[My apologies to Dmitry Orlov for posting excerpts from behind a paywall. How else to respond?]
This difference [between Soviet and American collapse], I have come to realize, hinges on a civilizational difference between the former USSR and the latter USA. It turns out to be, of all things, about love. What I mean by it is something along the lines of unconditional devotion, compulsion or surrender to a force greater than oneself, and the object of this love is what one treasures as the ultimate value, source of pride and sense of self.
Both Russians and Americans are endowed with such love, but they love different things. Russians love something they call Ródina (always capitalized). Although it can be translated as motherland, fatherland, native land, etc., these are all mistranslations because Russia is too big to be called a land. The Ródina does not belong to anyone; one belongs to it; or, rather, it belongs in one’s heart.
This superethnic entity within its vast geographic domain that is the object of the Russians’ love cannot be analyzed in terms of politics, economics, sociology or religion. It is just as meaningful, or meaningless, to analyze it in terms of footpaths, forests, heads of wheat, ants and moths. Ródina simply is, like the sun and the moon, and one’s love for it cannot be undermined by political upheavals, societal dysfunction, economic collapse or any other calamity. Nor is this love considered optional: inculcating “love of Ródina” is an explicit, stated function of Russian public education.
The Ródina phenomenon explains why after the financial, commercial and political collapse of the USSR Russia was able to arrest and reverse the process at social collapse, never ran much danger of cultural collapse, and has been able to claw everything back and then some. It is because Ródina has nothing whatsoever to do with finance, commerce or politics. Its place is in the heart, and no vicissitudes of fortune can dislodge it.
Here, Dmitry is a bit too pro-Russian in his exposition. Many of those ethnic groups bitterly resisted russification, and the fact that he quotes a poem in a language with only a few hundred speakers left tells a lot. Nevertheless, each country (just like a family) needs to have a unification principle, and the Russian Federation has it. It’s got its unifying language, it’s got its unifying values, it’s got its painful and glorious history finally free from the shackles of censorship, it’s got a sense of commonality, all of us in this together. Rodina serves as key social glue.
Turning now to the United States, what is the quintessential love interest of the American? The US is a nation of immigrants (a cliché, that, but true) who didn’t come there to form a harmonious superethnos with Native Americans and join them in their love of their native land. Most people came in hopes of claiming a piece of that land and striking it rich, or at least of having a chance to do their own thing. They came to colonize, to exploit and to profit. In America, possession and ownership are everything. An American’s first and last love is… money.
I think one need not be an American to see how grossly unfair and inaccurate this is. People came here originally to be free from gross oppression, from serfdom, from religious persecution, and later from communist dictatorships. Many fled utter destitution, as in the Irish famine, but not with the view of striking it rich. Coming as indentured servant was not a ticket to “making it.” Leaving one’s kith and kin network far behind is not exactly the recipe for a good life. But America gave them hope for bread, for children surviving and perhaps thriving, and for living in a political system less heartless and more “of and for the people” than the brutal systems they were leaving.
American culture and society are nice-to-haves and have largely fallen by the wayside. Culture has mostly been replaced by various commercial offerings while history—though very short and often shameful, still a vital component of culture—is being actively erased by toppling public statues. American society is so internally conflicted that people insist on being armed to the teeth and are notorious for shooting each other at the slightest provocation. Politics it is a toxic stew of mutual recriminations across a partisan divide so vast that it often looks like a low-intensity civil war. Commerce has been relegated to multinational corporations that have no specific interest in the US except as a source of consumers and of free money, and it is currently cratering, with consumer demand plummeting and retail chains collapsing. Once there are no more profits to be made, the multinationals will simply leave.
American history is indeed short, but no more shameful than Russian history. While here the colonists, later Americans, wiped out several million natives, bought extra territory from France and Russia, and stole a piece of Mexico, Russia killed over hundred million in various gulags under the czars and then the communists, as well as unknown numbers of Siberian natives, and stole a chunk of Poland, Finland, and Czechoslovakia. America had slavery, Russia had brutal serfdom. What’s the point of historical shaming? Nobody’s deep history is angelic.
But then there is a magic realm where everything is magically fine: finance. In spite of everything else being in dire straits, the stock market is doing well and banks remain solvent thanks to the Federal Reserve’s miraculous printing press. An ever-greater portion of the economy is being engulfed by an already bloated financial realm which specializes in generating, then hiding, bad debt. A large proportion of corporations are zombies addicted to free money with which to prop up their share prices by buying back shares. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the population is facing destitution.
True enough. I traveled recently across much of the country when moving, and what I saw in “small town America” was shocking. I have done this trip a number of times over the years, therefore I could compare. Americans are suffering, and their overuse of opioids should surprise no one. Opioids make suffering bearable. Until the government cracks down and you have to buy them on the street.
