I spent a good chunk of my childhood in third world countries. Most of that chunk was spent in Bangladesh, which was then arguably the poorest country in the world, but I visited or lived in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Nepal and India, among others.
There’s a feel to the third world one becomes familiar with: beggars, infrastructure that doesn’t really work, people doing terrible menial jobs. There’s the huge disparity between the wealthy and everyone else, or even those who have managed to attach themselves in a semi-dignified way to the wealthy.
Cruelty is routine and unremarked. Indian police officers routinely beat people as punishment (similar to their American counterparts). Servants are treated terribly, and in fact the locals routinely treated the servants far worse than foreigners. This has hardly changed, Vivekenanda, in the 19th century, noted that Americans treated their servants far better than Indians did.
The US is about to make a double digit percentage of its population homeless. Something like 20 to 30 percent — or more — of American small businesses have or are soob to shut down by the end of the pandemic. The jobs won’t all come back and those that do will pay worse and feature worse treatment than the ones before (which were mostly not well-paid and featured routine meanness).
We’re talking about 30 million to 60 million homeless.
These are staggering numbers.
The United States will feel third world. Oh, parts already did, when I landed in Miami airport the first time I immediately thought “third world.” Relatively prosperous third world, but third world.
Those places will be worse–and Florida (as I predicted near the beginning of the crisis) has handled the pandemic noticeably badly.
Of course, for many, little will change. They’ll keep their jobs, they’ll be fine. I recently witnessed a discussion of infosec jobs, talking about how for a person with a degree and a couple certifications, $120,000 was a lowball. There will still be good jobs, and you’ll still be able to lose everything in a few months if you become seriously ill.
But when those people who are hanging on go out in the streets, they’ll see, even more than now, the fate that awaits them if they slip.
So much of American meanness, and the culture is mean in the details of its daily life, comes from this fear. Because it is so easy to slip into the underclass, even if one “does everything right,” Americans are scared, even terrified, all the time. They suppress it with massive amounts of drugs (most of them legal), and most deny it, but the fear drives the cruelty.
In the Great Depression, people became less cruel, not more. They saw that the idea of meritocracy was absolute bullshit: The richest people in society had fucked up, good people wound up in poverty, and merit had nothing to do with who had how much.
I hope this is what will happen in the US this time. I fear, instead, it will lead to even more cruelty. Instead of saying, “We should make sure everyone is taken care of” and instituting universal health care, good wages, and a non-punitive welfare system (whether through a universal income or some other way), Americans will instead become even more cruel out of fear of losing their place.
The US is “undeveloping.” It is moving away from being a developed nation to being an undeveloped nation.
This process has been going on for a loooooong time. At least 40 years (1980), and arguably since about ’68 or so. The frustration, as an analyst, was that the trend was obvious but it took so long. There is, as Keynes said, a lot of ruin in a nation.
Change is slow, very slow, until it is fast. People who live in the slow period, of long decline, don’t really believe in collapse, they assume that things will get worse in a steady line.
But, in fact, there are long periods where everything changes slowly, then periods like earthquakes. 2008 was an earthquake (and collapse nearly inevitable by bailing out the rich). This is also an earthquake. Amercians will FEEL different afterwards, even if Covid goes away 100 percent, which it may not, because Americans refuse to do what is necessary. American media keeps having articles about how Covid will never go away. Well, except for quarantining visitors, it will for many countries. But not for the US, or Brazil, or India. Third world countries all.
Nor should we get too down on third world countries. The US is third world and experiencing the complete corruption of its ruling and governing classes, with the collapse of its administrative ability. When your post office can’t even deliver mail, you’re a failing state; this is such a basic part of being a government that it’s part of the Constitution, written in the 18th century, but because the post office isn’t a kleptocratic institution, the American political class is destroying it.
Most third world nations, indeed, are handling Covid better than The US.
Nonetheless the process is underway. The US is already governed like a third world nation, it just has a lot of legacy infrastructure and institutions to destroy to get the full experience.
So, expect that this is one of the times that matters. Expect that the US will be different after this. Expect that it will feel different. Understand that your personal position has become much more perilous. You must reduce your vulnerability and/or attach yourself to a corrupt money stream in a way which makes you indispensable. Being valuable is not enough, it needs to hurt important people if you you go down. If it doesn’t, the second the numbers say you go, you’re off, and any individual who can be replaced will be if you get on the wrong side of someone more powerful.
There’s lots of good paying jobs, yes, but almost all of them can be done by someone else. It doesn’t have to be you.
Bear all this in mind as you plan your future in the new third world United States.
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Plague Species
I’m very sad this morning. Michelle Obama has admitted she is experiencing low-grade depression. The racism she has had to endure her entire life and now all the recent racial turmoil has her on emotional tenterhooks. Poor dear. She has the weight of the world on her shoulders. It’s not easy managing a $12 million Martha’s Vineyard mansion. Meanwhile, my wife commutes to work an hour each way every day where she teaches children. She is quite literally putting her life on the line just as any soldier does and yet no one even thanks her for her service let alone pays her what she’s truly worth. No $12 million dollar mansion for my wife and, oh, lest I forget, my wife doesn’t have the luxury of experiencing low-grade depression. If she indulges that luxury, she’s living in a cardboard box underneath the freeway until the cops come and rustle her off and excoriate her for her white privilege.
This is what they mean by reparations.
Ché Pasa
“…about to feel like…”
Of course, for many Americans, we’re already there. Have been for many years. It’s getting worse, though, much worse for many millions, and our rulers don’t care. What they care about is on display in the streets and in the board rooms of giant corporations and in the halls of congress: suppressing revolt in ever more cruel and creative ways.
That almost matters more to them than accumulating more wealth. Can you imagine?
