This Week in the New Normal #76

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.

We’re going to be brief this week…because two would-be sections evolved into full articles in their own right.

1. Bullsh*t question of the week

US Professor of Economics Scott Galloway was on Bill Maher this week, arguing there should be “some grace and forgiveness” for those people who supported lockdowns:

I wanted a harsher lockdown policy. In retrospect: I was wrong… But here’s the bottom line: We were doing our best. Let’s give a little grace and forgiveness.”

The fact of the matter is that the question of forgiveness is not relevant, and indeed the whole issue is a propaganda construct in itself. A PR campaign designed to sell the idea that lockdowns were an honest attempt to mitigate a real disease.

We know the truth: Lockdowns were deliberately imposed to create poverty and social immiseration.

The people who supported them were either psychopaths hell-bent on breaking the world and ruining lives, or sock puppets who mindlessly repeated talking points handed down by the ruling authority.

Either way, forgiveness is a waste of time.

2. Dystopian nightmare fuel of the week

I saw this on Twitter and it made me sad…

It’s what they call an “influencer factory”, a bunch of young women set up in a warehouse to post entirely fake social media content to entirely fake social media accounts. All designed to sell makeup, clothes or food. Or, worse, to drip feed hope to poor people who aspire to a more affluent lifestyle.

That’s bleak, but it gets bleaker.

Think about it: If things like this exist to sell mascara and lingerie in Indonesia, imagine what kind of factories exist to sell agendas, or ideas, to the world. And imagine how many of the people working in them you’ve wasted your time arguing with.

3. Quiet-part-out-loud of the week

In a television interview Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell justified military aid to Ukraine by arguing that most of that money is coming right back to America because Ukraine uses it to buy American weapons and vehicles from American arms manufacturers.

This is, broadly speaking, true. America goes to war to make money – however, it’s also a lie. America doesn’t go to war to make money for America, but rather the small cadre of criminal psychopaths who have maneuvered themselves into power.

It has nothing to do with “rebuilding their industrial base”, and everything to do with profiteering.

McConnel mentions factories and companies, but there are several people he doesn’t mention. He doesn’t mention the Senators who are going to retire to jobs on boards of Boeing or Raytheon. He doesn’t mention his friends and relatives and business partners who own stocks in defense contractors and get handy tips just before big defense bills are signed (or before “terrorist attacks” take place).

He doesn’t mention that by taxing ordinary working Americans; giving that tax revenue to a foreign government and then making a profit when that government then pays it to arms companies, they are essentially stealing money, laundering it overseas, and reaping rich rewards.

He tells a bit of a truth, but not much of it.