Who Gets the Blame?
The world is a hot mess literally. I really don’t know if we will be around long enough for climate change to make us extinct along with millions of other species that did nothing to deserve it. Russia has invaded Ukraine and everyone is aghast wondering “HOW could Putin be so cruel? It’s genocide!” Let me tell you something, Western-style capitalism is the cause. I remember when the Soviet Union was standing in line for toilet paper on the regular. That was the proletariat dressed in fifty shades of drab with a babushka to get 4 eggs and maybe butter. The leaders from Stalin on down were awash in beluga and furs. They were not residents of the Soviet housing bunkers where three or four families share an apartment. We call that the projects here in Chicago, They got a taste of that good life and it started with Reagan as do most shitty things about America.
Reagan wined and dined Gorbachev and ignored how much Raisa did not dig Nancy. The excesses began and suddenly Yeltsin is doing the vodka boogie for all the world to see. Capitalism came to the Soviet Union and the wall came tumbling down. Everywhere people wanted to be like America and just like in America the people were given just enough taste of instant gratification, but only a select few got the big rubles and yuan to wash in American real estate. Fabulous darling! You can get just enough cheesy couture to look like a$100 dollar hooker. With inflation, that was a $5 crack ‘ho just a few short years ago. The same thing happened in China. I do not recall a time when China was the land of luxury brands rather than the enforcers of the number of children a woman could not have. None of the right-wing evangelicals were screeching about abortion then. There were fashionable ethnic babies to buy/adopt.
So yeah, American Capitalism is emulated. The American lifestyle and gross indulgence in luxury are what people everywhere want. I think that the only real culture to come out of America is “I got mine and I’m going to take yours via taxation and various systemic “isms” so screw you!” All of the hue and cry about oligarchs in Russia and all the shit they are buying are the chickens coming home to roost. Where did they get the idea that this was cool? Who sent so much manufacturing to China that I defy you to find more than ten items made in America in a Walmart. There was a fire at a Walmart distribution center and people had to be evacuated or sheltered indoors with the windows closed. Why? All of that Chinese manufacturing is done with toxic ingredients that have sickened millions of Chinese- not the ones buying Louis Vuitton, etc. It is not surprising that we handed the means of making oligarchs and kleptocrats to the denizens behind the Iron Curtain and “Red China”.
They can buy property here in America where no average American can ever dream of living. Estates costing in excess of $20 million are common because there is a tiny fraction of the world that has that kind of cash. They do not care how many people get shit on or killed in other countries. They can launder more of their money with “philanthropy”. They will write a big check and get a Ukrainian nanny to take care of their children with various Slavic wives, and say, “I did my part”.
It’s not enough to lay the blame on the 45th American president. This started way before him and as a real estate baron, he could smell investment money to slap the family name on the outside of whatever crap was built. 45 is a dummy with a hand up his back moving his lips. It’s the cabal that has the serious liquidity that runs the game and all of us are pawns.
I cannot say what the future will bring but I will wager that there are a lot of people who think the same way about how we ended up in this tar pit economy. Also, all of the piss and cornmeal-smelling punks who call themselves “right-wing, will be in the same bucket- sheltering inside eating Jim Bakker’s powdered bunker food with the windows closed.