Howard
In 1974 when I was 20 and 21 years old, I lived for most of the year in Bogotá, Colombia, having spent all of my life up to that point in rural Iowa. Ever since that time, I have lived with the light-bulb experience I had on my return (through the Miami airport) that this was our future in the US. I had a couple of images in my mind for some things whose names I didn\’t know yet but which came to be called \”neoliberalism,\” \”globalism,\” and \”environmental collapse\” (well, maybe I already had that last term, can\’t remember).
One image was of a whole bunch of tubes filled with water to varying heights representing the average person\’s standard of living in different countries. These tubes were about to be connected so that the level of water in all of them would gradually become the same. In a place like the US, the level would drop way down. In a place like Colombia, it would come up by an imperceptible amount or stay the same, and in Haiti or Bangladesh it might rise noticeably. I intuited this as a process that would be more or less complete by the end of my natural life span. I am 67 now. I have modified this image over the past couple of decades to allow for something (global-level corruption, let\’s call it) that is draining the whole system of water, so that the relative level will not in fact come up anywhere.
The other image was of the flight path of an aircraft as it makes a landing, and this image is also related to global environmental collapse as well as economic immiseration. It\’s similar to the \”earthquake\” idea mentioned in this post. The descent of the aircraft can be a smooth landing, but more likely it will resemble futile attempts to maintain altitude punctuated by heart-in-mouth sudden drops, ending in some very hard contact with the ground.
Guest
Compared to th US I grew up in, that 3rd world feeling started with Reagan. Remember how astonished people were at the explosion of homelessness and the closing and emptying of mental hospitals into the streets? People younger than me think it’s just normal.
It’s already getting much worse in Portland. Conservatives I know talk about leaving their tidy suburbs because they can’t stand to see the encampments on highway embankments and near grocery staores. The real problem to them is the liberals running the city who don’t “clamp down” on the homeless. That’s how conservatives look at every problem.
NL
Gold down ~1.5% as of right now as the headlines are that the ‘talks’ are to collapse … the so-called people’s representatives got their marching orders, ‘relief’ averted, dollar drop stopped…… for now… it could be just a reprieve that the people in the know convert their dollars into other forms of wealth… or it could be permanent…
… run for your life with your dollars, think creatively, euro is not a good alternative, buy yuan, Russian ruble. Or you can light a cigar and get a glass of whisky and watch this Titanic think, while pondering Hegel…
Quantity become quality suddenly… when USSR collapsed, it killed the US, because the source of progress is the contradiction between opposites..
Stirling S Newberry
One aspect of third world is that even people who are rich do not understand the poor. Another is the marginal work of being more corrupt. Let me explain both.
In a genuine meritocracy, and they have existed, a large number of the technocratic elite were, on some level, poor when they grew up and they made a living on taking tests. When the culture begins talking about a meritocracy, it can be safely assumed that it is very little about their culture which is meritocratic. They are aristocratic, kleptocratic, and look to their family to continue the true values of society. This for example was written in the 19th century – greater group fools running a country you would never like to see. Unfortunately, you are living to see exactly that because America in the late 20th century and early 21st century is precisely the same thing. In Britain, it was only the sense of obligation which had any hold on the upper class. In the United States, a sense of honor is also the last sense which has any attraction, largely because one can do a sense of honor by doing obnoxious things. (Hillary Clinton and Libya should be an excellent example taught to those who come after: Qadhafi had repented but the sense of honor made the diplomatic class rebel against allowing someone into the club. Like in Norse mythology the rules demand one thing and the honor demands something completely different. When these 2 intersect in opposite directions a slice of authority is destroyed by the decision and when it all comes to an end than Ragnarök or Götterdämmerung is at hand.)
This means that the problems of the vast mass of people are largely irrelevant to the elites. Getting into Harvard as a member of the graduate occupations is so far removed from the normal undergraduate experience as to be a completely different endeavor. This is because the number of people who are able to give orders to the Hoi Polloi (yes I know it is a double “the,” sosumi) becomes very large in proportion to the top jobs. For example, the president of the United States is now one of 350 million, but in actuality is intelligence has to be about 130 give or take 5 points, because people more than in intelligence cannot, in general, communicate to the managerial class. This is about 5% of the population, which on an individual skill is quite good but on a statistical level is 15 million people, when one takes the level of managerial experience one gets down to 1 million people. Which is why the United States Senate consists of 100 people who think they could be president.
A large number of people are the descendants of important people, which often means that they have never had to understand the actual mechanics and bottlenecks of producing goods, shipping goods, packaging goods, storing goods, etc. what they have is a name in his society where that means something. What this very directly means is that the number of people who are going to be elite to not understand how the structure of the economy actually runs. They are talking to a group of elite individuals to not understand the mechanics of the society or its political mechanics. It is a world where Davos has become important, a community where there is no society to speak of.
So this is a relatively ordinary observation, but the 2nd point is a great deal harder to explain to the people who have something about it. It is rolled where the means by which any organization is rated against other organizations of the same kind produces counterintuitive results. One looks at a not-for-profit, some of the means for determining how much of their income gets used as a not-for-profit and how much is used to raise money and the gamed, because it, economically speaking, is easier to gain the system than to actually contribute to the not-for-profit organization. This is true for Standard & Poor’s bond rating, University ranking, and so on.
Become too why corruption is so complex. When one gets into the black economy and the lower levels of states, it actually becomes much easier to engage in corruption – everybody knows that the purpose of the state is to hide money from someone. At the top level, it is easier to find corruption, because they are both homogenous in many levels, and they furthermore believe that corruption is almost always bad. The remaining levels of corruption have an actual use in that the level of observation needed to find the “best” is more nuanced than the actual levels of observation that can be done. For example, if you want a ditch digger you can measure certain aspects of what they do and decide accordingly, but as the operative condition gets more complex the level of observation grows beyond what can be measured. The difference between the level of measurement and the level of certainty is somewhat the same as the uncertainty principle, at the bottom, there are 2 things that are inter-dependent at a base level.
