Media criticism from American left-wing with window of opportunity in 1989 . . . High Trajectory?

raharris1973

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The end of the cold war was only a good thing if you're involved in the finance sector.

Well I'd argue there have been some benign effects.

I think in a continued Cold War there would be more US interventionism in Latin America and more paranoia by even local communists, making dictatorship more common than democracy over the last 25 years.

In a continued Cold War, there's little chance we would have gone through the Chavez regime and sympathetic ones elsewhere without US invasions, "Contra wars" or preemptive bloody repression to prevent his style of "Bolivarian" populism from taking over anywhere. In OTL despite media and vocal criticism of Chavez, and the US was more like, "wow, you mouth off a lot, but we really don't have any time for you. You are flattering yourself if you think we're going to invade you."

Given past precedents from the Cold War and the half century before that, I could easily see a lot more US military intervention in the region.
 
. . . Notice nothing like Bill Clinton's destroying the US industrial base with free trade or welfare reform of the sort recommended by Charles Murray was able ot even be seriously proposed in the 80s. You know, the same one who wrote 'The Bell Curve".
Just like “only Nixon could go to China,” I think it’s analogous that “only Bill Clinton could do welfare reform.” And it works fine in economic good times, but then people can really struggle and hurt during bad times.

Based on the fiction that there’s plenty of jobs, if only people availed themselves of more education and/or tried harder.
 
More specific than that, see what I said about a combination of the alternative to western capitalism collapsing on top of it.
 
The Monday to Friday show Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan González is pretty damn good.

https://www.democracynow.org/

I remember Amy Goodman from the mid ‘90s, and she’s gotten a lot better. And it’s not just the five Pacifica stations, but a bunch of other stations as well.

So, obvious POD is just to roll it forward, and to give them so good competition! ;)
 
. . Remove the Soviet threat and idiotic right wingers can be let loose to go to town with their various heart's desires . .
I have wondered as the right wing really went after environmentalists as “extremists” in the early ‘90s. And they criticized the environmentalists as not really caring about the environment, but as really just hating capitalism. It struck me as a classic blame-the-person misdirect, and as a way not to talk about what seemed to me to be valid points about the environment.
 
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. . a combination of the alternative to western capitalism collapsing on top of it.
Please tell me what alternatives you might have in mind.

I’ve had the idea, that instead of merely landing someone on the number line between capitalism and socialism, a country in the starting in 1950s or ‘60s keeps a mix of both a cash and non-cash economy. Might even be more of a story if a really healthy volunteer movement in the 1970s, backed by a couple of interesting laws, pushed the U.S. somewhat in this direction.
 
It’s all well and fine to take on the big oil companies and insist on a better deal, but I don’t know, things haven’t worked out very well for Venezuela.

Venezuela's problem comes from the fact oil is basically 97% of their exports along with the fact they actually didn't invest more into the oil stuff along with the drought they went through. Though I suspect them being socialist also meant they were viewed unfavorably by the US, which could've gimped trade for them.
 
Venezuela's problem comes from the fact oil is basically 97% of their exports . . .
And they were hurt by the 2014 drop in oil prices, as was Russia.

Plus, Hugo Chávez was a centralist. Even if he's not corrupt, the people around him can be by selling access.
 

On Saturday Night Live, here's Chevy Chase playing Gerald Ford and Dan Aykroyd playing Jimmy Carter.

One good method of comedy is to strive to be an equal opportunity offender. There may be other good methods as well. (I understand that SNL was a much bigger deal in its earlier seasons)
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=H...ated doubts about Carter's sincerity"&f=false

' . . . A little more than a month after the 1976 election, before Carter even took office, SNL blatantly demonstrated doubts about Carter's sincerity in a brief speech by Dan Aykroyd as Carter sitting outside a warehouse in Plains, eating from a bad of shelled peanuts. Smiling broadly, he proceeded to tell the audience that it would simply not be possible for him to keep all the promised he made during the campaign. He made those promises without knowing the sort of stuff only a president gets to know. So now, after the election, as he was getting ready to become president, it was becoming clear to him that Ford had been a pretty good president after all. He now knew that it would simply be impossible to cut unemployment and reduce unemployment as he'd promised during the campaign. Saving the economy would take a long time. People shouldn't expect to see any improvement until his second term. But, ending with a smile and "Merry Christmas," he promised that by 1984, the United States would have full employment and a balanced budget. . . '
So, in this potential POD the market for political comedy is discovered a couple of decades earlier.
 
Venezuela's problem comes from the fact oil is basically 97% of their exports along with the fact they actually didn't invest more into the oil stuff along with the drought they went through. Though I suspect them being socialist also meant they were viewed unfavorably by the US, which could've gimped trade for them.


The high amount of corruption didn't help Venezuela's economy either. One 2014 nonfiction book by Casto Ocando called "Chavistas en el Imperio" was about government officials' shady business dealings, which might be interesting if you can read Spanish.
 

youtube: Lettermans Greatest Moments - Dave visits the GE Building

On April 8, 1986, David Letterman tries to visit the GE building to bring a basket of fruit since GE is the new owner of NBC. And he's not too well received by this older fellow who's head of security.
 
https://case.hks.harvard.edu/genera...nal-broadcasting-company-a-clash-of-cultures/

'On June 9, 1986, General Electric Co. acquired the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for $6.8 billion, setting a record for the largest non-oil merger in US history. GE wanted RCA for its defense-related businesses and for its solid domestic sales of consumer goods, an area where GE was faltering. But the "jewel in the crown" was the RCA-owned television network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). . . '
So, it looks like David Letterman is ahead of the curve and poking fun before the purchase goes through for sure (maybe it needed anti-trust approval?)

And that's good for this whole story and subject to get more attention.
 
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https://books.google.com/books?id=M...etwork share of the audience dropped"&f=false

' . . . During the 1980s, the three-network [NBC, ABC, CBS] share of the audience dropped from about 90% to 60%; network share of television ad revenues declined from 60% to 47% (Owen & Wildman, 1992). . . . . Cable networks and multistation owners (companies that own several local broadcast stations) began to challenge the dominance of the big three. . . '
Notice that share of revenue is not dropping as fast as share of audience, but the owners of the big three may see and fear the coming future.

And an industry on the way down may thrash around more wildly and unpredictably than one on the way up!
 
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https://books.google.com/books?id=W...se his veto, a tactic that backfired"&f=false

‘ . . . Welch met with the governor to persuade him not to exercise his veto, a tactic that backfired. Cuomo not only vetoed the measure but he also later revealed Welch’s persistence on the issue: He “has called me, and lobbied me, about PCBs. I dispute what GE is saying and I said no to his ideas and proposals.” . . . ’
This pertains to GE power plants leaking PCBs into the Hudson River. And good for New York Gov. Mario Cuomo standing up to CEO Jack Welch.

If there had been a bigger citizens’ movement on toxic waste, this story could have really had legs.
 
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