Do The Dems Even Want To Stop It?
Yesterday we talked about how conservatives oppose education for the masses in order to maintain their social order— including policies that oppose Climate Crisis amelioration. Think of this as Part II. On Friday, Umair Haque wrote about how right-wing governments world-wide are pushing their countries into societal collapse, an extension of a theme of his: Everything the far right touches dies. He began with the easiest target “beleaguered old Britain.”
There it is, collapsing. Hyperbole? Just literal reality. It was mere days ago that London’s water system…collapsed. The once vaunted NHS barely works. 40,000— that’s not a typo— teachers quit last year. The economy’s in tatters, society’s fractured, pessimism and outright despair have set in— the average family’s experiencing the fastest fall in living standards in recorded history.
What happens when you let the lunatics and fanatics take power? This is what happens when you let the lunatics and fanatics take power. Now, everything I say here can also be applied to America, and I’ll come back to that shortly. And it matters for the rest of the world, too. Take nations like Italy, Sweden, Finland— who are all dallying, now, with far-right politics, to the point that Finland’s Finance Minister was found to have talked about “beating [N-word] kids.” In France and Germany, too, even in parts of Canada, the lunacy of the far right is rising. What’s the future of all that? This is a taste of that future. This is where it ends. Where it always ends.
You don’t have to think very hard why. Go back to Finland for a moment. If your finance minister is the kind of person who talks about “beating [N-word] kids”— and your economy minister’s the kind who thinks the solution to climate change is aborting African babies…and that’s all repellent enough… but what aren’t they going to actually be very good at? That’s right, running the economy, making sure things work, governing society.
Now let’s come to back to Britain. There are charts, and there are charts. Some are just summaries of everyday data, noise. But some teach us great truths of history. The chart above is one of those— and by the way, the one for America looks eerily similar. This chart shows us that everything the far right touches dies. In this case, that was Britain— one of the world’s most envied, beloved, and admired societies, wealthy, respected, powerful…and now there it is, a shattered shell, sliding fast into poverty and irrelevance.
How did all this come to be? Just look at the chart. What does it show us? It’s basically debt. And the reason that people these days vote for the far right comes with two motives. They believe in the naive pop economics of austerity— and that itself is often motivated by prejudice: “I won’t pay for those dirty people’s kids, schools, educations, healthcare, housing! Why, they’re barely people at all!! Just parasites!!”
Now, nobody likes seeing people around that don’t contribute to society— and it’s fine to air that complaint. But to then hand power to lunatics, and make a society’s only real priority…the combination of ethnic purification and austerity? Bad, bad news. A grievous, foolish, historic mistake. One that destroyed Britain in less than a generation, just a decade or so.
So. The chart above. It shows us that there was a financial crisis, and debt rose. Now, that itself shouldn’t have happened— the bad debts of banks should have been the responsibility of shareholders, wiping them out, not taken onto the public books. Still, even then, there were answers, like nationalizing banks, and then writing off the bad debt.
For now, though, public debt rose— and that catapulted a conservative government into power, on the myth that now people needed to “tighten their belts.” Note the bizarre paradox here: nobody likes bank bailouts, the average Joe thinks they’re wrong, not must morally, but also logically, and yet, the next ste— “we’ve got to tighten our belts now!— they seem to fall for it every single time.
This is what happened in Britain. The Conservative Party rose to power, promising the two words that strike dread into the heart of every thinking person: “fiscal responsibility.”
Again, this applies in almost eerily exact parallel to America, too.
So that government proceeded to institute vicious austerity. On the explicit promise that debt would fall. What happened next— in actuality, in factual reality? LOL, debt didn’t fall. In fact, it rose. Why’s that? For the reason any half decent economist, or just thoughtful person, could have pointed out then, and did. That it was going to shrink the economy, laying off vast swathes of public sector workers, causing incomes to fall across the board, and that’d mean less tax revenue— which would mean more debt. Which is exactly what happened.
And yet the conservatives kept on winning. Because by now, this line, this logic, was being embraced by Britain— and now the next stage of this classic pattern was to unfold, with genuinely devastating consequences. Austerity hadn’t solved the problem of “debt”— really, the problem of stagnant, even falling, living standards— it had just made things worse. So now… instead of admitting the problem, which was the solution itself was a mistake… a new scapegoat had to be found.
And that was Europe. Britain descended into a nationalist fervor, the likes of which modernity hasn’t really seen. “The Europeans are to blame for our problems!! Get them!! Get rid of them!!” The nexus was explicit by now: Brexit was sold to the British public on the basis of nonsensical Big Lies like there’d be millions more a week for the NHS— which were credible precisely because the average person had come to believe their nation was broke, and needed someone to blame for it.
As this nationalist fervor exploded, Brexit was passed. The conservatives beamed— this was their greatest post-war goal, at least of the lunatic fringe of the party, and they’d accomplished it in less than a decade.
And yet. Did this— even this, this colossal act, of sundering relations with the EU— fix the problem? Did… debt fall… or living standards rise. LOL, no. Look at the chart again. What does it show you? Ironically— and this is a measure of how Soviet Britain’s become— even it’s own Office of Budget Responsibility can’t put “Brexit” on its reports. But you can see that debt began to explode, as Boris Johnson’s ultra-bad Brexit deal— more a lack of one— was signed.
Why’s that? For a number of reasons. The pound cratered. Inflation soared. And yet something had to be done to keep basic systems going, even at the broken, minimal level of an NHS where you can’t get a doctor’s appointment or an ambulance regularly, or a water system right on the brink. No borrowing— poof, even that barely working level of functionality goes. So debt skyrocketed— basically because well, Britain left the EU without any kind of plan for how it was going to actually, LOL, exist, subsist, anymore, and it had to suddenly borrow, as its economy began to shrink.
