There’s been some indication that Trump’s being influenced on some of this stuff by the project 2025/Heritage Foundation people which is a billionaire backed think tank. I suspect this is a Shock Treatment in all but name with global Capital doing everything they can to rip the copper out of the walls and put the 99% of the US on a footing more equivalent to those in the third world. They’ll weather a few years of passing on tarrifs to the consumer, investing to gain from Brics wins, all while also profiting from the war machine and watching us cut each other’s throats to survive.
I should point out that while billionaires fund think tanks, they’re mostly staffed by compete cranks or idiot nephews who need busy work. They’re adult daycares where goofballs dream up impossible plans or try to influence classes at universities.
Most of the time when they actually do get their hands near the wheels of power their job is to do bullshit studies that politicians can point at to support whatever bill they’re pushing. Like say Representative Goofus wants to invade Cuba, he’ll get the Heritage Foundation to make a chart explaining why Cuba’s gonna destroy the world and needs regime change.
True that. But most of those cranks also come from schools like George Mason U/ Mercatus who have been teaching what the Billionaires have been paying them too for like 30, 40 years now. This has always been the end goal.
They usually wait for a crisis before doing shock treatment, but it seems they’re too impatient to wait for a crisis and instead are using shock treatment as the crisis. I don’t think that’s going to work out well for them - the hallmark of shock treatment is that the crisis disorients the population so that they can privatize and hollow out the government without anyone noticing.
But if they create the crisis I don’t think that works? Instead of cutting each other’s throats there will just be more Luigis.
They usually wait for a crisis before doing shock treatment, but it seems they’re too impatient to wait for a crisis and instead are using shock treatment as the crisis.
I think you could probably make the argument that whether through CIA directly, or School of Americas graduates, most crisii (sp? crisises?) have been manufactured. Also, as much as I hate to admit it, an H5N1 outbreak would probably be in their favor now that they’ve normalized the “can’t avoid getting sick” mentality.
Instead of cutting each other’s throats there will just be more Luigis.
But to be realistic, that would require Luigis who understand who’s pulling the strings. Stochastic terrorism hasn’t been too detrimental towards Capital, so far. And they have been cranking that othering up to levels I haven’t seen since the Bush years. Also, also, CEOs are like the Lieutenants of Capital, billionaires probably find the whole Luigi thing to be more like talking about what’s going on at the front; Unlike most of us, they understand that they’re in a Class War.
I think you could probably make the argument that whether through CIA directly, or School of Americas graduates, most crisii (sp? crisises?) have been manufactured.
Well what they do is manufacture the underlying conditions which make crises more likely - Hurricane Katrina was used as a crisis to expel Black people from their properties and privatize the school system, but the only reason Katrina became a crisis is because of decades of steady neglect of the roads and bridges and levees. So when you dig into the cause of the crisis, yeah, you do find that it was porky all along.
I guess what they’re doing right now might be intended to soften the US up to make H5N1 into a proper crisis when it goes pandemic, but they’re just moving so fast. Softening up New Orleans took 25-30 years. Where’s their patience?
… also I guess maybe they expect a crisis to happen really soon and they don’t have 25 years to whittle away at the State.
Back in the day they had an American Left and the USSR to deal with. Both those are gone and even the remaining “Left” in America is largely sinophobic and ignorant as hell.
Personally, I just don’t see that much of a risk for them. There’s been a pretty steady downward spiral my whole life and I think we’re just reaching that point where everything is lining up in their favor. We’re heading for some depression era shit and there’s nothing really standing in their way.
Which is not to say I’ve given up. I still think there’s possibilities going forward, but it’s probably going to get much worse before it gets better. People have to acknowledge the class war before they’re ever going to fight it.
But now they have BRICS and multipolarity to deal with, it’s like their plan is to give up on ruling the rest of the world to rule over their own little kingdom of shit.
Well keep in mind, I’m separating Global Capital from US government. Imo, Global Capital, as a whole, doesn’t really have any true allegiance to anything more than profit. They’re making money from our suffering, they’re making money from neoliberal micro financing scams in Africa, they’re making money from China growing other nations, they’re making money from the US doing genocide; They’ve got their thumb in every pie.
As for the US gov? Slaves (in all but name) and soldiers is my guess for their ideal future. They’ll continue poking every weakness they can, shoving resources into every right wing death squad waiting to be born. They’re not giving up, they’re just trimming the fat and taking the mask off. Is it a good idea? Hopefully not. Hopefully, it blows up in their face.
