Risking Everything
I am stealing that headline from the New York Times this morning as that theme seems to be screaming this morning for attention. The article in the Times is about the rising protests in Iran and China and the fact that the oppression in those two autocratic countries has gotten incredibly severe and economic salve is so absent, that people cannot help themselves but protest. This is in the light of the economic conflict that has been inflicted on the world by the other great autocratic regime of Vladimir Putin in Russia. This, as Russia it uses every weapon in its arsenal and directed at anybody Vlad the Destroyer feels he can to give him some conceivable edge in keeping his power. These are the things that autocratic leaders do, especially as their power gets old and creaky, as it always does sooner or later as as it is for Putin, Xi and Ali Khamenei. Ali Khamenei wins the supreme ruler sweepstakes with thirty+ years under his belt. Putin is the runner-up with 24 years (yes, I include the Medvedev years). And Xi is the relative rookie with only ten years in power, but you have to hand it to the Chinese Communist Party, only one out of 3,000 delegates voted against Xi and it is suggested that was a token planted by the Party to show that they could tolerate dissent. Nice try.
If the women of Iran burn their Hijabs, send out the The Guidance Police, as they call their Islamic religious goons and have them toughen the bonds on the population. Maybe the men of Iran will reign in their womenfolk as they should. If the youth of Wuhan protest the unbearableness of even more COVID lockdowns that place the health safety of older Chinese against the economic viability (note that I do not say “prosperity” since it it has become a matter of survivability in parts of China), the National Police Service of the People’s Republic will quickly hose it down with cold water. Would anyone even dare protest in Moscow at this stage and risk the Navalny effect? Now that Victor Bout is free and can restart his career in selling arms to anyone who wants them, he may find that the best customers for his business (which has been on ice since his arrest in 2008) are all these protestors. But then again, with the shortage of munitions brought about by the Ukraine War, who would you want as a creditor, Putin’s Russia under sanctions or the EU and the US? I suspect business may not be business just yet as Bout relishes his newfound freedom, but eventually he is likely to revert to form and be selling arms to the highest and best credit bidder.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or as our beloved ex-President Donald Trump calls it, Mar-a-Lago, the man is defaulting to form in playing along with Putin and other MAGA Republicans in complaining bitterly about “a ‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!!!” for securing the release of “a basketball player who openly hates our Country” instead of a “former Marine, Paul Whelan.” As always, Trump goes too far, as he always does, and shows his skirt of total fallibility and open deception by adding that Whelan “would have been let out for the asking”, implying that the State Department was as inept as his State Department was for four years and simply, what, forgot to ask for Whelan in their excitement over getting Griner? The bravest of protestors in Iran, Chin or Russia are not so bold as to lie publicly like Donald Trump must in these waning moments of his failing and as yet unjailed notoriety. I guess if you are Donald Trump, you are like the most downtrodden Chinese peasant of Pearl Buck’s Good Earth and you simply have nothing left to lose.
As much as we all need to be afraid of anyone we put in the position of having nothing to lose, we can rest assured that the impoverished peasant has more realization of his inherent destitution than Donald Trump and his followers do. They of the MAGA have not only lost touch with their humanity, they have lost touch with reality and do not see themselves as beyond redemption. Speaking of disconnected surrealists, how about Kyrsten Sinema and her announcement this morning that she is switching her allegiance from the Democratic Party to a status as an Independent, joining her fellow senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King? I have a great deal of respect for both Sanders and King, who hail from opposite sides of the progressive spectrum, but who truly and logically stand up for what they believe in.
Sinema, on the other hand seems to bend to whatever crazy thought comes into her head at any moment. This moment she wants to make a post-midterm and post-Georgia-runoff statement that Democrats don’t really have a 51/49 majority in the Senate. Her switch might even mean something if she was declaring that she would no longer caucus with the Democrats. She got as close to that line as she could by saying that she would NOT caucus with Republicans, but would not say that she would NOT caucus with the Dems. Why would she make this precisely-timed and high-profile announcement and then stop short? Well that would be hard to figure out if she were Sanders or King, but she is Sinema and that makes it a lot easier.
She has enjoyed two years of Manchin-like limelight in her modernistic outfits and big glasses. She has been a linchpin in the life of the nation in the way that few people, especially ones as morally bankrupt as her, could ever hope to be. Now that her edge has been eliminated by the Georgia electorate who chose not to vote for an even more morally corrupt ex-Football star who lives in Texas, what’s a girl to do? So, why stop short? Well, she could go all Marjorie Taylor-Greene and give up her committee assignments, which Chuck Schumer would be glad to pull out from under her for abandoning the Democratic caucus, but what would that serve? Don’t you get it yet? That would make her LESS visible even if it would agree with her supposed philosophical stand. There will be a time when she wants out of the spotlight, but not until she has secured whatever Quayle-like featherbedding she can get to make the rest of her life nice and cushy. Such is the pattern for men and women fortunate enough to get on the Senate roster.
I wish I could get more Americans to pay attention to the sentiments of the broadest segments of the population. Some might say that is what Trump has been mining for the past seven years, but I would wholeheartedly disagree. As previously discussed, he has been mining boredom and bitterness from the depths of the soul of people who have given up on hard work and education as their salvation and path for a better life. His base isn’t interested in risking anything, they want to recapture what they think is their birthright and they see him as the king of getting what you want rather than what you deserve.
I want them to turn their attention to those like the Iranians, the Chinese and the Russians, not to mention the subcontinent labor force working in the kafala system in the Gulf or the marginalized workers in the Brazilian rain forrest. These used to be extreme examples of the nothing-to-lose population, but they have more and more in common with a larger and larger part of the American labor force. With the Federal minimum wage at $7.25 ( that’s $15,000 per annum, which is below the median income in Russia and China, on par with Brazil, and slightly above India). By the way, 7 states do not have state minimum wages above this thirteen tear old minimum wage. I saw a starting fast food worker in California can get $14/hr and a day laborer at Home Depot gets $20/hr. In a nutshell, we are driving American workers to have nothing to lose and willing increasingly towards risking everything. Does no one else hear the revolution just over the horizon like
I do?