The Cautionary Tale of Petrol-less Britain

Turns out that Britain is in a bit of a pickle. For months we’ve heard of a fuel shortage that makes the petrol stations of Britain look like something out of snapshots of the economic crisis in Lebanon. With people queueing for hours just to get a spot of gas in their tanks.

But a fuel crisis is far from the only issue that is plaguing post-Brexit Britain. Empty shelves in the supermarkets, elder care work force shortages, and the meat industry are all staggering from the effects of PM Boris Johnson’s bull-rush toward the EU exit.

Sure, the plague didn’t help matters none. It never does. Unless you take carbon footprint into account, because it briefly helped with that.

So what? Everyone with half a brain between their ears knew that Brexit would be an act of self-mutilation by the proud once-empire. And as it goes, it wasn’t just predictable that the Cobbled Kingdoms would suffer, but it also could serve us as a valuable example.

An example of what? An example of how very fragile this world economy that our lords and evangelistic capitalists are so proud of. And also an example of exactly why our current globalist post-colonial economic system will never serve humanity honestly or, more specifically, evenly.

Allow me to elucidate…

Post-Brexit Britain shows us just how critical a low-paid, foreign work force is to a modern western society. Whatever rise out of poverty that Britain could boast about across the past few hundred years was because it had begun a process of outsourcing its poverty. Whether we’re talking about plantations in the Caribbean or imported labour from lower-income countries. And now that Britain has effectively cut its own legs off in a populist mad dash to score cheap points and unsustainable power for a gaggle of greedy twats, we can see just how absolutely essential that process of “poverty export” is to a western nation.

Britain isn’t alone. Not by a long shot. This self-inflicted curse of exported misery is endemic to western civilization. Or, perhaps, more succinctly, endemic to the free market system that has been projected onto the world as an unassailable status quo.

We can see as much by the example that post-Brexit Britain sets for us. Namely that a “developed nation” cannot exist without subclass humans to perform the dirty maintenance of or resource gathering for that nation. The living standards of any such nation is held up upon the backs of lower bracket nations, who in turn rest their weight on even lower bracket nations. So on and so further all the way to the bottom. The sweat-shops. The slave mines. The child labour yards and the concentration re-education camps.

Our “civilized” way of life in our precious western world requires poverty to deliver unto us our privileges. That’s the bottom line. And the lesson that post-Brexit Britain should make painfully obvious to us. Without people less fortunate, we cannot prosper under the current paradigm.

Much ado has been presented to “fight poverty”. But despite optimistic count-downs to end world poverty, even the World Bank isn’t as optimistic. And it turns out that a frequent tool to project progress in the “war on poverty” is to simply not update or adjust the definitions in accordance to inflation or the rise of the cost of living, et. al.. The same methods, basically, by which the US has been able to motivate not raising the minimum wage, while the costs of living have sky rocketed, relying instead on rocketing personal debt to close the gap.

So, what’s the point? Why am I harping about income disparity like it’s some holy grail rather than a failure of the system. Because income disparity is not a failure of the system,. That’s why. It is a product of the system working as intended. And post-Brexit Britain affords us a snapshot look at that as simple fact. Because it makes it painfully obvious that the standard living conditions that we have come to expect cannot exist without a legion of poorer people to hold out privileges up on stilts.

This isn’t news. It is known. But people seem content to enjoy taking their privileges for granted for as long as they possibly can rather than internalize a grim reality. The reality that it is not in the best interest of our current global economic paradigm to fight poverty, because it is dependant on it. It is not in your best interest to fight poverty, because you and your privileges of petrol stations, elder care, super markets, and cheap chicken are all dependant on it.

And if we’re not willing to fundamentally change our lives and discard our privileges, we should be honest with ourselves about that.

/Sebastian Lindberg 19/10-2021

A Voter’s Priority

So, some number of Americans survived Election Day. Well done. I bet that some will even survive the coming month of exhaustive media analysis, Republican legal complaints and lawsuits, not to mention evangelical numbnuts praying in front of election offices.

And as the votes get tallied, as the Biden campaign seems to be rushing ahead on the back of mail-in ballots, and as the Republican base can’t fathom the late surge in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, or even Georgia, the US may be turning the page on a very dark chapter of its short life span.