When one engages in corruption just below the best and just above the worst it becomes more complicated. Because neither corruption below a certain level works (best) nor does the abandonment of the entire concept (worst). Corruption is neither a thing in itself, but instead is a sliding scale based on the levels of corruption that are present in the society. Corruption is less measure in and of itself and becomes a sociological, cultural, economic, and political measurement. The sense of what level of corruption then becomes a more nuanced construct. This is why certain people can ignore the rules, because that level of corruption is normal, while certain other people engage in less heinous acts are pilloried, because the same level of corruption has not impacted the area in which they are working. Corruption has a social construct’s that different levels have different degrees of corruption. This is most visible in the area of passing along to one’s offspring the benefits of being elite: nonfiction writing is a well-understood concept and there are millions of people who do it. Since some such need to gauge the activity constantly, one of the privileges of being elite is to be at the front of the line rather than number 1 million. This is because the rewards are for not to the object in question but the share of viewers and the percentage of their income that they are willing to pay.
It also means that certain kinds of corruption are not yet fashionable among the elite. For example, certain kinds of gaming the system are not encouraged, partially because they are related to athletics, which its own field and does not work in the same fashion: the top levels are required to be able to perform feats of unimaginable skill, which that corruption has two blends in with the undeniable fact that winning is actually important. This does not mean that corruption does not take place, but its form is different. This is why gymnasts are inordinately easy pickings for pedophiles – the skill positively encourages a detailed understanding of how young bodies move, and it is this skill that pedophiles possess in spades. Hormones give an inordinate edge to observation.
What this means to the members of the bottom who are nonetheless more than competent at judging social, political, economic, or historical settings is a smorgasbord of examples of why society is either on the way up or the way down. In the 1870s in America, there was a plethora of degradation, manipulation, misconduct, and subversion. However, it became obvious to those who are elite that this menagerie of misdealings had a consequence. The vast mass of human beings would not gauge in anything even faintly resembling these activities less the were on the inside. People wanted to make money into cities expressly for this reason: they wanted to be on the inside of whatever corrupt scandal was occurring. Hence corruption was only useful if it could be managed: when there was little way of determining who was the best but could know who was loyal.
So this is why corruption looks on the way up, but how does it work on the way down? When one looks at empires that are falling (and I have my favorites the Qing Dynasty, the bakufu of Shogun Japan, the Russian Empire, the French kingdom, the British Empire, and the American Empire) one sees certain aspects which repeat themselves with regularity. One is that family is more important then anything, and the next most important thing is to be 1 with ones group. There is nothing that instills these as cardinal tropes, and indeed a study of families suggests that a more literal reading of the data is required. And of course being 1 with the group is a losing battle from the outset.
There is a difference between allowing for variation, on one hand, and the reflexive purpose of society on the other.
Stirling S Newberry
“In ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ (Random House), Isabel Wilkerson contends that the brutal Indian system of hierarchy illuminates more about American racial divides than the idea of race alone can, and early in her book she relays a story that King told about his India trip.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/isabel-wilkersons-world-historical-theory-of-race-and-caste
Hugh
I remember when one of my sisters told me she could remember when she was part of the middle class. I think that says it all. Middle class used to mean stability and a fair amount of security. But the middle class has been shrinking for years. And even if you’re still in it, most of the stability and security that used to define it are already gone, or so highly conditioned as to be a bad joke.
At least we still have our freedoms. We have the freedom to die in this ditch or that one over there. What more can you ask for –unless you are some radical leftist commie?
LHE
Good. Americans deserve it. No empathy for them at all.
Stirling S Newberry
The Middle Class was always a delusion but for a long time it was useful to those that it applied to. However, the were large sectors of the population were it did not apply to especially when there was another delusion – race – which trumped class.
Richard Arnold
@Ian Welsh
So let me get this straight.
To survive we should all sell out to big money and make ourselves indispensable? Because self interest comes before anything else?
Somehow the everyone for themselves mindset does not seem like a winning socialist strategy.
Oh, and I guess all those high paying jobs explains why there are record breaking levels of unemployment.
Plague Species
Soon enough, most of us will be Chris McCandless whether we choose to be or not. I already have my abandoned bus staked out just in case. I just have to remember, no wild berries.
tsisageya
The only thing we should be worrying about is our coming-to-Jesus meeting.
Ian Welsh
*shrug*
Americans already decided not to fight. I mean, as I’ve said elsewhere, what you should do is have a fucking revolution.
I hope you do, but I doubt you will.
If you don’t, well, sorry, but America’s about to become even more dog-eat-dog.
Given how Americans have acted, and voted, I assume that’s what most of them want. I assume most of my readers don’t, but most can’t get the fuck out, so since they’re there, they’ll have to do what it takes to survive.
Sorry, that’s how it works: if you create a shit society, people do shit things.
If you don’t want that, revolt. Storm Congress while it’s in session, the White House and really occupy Wall Street and the Hamptons.
And defeat the eliminationist right, who, unfortunately, have most of the guns. The cops and DHS will side with them, your only hope of winning is if enough of the military sides with you, which seems… unlikely.
I mean, you fuckers have dug yourself one of the world’s biggest holes and every time someone suggested you stop digging you refused.
So, you’re moving a couple layers down in Hell. Expect to act like it and be treated like it.
Plague Species
A question for Joe ByeDon. Joe, are the homeless as diverse as the latinos, or, are the homeless a monolith like blacks? If anyone can trump Trump at his own babble gaffe game, it’s Joe ByeDon.
Hey Joe, take a look at this monolith.
#BlackPartiesMatter
tsisageya
Maybe you can revolt up there in Canada. Go ahead, I want you to.
Synoia
Gibbons decline and fall covered 10 or more Centuries, if one Includes Byzantium.
That’s a lot of falling. So much that one could believe there was no fall, just steady state.
The US is the last surviving 19 th Century empire. It inherited the British Empire’s mantle after WW II, with the lend/lease agreements.
