagan gods.

      Analogously, today a father takes his family to church on Christmas, and instead of hearing what he was expecting, hears that salvation comes from voting for higher taxes and welfare, and that exercising authority over his wife and children is sinful.

      Progressivism, of course, dismisses ancient wisdom as “dead white males”, thus the progressive takeover is likely to have consequences less benign than the Christian takeover.

  14. Hidden Author says:

    So when do you know that the left-wing singularity has gone so far that it’s time to leave the country?

    • jim says:

      You should now be making preparations to leave, ideally a full alternate identity resident in another country, but as for when you should leave, you will know it when you see it.

      • Samson J. says:

        ideally a full alternate identify resident in another country

        Jim, I often wonder what your first language is. Clearly it isn’t English.

  15. […] The French left originated in Gallicanism, became atheistic in the same way and for the same reasons… […]

  16. Glenfilthie says:

    I am conservative but I have no problem with classical liberals. You could still see them around well into the 80’s. These were often well-meaning men that might have been a tad naïve – but wanted to help people do goo.

    Then the mental illness started. Political correctness replaced honesty and merit almost overnight. I sit and wonder how we got here sometimes.

    And I wonder when we are going to stand up and fight. I personally am beginning to think it is time to remind the leftists which end of the political spectrum has all the guns.

    • peppermint says:

      I believe that political correctness happened for two reasons

      (1) Laws that made it illegal to knowingly employ people with bad attitudes towards protected groups
      (2) Sound bite television

      The Internet, by not being TV, and having anonymity to protect people with bad attitudes, can have conversations that are shockingly insolent towards protected classes. If the Internet had appeared ten years earlier, we would almost certainly be saved by it. But now, I wonder if too much damage has already been done.

      • Kevin C. says:

        “But now, I wonder if too much damage has already been done.”

        The answer to that is yes.

      • jim says:

        The supremes have been finding ever increasing exceptions to freedom of speech and separation of Church and State for quite some time. Making it illegal to employ people with forbidden opinions is just the biggest and most recent escalation. The slippery slope has been apparent for some time.

        People have found it necessary to mind their words under threat of punishment all the way back to 1900 or so.

  17. Rollory says:

    “French leftism expired with Napoleon. ”

    You have no idea what you’re talking about.

    The Paris Commune (40 years after N1) was the first government that was communist in the modern sense. Napoleon III crushed it with his coup (the two Napoleons are two of the best examples of right-wing counterrevolutions). Twenty years later, the French left was still strong enough to simultaneously sabotage French military preparations while antagonizing Bismark’s Germany, putting N3 (who had turned France into a modern industrial country, and halfway through his reign won a referendum on his rule with a crushiing majority) in an impossible position. He was still man enough to put himself on the front lines, but the outcome was 100% what the left wanted. In the post-1945 period, it was down to the wire as to whether De Gaulle or the Communists would end up in control – and that’s not because the French were inclined to obey Anglo directives.

    Leftism today is perhaps less virulent in France than in Anglo countries, but that is principally because of the oft-remarked-on basic racism of the French. Thehy know who they are, and they know who’s not them.

    • josh says:

      The Babeuf conspiracy had serious leg via Buonarroti and his followers.

      I’d also be curious to know how you are going to write the history of the French revolution without the Freemasonry which arrived on the continent from England and the Whig cafe society that Phillippe Egalite tried to recreate in the Palais Royale.

      • jim says:

        Josh complains that I understate whig/puritan influence on the French Revolution, which I doubtless do.

        Rollory, however, complains that I understate indigenous influence on the Paris commune, which I also doubtless do.

        The Paris commune was, however, revolting against a form of government imposed by Britain, on the basis of British ideas that were undermining that form of government in Britain. It is hard to understate indigenous influence on the Paris commune.

        The most notable indigenous influence was that they named their instrument of terror, the Committee of Public Safety, after the original, and genuinely French, committee of public safety, and then proceeded to murder each other, the revolution devouring its children, the latter activity being terribly unBritish.

        But, on the other hand, anglosphere leftism has always been pretty casual about political murders of non anglosphere leftists.

      • jim says:

        I just noticed that Babeuf is portrayed dressed up in a costume that somewhat approximates the classic portrait of Oliver Cromwell, which back then was strong political indicator, though nowadays everyone respectable dresses like Oliver Cromwell, much as in China at one time, everyone dressed in a Mao suit.

