Being the best at being the worst might being in corporate profits for a short time, but it was never meant to feed, educate or house people.
Don’t look up. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
18 October 2022 | James Porteous | Clipper Media News
Armed with a suitable amount of gin or wine, it might still be possible to feel somewhat sorry for the leaders in the Global North.
After all, they had the world by the proverbials following World War II. They managed to score control of both the looser and the winners and set out to ‘rebuild’ the world.
And they did. For a time. But we all know what happens when you give a fool power. And a nuclear bomb. And control over the bulk of the world’s resources.
It was never going to be enough. Their economies are based almost exclusively on ever-increasing dividends and like banker’s babies in the sandbox, they were exceedingly reluctant to share their wealth.
And here we are. While the Western media continues to boast about companies cashing in on the green revolution, the US continues to increase its control of oil reserves, which would now include, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Libya, Syria, while continuing to move in on whatever else they can get their hands on.
And what of the future? As noted in the article below, the US – ‘histories most successful failing state’ – is never going to win the war -economic or otherwise- against China or Russia.
Indeed perhaps it is time to stop fighting and punishing Americans and start acting like an adult in the sandbox.
James Porteous | Clipper Media News
Illusory to think US can and will remain both rich and ungovernable for long
15 October 2022 | Dakotah Lilly | Global Times
There are far too many “leaders” and “journalists” in the West with too large of egos. Even when things are crumbling and crashing down around them, they still exalt that their situation is failing the most successfully.
At least that is the picture that Edward Luce for the Financial Times has painted. He argues that “America is history’s most successful failing state” and that the US serves as an example that a nation can be both “rich and ungovernable.” Luce then goes on to argue that while the US is failing and faces a very challenging future ahead, it’s not all bad because other powerful nations are also facing challenges.
Even when Western pundits are discussing the inevitable decline of the US as a hegemon in a unipolar world, they still attempt to find a way to attack Russia, China, or any other country striving for multipolarity and global fairness. The decline, Luce argues, can actually be traced back to the increasing polarization and divide between Democrats and Republicans. This is also a grossly misguided analysis of the current geopolitical situation.
To argue that the US is declining on the world stage and domestically because of polarization between Democrats and Republicans is to ignore a multitude of problems that average people in the US as well as across the world are all blaringly aware of. The US, like much of the Western world, is facing a cost-of-living crisis driven by financial speculation, wealthy profiteers and generally bad economic policy.
It is important to keep in mind that the two countries that Luce and every other mainstream Western commentator demonize in their articles – Russia and China – are not facing this crisis and are economically sound despite sanctions and economic war being waged on them. The American economy is inching towards recession, working people and families are struggling with rising costs and wages that have been frozen for decades, and political leadership has no answers for these issues; both parties are elite hubs of the status quo.
The humanitarian crisis presented in the US is alarming. Infrastructure is crumbling, people are desperate, and major cities across the US, like Jackson, Mississippi, are facing a clean water crisis; yet the US government still sees it as appropriate to send billions of dollars to Ukraine so the latter can buy more weapons. Does this have nothing to do with the decline of the US on the world stage? Life expectancy for US workers continues to fall, yet Pentagon budgets continue to climb, and the hundreds of military bases across the world continue to stay open.
It is clear to most observers that a radical change in the geopolitical arena has occurred, especially aggravated in the past year or so. People want a better world of peace, multilateralism, and cooperation, and for that to be built, there cannot be a hegemon that continues to defy common sense and international law. The people of the world and the US deserve better.
Luce’s point that the US can and will remain both rich and ungovernable is at best only true in the short term. The US may be “rich,” but the vast majority of the people are not: They are poor or working class, exploited by others in order to make the exploiters rich. No system that is built on the exploitation of a man by another man is sustainable, and the cracks have already begun to show.
The US will continue to be and will become more and more ungovernable as long as anarcho-capitalism and neoliberalism, guided by Wall Street and Washington, continue to rule the roost. As the US becomes more unequal, more violent, more desperate, and more anti-democratic with each passing day, ungovernability will be the least of the ruling class’s problem; rebellion will become a big part of the oligarchs’ day.
The author is a political and economic analyst with a concentration in areas such as socialism of the 21st century, Chavismo, Populism, Latin America, Geopolitical Trends, Latin America, and Kirchnerismo. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
