01 February 2018

The Establishment's Pro-Robotics Propaganda and its Manipulation of the Political Spectrum

We are told in this article to welcome the robot revolution and to not be concerned with either the technological implications... which are not really addressed... or the social impact.
In fact robots replacing workers are viewed as a solution to workplace problems and by implication it could even help with the social tensions regarding immigrants!
What we really have here is a Right-wing piece that's meant to promote the interests of the capitalist class.


And yet many would relegate Politico to the category of being Centrist or even Left-wing. The truth is that Centrists on the American political spectrum, and even most Democrats are still part of the pro-Wall Street, pro-Nationalist platform... in other words they're Right-wing.
The true Left has been pushed into the realm of 'alternative' media or is outside the spectrum altogether. Once again I assert the purveyors of identity politics are not genuinely Left, and the egalitarianism they espouse is essentially a counterfeit. In many respects they function as tools in the hand of the Establishment, dividing and distracting society from the real centres of power and oppression. Their ideologies are not the result of principled social critique and/or a challenge to the nature and concentration of power in terms of the Corporate-Technological-Imperialist state, rather they would (if possible) capture and utilise these same powers to enforce their agenda. In most cases they essentially affirm the system but want to change the nature and culture of its bureaucracy. Indeed many of their ideas challenge conventional morality and thus can be categorised as revolutionary and/or 'progressive' and yet when better understood they are revealed as little more than expressions of dissatisfied bourgeois decadence and self-serving degeneracy.
Even Martin Luther King Jr., the champion of black civil rights understood the true struggle was beyond race. It extended to poverty, the US economic system and its empire. Most have forgotten but his turn on the American system and especially the imperialist-genocidal war in Vietnam ostracised and isolated him, even from much of the Left. A year later he was dead and passed into legend. They very government he opposed (and likely killed him) now erects monuments to him... even while they distort his actual message.
Critics of technology let alone technopoly can be found in a few cases on the Right, but mostly the criticism is coming from the Left. Most of the Right's anti-technology impetus comes from Christian circles. Some might argue Right-wing opposition to Green Technology is rooted in an anti-Technology mindset but that's not the case at all. They're all for new technologies and in fact one of their primary arguments against the Green movement is an argument for scientifically engineered forms of synthetic energy, food etc... and for science to produce more efficient products. They confidently believe science will solve the problems of disease, food shortage, scarcity of water etc.
The handful of people on the Right that have embraced the organic foods movement represent something of a recent anomaly, almost a Romantic reaction to the Right's generally pro-Enlightenment thinking. This is where one encounters the strange twists and turns of culture in which the Left-Right divide breaks down. Today's conservatives were the progressives and forward looking transformationalists of past generations. When the momentum got away from them and ventured into realms they did not wish to go, they pulled in the reins, circled the wagons and became conservatives. And yet in terms of principled thinking, they can only be described as revisionist and schizophrenic. The present cultural crisis has led many Conservative Protestants to all but erase the past and embrace Roman Catholic social constructs and even read them into their own historical narratives. For the most part since they cannot be honest with themselves, or their past, one cannot expect them to provide an honest (let alone wise) assessment of history in general.
Either way, mainstream publications like Politico have no time for such views and it's interesting to watch displays like this piece on robots which are willing to posit somewhat absurd extremes as all but givens.
Are medium-skill jobs really something that can be replaced by robots? All we need then are high-skilled labourers? I think that can be disputed from many different angles. There might be more truth to it when it comes to a country like Germany... which is somewhat unique. They've maintained the industrial-manufacturing base but it's all predicated on the ultra-high quality and engineering of the products they produce. Germany's model is not applicable to Britain or America let alone Italy, Mexico, or Turkey. What sort of pro-robotics argument will they use in those countries? I'm sure they'll come up with something.
What was perhaps most laughable was the argument for women in the workplace as being somehow pro-family.
Pro-family? From whose standpoint? Clearly the corporate puppet-masters who back Politico and other mainstream media outlets.
What seems like almost a fluff piece is in reality a piece of weaponised agenda-driven journalism. It wasn't meant to make a splash but to cast doubts and to throw a few arguments into the arena. It's something that all publications and outlets are likely to engage in... but it's important to realise this and not get swept away.

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