Underpaid and over-leveraged by debt, ordinary citizens may as well be racing dogs chasing mechanical rabbits at the track, and the 1% at Davos are betting on our obedience.
The season of Davos is upon us during an era when economic and social inequality oozes over our lands like lava from an angry volcano.
Davos is stuck on an eternal rinse-and-repeat cycle for neoliberalism. Its aim is public relations to show the ordinary world the rich are invested in the well-being of all of us. Disturbingly the large anti-poverty NGOs enable this myth because their solutions to Davos are about reforming neoliberalism which is as useful an endeavour as trying to convince a lion to go vegan while resting in its mouth. It’s absurd waste of political advocacy that every year Oxfam publishes a report about how much of the world’s wealth the 1% own without demanding radical socialism. As the report every year, despite wide coverage by the news media plays does sweet fuck all because they file it under an “ever thus,” heading.
The 1% owns everything worth owning and will do so today and tomorrow as long as neoliberalism exists. It's irreformable. No petition, no incrementalism and no amount of opinion pieces in the Guardian or New York Times will change that.
Still, there is a change in the atmosphere of Davos in 2024. This year feels like the prelude to Armageddon because the US in the 21st century confused their "manifest destiny" as an Empire with that of the ambitions of trillion-dollar-plus hedge funds that are bullish on offshore wars and a cost-of-living crisis at home. Davos knows, like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that there is gold and riches beyond imagination in the killing fields of war.
There will be no wisdom from the 1% to end Europe bleeding out from the blood of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, only cynical platitudes and the traipsing out of neoliberalism's favourite Panama Papers President Ukraine's Zelenskyy
Don't look to Davos to stop Africa bleeding out from wars in Sudan and Ethiopia because they have too much invested in rare minerals needed to produce a capitalist faux solution to the climate crisis, the EV. And never ever look to Davos to end the slaughter of innocents in the Mideast- whether they be the 1200 or so Israelis on October 7th or the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in retribution in Gaza for that crime against humanity.
Democracy has a DNR note on its unconscious chest because we have no political choices to change society or the trajectory of our lives. Davos is just another word for despair because during and after it, we will hear calls from gelded centre-left politicians for a wealth tax that they have no teeth or actual desire to implement.
Neoliberalism was always a vehicle driving us towards fascism and now we have arrived at our stop. Every political party within a hairsbreadth of power offers a variant of the status quo. Trump winning the Iowa Caucus doesn't terrify me the way it did in 2016 because fascism isn't a one-man band in America. It's an orchestra that now plays everywhere. So voting in 2024 won't stop its tune because the Democrats are in its woodwind section.
Trump is too old to be a dictator for long. He's like America's Yeltsin. It's the Putin in the shadows; you should watch for because that one will bring the darkness coming, regardless of whether Trump or Biden wins this November.
Unmitigated capitalism hijacked our democracies, which explains why politicians have more wealth than the average citizen they claim to represent. The 1% bought our news media platforms, publishing companies, and movie and TV production companies and propagated the myth that wealth rather than empathy is humanity’s supreme virtue and reason to exist.
Underpaid and over-leveraged by debt, ordinary citizens may as well be racing dogs chasing mechanical rabbits at the track. Wages haven’t matched the cost of living since my dad was middle-aged in 1975. None of us will ever acquire the wealth needed to feel safe, secure, and at peace with our neighbours in the 21st century.
Covid, like the Climate emergency, was supposed to be about the “Great Reset.” It was our wake-up call for capitalism to change its ways and prevent our extinction as a species. Instead, of reforming itself capitalism delivered with the assistance of our governments a cost-of-living crisis to diminish what should expect in life.
The 1% of Davos suffocated democracy across the planet. 2024 is going to be one horrendous year of repression, death and wars without end. Hold on tight- but remember we are many, and they are few. It's time to get pissed off not just on social media but in the real world, where collective action can spark a revolution.
As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help to keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith and his Last Stand alive, in the public eye and relevant. Your subscriptions to this newsletter do that and also keep my housed which has become a precarious thing thanks to getting cancer along with other co- morbidities as I age in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John
Well said, John! And truth.
Your best post yet. Plainly stated truth and the horror of it all. "The purpose of a system is what it does" not what it consistently fails to do (Stafford Beer). That boot on our throats pressing ever harder, is right where this system wants it to be. It will not be removed voluntarily.