Love of money above all else neatly explains why the US is collapsing in the opposite of the canonical order, with finance—which should be the first pillar to collapse—perversely the only one to remain intact (for now).
I don’t personally know anyone whose love of money is their key value. Sure enough, many people immigrated here over the years to “strike it rich” as Dmitry says, but isn’t that true of Russia in its expansion period? The Russians went out to plunder the hinterlands. And now many former Russians are migrating back because Putin is giving away land, and they hope to do better there than elsewhere. (That free land was formerly inhabited.)
When I came here, I saw a country held together by common language, by pride in its history of victoriously shedding the shackles of colonial exploitation by the British monarchy, and a love for the pioneering political system the Founders put together, hoping, of course, that it would be improved over the years and provided the tools. Perhaps it was also the former ability of immigrants to form ethnic enclaves, and so to feel at home in the New World. There were the Chinatowns, and Slovenian or Italian towns, an Irish later Jewish Brooklyn, and Czech Chicago. And Black Detroit or Harlem. That gave America at least a flavor of the superethnicity that Dmitry speaks of. And small town America provided the agricultural backbone.
But that began to unravel from the mid-60s on. The Cubans fleeing to Florida refused to learn English and were given citizenship anyway. I had to prove my command of English in the citizenship proceedings, but they did not. And “English only” began to be attacked politically by people who either did not understand social glues or were in the business of destroying them. Equality before the law suffered even as important racial issues were finally being addressed. Affirmative Action defied the principle, but people shrugged it off. Now we have gotten to a place in some cities where the homeless and the insane are given special rights to behavior that would land me or you in jail, pronto. Corporate shuffling broke up communities. And small towns and small farmers began to be destroyed by targeted campaigns that go on to this day.
America’s first love has never been money, though doing better than one’s parents was a source of optimism. America’s love and pride has been its political system, the first in the world that built into its Constitution free speech, freedom of belief, equality before the law and equality of opportunity, rule of law, peaceful succession of power, and balance of powers as ideals to strive for. That is why the Independence Day is America’s most important holiday. Rightly so. Perhaps we should all celebrate it by reading once again that amazing and brilliant document, the Declaration of Independence.
The Founders toyed with ideas to build in economic democracy but lost their gumption. The first Pennsylvania constitution tried to blaze that trail. Later, Andrew Jackson fought the banksters and won. But they crept in by the back doors. That issue festers like an open wound, and transnational corporate takeover has made it all worse. This is not only America’s problem. Capitalism works better than socialism in providing needed goods, but it has a fatal flaw: it depends on overproduction and a world without limits.
Orlov is right – in the model followed here in the U.S., collapse is engineered by those who want to destroy the culture and morale first. Perhaps they are testing this particular approach on us, before they get to work on Russia. And most of the elites (those who love money and power best of all and don’t give a damn about America or the people on Main Street) are supporting the destroyers.
Rodina, 1967
Leaving Babylon 
July 26, 2020 at 2:22 pm
Hope this comment isn’t too long — it seems I often have trouble keeping them succinct… Always good to hear your points of counterbalance to Orlov. He is fond of tongue-in-cheek hyperbole in displaying his droll and dark Russian humor (which I enjoy) or to twist the knife in, and sometimes does go too far.
But let me offer a counterbalancing point as well. When Orlov talks about Americans’ “love of money,” I think he has his finger directly on the pulse of something fundamentally true, but the language he’s using isn’t quite right. I would characterize it instead as worship at the altar of work.
The country *did* start off as a land of opportunity, freedom from oppression, and freedom of speech, with a political system and Constitution to support that, as you say. But there has always been a strong undercurrent of Puritanism as well, going all the way back to the early colonists, especially in terms of its “work ethic.” This Protestant ethic elevates work as a prime value, and people who did not toe that line or see reason to be particularly industrious were not worthy of full respect. This ethic took deep root in America and is taken for granted as a self-evident good, which most do not question.
Since the country’s founding, by degrees work has become its own end (“the business of America is business”) and pushed other values to the background. To me, work for work’s sake as a prime value, especially when paired with consumerism as it has been since WWII, is corrosive to the soul by its nature. As these two forces have played out, the focus gradually became “me and mine,” instead of “our country.” This has led to the loss of any real sense of responsibility for the greater good. In my book, this is when our cultural collapse began in earnest, but the ultimate roots go all the way back to Puritanism and the founding of the country. I think Orlov is “right on” about this, even if his terminology misses the mark somewhat.
America is now a soulless place where many can be forced to uproot themselves and abandon the communities where they live to follow a needed job wherever it takes them. Consequently, we are rootless and have franchised out most of the country to where most cities and towns look just about like every other place with only slight regional variations. Time with family and children, the most basic unit of culture, not to mention friends, suffers due to the overwork required to fuel our consumerism. (Of course, for many, overwork at minimum wage is required even just to afford the basics.)
