Global Feudalism
A multitude of cases could be made “against” economic globalism--a material assault on the world by (primarily) one state: The United States of America. Here we will concentrate on just one case. The present state of health in the developing world is our indictment against this greed-driven ideology. We tell you that right up front, so you will “know where we are coming from.”
The current issue of National Geographic Magazine, my old employer, features a story on Malaria, with the grim statistics that “nearly half a billion people get malaria each year,” and that “more than a million die” from the disease.
Let us stop there for a moment, and ask what exactly is globalism, and what is its “promise?” The first question is “objective,” since it invites each of us to define the phenomenon as we see it. The second question is purely rhetorical, since it asks the globalists to tell us why they do what they do. They do it, they say, to spread prosperity from the developed world into the undeveloped. In other words, their motives are "noble." That is the promise. The elimination of the extreme disparity between haves and have-nots on the global stage, in a great leveling out of the world economy.
Now. What is globalism as I, Jonathan Light, see it? (Each and every one of us should conduct this thought experiment, since this is a phenomenon that is altering our lives as we speak.) In my opinion globalism is the push by the wealthy classes in America (and to a lesser degree, Europe and the rest of the developed world) to increase markets for the goods and services that are making them richer by the nanosecond. By eliminating tariffs and other import restrictions, the primary means by which counties protect their workers from foreign exploitation, globalists are able to double, triple, and quadruple their wealth. Why would not a class of people steeped in greed not want to do that? But that’s just my take. Perhaps I’m just an old hippie with axes to grind. So let’s go back to the “promise” of globalism, which ostensibly is to eradicate the extreme dichotomy between haves and have-nots on the world stage.
If globalism were in any way even approaching its noble goals, then we would be seeing signs of its success…amongst the working people of the world. Instead what we are seeing is the creation of pockets of extreme wealth in formerly poor countries like India and China. As for “the people,” they are either as bad off as ever, or worse off. Take the continent of Africa. At a time in human history when Americans are debating which expensive techniques will produce armies of centenarians, the people of Africa are still dying in droves…as children and young adults. What is even more of a global “scandal,” a million (mostly young) people a year are dying from a disease that is extraordinarily easy to treat…Malaria. As the fat cats of America get so bloated with wealth that they have to hire people to help them spend it, the people of Africa--the continent where human life began, according to many National Geographic stories that I worked on--don’t even have the resources to treat this easily treated disease. Here we see the “success” of globalism in all of its ugliness.
Now we ask: what should a “proper” globalism be all about? Have we not been promised, at least implicitly, that we are about to become a global village, one big planetary economy with benefits and caring for all? Hah! I challenge anyone to show us that this is happening. Globalism, as it is turning out, means only one thing: that a wealthy and privileged "global" class gets even wealthier and more privileged. Globalism is a way for American feudalism to become global feudalism. Plain and simple. And as African children die of a disease that could be treated for the small change left by Globalist billionaires as tips for their concierges, the American media continues to treat this phenomenon as if it were just another story of political “equivalence,” wherein each side of the argument is granted “respectability.” And virtually all of America’s political leaders, including most Democrats, and most notably Ms. Hillary Clinton, are solid defenders of the globalist juggernaut.
Wake up Americans of conscious. Wake up! If Senator Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, then form a third party and reclaim your human dignity. Let us, people of good will toward their fellow human beings, pursue our own dream of Globalism. The kind of dream that a benevolent God might approve of. Not the god of Mammon, which currently runs our benighted two-party system of “SO CALLED” democracy.
The current issue of National Geographic Magazine, my old employer, features a story on Malaria, with the grim statistics that “nearly half a billion people get malaria each year,” and that “more than a million die” from the disease.
Let us stop there for a moment, and ask what exactly is globalism, and what is its “promise?” The first question is “objective,” since it invites each of us to define the phenomenon as we see it. The second question is purely rhetorical, since it asks the globalists to tell us why they do what they do. They do it, they say, to spread prosperity from the developed world into the undeveloped. In other words, their motives are "noble." That is the promise. The elimination of the extreme disparity between haves and have-nots on the global stage, in a great leveling out of the world economy.
Now. What is globalism as I, Jonathan Light, see it? (Each and every one of us should conduct this thought experiment, since this is a phenomenon that is altering our lives as we speak.) In my opinion globalism is the push by the wealthy classes in America (and to a lesser degree, Europe and the rest of the developed world) to increase markets for the goods and services that are making them richer by the nanosecond. By eliminating tariffs and other import restrictions, the primary means by which counties protect their workers from foreign exploitation, globalists are able to double, triple, and quadruple their wealth. Why would not a class of people steeped in greed not want to do that? But that’s just my take. Perhaps I’m just an old hippie with axes to grind. So let’s go back to the “promise” of globalism, which ostensibly is to eradicate the extreme dichotomy between haves and have-nots on the world stage.
If globalism were in any way even approaching its noble goals, then we would be seeing signs of its success…amongst the working people of the world. Instead what we are seeing is the creation of pockets of extreme wealth in formerly poor countries like India and China. As for “the people,” they are either as bad off as ever, or worse off. Take the continent of Africa. At a time in human history when Americans are debating which expensive techniques will produce armies of centenarians, the people of Africa are still dying in droves…as children and young adults. What is even more of a global “scandal,” a million (mostly young) people a year are dying from a disease that is extraordinarily easy to treat…Malaria. As the fat cats of America get so bloated with wealth that they have to hire people to help them spend it, the people of Africa--the continent where human life began, according to many National Geographic stories that I worked on--don’t even have the resources to treat this easily treated disease. Here we see the “success” of globalism in all of its ugliness.
Now we ask: what should a “proper” globalism be all about? Have we not been promised, at least implicitly, that we are about to become a global village, one big planetary economy with benefits and caring for all? Hah! I challenge anyone to show us that this is happening. Globalism, as it is turning out, means only one thing: that a wealthy and privileged "global" class gets even wealthier and more privileged. Globalism is a way for American feudalism to become global feudalism. Plain and simple. And as African children die of a disease that could be treated for the small change left by Globalist billionaires as tips for their concierges, the American media continues to treat this phenomenon as if it were just another story of political “equivalence,” wherein each side of the argument is granted “respectability.” And virtually all of America’s political leaders, including most Democrats, and most notably Ms. Hillary Clinton, are solid defenders of the globalist juggernaut.
Wake up Americans of conscious. Wake up! If Senator Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, then form a third party and reclaim your human dignity. Let us, people of good will toward their fellow human beings, pursue our own dream of Globalism. The kind of dream that a benevolent God might approve of. Not the god of Mammon, which currently runs our benighted two-party system of “SO CALLED” democracy.
posted by Jonathan Light | 5:20 PM
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