It’s interesting to watch from across the pond. These people are trapped in a mental paper bag, scratching their own faces because they don’t know what to do. It’s so funny and sad because there is tons of capital, real infrastructure, and an educated workforce in the UK - they have everything they need to build a great society.
The thing is that they’re true Thatcherites - they genuinely don’t believe in society.
They see the neoliberal project as emancipatory (for them) because it theoretically broke a more aristocratic political power structure into a corporatist one where they could be lower-middle class (or occasionally ‘working class’ in the sense their mum was a teacher and they were quite comfortable or whatever) and through having the right grades and the right jobs and importantly the right opinions they can reach the heady heights of middle-managers for capital and the remnants of that aristocratic political power structure.
And they can justify whatever evil needs to be done as hatchetmen for billionaires and eugenicists and the US global hegemon because they ‘made it’ (although often only high enough up the ladder to make the same as, say, a private dentist who owns a practice or two), which conversely means that they can rationalise their reactionary cruelty by believing that everyone who didn’t can be written off as lazy, shiftless types or unfortunate but necessary collateral of their supposed greater good.
The other thing that’s pretty much universal amongst them is that they fucking love America. Sure, they grumble about Trump like they grumble about Bush, and tactically invoke very selective, mild indignation about British sovereignty vs being an obvious vassal when needed. But they nearly all dream of exiting British politics by getting a bullshit job that lets them live in the US. This lot of MPs (and previous on the right of the party) in particular are absolutely obsessed with this, because they’re often close enough they can taste it when they’re actually in government and connecting with think tanks etc. Them and their staff are constantly clambering all over one another to secure spots on various paid trips to the states from lobbyists, think tanks, Dem working committees etc.
In the months running up to the 2024 US presidential election when some Labour MPs and staff went to the US to put their forensic Midas touch on the Kamala campaign absolutely eating shit, one of them was sending selfies to our local non-league football team watching pub chat from three different MLS games they’d been given hospitality tickets for in the one week they were there before coming back and talking about how they spent 12 hour days campaigning and strategizing for the Kamala campaign.
One of them has a subscription to The Atlantic and started reading it in the pub a couple of times before I started taking the piss out of them for it.
You have no idea how deep the burgerland simping goes.
It’s interesting to watch from across the pond. These people are trapped in a mental paper bag, scratching their own faces because they don’t know what to do. It’s so funny and sad because there is tons of capital, real infrastructure, and an educated workforce in the UK - they have everything they need to build a great society.
The thing is that they’re true Thatcherites - they genuinely don’t believe in society.
They see the neoliberal project as emancipatory (for them) because it theoretically broke a more aristocratic political power structure into a corporatist one where they could be lower-middle class (or occasionally ‘working class’ in the sense their mum was a teacher and they were quite comfortable or whatever) and through having the right grades and the right jobs and importantly the right opinions they can reach the heady heights of middle-managers for capital and the remnants of that aristocratic political power structure.
And they can justify whatever evil needs to be done as hatchetmen for billionaires and eugenicists and the US global hegemon because they ‘made it’ (although often only high enough up the ladder to make the same as, say, a private dentist who owns a practice or two), which conversely means that they can rationalise their reactionary cruelty by believing that everyone who didn’t can be written off as lazy, shiftless types or unfortunate but necessary collateral of their supposed greater good.
The other thing that’s pretty much universal amongst them is that they fucking love America. Sure, they grumble about Trump like they grumble about Bush, and tactically invoke very selective, mild indignation about British sovereignty vs being an obvious vassal when needed. But they nearly all dream of exiting British politics by getting a bullshit job that lets them live in the US. This lot of MPs (and previous on the right of the party) in particular are absolutely obsessed with this, because they’re often close enough they can taste it when they’re actually in government and connecting with think tanks etc. Them and their staff are constantly clambering all over one another to secure spots on various paid trips to the states from lobbyists, think tanks, Dem working committees etc.
In the months running up to the 2024 US presidential election when some Labour MPs and staff went to the US to put their forensic Midas touch on the Kamala campaign absolutely eating shit, one of them was sending selfies to our local non-league football team watching pub chat from three different MLS games they’d been given hospitality tickets for in the one week they were there before coming back and talking about how they spent 12 hour days campaigning and strategizing for the Kamala campaign.
One of them has a subscription to The Atlantic and started reading it in the pub a couple of times before I started taking the piss out of them for it.
You have no idea how deep the burgerland simping goes.