When you lose the sense of responsibility for the greater good and everybody just “wants theirs,” when it’s each person for themselves, my gain becomes your loss. Without sharing our burdens, life becomes alienating and lonely. It’s become a cultural cancer that has eaten away the very fabric of America. We’ve been “working” on cultural collapse for decades, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
July 26, 2020 at 3:04 pm
That is very well put. My uncle once inquired, after his visit to America, why the heck is everybody working so hard? Of course, the system of money built on debt makes it even worse, but the root of it goes deeper. I heard that one of the horrible things guards in nazi concentration camps did was to make inmates carry heavy sacks of salt from one place to another, pointlessly. Pointless work is torture. And we in the U.S. have also turned pointless work into a twisted art form. While real work needing doing goes undone.
What will America do when “jobs” are gone? Even for the “better sort”? I just read an article about Thailand that completely shut down though the virus occurrence is minor there, and one third of their economy is tourism. Shops are shut down for good. When then? Mass starvation?
Added note: What you say makes a lot of sense, but it does not work for Orlov’s point. I don’t think Americans are in love with work, or see it as the glue that holds the nation together. (?)
July 27, 2020 at 1:45 am
The post and comments are interesting and meaningful. My personal take:
The US-American mindset can be sufficiently well explained by history:
When settlers from Ireland and other European countries invaded the American continent, they found a sparsely populated land with tremendous natural resources. As they expanded west (the Wild West) there were not many rules and moral restraints. The native inhabitants were swiftly exterminated, the backbreaking work on the southern cotton fields was done by African slaves.
The settlers were mainly puritans, who believed, that God had made a pact with their people and had chosen them to provide a model for the other nations of the Earth.
Sociologist Max Weber, in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, expounded the thesis that Calvinism was the parent of capitalism, and Puritanism especially in its later phases indeed added a halo of ethical sanctification to pursuit of economic success and wealth accumulation.
Puritan moral implies, that practical success is the sign and at the same time the reward of ethical superiority and it emphasized individual responsibility over social obligation. Poor people are not poor because of adverse circumstances but because of lacking virtue.
In other words: Competition trumps cooperation.
The blue collar and white collar workers, squeezed like lemons in a workplace environment where Amazon and Walmart set the pace, enacting the vision of Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece Modern Times, will need to setup local comitees, strike, and chase away the corrupt union bosses. Yet, with the old order coming to an end and many companies closing, they often will have to organize their work themselves in co-ops or begin a new, subsistence-based life in a post-industrial, post consumerism economy.
Change is urgently needed, because US inhabitants consume more energy and resources than anybody else (twice as much as Europeans, ten times as much as most developing countries), and because US consumers and especially the military inflict more damage to nature than anybody else.
It is not the first time, that an empire has kept a great part of the world in its stranglehold and committed abhorrent crimes against humanity. Romans, Moguls, Ottomans, Spanish, French, British all committed atrocities, inflicted irreparable damage, oppressed and exploited the natives which were lucky enough not to be killed right away.
There are two crucial differences though, which makes the US empire more dangerous than any other one in history:
1. US nuclear weapons can destroy the world a few times over.
2. The US empire has bumped against unsurmountable planetary boundaries.
These are excerpt from my blogpost: https://mato48.com/2018/02/16/days-of-reckoning/
July 27, 2020 at 4:28 pm
I frequent the Project Gutenberg site and just today came upon a self-described Boston Bibelot: in essence, a periodical of pure snark from April 1896. If you like to follow it up, here is the link: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/62763/62763-h/62763-h.htm
Allow me to cite from its pages what it considers to be sparkling and winey wit.
“I wonder if the critics who are optimistic about an “American” literature ever stop to consider the fact that two-thirds of the people who live in this country are of different stock than ours, and different racial traditions and language. Then they are from the depth of savagery. They are illiterate and brutal, and possessed of an unconquerable phlegm that cannot tolerate such trivial, foolish things as the arts and literature. Moreover, they are utterly out of sympathy with the ideals of our race….We are recommended to go to Europe for aesthetic training. We could get along much better with a sturdy stock of native observers, if we could only keep out the hordes of ignorant and degraded savages that flock here from every hell-hole in Europe, and then spread like a great itch throughout the country….When one looks at the great blotches of ignorant and inferior races which dot the map of the United States in different industrial sections, one wonders where and when an “American” literature or “American” anything will come in. Emigration is all right when it comes from the right quarters, but the recent social history of this country shows how it is absorbing the barbaric scum of Europe.” — Jonathan Penn.
