Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Geld Vlad Better

 My fellow Americans, your government must sanction the oligarchs over there so we don't have to tax them over here.  

If only Joe Biden would expand his sanctimonious sanctioning of a few Russian billionaires in Vlad's inner circle into actually converting their "frozen" or "seized" real estate holdings in the United States into permanent, federally subsidized housing for poor people! Just think of how many people could be sheltered in the empty luxury penthouses and mansions they've been vacuuming up here since the fall of the Soviet Union, using them not as homes but as money-laundering banks.

 Then Biden finally might even start clawing his way back into positive poll territory.  After all, if he can unilaterally seize the frozen assets of the Afghan people and use them to settle lawsuits with the 9/11 survivors, then he can seize the myriad ill-gotten assets that Putin has no way of preserving for himself and his oligarchic pals. Even better, such seizure and allocation to the needy would not lead to the deaths of innocent civilians through starvation, disease and exposure to the elements. For once in the violent hegemonic history of these United States, what our leaders euphemize as their "responsibility to protect" through "humanitarian interventions" will be the real deal, and not just a fig leaf for mass destruction and violence.

And if he gets a good public response from real estate seizures from Russian oligarchs, he and the Congress he reveres might even want to expand it further with punitive taxes on the wealth of such sociopathic American tycoons as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

  But then again, the US municipalities which host the Russian oligarchs' real estate holdings could very well balk at losing their tax bases through such a federal seizure and redistribution. It would also mightily disappoint the private equity vultures doing their own predatory part of buying up homes and apartment complexes, forcing people to rent them at exorbitant rates. I assume that the foreign owners do pay some property taxes through their shell companies, despite all the sweetheart deals for concessions for buyers or developers in exchange for, as an example, allowing a little green space and one or two "affordable" apartments for the hoi polloi.

And as for the US-based zillionaires, cities are actually vying for their presence because it allegedly creates jobs, despite the fact that the municipalities themselves are on the hook for building the infrastructure and the helipads and other perks for the job-creators.

For when push comes to shove, capitalism knows no national boundaries, despite all the intra-oligarchic bickering and land grabs among the globe's nation-states. Vlad Putin's "invasion" of a small part of Ukraine the size of New Jersey is thus far limited* to diplomatically recognizing a region historically populated by ethnic Russians. There will be much bombast and posturing on both sides, with probably the biggest winner being the US military-industrial complex, standing to reap a windfall from weapons sales to a disorganized Ukraine military populated largely by neo-Nazi freedom fighters.

Speaking of freedom, official Washington is also "bracing" for the convoy of big rigs driven, allegedly, by white supremacist fascists whose only desire is to be freed from mask and vaccine mandates. Never mind that our leaders can't seem to rid themselves of the mask mandates fast enough to placate all manner of individual, ad hoc dissidents and private militias in official or unofficial service to the US-based oligarchs.  How else can the surveillance state ever use its facial recognition technology to surveil and arrest all the necessary suspects? 

The timing of the remake of Smokey and the Bandit, meanwhile, could not be more exquisite, with the arrival of the convoy of truckers coinciding with Joe Biden's State of the Union speech next week before the Congressional Joint. What a relief it must be to his own beleaguered party that he'll get away with a few whispered regrets about the failure of his Build Back Better social welfare package. He will drown them right out with a jingoistic emasculation of Vlad the Impaler! Geld Vlad Better, if you will. Can't you already hear the raucous bipartisan yells of USA! USA! USA! echoing through the hallowed halls? Can't you envision democracy itself rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the January Sixth sacrilege?

But just to keep the fear alive along with the exaltation, to maintain the free-floating anxiety so necessary for a resurgence of the Cold War if not a hotter one, the TV audience will also be regaled by at least a thousand National Guard troops policing the Capitol to supplement its actual encirclement by the same forbidding barbed wire which protected the ruling elites from the people at Biden's inaugural last year.

Biden is taking no chances. He is selling us on not just one Enemy Outside, but two. There is Putin over there, and there is the threatening convoy of Trumpy Truckers converging on Washington from all over the wild hinterlands of Outside Over Here.

We'll no doubt be hearing many plaintive cries for national unity from elites all over the political spectrum in the coming days and weeks and months. The spectrum of which I speak spans all the way from A to B, with myriad pinpoints and occult cracks in between for just a little surface variety.

