It feels like that is part of what’s going on right now in the US. We are so overwhelmed with complete shit, while we move towards losing any form of regulation over business and the idea of democracy itself.
I feel like continuing to read it is going to force me on blood pressure medication. I knew that the US did a lot of ratfuckery to support regimes like Pinochet’s, but now I want to convert to Christianity just so I can believe there’s a hell for Milton Friedman to burn in.
I read the Shock Doctrine back in '09. It crystallized the Bush II presidency in such detail and scope that I’ve never been able to forget it.
Things have only gotten worse. Even under Obama. Certainly under Trump and Biden.
The part about Yeltsin firing on his own Parliament was very insightful. Again, setting the stage for Russia’s current exercises of Shock.
Letting enough people die expedites certain forms of problem-solving; particularly those that involve the military, technology, heavy industry, reconstruction, and financial sectors of the economy. When the most expensive things are destroyed — like cities, infrastructure, and the concept of human security — that’s where the fuckiteering begins. Debt loads, overcharging, and profiteering on misery for companies /countries that caused the problems in the first place.
It’s gross.
I just got through the section on Russia. The idea that “Russians weren’t ready for democracy” - WTF! I’ve read so much Cold War propaganda about how much better the US because it was a Democracy™ and then the West pressures Russia to not allow elections? Western money interests are why we have Putin.
I don’t get how any of these “economists” could live with themselves.
I’m starting to think that the Nobel Prize for Economics should be renamed the Nobel Anti-Peace Prize.