Missive #57

Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: April 7, 1935

The most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left.

The epochal shift toward neoliberalism-a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of I liked this book which I thought was generally bias free. That is it was bias free until he started writing about the Trump and Biden years. Some readers will think there is no bias, others will agree with me. You need to read it and make up your mind. government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces-that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word “neoliberal” is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world.

To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades. As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. Along with tracing how this worldview emerged in America and grew to dominate the world, Gerstle explores the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies. He is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order’s fall, originating in the failed reconstruction of
Iraq and Great Recession of the Bush years and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s.

An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future. — Book promo @ goodreas.com

I don’t think this will happen in 2023 but it very well could happen within the next 3-5 years. When it does it is going to have a big impact on the United States assuming that the United States is still one country.

Mexico has expressed its interest in joining the BRICS group of emerging economies… Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that Mexico shares the vision and values of the BRICS and hopes to deepen its cooperation with them in various fields, especially in medicine and trade. Mexico’s move comes amid growing tensions with its northern neighbor, the United States, over issues such as immigration, border security, trade and human rights. The US has imposed tariffs on Mexican goods, threatened to cut off aid and demanded that Mexico do more to stop the flow of migrants from Central America.… Mexico sees the BRICS as an alternative platform to diversify its foreign relations and increase its global influence. Mexico is the second-largest economy in Latin America after Brazil and has a population of more than 120 million people. — Mexico Plans to Join BRICS Amid Growing Tensions with US by Newsdesk

I think that is what is coming next in the attempts to stop Trump from becoming president again — they must kill him.

If you shoot the king make sure you kill him. Accusing Trump of crimes that can not be proven in court will only make him stronger. — Democrats Promote Trump by Claiming He is a Criminal

I have never been a Democrat supporter however if it comes to a vote between Trump and Kennedy Jr I may be leaning that way. Robert F. is a anti-vaxxer which goes a long way in garnering my support. Then there is what he has said in his Tweet quoted below; he sounds more like an old time Republican that a member of either Party today.

The collapse of U.S. influence over Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom’s new alliances with China and Iran are painful emblems of the abject failure of the Neocon strategy of maintaining U.S. global hegemony with aggressive projections of military power. China has displaced the American Empire by deftly projecting, instead, economic power. Over the past decade, our country has spent trillions bombing roads, ports, bridges, and airports. China spent the equivalent building the same across the developing world. The Ukraine war is the final collapse of the Neocon’s short-lived “American Century.” The Neocon projects in Iraq and Ukraine have cost $8.1 trillion, hollowed out our middle class, made a laughingstock of U.S. military power and moral authority, pushed China and Russia into an invincible alliance, destroyed the dollar as the global currency, cost millions of lives and done nothing to advance democracy or win friendships or influence. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr