I have a friend who, like me, is tired of the propaganda that passes for news nowadays. He wondered how things would seem to our counterparts in Russia and China—say, to a retired school teacher born in the 1940s.
I can only guess at the answer. I have no first-hand knowledge of these huge, diverse nations. But there is no harm in speculating.
For one thing, such people would have had more radical upheavals in their lives than my friend and I did.
A Russian retiree would have experienced the period of stagnation under Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev, the euphoria and collapse of the economy under Boris Yeltstin and the slow rebuilding under Putin’s corrupt oligarchy.
A Chinese retiree would have experienced the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, rebuilding under Deng Xiaopeng and now the tightening up under Xi Jinping.
They would remember the economic collapse in Russia in the 1990s and the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s. I imagine their main desire would be to keep these traumatic events from happening again.
We Americans may be heading into our own versions of a Yeltsin-style economic collapse and a Mao-style cultural revolution.
Our economy primarily benefits a small number of super-rich individuals and monopolistic corporations. The USA never really recovered from the Great Recession of 1980. Governmental policy props up the banks and financial markets, but does little for average American wage-earners. This is very like Russian economic policy under Boris Yeltsin.
What’s propping up the U.S. economic is the power of the almighty dollar. The fact that the whole world needs dollars in order to do business enables the U.S. government to continually cut taxes for the super-rich and finance a huge global military establishment.
The end of dollar supremacy will leave the U.S. in the same position as other nations with big trade and governmental deficits. We as a nation would have to raise taxes, cut spending, raise prices, cut wages and sell national assets to foreigners, just like Greece. But our banks and big corporations may well come out all right.
The other problem with news coverage is what is called “woke-ness,” a blanket term for evolving taboos about what you must and mustn’t say in public about race, gender and sexual orientation. The mentality in many ways is like the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Mao Zedong unleashed the Cultural Revolution in China in order to dismantle potential opponents and reassert control. Big U.S. corporations, universities and government agencies allow woke-ness free rein because it diverts attention for their abuses. In China, the movement got out of control. The same could happen here.
Perhaps we Americans will come to our senses before it’s too late. More likely we will experience the same kinds of breakdowns that Russians and Chinese did—hopefully, not as bad. Afterwards we will be sadder and (maybe) wiser.
LINKS
Polarization, Then a Crash: Michael Hudson on the Rentier Economy for theAnalysis.news. Reasons for a possible U.S. economic breakdown.
The Neoliberal Exploitation Under a Super-Imperialism Lens by Michael Hudson. More about instability.
No, the Revolution Isn’t Over by N.S. Lyons for The Upheaval. Reasons for a possible U.S. cultural revolution.
Our Rolling Civil War by Thomas Neuburger for God’s Spies. More about societal breakdown.
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
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