And here it is today. Think of where that really is. It’s got devastated systems, right down to water and healthcare, but now it’s also basically approaching a debt crisis. In other words, it’s been borrowing and borrowing…with nothing to show for it. Less than nothing, in fact, because a decade or so ago, things in Britain worked pretty well.
What does that teach us?
I am not making political points here. This isn’t politics. This is learning about the consequences of politics. This is knowledge, which we use to evaluate politics. And right now? We should all be learning something. Everything the far right touches dies.
Here you see it in painful detail. In Britain, a series of more and more fanatical conservatives rose to power. They promised, above all, “fiscal responsibility”— and that set off a chain reaction in the American pattern of collapse. “I won’t pay for those dirty people!! To have anything! Why, they shouldn’t even be here!” In the American context, of course, this has meant non-“white” people. In Britain’s case, this meant, LOL, Europeans.
And at the end of this cycle? Austerity only produced more debt. Lower living standards. And so a scapegoat had to be found, which produced the catastrophe of Brexit. That, in turn, left Britain impoverished, in a true way— today, the economy’s shrinking, it’s got no functional systems left, and it’s approaching a debt crisis.
Think of how colossal that kind of mismanagement really is for a second. Just a decade or so ago, Britain had it all. The NHS was the world’s finest healthcare system, the BBC its finest broadcaster. Brits enjoyed ultra high living standards, and it was the envy of the world— a gateway to Europe, a friend of the United States. Today, Joe Biden treats Rishi Sunak the way you or I avoid a drunk neighbor on the street. It’s one thing to have a shrinking economy. It happens. It’s another thing to have a debt crisis. Even that happens. But to have a shrinking economy, no functioning systems left, and a looming debt crisis?
This…to the economist in me…is at the outer reaches of “wow, this is bad.” It’s just incredible to behold.
And that’s what “everything the far right touches dies” means, in simple, everyday terms. Incompetence, malice, greed— ruin.
In economist speak, this is “malinvestment.” Where did all that money go? Well, part of it went to shoring up broken systems. But a lot of it went to…the foolish dreams of Britain’s lunatics. “Freeports.” “Leveling up.” Think about how Britain’s leaders want people to paint over Mickey Mouse murals for refugee kids, just to teach them a lesson— they’ll pay people to do that. But anything constructive? Doctors and nurses barely make enough to live on. Malinvestment is a hallmark of far right governance— and so debt piles up, and along with it, interest does, and then interest rates rise, because, well, now you’re a riskier bet, and before you know it, bang, debt crisis.
And…when none of this needed to happen? When it had no natural— in economist-speak, “exogenous,” meaning outside— cause, like say war, natural calamity, catastrophe? It’s unprecedented, in modern, wealthy nations. The only parallels we really have are far, far poorer, less developed countries— which is what Britain’s on the path to becoming now.
Join me in deranged laugher, because all of that borders on incomprehensible. It makes no sense, because it is irrational— this is what nationalist manias and fervors do. This is where they lead.
You see, right about now, we’re in a phase of history where nationalists— and I don’t mean the benign kind— are rising to jaw-dropping degrees. Think of the things that Finland’s leaders have said recently— it’s hateful, malicious, bigoted, violent. And yet it’s seducing society after society, and a lot of that seduction’s because of the myth of “fiscal responsibility.” Some people use that myth to mask their own prejudices— and some, well-meaning people, think to themselves, “well, they’re ugly, and I don’t like them, but maybe they know how to fix things.”
But we should see that all this is wrong. Not in the way of “I want it to be wrong”— that’s politics, beliefs, values. In the way of empirical, factual reality. This is the death spiral that sets in when a society goes far right. Britain teaches it to us in no uncertain terms, and as I’ve said, America’s story is more or less exactly the same— austerity, beginning in the Reagan years, no investment in universal public goods, which led living standards to fall, which meant debt rose all over again, and then taxes were cut for the rich, and bang, today, yes, America’s debt is out of control.
Think of how America has this mountain of debt— and nothing to show for it. Not a thing— not a functioning healthcare system, not education for its young people, not decent infrastructure, nothing. Where did it go? That money is what turned America’s rich into its ultra-rich.
Once might be a fluke. But this is a pattern. We see it over and over again in history. Today we see it in Britain and America. A century ago, it was the story of Nazi Germany, of course— the Nazis surged to power not just because they hated the Jews, but because the “good German” went along with it, even if they found it repellent, because it promised a solution to their mounting and dire economic woes— remember the hyperinflation and crumbling living standards of the Weimar days.
Once is a fluke, over and over again is a pattern. The chart above isn’t just a chart, it’s proof. Of a factual, empirical reality. Everything the far right touches dies.
But the rest of the world has scant time now, to learn it.
Hate and greed and violence lead us nowhere. The world, much of it, is flirting with the far right, even having a torrid romance with it, like Finland and Sweden and so forth, places that should’ve left this old, old problem behind. Talk of gunning down hated subhumans is now becoming normalized, and written off as mere macho posturing.
Understand this much. This is where we are. The far right can destroy what its taken centuries to build in mere decades. It can set fire to everything faster— and dumber— than a society can believe. And a society can shake its head in bitter regret, as it watches its future burn, in disbelief, that it was ever foolish enough to fall for the lies, the rage, the fear, the violence.
Just ask Britain. Or what’s left of sane America. This is where it ends. This is the pattern. Everything the far right touches dies. Not some kind of abstruse theory, not politics, just cold, hard, factual reality at this point.
Examples like this? For the rest us? They must teach us something. But whether or not we learn is up to us.
