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Title: We're All Soviets Now
Source: thefp
URL Source: https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now
Published: Jun 18, 2024
Author: Niall Ferguson
Post Date: 2024-06-19 15:31:34 by Prefrontal Vortex
Keywords: None
Views: 193
Comments: 3

🇺🇸 🇷🇺 Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now

⬛️ A government with a permanent deficit and a bloated military. A bogus ideology pushed by elites. Poor health among ordinary people. Senescent leaders. Sound familiar?

🔶️ I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we— and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets.

🔶️ A chronic “soft budget constraint” in the public sector, which was a key weakness of the Soviet system? I see a version of that in the U.S. deficits forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to exceed 5% of GDP for the foreseeable future.

🔶️ The insertion of the central government into the investment decision-making process? I see that too, despite the hype around the Biden administration’s “industrial policy.”

🔶️ We have a military that is simultaneously expensive and unequal to the tasks it confronts, as Senator Roger Wicker’s newly published report makes clear.

🔶️ The share of GDP going on interest payments on the federal debt will be double what we spend on national security by 2041, thanks partly to the fact that the rising cost of the debt will squeeze defense spending down from 3% of GDP this year to a projected 2.3% in 30 years’ time.

🔶️ Even more striking to me are the political, social, and cultural resemblances I detect between the U.S. and the USSR. Gerontocratic leadership was one of the hallmarks of late Soviet leadership.

🔶️ Another notable feature of late Soviet life was total public cynicism about nearly all institutions. To reread Russians’ complaints about their lives in the 1980s is to come across more than a few eerie foreshadowings of the American present.

🔶️ The mass self-destruction of Americans captured in the phrase "deaths of despair" for years has been ringing a faint bell in my head. This week I remembered where I had seen it before: in late Soviet and post–Soviet Russia.

🔶️ Like the Soviet system as a whole, the U.S. healthcare system has evolved so that a whole bunch of vested interests can extract rents. The bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy is great for the nomenklatura, lousy for the proles.

🔶️ As in the late Soviet Union, the hillbillies—actually the working class and a goodly slice of the middle class, too— drink and drug themselves to death even as the political and cultural elite double down on a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.

🔶️ A bogus ideology that hardly anyone really believes in, but everyone has to parrot ? Check. A population that no longer regards patriotism, religion, having children, or community involvement as important? Check. How about a massive disaster that lays bare the utter incompetence and mendacity that pervades every level of government? For Chernobyl, read Covid.

https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets- now

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#1. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#0)

Senescent - (seh-NEH-sents) The process of growing old. In biology, senescence is a process by which a cell ages and permanently stops dividing but does not die. Over time, large numbers of old (or senescent) cells can build up in tissues throughout the body.

If I didn't know what it meant, few people did.

“The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone.
TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy…
but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.”

Esso  posted on  2024-06-19   16:40:14 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#0)

Another notable feature of late Soviet life was total public cynicism about nearly all institutions. To reread Russians’ complaints about their lives in the 1980s is to come across more than a few eerie foreshadowings of the American present.

I suspect Aleena's father (USSR/Lithuania, KGB/FSB) set me up as her 'sleeper guardian' years ago when she came to the US to get her education in nursing and experience in Ft. Wayne while I was a Company contractor.

I think I met Aleena at Melissa's (Daria's) clot-shot funeral in Feb2021. They worked together. She didn't move in with me until the day after Thanksgiving 2021 and stayed until 9Feb2023 to leave for Vilnius.

Aleena died 27Feb2023 in her sleep just before her 31st birthday. Ever hear ex-KGB guy cry?

“The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone.
TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy…
but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.”

Esso  posted on  2024-06-19   17:08:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Prefrontal Vortex (#0) (Edited)

For Chernobyl, read Covid.

v2.0 'Bird Flu' should be a doozie.

And my 15 y/o girlfriend who turned 60 in January is going to be on the forefront.

“The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone.
TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy…
but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the Men who just wanted to be left alone.”

Esso  posted on  2024-06-19   17:11:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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