This was written about 30 years after the close of a devastating civil war. Its breathtaking arrogance and stunning self-absorption can be found to this day amid the habituees and alumni of Hah – vad – yail – daht – muth, et alia.
Another fellow, an anonymous witster pens his sentiments thus: “The instability of all industrial and business life in America is one of the horrors of existence here, and it is one of the factors that make culture impossible here. A nation on the jump runs to “smartness” but not to intellect. There is only one class in our society that enjoys stability, and that is the Police. Whether we may expect any aesthetic appreciation from this quarter remains to be seen.”
I do not see how this self-appointed upper class attitude and posturing of pride squares with any of the narratives offered up so far. The tainted minds that use ‘race’ as both weapon and justification for aggressive self-promotion are endemic, perhaps pandemic, in the colonizers of America, north south, east, west, above and below the Great Class Dividing Line – more durable in civic life than the Line Plato speaks of concerning Knowledge. What both upper and lower classes have in common is a determined intent to exclude this massive chunk or that minor cluster of ‘different’ people from obtaining a share in every kind of goody on offer: land, money, power, self-determination, votes, education, civil rights under the common law, honor, respect and recognition as contributors to and creators of cultural treasure. Or anything else lying around loose and up for grabs. There is no end to the ways in which non-conforming individuals can be punished for daring to exist on American soil. Which group happens to be the victim du jour that ‘deserves’ to be trampled on does shift around a lot; but the pattern of senseless aggression and selfish exclusion continues unimpaired like a standing wave. Because the fact is that not one of us has any God-given grace nor mundane moral right to be here on soil that was already occupied; and the guilt of that primal sin must always be thrust upon the latest or oddest newcomer. Especially now that the shame cannot be permanently glued to people whose skin is of a non-blondie-Anglo hue. By accidents of geographical distance and abundance of natural resources, the U.S were able to act as one nation during the world wars – the one time that came closest in U.S. history to forcing the sons of the rich to rub sweaty shoulders with the sons of the soil – and to rely on them as equals in a bloody field. But the reaction was severe and the lines of division were drawn harder and deeper afterward. For the past 130 years the rich have been treating everyone else in America as their privately owned sheep farm: to fleece or turn into dead mutton at their will and pleasure. It is not love of money but love of pure power that characterizes the upper classes: an addictive substance and a danger to all life. As for the rest, we settled for comfort and car culture. Car culture has been substituted for real liberty since the mid 1950’s: a proxy scam that beggars every other Ponzi scheme ever played on a bunch of willing suckers. And oil’s well that ends badly.
The Flag and the Founders have been worn as a fig leaf over naked greed for long enough. To realize the promises implicit in those 250-year old words will take another century or two, and people who have more character than they have money. I expect us to get the chance to prove those ideals sooner or later.
July 28, 2020 at 5:17 pm
Before I get to Mato, I must say I appreciate the thoughtful and long responses.
However, in your words and choice of quotes, gkb, there seems to be, to me, a lack of balancing animus. When I read it, I, a child of communism, whose great uncle lost his head to them, whose grandfather was jailed for years (while his brother lost the farm to collectivization and then went to jail for I think 11 years), I who was sentenced to jail (in absentia) for simply staying in America, when I add this all up, I still see a country that gave me and millions of others like me succor, and freedom to say what I want and what I believe. A highly imperfect country, yet…!
The fact that America’s elites have behaved, overall, pretty badly (and it’s not getting any better) needs to be seen in the overall picture. Where have elites behaved well? Can we look at the communist elites and not count their corpses and their betrayals? Or perhaps look at the elites in the countries that ended colonialism only to devastate their economies by cockamamie (or plain greedy and murderous) schemes in the name of fixing things without flinching?
As far as I can tell, the American or any other elites are no longer (if they ever were) particular to any country or any ethnos or any ideal. They are only particular to power and money for power and money’s sake. If I am wrong, please mount that argument. I don’t see it. But I have studied the Founders and their documents, and I think that there was a time in America when government by and of the people was taken seriously. When America stood as a beacon to those who were still enserfed elsewhere, and who flocked here by the millions despite brutal ship journeys. And there are people here to this day who still see that, love that, support that, and don’t want it to be swept away by malevolent vandals who have nothing better to offer, only worse.
It seems to me unfair not to see that side of this country. All its failures and imperfections, and there are many, cannot erase that core dream. Look at Orlov. He knows well all the horrible things in Russian history. Yet he is loyal to the core of goodness that’s there. We should do well to do likewise.
July 28, 2020 at 5:59 pm
Mato, that is indeed one way to look at it, and Weber did a good job.
But again, there is another way to look at the very thing he describes. America (not counting the Spanish) was started by English, Scottish, Irish and Dutch Protestants who had been brutally persecuted in their previous homes, and looked to flee to climes where they could create a political and social system that was better than the one left behind.
