Just to finish a thought, here.
What is amazing about all of this stuff isn’t even so much that the US oligarchs refuse to compromise, it’s that for all appearances they refuse to even acknowledge the validity of other viewpoints. It’s as if they can’t even understand that other people might have differing views, and that these views might have some kind of value.
Take Russia, for example. The view amongst the ruling families here seems to be that Russia has no place on the world stage, at all. The oligarchs here have an almost unfathomable arrogance towards Russia, like they don’t think that they should have any say in anything, at all.
The fact that Russia is by far the largest country on Earth, and has more mineral wealth than anyone else in the world, does not seem to be details of importance to them.
Take Russia’s mineral wealth, for example. The US government recently passed yet another round of sanctions on Russia, to try to stop them from selling natural gas to their next-door neighbors in Europe, as if that was 1) logical, 2) moral, 3) reasonable, and 4) able to be accomplished, somehow.
What these people are thinking at this point is beyond me, and beyond the rest of the world too, I think. I don’t get it. I mean, it just doesn’t even make sense. How is the US, over in the Western Hemisphere, going to stop Russia from selling natural gas via underground pipes to their next door neighbors? By what supernatural process does the government here expect to do this?
What does our government expect Russia’s neighbors to do? To live without natural gas, and/or other natural resources? I don’t get this. This is WTF politics writ large.
The same with China. How is the US government going to stop Russia from selling gas and oil to China?
I have a better idea, here. Why not just let Russia sell it’s fucking resources? You know, stop meddling and just get out of their way and let them manage their own economy? I mean, that way, when these sanctions fail in the same way that the old ones did, we might not look so unbelievably ridiculous!
Why not just let Russia have a say in it’s own policies with it’s next door neighbors? What is so awful about that?
The rest of the world has spent the last 9 years, since Obama’s inauguration, trying to make the US oligarchs listen. Trying to at least get their attention. I mean, whether it’s voters here at home, or people elsewhere. And no matter what happens, the viewpoints of others are never heard within the halls of power, here. It’s like it never even occurs to them that other people even have opinions, let alone that these opinions might have actual value.
At home, it’s diversity, always. Always, always, always diversity as being the only possible answer to every problem that is presented. Diversity can fix the economy. Diversity can fix the school system. Diversity can fix the culture. Diversity can fix the political problems. Diversity can fix the deficit. Diversity can fix fucking everything, including the problems caused by diversity.
So people just keep ramming their heads against the wall, here, trying to at least get some kind of respect, somehow. I mean, some kind of acknowledgement that there might be a solution to a problem that somehow doesn’t revolve around increasing “diversity”. And they don’t get anything, ever, from anyone, at any point. I mean, they don’t even get an acknowledgement that their ideas exist 99% of the time.
It’s baffling how truly thorough and complete the oligarchs’ dismissal of everyone else in the world really is. It’s as if they really believe that the rest of humanity is there to serve them, to the point that the others’ basic value as human beings is in question.
And so, the world turns away, and looks to others. As they should. Because who the hell wants to deal with people like that? The ruling families here are just abominable. I mean, they don’t even like the people in their own country, let alone others’. Morally, they’re the scum of the Earth. They see nothing of bombing and warring against other countries to deflect attention from the problems they themselves create here at home.
They’re moral trash, the garbage of humanity. No matter how much money they have, that’s all they have, in the end. They have no desire to see anyone else as their equal, so they refuse to work with anyone else, ever.
And so, the other great powers in the world continue to advance and make inroads into the ruling families’ former backyards, like South Korea, Japan, and South America, and the oligarchs here can do nothing but sit and count their money, as if that matters to anyone else besides them.
And so they sit and watch as their own country’s economy burns to the ground around them, while they squabble amongst themselves like toddlers, thus earning themselves the undying contempt of the rest of the world.
It’s just beyond parody, at this point. Beyond hope, beyond redemption.
It’s really sad, when you think about it. Ten years of others trying to make them listen has resulted in nothing. They will not change or budge, one iota.
Really sad.