It cannot endure, consequently is will disintegrate in violence, because the current US Government is accomplished at violence.
I’ll make my point: If I could finds a comfortable warm county I’d go there. I’m in the US because when I came here, it was the least worst place to reside.
tsisageya
A kingdom divided will not/can not stand. It will fall of it’s own weight. All I can do is watch and approve. Babylon falls.
tsisageya
What is happening? I thought I was banned.
Ian: you are now. You sure worked hard at making sure of it.
Anon
>There is, as Keynes said, a lot of ruin in a nation.
In case you’re interested, this is attributed to Adam Smith (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#Attributed).
Ché Pasa
I think it was Toynbee who pointed out that the Roman Empire continued in one form or another until the last sultan was expelled from Constantinople/Istanbul in 1922. One of the sultan’s primary titles was Kayser-i Rum (Caesar in Rome) you see and the Ottoman Empire was deemed successor to — and continuation of — the Byzantine Empire, which in turn was the legitimate successor to and continuation of the original Roman Empire established by Octavian.
Question: does the British Empire still exist in one form or another? Is the Commonwealth merely a continuation of the British Empire? Is the Dominion of Canada merely one of many appendages of British imperialism?
As for the United States, an argument could be made that it was established as an imperial enterprise by the British, and its independence was intended to expand the imperial origins of the colonies and state(s) first by domestic conquest then overseas — while denying any such thing.
The contradiction is fundamental to understanding the US in its current state of flux.
Meanwhile, though it may not be immediately obvious, there are still many hundreds of thousands of people in the streets day after day, night after night, in hundreds of towns and cities “all over this land”.
The revolt is constant and current. It has yet to become a revolution. It may never. But revolt is most surely under way. And not solely in the USofA.
tsisageya
I understand that none of you have any respect for Jesus Christ. You may even think that He has nothing to do with all this. You may all think that you have no sin. You probably think it’s all irrelevant. Buddah is the one to follow. But did Buddah die for your sin? Did Mohammad die for your sin? Do you even understand that you are a sinner?
tsisageya
Oops. there I go getting banned again.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“Most third world nations, indeed, are handling Covid better than America.”
Yes, I noticed the other day that Vietnam had suffered either no cases or almost none (I forget where I found that article, alas).
Maybe we should have let them take us over when they beat us in that war. 😉
someofparts
Will the inhumanity about to be unleashed on this nation tank the value of the greenback or will our reptile overlords manage to keep its value up despite our impending socio/economic calamity?
How will the Canadian dollar be impacted?
I’ve heard that being the global reserve currency really isn’t good for regular people and that it only benefits the wealthy. That’s why I asked the first question. I know the reptiles in charge would like to keep the greenback pricey while immiserating the multitudes, but can they actually pull it off?
different clue
@Ian Welsh,
In your Great Depression paragraph, when you write “They say that the idea of meritocracy was absolute bullshit” . . . I assume you meant to write ” saw” instead of “say”.
different clue
Dear Mr. LHE,
You must be one of our foreign friends.
All I can say is . . . thank you so much for sending over your best and brightest to get the party started, eh?
( Now . . . if you are actually a self-hating anti-americanitic anti-americanite, I hope you get to feel every single thing that you hope the rest of us get to feel).
Willy
I was a big fan of Jesus and conservatism until evangelical Christians screwed me over. After I had done all the right things. I felt like the naïve altar boy placed onto the priests lap. These things were only supposed to happen with athiest commies.
So then I actually read the Bible. I actually did my homework. I actually read between the lines. It’s a very sad thing, what our once good and decent Christianity has devolved into. With the facts against them, all they have left is to blame and shame.
Ian Welsh
Oh, blame is sometimes useful. If it’s a one time fuckup, let it lie. If it’s a pattern, you need to know who to get rid of.
scarnoc
Meh, I do think at some point the American people will revolt. It\’s around the corner. And when it happens, it\’s gonna be absolutely explosive. Guard your borders, Ian, you all won\’t want the spillover. I\’ve got one of those well paying tech jobs. I\’m using that revenue to move out of the suburbs with my family, since I\’m able (and in fact instructed) to do the job remotely. Going rural. Things will get much worse before they get better.
different clue
If America is going to become a Third World country, that means that Canada is going to have a Third World neighbor. So Canada will have to get ready for that. Part of the Third World Neighbor experience may well involve millions of Illegal American Aliens surging across your border and infesting your country. And since America will be too Third World anymore to care about Mexicans and Central Americans coming into or going through America, you could see hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans helping us Neo-Third-World Americans to infest your country.
And of course the onward march of man made global heating will make enough of Mexico, Central America and USA straight-up outright uninhabitable that a hundred million or more climate refugees will add on to the mere Third World Deterioration refugees in surging into Canada.
Canada may well have to place itself under the protection of CommuNazi China to keep out all us Third World Americans. The price of that protection may well be taking in enough Chinese Settlers to keep out the millions of MexAmericans who would otherwise stream in.
anon
Plague Species – I’ve been listening to Michelle Obama’s podcast. So far it’s just Michelle reminiscing about the good ol’ days with Barack and her closest friends. Don’t get me wrong, Michelle is very likeable, but she’s been encapsulated for decades by her husband’s wealth and political influence, which makes her inadequate to address the social ills we are facing in 2020. Most of her listeners are likely well-educated upper class women like herself who aren’t worrying about unemployment or being evicted. Like many other wealthy middle aged female celebrities, it feels like she is trying to be a self-care/health/wellness guru, similar to Oprah. She is nice to listen to but a lot of what she says has me rolling my eyes.
GrimJim
The US has always been a Third World state, with a few very rich Masters and many, many poor Servants, with a tiny sliver of these being House Servants (i.e., Middle Class) . However, after WWII having the only surviving industrial base and the biggest effective military with viable force projection enabled the US to support a bigger Middle Class and the old myth that America was the land of opportunity. And the Masters kept up that trend as long as it served to keep them on top.