Then they discovered that it’s easy to make changes to one’s ideals, not so easy to make changes to one’s actual thoughts, emotions and actions. And so the Puritans unleashed on the Indians and the Quakers the violence that had been unleashed against them. Nevertheless, as generations moved along, they learned from the Indians and the Quakers, and others. And modified their systems of governance. And learned tolerance of free speech and ideological differences that Europeans have not mastered to this day.
Puritan morals have not won the day. Actually, what is happening now is a takeover of the country by people who have no intention to do any real work, and probably have few skills even if they were so inclined. We are heading for civil war, as far as I can tell.
I am sorry to tell you, but there are few union bosses to chase away. Most unions here are a thing of the past. Partly because they became corrupt, and partly because in globalism, a demand can be met by the middle finger, and the company moved or destroyed.
At present, there seems to be no plan on the part of anyone for the future. There is endless propaganda about masks, social distancing, and viruses, but plans? Who needs plans? Most Americans are clueless urbanites that don’t get the fact that farmers in Missouri euthanizing piglets because they can’t make a living selling pork bodes ill for the future. Who the heck cares for the rednecks in Missouri anyways?
The U.S. is on the way down from its pre-eminent role. But if you want to get a good look at someone abusing power and throwing away resources, look no further than the increasingly totalitarian EU. At least, here we can still jeer and they don’t come to threaten us in the middle of the night. The EU empire has come up against planetary boundaries too. Europe is not immune.
July 28, 2020 at 9:10 pm
I don’t read Orlov for reasons I consider obvious: he’s a sloppy thinker and egotist. Painting with such a broad brush with respect to either Americans or Russians, both comprised of many ethnic and regional cultures, seems to me far too reductionist to be taken seriously. Lengthy arguments and comments here and elsewhere further indicate the plurality of analyses possible such that no canonical account can ever be agree upon. Indeed, I also have a blog post from two months called “Borrowed Identity” that distinguishes between American character and American identity as a launching point for a brief discussion of Americans’ messed up attitudes toward race. So answers to questions no one in particular appears to be asking are provisional at best and worthless at worst. When it comes to social and/or civilizational collapse, who cares, really, what the differences are? It will all be a mad, brutal scramble.
That said, I appreciate the notion of Ródina, though I wonder how much of it is voluntary vs. consensus vs. compelled. That same question applies to American notions of hard work, self-reliance, competition (healthy or exploitative), and callous disregard for one’s neighbors, the commonweal, and the natural world. As an armchair cultural critic, it’s easy to get lost in myriad failures embodied in American history and contemporary culture, leading me to indulge my pessimism. That an immigrant can still muster praise for what the U.S. has offered her is a potent reminder that the glare of injustice tends to blot out what good is still to be found here, more among regular folks than our sclerotic institutions.
July 29, 2020 at 3:25 am
The EU is doomed and many here expect it to be dissolved in the not too far future.
For me it appears that the movers and shakers in both the US and Europe have a plan, which is to keep the current economic system (heavily financialized cut-throat capitalism) running as long as possible to safely hide away their loot, set up and fortify their luxury refuges and doomsday bunkers on private islands or the New Zealand countryside, and eradicate all evidence and traces of their crimes.
One aspect of US society and culture, which I always admired, is the fusion of social and cultural traditions from around the world. America as a cultural melting pot gave the world the gift of novel artistic styles based on both ethnic naturalness (spontaneity, authenticity) and European sophistication.
Though this also may be a thing of the past: https://medium.com/@drillbitnews/americas-broken-melting-pot-d1fffbeabb83
Especially African American music fascinated me, though curiously I became aware of this cultural gem via George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin’s music surely cannot stand up to the ingenious compositions of Bach fugues but I still like to hear it occasionally.
Gershwin was white, a Jew, but as he looked around for new inspiration he was intrigued by the music of the former slaves and incorporated it into his personal style.
Blues, jazz, R&B, gospel, soul, zydeco, funk, and the Latin styles salsa, samba, rumba, calypso, ska, reggae all evolved from the fusion of African and European music, in fact nearly every style of todays global pop music originated from there.
My musical heroes were Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Al Green, Donny Hathaway, Solomon Burke, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, Bill Withers, The Staple Singers, Gil Scott-Heron, and many other mostly black US artists. https://mato48.com/2017/10/10/links-october-2017/
I only write that to make it clear that my anti-US sentiments are not unconsidered, rash, or indiscriminate. They are based of the facts of 500,000 to 700,000 homeless persons, 41 million “food insecure” persons with 9.5 million families needing food stamps, and 44 million persons without health insurance. They are based on the fact that the 3 richest US-citizens (Bezos, Gates, Buffett) own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of US-citizens. They are based on the fact that US inhabitants on average use 2 times more natural resources (energy, materials, water, soil, forests, etc) than Europeans and up to 10 times more than people in the (so called) developing countries. They are based on US power projection (coercion, bullying, sanctions) with 800 US military bases all around the world, 1.3 million US soldiers, 13,000 US military aircraft, and an inventory of 6,185 nuclear warheads.