    • spandrell says:

      France has had the highest level of immigration in Europe since the 19th century. How many millions of Spaniards and Italians are there? And now zillions of Blacks and Arabs. They know who’s not them? Well they’re gonna lose count soon.

      • Zach says:

        Yeah. Basically my question(s) as well.

        For some reason I feel you two have a kindred spirit. One was spawned from another? Who cares. heh

        I usually auto-forward this blog to wife. Good bedroom talk…

        I’ll say it loud and clear: Jim is vastly more right than wrong. When wrong, quite obviously so, and when right, then fascinating for obscure and nuanced reasons. Insights are clever where wrong or right.

        This is a great blog.

        Call me Taleb, because it’s’ all about me heh (quite by design)

        Fascinating blog.

  18. Konkvistador says:

    This is the most extensive elaboration on the previously mentioned claim you made on of the history of French Revolution leftism being a descendant of Gallicanism and the latter being the follow up to the Avignon Papacy I’ve seen so far. Since discovering wine drinking promiscuous “Muslim” Zoroastrian heretic socialists and Zhang Xianzhong I’ve noticed huge swaths of non-Anglo history, might provide interesting clues about Progressivism by comparing in what ways it is similar and in what dissimilar from other kinds of leftism and para-leftism.

    I would appreciate it a lot if you dedicated a separate post and marshall any sources on your Gallician hypothesis, you can remember so I can study them. At least perhaps point out what wikipedia underemphasiszes or leaves out?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallicanism
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy

    I’ve been doing thinking on my own model of Milleniarism inducing skyrocketing time preferences which are rationalized in predictable ways that I explained from points 6 to 8 in http://www.moreright.net/links-for-october/ and if it differs significantly from your own model of leftism as holier than thou, or is just another aspect of it.

    This has lead me to two more interesting belief systems I think need attention. The first is Catharsim. Indeed what first made me think of them was that Arnaud Amalric need to pull a “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” to stomp them out. This another way of saying both “if they are so holy let them out-holy death” and “our local branch here is compromised by entryists, cut it off before it lays eggs”. I think a good reflex, for a modern person looking at history and seeing something like this is to, rather than assume the past was populated by monsters, consider what kind of circumstances warrant this kind of response and then investigate if they where there.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

    I see several pings on “Holier Than Thou” I’d expect to see in your explanation of Leftist Singularity, but don’t see that many pings that would match my own Milleniarist model.

    The second are the German Anabaptists as seen in the Münster Rebellion:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_Rebellion

    “Matthys identified Münster as the “New Jerusalem”, and on January 5, 1534, a number of his disciples entered the city and introduced adult baptism. Rothmann apparently accepted “rebaptism” that day, and well over 1000 adults were soon baptised. Vigorous preparations were made, not only to hold what had been gained, but to proceed from Münster toward the conquest of the world.”

    “John of Leiden’s authority grew, eventually proclaiming himself to be the successor of David and adopting royal regalia, honors and absolute power in the new “Zion”. He legalized polygamy, and himself took sixteen wives. (John is said to have beheaded one woman in the marketplace for refusing to marry him; this act might have been falsely attributed to him after his death.) Community of goods was also established. ”

    Seems to match Excuses To Party quite well and it also matches Holier Than Thou. So in addition to as much dedicated exposition of your Gallicain hypothesis I’m wondering if anyone is well informed on these two historically interesting episodes of belief systems grabbing power and power reaction to belief systems.

    • jim says:

      My interpretation of escalating time preferences is that someone who rides holier than thou to power is riding the tiger. When you are on the tiger’s back, your time preferences become extremely short, even if you manage to stay on the tiger for quite a while.

      Also, if you are replacing insufficiently holy people in power with sufficiently holy people in power, you are shredding existing institutions that manage the allocation of goodies. The easiest way to solve the socialist calculation problem is to announce unlimited goodies for everyone. Its party time!

      Thus, for example, Obama’s health care plan was originally sold as something for nothing, and from time to time they take ad hoc measures so that it is still something for nothing.

      To deal with the socialist calculation problem for Obamacare, the Democrats generate thousands of pages of law and tens of thousands of pages or regulation. When this does not work, they use a speech instead.

      Political allocation of medicine is less disastrous than political allocation of food, because people don’t really want effective treatment, which they suspect is not really available. They just want mummy to kiss it better, whereas people really do want food. So when you start politically allocating food, the crisis moves into high gear.

  19. […] – Jim o povijesti ljevice: […]

  20. Anomaly UK says:

    I don’t think Mugabe was deliberately installed by the Cathedral – obviously black rule was installed, but my recollection is they believed their own propaganda and were expecting Muzorewa to win the election.

