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Political-Economics of Distraction [1]

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Date: 2023-03-03  

A presumed candidate for president in 2024, has hit the campaign trial in all of the usual states (purportedly to sell his book), with a singular mantra for his bid for the White House: “Defend Against the ‘Woke’ Mob”. The problem is, the “mob” he is referring to, is neither woke nor a mob. What he is referring to is actually anybody who expresses any thought that may be to the left of Attila the Hun. Yet, that’s the game.

I once shared with a “QAnon-deluded” acquaintance a statement of theory regarding our country, economy, and politics. It goes something like: “The real conspiracy, is the alleged conspiracy.” The theory goes that right-wing operatives grasp-hold of, or CREATED the entirety of the QAnon metaverse in order to distract the world, especially Americans and Europeans. Now years on, appears no psycho-social-political-economic experiment has ever been so successful. It isn’t just armed whack jobs breaking into the Capital or pizza parlors in Georgetown. That is only a small part of the success, even though it has managed to send about one-third of our population chasing their tails after phantoms and ghosts. It is more so that it has the other two-thirds either exhausted or pre-occupied with trying to repudiate the existence of the non-existent. In the end, the sum of this effort is to prove that Occam’s Razor cannot exist as a principle in groups greater than one.

In the meantime, what has it cost the world? It has and continues to distract the world from the real conspiracies and issues. And that is the point of it.

The world is at a crossroads. Climate change threatens to cause the extinctions of every species on this planet, including and most especially the species that is causing it. Yet, while the so-called “woke” lament the crisis; they continue to drive their SUV’s around the corner adding (with the help of cement production) 35 billion plus metric tons carbon dioxide (2016 www.climate.gov). At the same time, they are adding to their waistline and healthcare costs, and the oil companies are posting record profits.

The world is at a crossroads. Every industrialized economy in the world is at risk of collapse. It does not matter if one is referencing “Capitalist” or “government-controlled” economies. The entirety of economic theory is based on a ponzi-like scheme of the young being the canon-fodder of economic growth, ergo stability. As long as a ponzi-scheme is growing its stable. However, such (and all economic theories) are based on growth from the bottom (pushing the top higher). However, with each successive iteration, the base of the pyramid must be broader. If the system fails to properly broaden the base, the rest of the structure no longer has a solid foundation. It will collapse. Yet, the collapse of such always falls unequally, landing heaviest on those at the bottom. In relation to the world’s economies, all of the “industrialized” countries have seen slowing or even negative population growths. At the same time, and due to the wonders of medicine, people are living longer (especially in those same “industrialized” countries). Thus, they each face a crisis of economic instability, because they do not have the young workers or the infrastructural supposed to continue to broaden the economic base. In fact, the pyramid is bloating out at the middle and top. To adapt, countries have “imported” workers to fill-out the base more (causing immigration crisis throughout the world and increasing human-trafficking and systems of slavery). Yet, the more insidious answer these countries have come up with trinket distractions and pruning of the aged. Trinket-distraction destroys generational wealth, which causes the base of an economy to broaden out by slipping downward. This helps to fill in the gaps in the newest layer of the foundation of the pyramid and narrows the succeeding upper layers of the pyramid. In terms of real-production, a pair of $500 sneakers, do not add an equal amount of productivity to the economy, as does ten pair of $50 sneaker or a hundred pair of $5 sneakers. Likewise, a hundred pair of $5 sneakers do not add an equal amount of productivity to the economy, if the $50 sneakers last 11 times longer. The truth is, trinket-distractions have sapped the economic viability of the entire “western-world”.

Biden is wrong. The United States is not “competing” against China. We are in a de facto state of war. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, China undertook to “modernize” its economy. It did so by amassing a vast amount of debt (yes, more debt, especially foreign held debt; than the United States). In short, it went “all-in” on the bet that it could out United States the United States. It could not. Now it has a big problem. Its pyramid is even more bloated than the western-countries. Now in order to adapt, it has taken to a multi-faceted scheme to de-bloat. One part of this scheme is use of slave-labor (eg. The Uyghur population - pronounced “weiger”). It is taken to old-fashioned “imperialism” (both in the form of “loans” to developing nations, and the form of militarism; so as to expand its labor and resource footprint). It has also undertaken to cripple America productivity (using trinkets-distractions, eg. valueless products or Tik-Tok; and with the massive exportation of drugs such as Fentanyl). At the same time, it has undertaken to reduce its older less productive populations. That was the goal of Covid and its Covid policies (it is irrelevant, whether Covid was purposefully created, purposefully released, or it was all an accident). Covid will save the United States Social Security system $19.819 BILLION dollars this year (similar amounts in 2020, 2021, and 2022 average; based on government date, estimating approximately 905,000 retirement age deaths, or 80% of all Covid deaths in the United States; and average social security payment of $1825 per retiree. NOTE: the current percentage of population over 65 is almost 17%. However, even with Covid deaths, the percentage of population that’s over-65 actually went up from 2019 due to rising number of “Baby Boomer” being added per year to the over-65 rolls). While the percentage of China’s population that is over-65 is currently less than the United State. Its problems with its aging population is far more acute than the United States (because the U.S. has a greater percentage of younger people, and the U.S. had a much greater head start in building retirement wealth and support structures). In fact, all the “industrialized countries” are facing a crisis of aging. Yet, China’s plan to deal with this crisis is particularly ominous: Africa. In short, the places where China has “invested” the heaviest around the world, is in countries that are also the youngest.

Whether in totalitarian states like China or Russia, or in the circles of wannabe totalitarians in the United States (or other western countries) like Trump or DeSantis; the words and tactics of these people are same. The tools they are using to try to gain or maintain control are the same: distraction, engendering division through distinction-biases, baiting class-warfare, and of course wars (real or imagined) against every ghost and phantom alleged to be lurking under the bed.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/3/2156012/-Political-Economics-of-Distraction

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