The moment it did not they whipped out Neoliberalism and started returning everything to the status quo antebellum. They just never got around to letting the Proles know…
Gunther Behn
There should be some discussion about how life in 3rd world America will affect those who now (or are about to) will depend on income from pensions, 401(k) plans and Social Security.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Off topic:
(North American Central Time)
The Magical Mystery Tour 8 PM – 9 PM. Host Tom Wood picks a theme for an hour of Beatles music.
Beaker Street 9 PM – 12 AM. Legendary host Clyde Clifford is having to take a few weeks off (myeloma; he’s 74). However, he expects the treatments to work, and he expects to return eventually. Meanwhile, Tom Wood will host Beaker Street as well.
https://arkansasrocks.com/
If you can’t make Beaker Street live, the previous shows are available at
https://beakerstreetsetlists.com/
Tonight’s show will probably be there tomorrow.
Dermot M O Connor
tsisageya, I think you\’re taking the \”fool for christ\” thing a bit literally.
Take a deep breath or three. Please.
bruce wilder
Feels that way now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-06/misery-ranking-will-show-u-s-getting-worse-versus-rest-of-world
Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa top the misery list, but the U.S. passes Mexico and Russia.
Anthony Cooper
Sin is separation from god. Nothing more to it. It’s an older definition, but clarifies doctrine in ways most important. The more modern definition, something akin to spiritual crime, is useful to empire, but not the least useful for spiritual growth. The new definition of sin short circuits wisdom, the weighing of complexity, in favor for a checklist, something like the Ten Commandments.
ricardo2000
You have nailed it Mr. Welsh. Americans have no one to blame but themselves. They have acted as if history and economics doesn’t apply to their society. Worship of money and fame, combined with ruthless bigotry, ended any philosophical nobility before the 19th century. It was loudly proclaimed with the Monroe Doctrine. Latin America could have the happiest countries in the world. But this Doctrine doesn’t serve peace, justice, and happiness. It institutionalized colonial economies run by Quislings with treacherous dreams of Florida condos.
All the techniques of empire are coming back to the US, most notably in the form of brutal police stupidity. BORTAC is not an elite unit. They are merely privileged to use, and teach, extrajudicial cruelty, just like the death squads that have always tormented Latin America. Just as US trainers have always taught local collaborators to torture and murder those who would make their neighbours powerful. Americans claim descent from the Constitution and its founders but they have never applied any of the sentiments of the document to the means they use to make themselves rich. America isn’t democratic in any sense as slavery, theft, fraud, and genocide are employed world-wide. For no better reason than to protect the wealth and power of their oligarchs just like every other imperial crusade.
US citizens have been lying to themselves for decades, if not centuries. The logical cultural development had them electing a proudly ignorant, bare-faced liar as President. The world can no longer pretend US citizens know anything about the world, their own best interests, or the best interests of their longest allies and best friends. US citizens have put the world through 3 great recessions in 20 years, destroying decades of lower and middle class wealth. They can’t be expected to defend democracy, expand human rights, maintain an incorruptible rule of ‘law’, or manage the most important part of world’s economy.
GlassHammer
“Given how Americans have acted, and voted, I assume that’s what most of them want” – Ian
As an American let me assure you that most of my countrymen never have any idea what they themselves want, they only know what someone has told them to want.
As far as I can tell no populace in the developed world is less self aware, less fully formed, and less capable of introspection than us.
This is probably because we are the natives of network news, the entertainment nation, the conspiracy citizenry, and the original commuters of the electronic highway. We live in the perfect censorship environment, one that constantly bombards you with so much data that you can’t even form your own thoughts.
And we are taught at such a young age to consume data that by the time we are an adult we are completely unable to change without a dramatic event.
Ian I would never have even found your writings if not for the 2008 crisis forcing me to seriously reconsider what I listened to and the harm/benefit of the normal American life.
Trinity
What GlassHammer just said. Morris Berman prefers the version where all Americans are stupid, but the truth is that Americans are the most propagandized citizens in the world, too busy fulfilling their mandate to buy, buy, buy, and stab your coworkers in the back to get ahead so you can buy more stuff. The endless video streams of talking head lies, and something like 20 minutes per hour of additional exhortations for you to buy this one thing you just know you cannot do without, and btw your neighbor already has one! (Berman was right, however, about getting out of the country.)
This is really about how stupid our leaders are. It’s about oligarchic hubris, human ego run amok. I’ll repeat it yet again: this problem was known and solved thousands of years ago by certain native populations across the globe. Hopefully enough of them survive that humanity has a fighting chance.
Ian, this constant focus on America, while true, doesn’t acknowledge that neoliberalism has been deliberately spread throughout the world, and Canada will not escape. Neoliberalism is the Borg, assimilate or die. It’s not a matter of degrees, it’s a matter of time. Isn’t the NHS under ongoing attack? Neoliberalism didn’t begin with just the US, it was really pushed by a joint effort with Maggie. As someone pointed out, we also know this was a problem in 1776 and 1896, and 1972, and it will continue well into the future. They will not learn until, as you noted, someone teaches them the lesson.
The one rule that binds us all: everything is connected to everything else, and as “different clue” pointed out, the problems never remain in one place for that reason. That’s the nature of the world, even the universe. It’s the lesson we learned long ago, and forgot. It’s the lesson the oligarchs think doesn’t apply to them. It’s what climate change really is: fuck with the global climate system and it will fuck with you right back. Or as my mother used to say: what goes around, comes around. I’m not saying there’s hope in this, not at all. I’m just saying as long as the people in power are stupid and forget this rule, this will continue, ad infinitum. And it won’t be isolated to a few countries, their reach is now global.