July 29, 2020 at 10:12 am
Well, in Czechia the notion of “vlast” (homeland) has been polluted by the usual “divide and conquer” tactics visible everywhere in the world. I imagine that in Russia, this is discouraged, officially. When I was growing up, the notion of vlastenectvi (a poor translation is patriotism, we Czechs distinguish between patriotism, somewhat jingoistic, and vlastenectvi, the genuine appreciation of and love for one’s history, language and culture) was never in dispute, and valued as a matter of fact, as loving one’s family would be.
Yes, I wanted to point out that for all America’s faults, things could be a lot worse, and I as a first gen immigrant can tell the difference. It saddens me that born Americans are losing that ability along with the willingness to defend the good at the core.
July 29, 2020 at 10:23 am
It’s good to know, Mato, you appreciate parts of American culture. Gershwin in particular is memorable (I love Porgy and Bess as well). Some people don’t know how much Elvis Presley, for example, was a child of the partly black South where all that back country music was still being played in his day. I also love Appalachian Spring, by Copeland, which borrowed from the Shakers.
As for the power excesses of America, that is Deep State, and not “us”. It would be nice to distinguish. Many Americans are against that, on both sides of the political divide. Why, part of Trump’s platform was to mend relations with Russia and lower overseas expenditures and wars. The Deep State did not agree, and has done everything to keep the hostility with Russia simmering and the conflicts going.
July 29, 2020 at 11:03 am
Oh, one more comment, Brutus. I will look on your blog for the article on race you mention. But it shows ya… in my experience, America is amazingly not racist. Compared to elsewhere I know. Of course I came here a while after the civil rights movement. So I can only speak to what I know. But here, a massive effort has been made to not see the color of the skin as something important, and minorities were given many breaks and special rights, along with women (which, in my opinion, should have sunset long ago).
Of course, that is now changing, as whites are vilified, and European civilization is being flushed down the drain. Good luck, folks, because what is coming is not going to be good to anyone of any race.
July 29, 2020 at 11:49 pm
I have no intention to deny the truth of your experience of breathing freer air. All I am saying is that any degree of liberty you felt was relative, temporary, and possibly due to the absence of melatonin pigmentation in your skin. You must have some idea of just how evil the common people of this nation can be towards any group that a dominant faction cares to target. Jews, Germans, Sikhs, whatever.
In the South of this nation, liberty, equality and citizenship rights have long been reserved for white men only. In the West of this country, just looking like you had Asian ancestry was enough to put you in concentration camps. In the North and East of this country, the Boston Bibelot attitude previously described is hypocritically smarmed over with smiles and pats on the back just so long as there are pockets to be picked. Mortgages to drive the cost of housing to double or triple its worth, and derivatives to scoop the rest of the middle class money into already bulging pocketbooks. At the time you arrived, there were still a few trashcan lids and firewalls set up against the roaring wildfires of greed that currently rage and riot in the corporate suites where the uncrowned owners of the nation’s land, waters and airwaves preen themselves on their cleverness and supposed superiority to us peasants.
I never said US money elites were any worse or better than Tsarist, Communist, Franco-Anglo Aristos, or any other set of blood-and-guts elites. I have never heard of any self-serving elite in any country at any time that can claim to be free from the guilt of greed and abuse of power. There are documented reports of Chinese emperors that make the blood run cold. Government or church or temple, it matters not. Whether you have a sensuous theocracy with fat priests cavorting at table and in bed or an austere theocracy with lean Calvinists and intolerant Puritans, or any other male-led theocracy, the end is the same. Anytime a group of men get a clutch on power they abuse the living hell out of it. Cavaliers and Cromwells alike, it makes no difference. Religious wars shredded Europe over trivialities and passionate, murderous devotion to the egos of varied opinion-holders in every corner of the castle of power from donjon to tower pinnacle.
It is universal and inevitable. This is the predictable product of patriarchy. When only men are deemed fit to rule, they rule by the laws of their own hormonal drives for dominance, control of resources, and purchasing power for securing sexual pleasure. That is why there is a continual churning of war and unchecked grabbiness in every form of governance extant today. The more power a man has, the more testosterone he gets, inclining him to seek more and more power, more of everything his hormones dictate.
There is little evidence to go on, but when men have to share power at a parity rate with women, women tend to follow their own hormonal imperatives: making comfortable nests, ensuring the successful launch of children, defering to the wisdom of elders, creating dominance structures that rely more on exclusion than overt aggression. More butter, fewer guns, more turnover, less savage thuggery. It is doubtful whether the world would be any better off if female power were raised to a pitch as steep and unbalanced as male power now is. But at the very least, breaking up the uber concentration of powers now held by rich white men could have a balancing effect.