It's a democracy, my fellow Americans. You have the freedom to pick from two options. Vote on which scenario will inspire, scare or disgust you the most in the latest propaganda battle for your hearts and your minds.

Is it this?


 

Or maybe this:


If, as Samuel Johnson opined, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then the appeals for "unity"  and "civility" and "bringing the country together" are its partners in psychopathy.

We should avoid this cant like the plague, whose cruel reality and human cost is what the political scoundrels themselves are working like mad to avoid addressing.


*2/24 It is now a full-scale invasion. US intelligence has been vindicated, says US. They got exactly what they wanted. The neocon and liberal interventionist hawks must be in heaven, and Biden's poll numbers from the Dems will probably soar skyward as well, in the spirit of elite solidarity. And with Trump praising Vlad, it makes one wonder if the normally war-hungry Republicans will have no choice but to disown him. It would be quite an about-face if any anti-war movement in the US ends up being led by right-wing factions.

3 comments:

Mark Thomason said...

Ukraine's President Zelenskyy announced mobilization of reservists, and an "economic mobilization." That meant tax cuts on the wealthy. He said it was to encourage them.

Normally countries facing war raise taxes to pay for it, and also to reduce domestic demand in order to avoid inflation and competition for resources wanted for the war industry. Ukraine is doing the opposite.

This tells us they have no plan to pay for this war, nor to produce the war materials. They are a proxy for those they expect to pay for this war and supply it.

It also tells us who among the Western interests is dominant in Ukraine. It is not the average Ukrainian worker, it is the oligarchs who use even war to cut their taxes.

We should keep this in mind as our own warmongers push our support of this project. Today the NYT included a call to "rally around Biden" for this war. Well, no. I'm not rallying to this war, and certainly not around these bungling miscreants.

VLT said...

The U.S. isn't sending in soldiers but, of course, we will provide the Ukraine with arms. Meaning, once again the U.S. tax payer will pay the weapons manufacturers boatloads of money and it will be sold to the public as we are supporting an ally.

I can't bear to watch.

Erik Roth said...

"No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up.”
~ Lily Tomlin

America’s Ukraine Hypocrisy —
The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking.
https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy#
August 6, 2017 ~ by Ted Galen Carpenter

How and why the U.S. Government Perpetrated the 2014 Coup in Ukraine —
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/04/how-and-why-the-u-s-government-perpetrated-the-2014-coup-in-ukraine/
June 4, 2018 ~ by Eric Zuesse

US Stokes Tensions With Russia by Building Military Base 100 Miles From Border —
https://truthout.org/articles/us-stokes-tensions-with-russia-by-building-military-base-100-miles-from-border/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=d7f0396b-f68c-4d9e-a49c-ec23838e18dd
February 23, 2022 ~ by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout

The Push to Expand NATO Could Cost Countless Lives. It’s Time to Stop It. —
https://truthout.org/articles/the-push-to-expand-nato-could-cost-countless-lives-its-time-to-stop-it/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=250edd20-905c-4646-9f68-5a4ccb7085a4
February 23, 2022 ~ by Norman Solomon, Salon

EU and UN Are Also Responsible for Failure to Prevent War in Ukraine —
https://truthout.org/video/eu-and-un-are-also-responsible-for-failure-to-prevent-war-in-ukraine/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=250edd20-905c-4646-9f68-5a4ccb7085a4
February 23, 2022 ~ Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

Nuclear War Risk Rises as Tension Mounts Between Nuclear Superpowers over Ukraine —
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/23/the_threat_of_nuclear_war_ukraine
02/23/2022

US gas exporters set to benefit after Germany halts Russian pipeline —
“There are always those who will want to profit from war or the threat of war, as unscrupulous as it may seem,” said one critic.
“And for the American oil and gas industry there is no exception.”
https://therealnews.com/us-gas-exporters-set-to-benefit-after-germany-halts-russian-pipeline
02/23/2022 ~ by Kenny Stancil

Finally, for the American venerated bottom line, I hope you all can handle the truth:

Oliver Stone & Abby Martin: Down the JFK Rabbit Hole —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJd3Y94etd4
02/22/2022
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone joins Abby to discuss his new film J"FK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” —
his journey into the case, the evidence of a CIA-orchestrated assassination and American foreign policy.