V
GlassHammer PERMALINK
August 7, 2020
I left more than 17 years ago for most of your listed reasons; thanks for that blast of reality, rarely seen, heard, or read in the Usian press…
Revolution? Sure; from bad to the worst imaginable; done is done; and should be recognized as such…
anon y'mouse
in many, many places it never rose to the level of the 1st world. even though it could have, it suppressed development in certain places for certain people simply to maintain its caste system. and i am not merely talking of the rural hinterland places or the deep south.
jackiebass
I live in a small city of around 30,000 in upstate NY. Homelessness has been a problem for at least 2 decades. It is sad to see very old people digging in trash cans to pick out deposit bottles and cans. In the Sumer then set up camps under local bridges. I’m not sure where they go when it gets cold. Our county is one of the poorest in NYS. Intrafracture is a mess needing repair or replacement.The only good employers are schools, local government, two prisons, or the hospital. Other than these places people have to work in low paying part time retail jobs. I would consider our county like something out of the third world.
Pelham
Back in the ’90s when Clinton was destroying welfare, Barbara Ehrenreich suggested an alternative: Keep welfare as it was but institute periodic floggings for recipients to satisfy our punitive lust. We’re approaching a time when this will seem perfectly reasonable.
Merf56
I believe we are already in a defacto third world country in many aspects. I live in sPhiladelphia suburbs in Montgomery county. Lots of huge expensive homes around me as well as regular folks houses. Most own their homes. Lots of BMWs and Lexus’ in the driveways. Yet in a five miles radius ( yes I actually mapped it out) we have 4 roads more or less permanently closed because the bridges were so unsafe. There is NO local or state timeline to ever have them fixed though the various PTB tell me they will ‘eventually be fixed’. I have been here 12 years and they have been closed for 8 to 12 years depending on the bridge. In the recent hurricane/tropical storm Isaias we literally could not go anywhere for three days as all our roads anywhere crossed flooded creeks – Perkiomen Creek, Skippack creek and their various branches and feeders. The roadbeds were Partially destroyed after the water subsided. This happens every time we have a nasty storm yet when our two major artery bridges were redone in the last few years they refused to raise them or raise/recontour the approaches. “No money they say though they keep cutting our taxes. Do they not see a connection??
M y son couldn’t get to his job 4 miles away for two days. On the third day a bridge opened and though it took him 23 miles out of his way he managed to get there. Our local roads are in massive disrepair unless they have a township supervision, state vip or other VIP living there. Our ‘award winning‘ Perkiomen Valley schools are Falling apart inside but somehow we are getting a new super duper HS football field done right now.. A teacher friend tell me there is no money for school supplies She has to buy them herself , the library has been given zero money for books For three years running and their computers are so old no one can repair them any more though the budget says otherwise.
Its all smoke and mirrors. Spouse and I were in the Peace Corps in the Philippines back 78-80. Two places we stayed for our various training had gorgeous state of the art modern bathrooms…..except…. there was no actual plumbing installed …so we had a giant water barrel for dip and pour bathing. A Potemkin Village.
This is America now..
Sorry for the rant. Your post hit a huge nerve for me – glad at least someone sees what I see..
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“…this problem was known and solved thousands of years ago by certain native populations across the globe. “
But what about the problem of how to get self-sustaining populations of human beings established off the Earth, in terraformed other worlds and/or self-supporting mobile colonies in space?
Why is that important? Because even if we find a way to fix the environment to undo all the damage we humans have ever done, another stray asteroid might come along, or we might have a massive series of volcanic eruptions, or–if nothing else–the Sun will eventually evolve out of the main sequence of stars and become a red giant. Even if the Earth remains inhabitable up to that point, it will then become uninhabitable.
If we abandon technology, we doom our species to eventual extinction.
I do not consider that an acceptable solution.
Donald Leo
1968 + 40 = 2008
I like your article but such a big mistake. It started in the 1980s so you were close and that would have been the +40 you were looking for.
Milton Friedman wrote a paper. 80s big businessmen got excited by the idea. Reagan pushed it. They were all wrong, and now we are here.
Jeremy
“Good. Americans deserve it. No empathy for them at all.” – LHE
I have to agree with you LHE. Having lived there for 20 years, I was constantly appalled at their sanctimonious ‘We’re the greatest’ attitude. And their lack of emapthy for the plight of the rest of humanity, often as a result of the violence unleashed on it by the most vicious military the world has ever seen, was chilling.
Screw ’em!
Jeremy
@ Ché Pasa – “Does the British Empire still exist?”
Oh, yes, very much so – it’s just well hidden to the likes of the 99%.
Watch ‘Spider’s Web’ and learn:
“At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secret jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance.”
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-spiders-web-britains-second-empire/
Bruno Ruhland
I think many people here ( including Ian) are forgetting that old basic Marxist concept that the ruling ideas of an era are those of the ruling class. And so we got the dog eat dog social Darwinist be-the-biggest-self-interested asshole-that-you-can-be (and, oh, utter ruthlessness is a natural part of it ) world. That is how we got where we are with the neoliberal free market religion/ all of life organized by money ideology. So it is a disaster and that world must self destruct.
But, funny thing about money. There are oceans of it. Our lives have been dedicated to keeping it circulating in the most idiotic wasteful uncapitalistic inefficient ways possible. The military industrial complex, the \”health care\” system, endless encouragement of consuming shit as the key to happiness, armies of people doing bullshit jobs, ridiculous predatory finance which is just a wealth sucking and magic money creating racket that produces nothing useful, all of our institutions thoroughly crapified – government above all- because they are just about money.
The iron law of money is that if it is all about money it will turn to shit.
So we have to uncapture money. Those oceans must be drained.Let there be inequality and rich people for a little while – let people have a net worth of say 25 million dollars – but no more since it will just be used to buy power and poison everything.It only really works anyway if you give it to people who actually need it for essential things. So we need to do that. And modern monetary theory is right. There is more than enough for doing good stuff. Poverty is bullshit – it is just the feel-the-fear way the ruling class rules as Ian explained. And then we need to have governments that actually serve the public good. Oh yeah, and kindness and solidarity are actually both more functional and more pleasurable than capitalistic assholism.
