Can Crony Capitalism Win Wars?

South China Morning Post

My husband is writing the next viral country song: "Try building hypersonic weapons in a country with subpar science." 

It may need some wordsmithing, but his concept is solid.

He was inspired after I showed him this tweet of the article above along with a selection of the comments:

https://twitter.com/thonwingp/status/1690904183195770881

"Inept H1B imports" refers to a special visa designation oft used by tech corporations to hire from outside the U.S. based on their claim that they can't find anyone in country who will accept low wages has the skills to do the job. (I'm not sure why Quaternion Group calls such workers inept -- could he do their jobs?) 

I would argue that the military-industrial industry is more likely to be brought to its knees by the poisoned seeds it contains within: crony capitalism.

When the head of your military has just resigned his seat on the board of Raytheon, you know he has friends in high places who expect him to scratch their back in return for having scratched his. White House, ditto. And then Congress multiplies this problem several hundred fold. For the past few years it has passed a Pentagon budget higher than what the Pentagon itself requested.

Try that in a small town.

Rep. Adam Smith chairs the House Armed Services Committee and is making a name for himself sharing opinion pieces like this:

The U.S. Department of Defense has spent tens of billions of dollars over the last 25 years on weapons systems that simply have failed to deliver as planned. These systems have wound up way over budget and have been either delivered exceptionally late or canceled outright after the DoD spent billions of dollars on them. Many of the programs that survive to completion, after long delays and cost overruns, have not delivered the capabilities initially desired and promised.

Not for the first time I'm reflecting on the role of late stage capitalism in defunding and privatizing public education. 

Finding the best math and science students and giving them all the free education they desire is what countries like Russia and China do. Here's what the U.S. does:

And, I'll just leave this artifact of reverse brain drain here:

From the International Business Times:

In April, Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of operations at the Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii, conveyed to CNN that "submarines are one area where the United States retains unchallenged superiority over China."

But now it's being reported that a prestigious science journal in China published a study suggesting that existing technology could be used to successfully detect U.S. nuclear submarines. If it pans out, this could significantly affect U.S. military dominance of the world's oceans. 

And that would be a game changer, indeed.

Is Extraordinary Attorney Woo An Indictment Of Capitalism?

In the quest to understand other cultures, confusion is normal. I observe, perhaps clearly, but then misinterpret what I see or hear. This made living abroad endlessly fascinating, and often humorous.

The quest is one of the many things that keeps me coming back guiltily to the propaganda platform Netflix. It would take too long to list every show that depicted Russians as evil incarnate so I'll just list one that seems specially designed to tee up the proxy war in Ukraine: Stranger Things. The propaganda is often more subtle, and harder to discern when watching a show set in Turkey, Iran, Italy, or South Korea.

Now that I'm down with Covid for the second time, Netflix is useful for keeping me resting on the couch. But I have to find a different show for daytime because my husband would be disappointed if I watched Extraordinary Attorney Woo without him.

The premise of the show -- that people on the autism spectrum experience life differently than most of us, and face unique challenges in love, diet, wardrobe, and issues of employment (including revolving doors) -- is not uniquely Korean. Several individuals in the community of people on the spectrum have criticized the show as coming from an ableist perspective. Also for depicting an extremely rare "genius savant" as if she represented the group accurately.

Apparently the show is popular enough in South Korea that schoolchildren are taunting classmates by asking, "Are you Woo Young-woo?" 

Perhaps not surprising considering the original title in Korean translates as Weird Attorney Woo Young-woo. 

So I'm watching this highly entertaining show through the lens of my own experiences. I was a teacher for many years, on teams working to eliminate the "R" word as an ableist taunt disrespectful of people with developmental delays. And I witnessed the beauty that becomes possible when neurodivergent people are afforded time and appropriate accomodations to participate fully in school activities. At my oldest grandchild's high school graduation recently, his class gave a standing ovation to a classmate with Down syndrome who was receiving a diploma along with the rest of the class. The growth in compassion, understanding, and opportunity that resulted from inclusion is  the best thing that happened in public education during my lifetime.