That is assuming, of course, that the gung-ho supremacist groups that the Orange Administration has been courting, like the Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys, because apparently it’s always “boys” with this chuckle-fucks, don’t up-end the prototype democracy with a dash of civil insurrection. Which is still a big assumption.

But on the back of this relief and disappointment of an election, one factor has cropped up as particularly interesting to me. Most polls just straight assumed that the Orange Hydra would be swiftly and unceremoniously punted out of office at the polls. It turns out though that most swing states were an awfully tight race. In some of them, the difference is but a few thousand, even a few hundred votes. After the Covid-travesty, the tens of thousands of lies, the “good people on both sides” overt support of racism, the Orange monster still held onto a lot of confidence among US voters. Which should, but certainly won’t, prompt the Democratic Party to do some serious soul-searching. How is it that their neoliberal politics and policies could just barely win by the skin of its teeth against a compulsive liar, a sycophant, a criminal, an authoritarian, a demagogue, a cognitively impaired chauvinistic pig?

It seems, according to some pundits, to stem from the fact that to the average US voter, none of those travesties are their biggest concerns. Because to the average voter, a global pandemic that kills some and leaves others potentially permanently brain damaged isn’t the biggest problem of their lives. Galvanized racism, sexism, and lgbtq-phobia isn’t their greatest concern. A destabilized world order, a trade war with China, and the squandering of diplomatic reputation isn’t their greatest concerns. Even the failing environment, causing storms, draughts, and continent-spanning wildfires isn’t their single most urgent concern. No, what turns out is the absolutely most important issue during an election for oh so many US citizens turns out to be the state of their personal wallets. Their own private bank accounts. Their income security. All other concerns are distant seconds, even the viability of the planet and their country as a habitat.

I think that says a lot about the condition of the nation state of the US. It is a society that is so desperately dependent on an income, on jobs and private assets, that not even a global plague can compete. That the US is so engorged in haywire capitalism that the average voter doesn’t give a shit how despicable you are as a leader, so long as you promise them a pay cheque…

Must be nice, non? Must be nice to have turned your citizenry into such desperate pawns that you can do whatever you want to them, treat them however callously as you wish, lie and cheat and steal from them, so long as they believe you can provide them with an income. Must be nice to have taught them that the only decent, the only truly “American” way to live is to slaver and beg for a slip of money at the end of a month or week of hard labour. It must be nice to lord over such an Objectivist utopia. Because as it turns out, if you’ve imprinted that notion hard enough into the mind of the average voter, you won’t have to supply any other services as a government. You don’t need to make sure that everyone’s fed, that everyone has a roof over their heads, or that everyone can get medical care if they need it. Give them a pay cheque, even minimum wage, and their desperation for another slip of credit will make them blind to anything else.

Perhaps this is why the projected nightmare of socialism haunts the mind of the “True American” as it does. The vilified notion of the “Handout” stalks among the downtrodden, threatening to turn the able-bodied worker into a beggar. Pay no mind to the fact that you’re just as much a beggar under the ultra-capitalist boot of the “American Dream”. Pay no mind to the fact that paying taxes can earn you subsidised healthcare just as well as you can “earn” it by remortgaging your house. Or by pawning off your kidney to afford a new liver for your husband, which has failed over the course of decades of eating corporate garbage food originally intended to keep livestock stupid and pliant.

No wonder “socialism” is so demonized in the US discourse. Even though public healthcare, education, housing, are all “socialist” ideas that have been adopted by otherwise capitalist governments and societies across the globe. But not in the US. Never in the US. Because if you undermined the desperation of the US voter, perhaps their leaders wouldn’t be able to lie, cheat, steal, grab a woman by the pussy, or fondle pre-pubescent children the way that they do. Perhaps, if the average voter didn’t have to fear for their life and well being, constantly worry that their inherently unhealthy lifestyle might send them into crushing medical debt, or slave away at the plant, or stress out over their private business endeavour, then they might notice such abhorrent behaviour. Maybe they’d even take umbrage with it? And maybe, just maybe, the pliant and gullible masses would start making demands of their government.

But of course, that’s not the reality of the United States of America. For so long as the average voter is more concerned with the state of their private finances, none of the details will bother them. Raging wildfires, unrelenting storms, pandemic plagues, senile and insane leaders, none of it will come close to the very private concern of the wallet.

Must be nice…

/Sebastian Lindberg 10/11-2020