So we have to get life uncaptured by money. Then we can get on with the burning urgent save the planet/eliminate unnecessary suffering project. Money applied rationally to using science and the wonders of technology. That might be cool. We don\’t even have a choice.
An undercooked idea or two in here but I am not buying any people are just too fucked up arguments cuz that is just parroting the official ruling ideology.
Mark Pontin
Jeremy is correct.
Something like 32-36 per cent of global financial transactions currently go through the City of London and its annexes; New York and Wall Street are somewhere around 18-22 percent when I last looked.
At some point, too in the next twenty years the U.S. dollar will cease to have global reserve currency status*, and the City will benefit from that also. An agreement-incapable third-world kleptocracy that uses the global reserve currency as a weapon against its enemies on a fairly unrestrained basis is not going to be tolerated indefinitely. Large sections of the world — Russia, China, Iran — are already de-dollarizing.
Mark Pontin
* and do not tell me that the dollar cannot lose that status because there is no other single candidate like the Euro, renminbi, etc. that’s suitable. There doesn’t need to be —
https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016/08/01/14/51/Special-Drawing-Right-SDR
Essentially, Keynes’s bancor has existed since 1969. There are other alternatives.
Marv
\”The jobs won’t all come back and those that do will pay worse and feature worse treatment than the ones before –We’re talking about 30 million to 60 million homeless.\”
Well, by all means, let\’s keep importing Central America\’s and Mexico\’s poorest and least educated, letting them compete with Americans for jobs, health clinic and housing, that\’ll make things better.
I think \”just doing the jobs Americans won\’t do\” (at the wages and working conditions offered), will become meaningless as Americans will now be willing to \”competeon\”.
Mission accomplished for the elite in need of even more disposable servants, and without that troublesome language problem.
baldering
You are right, revolution is truly the only thing that will bring needed change. Look at global warming. It is clear that the elites would rather the world boil, causing untold mystery and death, than spend the resources needed to fend it off.
But the problem is the left has long since given up. In the current turmoil they still preach nonviolence like is is some form of religion. They have even convinced themselves that true change can only come about through nonviolence (Chennoweth comes to mind). They don\’t see they have been entirely beaten. They don\’t realize that nonviolent protest can simply be ignored, and since the left doesn\’t want any change that doesn\’t come about nonviolently, there is no consequence in doing so.
This is why global warming will continue. This is why we have fallen into so-called \”third world\” status, and why it will get far worse. This is why the November election will be a shit show and stolen again by the right, and why there will again be no consequence for it.
different clue
When looking for suggestive comparisons and analogies to what life has been like in America and will get more like in America, lets don’t forget the collapsed Soviet and post-Soviet Republics. There is much to be learned from reading and considering material by Dmitri Podboritz, Dmitry Orlov, and Teodor Shanin.
Fewer people have heard of Teodor Shanin, but he coined the word “peasantology” among other things. And did some systematic study of peasant survivalism in the midst of big formal economies.
https://anaryadravidvangaindigenous.blogspot.com/2009/07/re-teodor-shanin-on-peasantology-and.html
https://worldpress.org/Europe/1516.cfm
https://wiki2.org/en/Teodor_Shanin
different clue
@baldering,
The right pre-stole the election when they conspired to prevent Sanders from winning the nomination and when they pre-installed their Biden into the “presumptive nominee-ship”.
Biden represents the Right and Trump represents the Righty-Right. There are some differences to be sure . . . but are there enough differences to matter to the multiple-times-betrayed Sanderistas and Bernie-backers? Especially after sleazy little Clintonites go out of their way to refer to us as the “dirtbag left”?
There may be some Dirtbag Leftists who decide to leave the “President” line blank . . . or vote for some Vanity Third Party candidate . . . . and let the ClintoBiden Shitobamacrats see if they can win without the Dirtbag Left.
baldering
@different clue
The ‘shitobamacrats,’ as you label them, would rather lose than rely on the ‘Dirtbag’ left. This has already been proven unequivocally by the ‘Never Sanders’ lobby from the primary. Bloomberg is one big example, as is Bill Gates, who was weighing his options.
What I was thinking was Bush in 2001, who had the election handed to him on a silver platter by the right wing Supreme Court. The left is not ready to effect change, and probably won’t be able to even consider it until things get far worse.
different clue
@baldering,
Yes, it is the sad truth. On reflection, I would have added even one more word to the label . . . to cover ALL bases.
Catfood ClintoBiden Sh*tobamacrats. ( The “Catfood” in honor of their hatred for Social Security. The “ClintoBiden” so we don’t forget about the Clintonites and the Bidenoids.)
A reason there is not a very effective “left” in this country is because so many Presidents and others worked so hard to destroy it. Beginning with America’s most Evil President, Woodrow Wilson. How many people even remember his Palmer Raids? How many remember his imprisoning Eugene Debs on foam-rubber conviction on totally foam-rubber conceptual charges?
jonboinAR
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That\’s not even remotely in the realm of what\’s possible. Outer space is way, way, WAY inhospitable to life. So are all \”close\” planets. We have to take care of this one.
Tomonthebeach
I think the reason commenters are so pearl-clutchy and/or depressed is due to the awareness that all of this suffering could have easily been minimized had our president not undermined public health efforts at every single turn. Well, we might say, “I didn’t vote for Trump.” However, that hardly exculpates us from what happened. We all enabled the election of a Republican Congress. Maybe by not voting, or voting a split ticket. But the Left is just as responsible as the Right.
Guest
I don’t even blame the right wingers anymore. These last 18 months have really opened my eyes that the complacent center so-called-left is much more to blame than the implacable right.
They are the ones who compromise with the right but not the left. They are the ones that consistently dismissed our concerns for 40 years as overblown. When the wingnut vigilantes come, I’m turning in anyone with an NPR totebag. I hope pelosi lives long enough for them to get there hands on her and hers. Would love to see that. She, not trump, is the epitome of all that is wrong with this country.