    In terms of Jewish influence on the Anglo left, my researches on the early Cathedral turned up this chap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Adler_(professor) , who seems quite influential in a small way, and well ahead of his time. You may well be right about large numbers not being involved until the 40s, I don’t know.

    • jim says:

      So, New York rent control was a Jewish plot. I guess substantial Jewish influence in the left runs earlier than I thought.

      But I base the claim that Jewish influence was small on the fact that until the late 30s, highly prominent Jews came out of low status academies. The high status academies are where the power is. In particular, and especially, Harvard is conspiracy central of the Cathedral.

      • B says:

        In the interest of accuracy-Boris Sidis, a genius Jewish revolutionary, William James’ friend and colleague and psychologist, got his BA, MA and PhD from Harvard in the late 19th century and his MD in the early 20th. His wife’s highly readable memoir is available online here: http://www.sidis.net/Story1.htm

        How much Judaism informed these poor people’s worldview can be gauged by the fact that she doesn’t mention anywhere in there the fact that they were Jews.

        • jim says:

          Thank you for this correction.

          From which I conclude that then, as now, progressives encouraged Jews to leave their Jewishness behind them, in order to be allowed in.

          But, from the propensity of prominent Jews to graduate from New York College rather than Harvard before 1950 or so, progressives were doing a more thorough job of it before 1950 or so.

    • jim says:

      Bishop Abel Muzorewa was overthrown by Cathedral sponsored terrorism, unending war that exhausted the capability of white Rhodesians to defend a reasonable black government

  21. peppermint says:

    Today’s state is the left, and the left is the state, as is apparent when one traces the funding of Occupy astroturf to itself.

    I was part of that astroturf, and what shocked me about it was how ineffective it was. I was sure that with Occupy providing political theater, the President would announce prosecutions of key figures in the 2008 crash, and/or get a serious jobs program passed, or do *something* with it. Instead, Occupy had no real effect, and is now a punch line used by conservatives.

    To me personally, though, the effect was that I started to wonder how and why the ball was dropped, which eventually led me to Moldbug’s theories.

    • jim says:

      The number one criminal in the crash, and the single individual who caused bigger losses than anyone else, was Angelo Mozillo, who was fined sixty seven million dollars, the largest fine levied on an individual for misconduct leading to the crash, which fine is nonetheless for him pocket change.

      Mozillo was purged from the financial system, forbidden to continue as a financier, but many other prominent criminals are still robbing the system blind, among them the man of many hats, the politician/regulator/financier Jon Corzine, who so successfully regulated himself, making himself probably the most highly regulated man in finance.

      If you want to know why heads failed to roll, consider Jon Corzine.

      Also reflect that among Mozillo’s many crimes was bribing various public officials, among them the management of Fannie and Freddie, but though the man who paid the bribes has suffered dismissal and a small fine, the recipients of the bribes are doing fine.

      • Jake says:

        This isn’t directly related, but you’ve said several times that Leftism results in ever more extreme inequality, and thus ever greater measures to reduce said inequality. But that’s not what the data shows for the US. The annual income share of the top 1% peaked in 2007 and has been going down since Obama took office. As some American conservatives point out, for all the attention paid to the consolidation of wealth in the top 1% over the past 30 years, the late 1970s were the trough in terms of the top 1%’s income share. It’s certainly suggestive, and unlikely to be a coincidence, that inequality peaked in 1928 (top 1% had 23.9% of the wealth) and 2007 (top 1% had 23.5% of the wealth). It’s hard to square that with your rhetoric.

        • jim says:

          Your argument is that a reduction in inequality that occurred in 2007-2008 is caused by redistribution measures that are occurring now in 2013

          The decline in inequality in 2007 occurred because the economic slump damaged rich people more than poor people, since rich people are the ones that take financial risks.

          Obama has only just now, about five years later, hit us with a major increase in progressive taxes. We shall see what effect they have on inequality in ten years or so, assuming that the US lasts that long without radical crisis.

    • SOBL1 says:

      Occupy had one important effect for impressionable voters, it was Port Huron script communism that made far left, but in a suit, Obama look reasonable. Another non-voting effect was that it shifted focus away from just Wall St to the entire 1%, which includes the productive economy, retail, healthcare, etc. Their demands were unfocused and wide in spectrum rather than just “break up the TBTF banks”, taking heat off Obama for not doing that specific task many Americans expected him to do in Nov of 2008.

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