I also lived in Japan for several years, where Koreans conscripted during WW2 were still treated as aliens several generations later. I've protested General Dynamics building warships that port at Jeju Island, depicted as a tropical paradise for vacationing in certain Attorney Woo episodes, with a heritage coral reef now entombed in concrete. 

I've heard the argument that the brutal occupation of Korea by the Japanese empire created the conditions that gave rise to a culture of political protest. 

Protesters in Seoul on August 13, 2022 demand peace on the Korean peninsula. The signs read "Stop the joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea."

The ubiquitous presence of organized protest is one of the first things I noticed about this show.

Color-coordinated vests with political slogans show up in the courtroom when Woo's trials address social issues like gendered discrimination or treatment of people with disabilities. An opposing lawyer steps outside her role to protest (loudly) outside the courthouse, and then makes the argument that she was doing so in her capacity as a private citizen, and that she and the plaintiffs only chose the location because they had to appear in court later that day. The judge allows it.

Even the episode on South Korea's education culture, which many consider oppressive and inappropriately harsh, featured a character using absurdist political theater and direct action to protest. The self-styled Commander-in-Chief for the Children's Liberation Army has elementary school students ditching their "study cafes" and instead chanting: "Children must play now! Children must be healthy now! Children must be happy now!" He's the youngest son of a private academy owner known for her draconian regime of 12 hours straight study with no breaks or meals, where students are sent home for using the bathroom more than twice a day.

I live in a nation at the other extreme, where standards of education for the masses have eroded steadily. We look longingly at nations like Finland which has both excellent outcomes and plenty of play time, and where school tuition is illegal to ensure the wealthy don't exclude their children from the public schools.

Overall, though, I continue to be surprised by how much South Korea's legal system as depicted in Woo resembles that of the U.S. Our war on Korea killed 5 million before it was suspended by  ceasefire and partition of the peninsula into the communist North and the capitalist South. Freedom of speech and press are part of South Korea's constitution, as is prohibition of discrimination against people with disabilities or on the basis of sex.

That's the structural reflection of U.S. influence, even though the national government of South Korea has often been autocratic, with heads of state installed via military coups. Militarism pervades Attorney Woo's world as male attorneys bond over their shared military service experiences. 

Most like the U.S., however, is the pervasive class resentment that crops up in nearly every episode. It underpins the education mamas' anxieties, and fuels competition at law firms where connections trump merit. The theme of class under capitalism was an Academy Award winner in 2020 when the South Korean film Parasite won Best Picture depicting greedy landlords, and was the underpinning of the blockbuster dystopian series Squid Game in 2021.

Our increasingly desperate life under late stage capitalism transcends borders, inspiring authors in many languages.

A final note: it can't be a coincidence that all the affluent, highly-educated characters on Woo have very light complexions -- in contrast to many of their working class clients, and consistent with social stratification by melanin under capitalism. A cursory examination of K-pop stars shows those rising to the top of the highly profitable entertainment sector are uniformly fair. Also, the lighting scheme most often employed renders the actors especially bright. 

This is an issue the show has yet to take up, but I'm on episode 11 out of 16, so we could still get there. Needless to say, I will stay tuned.

Late Stage Capitalism Is A Death Cult -- Change My Mind

Aerial view of candle factory in Kentucky before and after this week's tornado.
Source: MAXAR Technologies via Reuters

I was sleepy the other night when I thought my husband said that there had been a 200 mile wide tornado killing people in Kentucky. Turns out it was a mile wide tornado (bad enough) touching down over a 200 mile area in several states (quite bad) in December (clear sign of a climate in crisis).

What he didn't know at the time is that Amazon warehouse workers routinely deprived of their cell phones were buried under rubble when the roof collapsed.

Source: The Washington Time "OSHA opens probe into deadly Amazon warehouse collapse in Illinois"

Also that workers in Kentucky's Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory who heard warning sirens and tried to leave were threatened with firing if they departed. Some stayed and died, some left anyway, and some stayed and survived to tell the tale.

