Dicktator Politics

[pipbarber]

Argentina, come on down

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... l-election

This dick has been likened to Boris Jonson and Donald Trump's love child. Looks like he'll be unleashed on Argentina for an electoral cycle.


Where do these people come from and why do they win elections?

[stylofone]

Argentina, come on down

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... l-election

This dick has been likened to Boris Jonson and Donald Trump's love child. Looks like he'll be unleashed on Argentina for an electoral cycle.

Where do these people come from and why do they win elections?

An analyst on the BBC World Service said young people in Argentina are pissed off because everything's so dysfunctional. Milei's digital strategy is a refined version of what worked for Bolsanaro. Apparently he uses Tiktok a lot, you can see how wielding a chainsaw as a political metaphor would work in a bite-sized mindless social video. In typing that I realised the probability is growing that that in some form the chainsaw will no longer be a metaphor. One imagines a political opponent being murdered by zealous Milei supporters believing an Argentinain version of QAnon. The other bit of analysis was that in this case compulsory voting works in his favour, because he has to win with the votes of people ignorant or deluded enough to be swayed by silly memes, and if voting was optional they wouldn't show up for him.

It's also interesting in that mindless memes would surely be immune to a lot of the anti-misinformation measures and content moderation the EU is trying to impose on twitter. The toxin of social media, its persuasiveness enhanced by surveillance capitalism, is potent and the antidote is still under development, or maybe not even that.

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... rgio-massa

Looking a bit concerning for Argentinians.

[stylofone]

Fuck, he won. I read earlier there are checks and balances and he won't be able to unilaterally get his mad platform through the legislature. But it is still a bad sign for the planet.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-67470549

[pipbarber]

He's like a reverse Michael Moore.

He want's to switch currencies to the US dollar, which will be fun in a country with an inflation rate of 150%. Chaos pending, i would think.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/ ... 023-09-27/

A poverty rate of 40% pretty much demonstrates that business as usual, ie neoliberal capitalism, aint gonna get you elected and that any clown that comes along with an alternative plan is a preferable option, no matter the plan.

The global flowering of authoritarianism is a consequence of a failed economic system. Until the left can come up with a viable counter i think we might just see this played out everywhere - elect a populist for a term or two, then reelect the capitalists that caused all the problems in the first place but are amazingly better than the power hungry clown who promised to make everything great again. Then back to the next joker...and so on until the whole world is boiling furnace.

What a fucking dismal cycle this is.

[stylofone]

He wants to switch currencies to the US dollar, which will be fun in a country with an inflation rate of 150%. Chaos pending, i would think.

I'm not sure how that would work because they have to acquire the dollars, don't they? They'd have to buy them from foreign entities, obviously not with the pesos they are abolishing. Would it be some sort of government bond? More debt? Who's going to be part of that? "I don't have any collateral, but I've got a chainsaw!"

[pipbarber]

He wants to switch currencies to the US dollar, which will be fun in a country with an inflation rate of 150%. Chaos pending, i would think.

I'm not sure how that would work because they have to acquire the dollars, don't they? They'd have to buy them from foreign entities, obviously not with the pesos they are abolishing. Would it be some sort of government bond? More debt? Who's going to be part of that? "I don't have any collateral, but I've got a chainsaw!"

Yeah, it doesn't really make sense, especially given the Argentine Peso isn't worth that much in US dollars, and i read somewhere that they have almost no reserves of US dollars, so yes, they'd have to purchase them. Or something...or not...

He's a president for the post fact world, so it's probably best to not ask too many sensible questions.