"These jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back"
- Bruce Springsteen, My Hometown, Born in the USA [1984]
Having roamed abroad for years and decades, wreaking havoc upon one developing nation after another - laying them asunder to ponzi capitalism - the frankenmonster finally came home hungry. Now, amid record wealth, poverty, billionaires, debt, child homelessness, bankruptcies, lies, bullshit, school shootings, global warming, drone attacks, diabesity, foreign occupations, wealth inequality etc. etc., the once great corporate empire is staggering under the weight of its own accumulated excess.
1991 was the seminal moment - the fall of the Soviet Union. Vindication for decades of Cold War and Third World "intervention" - support for literally every fascist dictator on the entire planet. That pyrrhic "victory" inspired Fukuyama's NeoCon fantasy, "The End of History":
"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
Reading through the lines, it was a capitalist paradise consisting of unhindered labour exploitation and resource extraction, unfettered by socialists, unions or even real people for that matter. Fast forward and the Roaring 1990s only reinforced this view that Ponzi Capitalism had "won" and would never be rolled back.
Then came Seattle 1999:
The Dark Side of Globalization: Why Seattle's 1999 Protesters Were Right
"The WTO demonstrators were the "Occupy" movement of the late-20th century—mocked, maligned, and mostly right"
"Economists Michael Elsby, Bart Hobijn, and Aysegul Sahin found that competition from developing countries—not the decline of unions or the rise of automation—has been responsible for the bulk of the recent decline in labor’s share of income in the United States.
Chinese imports have lowered prices for consumers and raised the income of capital owners, but those benefits are either spread very thinly over a large number of people, or concentrated among the rich. The American workers who have been hurt by globalization have been hurt very badly, and America has no system in place to compensate them for that loss. China’s accession to the WTO in 2000, following the 1999 meeting, accelerated its rise as an export powerhouse."
Note the de rigueur Ponzinomic reference to "lowered prices for (jobless) consumers".
It's unbelievable that the Seattle protesters 15 years ago, were only ten times smarter than the abject dumbfucks who run the global economy today. And yet there is literally almost no commentary on Globalization now amidst today's wholly shrink-wrapped Walmartized Idiocracy.
That was the 2000s in a nutshell - total capitulation to Globalization. Post-9/11 Shock Doctrine.
And then of course, DotCom bubble and bust, followed by housing/subprime bubble and bust. Each time, Globalization tightened its grip on the developed world while the Third World's unlimited labour supply was opened wide to the Multinational industrial arbitrageurs. Buying in one locale and selling in another, financing the growing unemployment with debt.
And suffice to say that Fukuyama and the other NeoCon artists didn't foresee Bin Laden & Company creating their own "protest" movement against the global empire. Nothing like turning Globalization's energy source into history's largest guerrilla warfare zone.
And suffice to say that Fukuyama and the other NeoCon artists didn't foresee Bin Laden & Company creating their own "protest" movement against the global empire. Nothing like turning Globalization's energy source into history's largest guerrilla warfare zone.
From 1% interest rates to 0% interest rates: "This one Goes to 11"
Globalization peaked in 2007 by all honest accounts - Peak prosperity for the BRIC all-stars of ponzi capitalism: Brazil, Russia, China, India. Therefore, this post-2008 is merely a Dow-at-all-costs smoke and mirrors show for massively corrupt geriatrics, who've thrown every other generation under the bus. It's one last all-in attempt to keep the Globalized Ponzi Scheme from collapsing i.e. by making it far larger and more lethal. Financialization on steroids.
We've had plenty of warning. We are not "owed" anything more.
The 2011 Occupy protesters were right too of course, but fortunately they were ignored by this corrupt and stoned Idiocracy. This time there will be nothing left to save.