Lex
I lived in Russia in the late 90’s. I’ve been trying to explain to people what life in a failed state actually looks like. It’s hardly the mad max fantasy of the beans and ammo crowd (though America might be able to achieve mad max). But the more I think about it, the more I realize that life won’t change much for many people. The inescapable insecurity is the most obvious trait and Americans already know that. I live in a dual income professional household with no children. But my wife has a lifelong autoimmune disorder so if she were to lose her job (with the “gold plated” insurance that still costs us $15K/year plus premiums, we’d lose everything and she’s die.
I hope you’re right that Americans will wake up when they can’t sleep through it anymore, Ian, but I fear we’re too far gone.
Hugh
Mark Pontin, in 2008, the Fed through its dollar swaps and other programs acted as the central bank to the world. Now it used that power to leave the financial system predatory and corrupt, and most of the benefits went to the world’s rich. But it did shore up this system. No other financial entity even came close.
In 2020, with the covid crisis, we see the Fed bailing out the rich again. Trump and the Congress can’t agree on a plan to help ordinary Americans but with the Fed the stock markets even with the economy in tatters are near their historical highs.
Mark Pontin
@ Hugh —
I’m aware of all that.
Part of the beef that states and actors like, forex, Putin have with the U.S. is that after the incredibly irresponsible — criminal — behavior by U.S. finance capital that created a *global* financial crisis, the U.S. state then did nothing to change U.S. finance capital or bring it heel, but effectively rewarded it (and in the process, yes, the Fed did extend those credit lines, with 75 percent of funds it created going to foreign banks) for its depredations and let them continue.
Of course, the U.S. state did nothing to rein in U.S. finance capital after 2008 because U.S. finance capital enacted a soft coup and took over the U.S. state, in a way and to an extent that Wall Street had never quite done hitherto, as far as I know. (But I’m no expert on U.S. history during the Gilded Age, so anyone who knows more please educate me.)
In my view, the path the U’S. has taken to where it is now was inexorably set then, in 2008. Before that there was a chance that the U.S. could take another turn; the bank-owned Obama administration’s handling of 2008 and its aftermath put the country squarely on the road to where it is now.
And it’s going to get worse, as Ian says.
But note also Lee’s post, just above ours: life will continue and it won’t look like Mad Max for more than a segment of the people some of the time. To recall W. Gibson’s phrase that ‘the future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed,’ that uneven distribution will become even more the case. There’ll probably still be regional centers of tech development and affluence around the SF Bay Area and Boston, even — or especially — if the country gets balkanized.
sbin
My grandparents were almost starved to death in Ireland.They immigrated to America where they were lowest class.When the depression hit they were a young family with children.
Hard work frugal habits and community helped them create a financial base for children to become middle class.
Middle class was much more humble.
Large food cellar and large savings are a must.
Debt is to be avoided at all costs.
A few generations with such habits creates wealth.
Federal Reserve is debasing that but simple habits still work.
Erelis
In terms of Portland, Oregon homeless problem. Portland and the county government are run by people I would would describe as very liberal. There is nothing stopping them from implementing any series of policies and programs to deal with homelessness. But instead these governmental institutions and their very liberal managers have literally given up control of the city streets to the homeless.
But what about the homeless. The homeless rarely comprise whole families or mothers with children living out in the streets. There are social welfare groups that focus on helping these particular vulnerable people. What is left over are petty criminals, prostitutes, drug addicts, drug dealers, and the mentally ill. Marx would call them the lumpen proletariat. And Marx thought of the lumpen as purely reactionary. The NYPD knew this instinctively as they would transport newly released lumpen petty criminals to the OWS encampment at Zuccotti Park.
Trailer Trash
Dear Leaders have made peaceful change impossible. As other posters have noted, there is no Left in Uncle Sam Land. All political groups bigger than three people, regardless of philosophy, have been infiltrated, and the infiltrators pit various groups against each other. Divide-and-conquer remains the ruling elite\’s only strategy. So far it has worked splendidly. Sort of.
For decades US peons have been passive. But now fear of starving is becoming stronger than fear of police, as shown by yesterday\’s general looting in Chicago. That toothpaste is not going back in the tube. The State will of course respond with more violence and repression, because that is all it knows. Overall violence is about to get much worse.
Will people overcome their fear of each other and learn to work together? If so, then a revolution is possible. If not, we can look forward to constant battles between police paramilitaries and civilians and various civilian paramilitaries. Mexico will seem peaceful in comparison. This is the path the US is on at the moment.
When the Empire finally dies the rest of the world will breath a sigh of relief. I wish I could say that the US will be the last empire to rise and fall. That would be worthy of celebration. Unfortunately there is not much interest in discussing the basic design flaw of societies that allow psychopaths to rise to the top. That flaw is hierarchy. As long as there is a top, there will be psychopaths to claw their way to it.
Funny how all the yapping about equal rights, financial inequality, freedom, etc. never mention hierarchy. How can people ever be equal when we are all forced into \”higher\” or \”lower\” status depending on skin color, ethnic group, family name, occupation, bank account size, education, etc., etc., etc.?
As long as some people are more equal than others, it will be easy to inflict cruelty on the less equal because, well, obviously they deserve it.
So
When I was young I accepted hardship. I ignored it. Improvisational living. Food stamps to hand to mouth. Moment to moment.
From 20 to 50 I tried to fit in the box(fear) society had allowed me to carve out the best I could. I succeeded and failed. But from that contrast I re-learned meditation and sprituality and found self belief in the realization that I am part of God.
Now with the help of my wife I am an artist. I may not be financially successful yet. But I have made it this far and I will never use fear to allow me to stray from the path again.
I know death is coming and the thought of it is fear knocking on my door trying to push me off my path once again. I keep working. It remains waiting patiently for me to get tired. Death and I are never finished or done. We are one. Love.