Multipolarity is not in global capital’s interests; they do have an allegiance to the imperial core, even if they aren’t loyal to any one country. Unless we’re moving to some new stage of superimperialism where they ascend above the imperial core and move to live in Elysium on Mars where all of their needs are taken care of by robots or some shit, they still have to live somewhere. They need higher production/finance separated from primary production/resource extraction, so they need a core and a periphery.
… although I did think that they were working to make New Zealand into their bunker nation during the first COVID waves. For a few months it actually did look like they were going to uproot themselves from the rest of the imperial core to hide away on a fortress nation, so maybe we’ll see something like that again when H5N1 inevitably mutates.
I think it might be worth it to read Geopolitical Economy by Radhika Desai. I think she foresaw with this book what is happening here and now. I haven’t finished it yet, and I’m not sure its a revolutionary text in the same way State and Revolution was. However, the argument she makes is that capital is still very much a nationalist project, and it has not transitioned beyond national interests and ties. I think the reality is, there hasn’t truly been an alignment of global capital, in the sense that, there are many equally powerful capitalist entities that have transcended the influence of the state through collaborative means. “Global Capital” as we understand it is by and large American Financial Capital, and most of their assets are tied to the success and failings of America. The reason for this is there hasn’t been a transition away from the dollar as the dominate global currency. Maybe if they keep pushing hard on crypto and bitcoin, and most of the corporate entities performed their transactions through that system instead of a state-owned system, then we might see a true “Global Capital”. However, as it stands, a national currency as the backbone of “global capital” naturally ties its value to the state, and the state has all the cards when it comes to that currencies value. To maintain its value, it has to maintain its usefulness on the world stage, and to maintain its usefulness it has to squash competition, which Desai argues creates uneven and combined development of those states, pushing them through rapid and compressed development and eventually becoming contenders to the leading state. This eventually will bring about a multipolar world, as states are more or less on equal footing. The emergence of BRICS also signals a lack of true “global capital”, in the sense that it is an effort to bolster national development, something Global Capital would see as irrelevant, since they should exist above any one state’s influence.
Multipolarity is not in global capital’s interests; they do have an allegiance to the imperial core, even if they aren’t loyal to any one country. Unless we’re moving to some new stage of superimperialism where they ascend above the imperial core and move to live in Elysium on Mars where all of their needs are taken care of by robots or some shit, they still have to live somewhere. They need higher production/finance separated from primary production/resource extraction, so they need a core and a periphery.
Maybe? But I think we all are maybe being a bit optimistic about what a multipolar world will look like. I think some of them are seeing it as an opportunity for more conflict. Making the US’s fall in status not a loss, but like a shift in the tides.
… although I did think that they were working to make New Zealand into their bunker nation during the first COVID waves.
During the Bush years we suspected that was happening with Dubai.
There’s been some indication that Trump’s being influenced on some of this stuff by the project 2025/Heritage Foundation people which is a billionaire backed think tank. I suspect this is a Shock Treatment in all but name with global Capital doing everything they can to rip the copper out of the walls and put the 99% of the US on a footing more equivalent to those in the third world. They’ll weather a few years of passing on tarrifs to the consumer, investing to gain from Brics wins, all while also profiting from the war machine and watching us cut each other’s throats to survive.
I should point out that while billionaires fund think tanks, they’re mostly staffed by compete cranks or idiot nephews who need busy work. They’re adult daycares where goofballs dream up impossible plans or try to influence classes at universities.
Most of the time when they actually do get their hands near the wheels of power their job is to do bullshit studies that politicians can point at to support whatever bill they’re pushing. Like say Representative Goofus wants to invade Cuba, he’ll get the Heritage Foundation to make a chart explaining why Cuba’s gonna destroy the world and needs regime change.
That’s their primary function
True that. But most of those cranks also come from schools like George Mason U/ Mercatus who have been teaching what the Billionaires have been paying them too for like 30, 40 years now. This has always been the end goal.
They usually wait for a crisis before doing shock treatment, but it seems they’re too impatient to wait for a crisis and instead are using shock treatment as the crisis. I don’t think that’s going to work out well for them - the hallmark of shock treatment is that the crisis disorients the population so that they can privatize and hollow out the government without anyone noticing.
But if they create the crisis I don’t think that works? Instead of cutting each other’s throats there will just be more Luigis.
I think you could probably make the argument that whether through CIA directly, or School of Americas graduates, most crisii (sp? crisises?) have been manufactured. Also, as much as I hate to admit it, an H5N1 outbreak would probably be in their favor now that they’ve normalized the “can’t avoid getting sick” mentality.