However, the bonanza of Oil ensured that every class of people other than rich white men was thrown under the wheels of the Juggernaut money. The elites are not alone responsible for the sad state of this nation. The commonwealth has been truncated to mean “wealth for me and mine” only. And the commoners are just as guilty as the elites in this. Patriotism now is nothing more than an Uncle Sam mask hiding the face of greed for oil.
As Oil depletes, so too will patriarchy. Without the corrupting effect of Oil, absolutism, urban power centers, centralized utilities, etc. will wither away. A more female-friendly mode of governance might become possible. Maybe when the needs of children take precedence over the greeds of grown men the ideals of liberty and equality can begin to be expressed in meaningful ways. As it is now, these concepts are mere advertising slogans wielded as bait on the sharp hidden hooks of money, money, and more money.
July 30, 2020 at 6:45 pm
What you say, gkb, is eloquent and true. What would be the point of arguing? There is plenty of bad to America. I hold the ugliness of her cities as a particular grudge.
However. And here is how this is a road to nowhere. What you are doing is what abusive parents do to their children: all the good is ignored, all the bad is relentlessly and angrily pointed out, over and over. That’s how you ruin the lives of children, of abused spouses, and whole nations as well. Same principle.
You want fairness? Start with yourself. Be the change you want to see in the world. Start small. Be a bit fairer to America. Hm?
Patriarchy did not start with oil. Why would it end with the end of oil? We live in an age when women are treated better than ever before, not counting tribal days. Kill this civ (in the better sense of the word), and watch the real brutality return. Kill the caterpillar, and the butterfly will die with it.
For folks wanting to access Brutus’ essay on cultural appropriation, here is the link.
https://brutus.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/borrowed-identity/
July 31, 2020 at 11:53 am
I do not think that patriarchy will end with the last of the cheap oil and fossil fuels. I only think it will lose much of its steely grip on the world’s resources. It will have more competition from other systems and less police power to enforce its economic agenda. Before fossil fuels like coal and oil were massively exploited much more muscle power was required to get things done, and it took nearly eveyone’s labor just to get by. This makes the contribution of women’s labor much plainer to see. Living within the energy budget defined by the sun and the natural world is likely to foster many changes. Collective housing, for instance. The whole man-in-his-castle concept and its correlate every-woman-and-her-own-kitchen will have to face the challenge of more economically sound and labor-saving collective living arrangements. Much more difficult to beat the crap out of the little woman in the privacy of “his own home” (not hers, of course) when there are a lot of other people around to whack back when he gets drunk and gets started. Or shift the men off to stay in their own longhouse and beat up on each other if they like. Less opportunity for Da to get in bed with his nine-year old daughter or step-daughter. Or compound housing that affords shared child care relieving some of the burden on women that men have failed to shoulder for centuries past. Only extraordinary men will be able to sustain the cost of an individual housing unit, or one for each wife, as used to be common law in parts of Africa. Also the invention of guns, if well-maintained, will reduce the temptation to dismiss women’s killing capacity in war. Besides, there will be a lot fewer people soon as world population drops down to a sustainable level; therefore there will be less pressure for beta males to continually stir up trouble to give themselves a chance of toppling the alphas. A slower pace of patriarchal self-puffery would be a welcome relief to all.
As for abuse, it is not abuse to tell the truth about how one has been treated and the truth to be seen by one’s own eyes. If a nation’s failure to live up to its own proclaimed objectives cannot be publicly pointed out by a citizen who has seen every ideal trampled and every hope dashed, then that is just another example of suppression of freedom of speech. If a person cannot walk into the building that the city sets up to supply health and human services without having their 4th Amendment rights violated by hired ‘security’ police (paid for by public taxes!) then that is a rotting away of liberty from within and a damnation of democracy at the root.
When millions of people are cast out of work and their pensions stolen by Wall St using the short-selling rule that had been banned since the 1929 crash – and this theft was enabled by the elected representatives of the People, has gone unchallenged by the Courts, is smiled upon by the Executive branch, celebrated by the Press, and sullenly accepted by the People themselves, then that is clear proof that money alone rules this nation. When Congress fights tooth and nail to avoid giving money to desperate people yet hands out billions to banks and corporations – when said corporations are legislatively granted the status of Real People and yet never have to pay death taxes or any taxes at all for that matter – what is fair about that?
When whole industries are shipped overseas to avoid the cost of environmental regulations and trash other people’s lands and waters, how does that not merit remonstrance at least and reparations via massive fines as for any other violation against the health of the Commons we call the Earth?
