> I believed back then that the disjunction was so great, that it could
> not be erased. Obviously I was wrong. This was the importance of the
> concept of erasure, that you could not erase a breach this big. Well, it
> seems you can.
Maybe the memory was erased, but noone can erase geopolitics. Looking back, there are some truly eerie parallels between the US defeat in Vietnam and the defeat of neoliberalism. Like the US, neoliberalism seemed to have all the advantages: the best technology, superior financial firepower, the most liquid markets in the world. Like the US, neoliberalism kept telling itself that it was a winner, that it couldn't possibly lose, that history had ended. Just as the US ravaged Vietnam from 1954-1975, so too did neoliberalism ravage the global semi-periphery from 1975-1999.
But then it all came crashing down. No amount of military firepower could stop a genuine people's revolution, and no amount of IMF austerity or Wall Street speculation could halt genuinely popular developmental states.
-- DRR