[lbo-talk] The very worst custodians of empire

Paul paul_ at igc.org
Thu Jun 29 08:34:44 PDT 2006


How much are we thinking of the "old" U.S.?

America is in throes of a vast transformation, going from a country of great expectations to the most unequal in the developed world, with the least mobility, and the most day-to-day insecurity for the vast majority. This is new - and the trend is for even worse ahead. (Never mind what happens if there is an old fashioned depression in the midst of this change.)

No one knows exactly how this will affect future social relations within the U.S. and social relations can have a "lag" period of many years. But surely this change is likely to fuel all sorts of social hatreds. I would think that EVERY identifiable social group will be at greater risk from all sorts of directions ("above", "below", and new opportunistic coalitions).

Blacks and Latinos will be less in a position to defend themselves, but *everyone* may experience greater insecurity. In many countries with large inequalities even the wealthiest and most powerful (I am NOT identifying Jews, as a group, in this category) feel a constant sense of fear and even persecution -- particularly if they also come from a distinct ethnic group. Come to think of it, I can not recall a single region of the world that has such inequalities and does NOT have communal strife.

People at the bottom will lose more in this new arrangement, but everyone will lose something.

Paul


> >
> > I'd say that anti-Semitism isn't really at the top
> > of the list of
> > potential horrors in the US. There's always a risk,
> > but as targets
> > go, black people and Mexicans are much more likely.
> >
> > Doug
>
>I can imagine pogroms in the US against Mexicans. With
>greater difficulty I can imagine them against Blacks.
>Anti-Jewish pogroms in the US in the stuff of science
>fiction, despite the apparent attempts of people to 1)
>pretend that Weimar Germany still exists and 2) Weimar
>Germany exists everywhere in the world.
>
>Nu, zayats, pogodi!



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