The economic system producing both galloping climate change and burgeoning military budgets that drive climate change is a death cult.

Usually the claim "capitalism is a death cult" applies these days to the absence of public health policy that protects, you know, public health. 

One cannot serve both commerce and health as the CDC has bent over backward to demonstrate.

In the second winter of a deadly pandemic the U.S. has racked up this dismal track record:

• no universal health care
• no free testing kits such as the rest of the world receives (and derision from the White House press secretary for even suggesting this would be a good idea)

Wow. This tweet took off. And contains some of the most accurate responses wrt our pandemic response here in the US.

Maybe at some point our FDA, CDC and administration will understand finally this is a PUBLIC HEALTH problem, and not a Medical problem to make $$ off of. Maybe. https://t.co/fUCMNTtw91

— Michael Mina (@michaelmina_lab) December 7, 2021

• vaccine mandates rather than empirically proven access + education + incentive methods

• feeble vaccine distribution to low income nations we share the planet's germ pool with

• miniscule economic relief for actual people (vs. corporations)

• huge growth in the numbers of unhoused people nationwide

• schools open despite higher infection levels and maxed out hospital ICUs nationwide

• widespread health care provider burnout

• obscene growth in wealth inequality

Extreme wealth inequality has been a significant force for toppling the social order throughout history. So have pandemics and other disasters.

Meanwhile, the engines of commerce churn on creating profits to buy off governments. Subsidies to fossil fuel corporations were $5.9 trillion in 2020, a whopping $11 million a minute.

That would buy a lot of testing kits. If only the U.S. prioritized life over profits.

The Cult Of Celebrity Is Not Our Friend

Which version of Philip will you remember?

I've long been fascinated by the role that celebrity worship (yes, I think that's an accurate term) plays in the narrative management that keeps a greedy 1% in power hogging our common resources.

The death of Prince Philip at age 99 is a good occasion to reflect on this psychological weapon of the rich against the working classes. 

An aristocratic parasite whose brother-in-laws were literal Nazis, nasty and mean by reputation, Philip will ironically be mostly remembered on this side of the pond as portrayed by an actor in the Netflix series "The Crown." You know: younger, handsomer, and a boon companion of the plucky queen. Loving father (hard to type that with a straight face), etc. 

This sort of thing -- the inexplicable fascination ordinary humans have for individual members of the elites that are crushing the life out of them -- has been going on since at least Shakespeare's time. Recall if you will the opening scene of Julius Caesar where two patricians admonish the rabble for being out in the streets in their best i.e. not work clothes. Eager to see the triumphant Caesar parade by, Shakespeare's plebians are indifferent to advice that Caesar recently killed rival general Pompey.

...

So a Renaissance playwright projected his own generation's fascination with the cult of personality onto Roman citizens on the verge of imperial decay.

Propaganda has become much more sophisticated in our day. While ancient Assyrian warrior princes commissioned their own accolades (cuneiform message for the literate extols the fertilizing powers of King Ashurnasirpal)

the royal family in Windsor Castle has the BBC and Netflix to do this for them.

The imperial presidency in the U.S., upstart branch of the brutal colonial projects launched from England's shores centuries ago, has its own faux populist stories told by experts. 

Thus we see a lot of attention paid to the pets brought to the White House by various CEOs of USA, Inc.

The propaganda effort starts early. Note the link in my last paragraph to National Geographic for Kids. 

If you doubt it, check out corporate publications like Time for Kids.

I had a taste of the cult of celebrity when I ran against Susan Collins for her seat in the U.S. Senate last year. Based on my experiences, I'd say a lot of projection is involved. People are eager to support a personification of their values in part because (they think) it relieves them of the responsibility for fixing the mess of late stage capitalism that we find ourselves in. Months later, I am still receiving effusive notes of thanks for my attempt to crack the corporate duopoly's stranglehold on Congress.

You're welcome, but the real point is: 

what are you going to do about climate crisis, galloping poverty and homelessness, and Cold War belligerence marching us toward WWIII?