When a nation abuses its citizens as American federal, state and municipal governments have certainly done to many of us, well, that nation must expect payback in kind.
It is well to have ideals as long as you do not allow them to blind you to the facts. And the facts are that Americans rich and not-so-rich have trashed land, water, air and all merely in order to maintain their car culture as long as possible. This is an addiction to unnecessary speed and a selfish misuse of resources at the expense of the common weal. This speed addiction has been nearly universal here at home and has been a grievous burden on the rest of the planet.
Do you not think that an addict who is selfishly expending the crucial resources of the family in order to maintain his speed high has richly earned having the truth rubbed into his face? If that is abuse what do you call HIS actions? What does it take to unhook a nation of addicts from their drug of choice? It takes the threat of death within two weeks. Did you notice how swiftly the atmosphere over cities de-smogged and the canals of Venice returned to lucid clarity when the number of oil-powered motors in motion and airplane flights dropped off a covid cliff?
Similar action could have been taken and should have been taken and was not taken. Why? Greed of the common people and greed of the rich people. Where are the American qualities that you perceive? Where are shown in real practical ways the statesmanship, leadership and national willingness to face up to a critical, sorely needed change in the way we live? I do not see them anywhere. I do not believe they exist. I think they are an illusion, thinner than the fabric of a hundred-year-old flag.
I can no longer wait for them to show up. In a year I will be homeless because my pension fund was stolen by Wall St. and the laughably named Social Security check the government gives me does not cover both housing and food, much less rent, food, and utilities all in the same month. I could alternate, I suppose: eating one month and having a safe place to sleep next month, perhaps. But it is not an appealing prospect. The state I live in will not provide any help until my pitiful savings are exhausted to the point of having just enough to bury my corpse; and there are scads of pregnant wives of immigrant workers well ahead of me in line for any benefits to be had. My whole industry has been gutted and outsourced. There is no work for me at my age without retraining and I cannot afford to buy any grossly cost-inflated courses in outdated programs which is all the community college offers, and there are thousands of better qualified young people living at home who are now flipping burgers and selling fries because the work simply is not there.
Without more income I cannot afford to pay for always-on internet connection so I cannot work from home part-time without special arrangements from the employer they could dispense with for other candidates. I do not drive a car and have no license to do so. Most employers count this as reason enough to disqualify a person for work; nor do bloated corporations make any effort to provide discounted, profit-free transport services for their employees to save time, money and the environment. The Car is God-King and Oil is its only prophet.
Meanwhile, in Ecuador, a person can live in a two-bedroom apt with a doorman for $400 per month and have a box of vegetables the size of one bus bench for $5, delivery included. The United States has manifestly failed its people and I am among them. I have every right to criticize its stupid, wasteful, selfish, greedy attitudes and its environmentally irresponsible actions, laws and policies.
July 31, 2020 at 12:20 pm
Nobody is taking away your right to criticize, certainly not on this blog. Have you heard what I said? Relentless pointing out the negatives while ignoring the positives is one of the ways to destroy a person or a culture. Here is my challenge to you. Come up with three good things about America. While we still have them.
PS What’s happened to you sucks. But relentless bitterness hurts only you, and does nothing to the ghouls on Wall Street.
July 31, 2020 at 1:04 pm
I beg your pardon, gkb. I did not express myself clearly enough. Your relentless negative portrayal hurts the culprits not at all, but it does hurt you, and it does hurt those who extend you the good will gesture of listening to you carefully, like the people on this blog. That’s why I made my suggestions.
July 31, 2020 at 5:03 pm
Just to be clear, I do not deny that I have benefitted personally from the industrial economy. Every bite of food I ever ate was brought to me by truck and car. Even the seeds planted in the church garden that supplies the local food pantry are shipped by air and auto. I rely on electric power and gas heat like millions of others in my class.
Nor do I fail to recognize that the farmers of Ecuador may be even more brutally poor than the people of inner cites in the U.S. and perhaps even more helpless against the political clout of the rich in their nation. That I share some of the guilt of my nation does not invalidate my criticism.
What I am saying is that given our Constitutional origins and professed ideals, U.S. Americans could have done better, should have done better, did know better, and instead chose to do worse. And that the reason for this choice is oil-magnified patriarchy. Excluding women from the political sphere and banishing feminine values, from the carpet-cleaned corridors of corporate power has been disastrous for the crafting of rational decisions on public policy. Men are too hotly emotional to govern without proper female guidance and cooler heads.
July 31, 2020 at 7:08 pm
Could have done better? Yup. Why even that horribly old and white Thomas Jefferson, a slave holder and all, said that we should have a revolution every generation. And exactly. There are plenty of places where things are a lot worse. Which means we ought to show some gratitude for the things that are still good. At least that’s how I see things.