But to be realistic, that would require Luigis who understand who’s pulling the strings. Stochastic terrorism hasn’t been too detrimental towards Capital, so far. And they have been cranking that othering up to levels I haven’t seen since the Bush years. Also, also, CEOs are like the Lieutenants of Capital, billionaires probably find the whole Luigi thing to be more like talking about what’s going on at the front; Unlike most of us, they understand that they’re in a Class War.
Well what they do is manufacture the underlying conditions which make crises more likely - Hurricane Katrina was used as a crisis to expel Black people from their properties and privatize the school system, but the only reason Katrina became a crisis is because of decades of steady neglect of the roads and bridges and levees. So when you dig into the cause of the crisis, yeah, you do find that it was porky all along.
I guess what they’re doing right now might be intended to soften the US up to make H5N1 into a proper crisis when it goes pandemic, but they’re just moving so fast. Softening up New Orleans took 25-30 years. Where’s their patience?
… also I guess maybe they expect a crisis to happen really soon and they don’t have 25 years to whittle away at the State.
Back in the day they had an American Left and the USSR to deal with. Both those are gone and even the remaining “Left” in America is largely sinophobic and ignorant as hell.
Personally, I just don’t see that much of a risk for them. There’s been a pretty steady downward spiral my whole life and I think we’re just reaching that point where everything is lining up in their favor. We’re heading for some depression era shit and there’s nothing really standing in their way.
Which is not to say I’ve given up. I still think there’s possibilities going forward, but it’s probably going to get much worse before it gets better. People have to acknowledge the class war before they’re ever going to fight it.
But now they have BRICS and multipolarity to deal with, it’s like their plan is to give up on ruling the rest of the world to rule over their own little kingdom of shit.
Well keep in mind, I’m separating Global Capital from US government. Imo, Global Capital, as a whole, doesn’t really have any true allegiance to anything more than profit. They’re making money from our suffering, they’re making money from neoliberal micro financing scams in Africa, they’re making money from China growing other nations, they’re making money from the US doing genocide; They’ve got their thumb in every pie.
As for the US gov? Slaves (in all but name) and soldiers is my guess for their ideal future. They’ll continue poking every weakness they can, shoving resources into every right wing death squad waiting to be born. They’re not giving up, they’re just trimming the fat and taking the mask off. Is it a good idea? Hopefully not. Hopefully, it blows up in their face.
Multipolarity is not in global capital’s interests; they do have an allegiance to the imperial core, even if they aren’t loyal to any one country. Unless we’re moving to some new stage of superimperialism where they ascend above the imperial core and move to live in Elysium on Mars where all of their needs are taken care of by robots or some shit, they still have to live somewhere. They need higher production/finance separated from primary production/resource extraction, so they need a core and a periphery.
… although I did think that they were working to make New Zealand into their bunker nation during the first COVID waves. For a few months it actually did look like they were going to uproot themselves from the rest of the imperial core to hide away on a fortress nation, so maybe we’ll see something like that again when H5N1 inevitably mutates.
I think it might be worth it to read Geopolitical Economy by Radhika Desai. I think she foresaw with this book what is happening here and now. I haven’t finished it yet, and I’m not sure its a revolutionary text in the same way State and Revolution was. However, the argument she makes is that capital is still very much a nationalist project, and it has not transitioned beyond national interests and ties. I think the reality is, there hasn’t truly been an alignment of global capital, in the sense that, there are many equally powerful capitalist entities that have transcended the influence of the state through collaborative means. “Global Capital” as we understand it is by and large American Financial Capital, and most of their assets are tied to the success and failings of America. The reason for this is there hasn’t been a transition away from the dollar as the dominate global currency. Maybe if they keep pushing hard on crypto and bitcoin, and most of the corporate entities performed their transactions through that system instead of a state-owned system, then we might see a true “Global Capital”. However, as it stands, a national currency as the backbone of “global capital” naturally ties its value to the state, and the state has all the cards when it comes to that currencies value. To maintain its value, it has to maintain its usefulness on the world stage, and to maintain its usefulness it has to squash competition, which Desai argues creates uneven and combined development of those states, pushing them through rapid and compressed development and eventually becoming contenders to the leading state. This eventually will bring about a multipolar world, as states are more or less on equal footing. The emergence of BRICS also signals a lack of true “global capital”, in the sense that it is an effort to bolster national development, something Global Capital would see as irrelevant, since they should exist above any one state’s influence.
Maybe? But I think we all are maybe being a bit optimistic about what a multipolar world will look like. I think some of them are seeing it as an opportunity for more conflict. Making the US’s fall in status not a loss, but like a shift in the tides.
During the Bush years we suspected that was happening with Dubai.
https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2007/03/15/halliburton-moves-headquarters-to-dubai/31516752007/