a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America
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Luk
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Hopefully, the KGB will get to him soon.
Luk
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2007
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- 32,404
Someone needs to read that transcript to 45.
Hey Ish.
I've been thinking quite a bit about what you said.
And I also recalled two other extraordinary authors that I would be keen to add to the discussion: Mark Blyth and Jonathan Strauss ("The Fourth Turning").
All three employ a generational approach to history, yet each focuses on different facets:
- While Mark Blyth and Bezmenov opt for the traditional linear view of time and history (Blyth seeing economics as the main forward-propelling factor, Bezmenov - ideologies),
- Jonathan Strauss (and Schlesinger) conceive history as cyclical, with repetitive generational patterns across centuries.
I had an "Aha! I finally get it!" insight moment when reading them separately. But things got so much more complex when putting their theories side by side.
Just a testament that History is multilayered and so fundamental.
When I grew up, History was dismissed as a peripheral subject, second class compared to math and literature. And our dumb ass teacher's approach was to just ask us to memorize dates and facts. When History is so important for shaping critical skills. If taught properly.
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A couple of quotes from Mark Blyth, with a small commentary by myself after point no. 1
“Ever since World War II, the governments and financial institutions of “the West” (U.S., UK, Europe) have focused their national economic policy on two broad targets—"
1. “from 1945 to 1975, broadly speaking, the goal was to achieve “full employment.
At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable—trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent.”
Mark Blyth
“This is part of why the 1950s-60s are looked back upon as a kind of Golden Age for the middle class, especially for people who worked in manufacturing at union jobs with good wages and benefits. And broadly speaking, this policy was successful!”
Mark Blyth
2. “But full employment led to inflation—and by 1975, inflation had gotten so bad that creditor classes within these countries (investors, banks, wealthy people) started to revolt, and put in politicians like Reagan and Thatcher who focused on strong anti-inflation policies, and who changed the way that everyday people thought about the economy by appealing to voters’ interests as consumers (“low-priced products from China are good! High-paid union labor is bad!”) instead of their interests as workers or union members.
Over the next thirty years the world was transformed from a debtor’s paradise into a creditor’s paradise. [...] Productivity rose, but the returns all went to capital. Unions were crushed while labor’s ability to push up wages collapsed due to the twin shocks of restrictive legislation and the globalization of production.”
Mark Blyth
https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...ot-a-fluke-why-trumpism-is-a-global-phen.html
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-11-15/global-trumpism
“Ever since World War II, the governments and financial institutions of “the West” (U.S., UK, Europe) have focused their national economic policy on two broad targets—"
1. “from 1945 to 1975, broadly speaking, the goal was to achieve “full employment.
At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable—trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent.”
Mark Blyth
Addit: According to Strauss, the cultural awakening of the 60’s feminism and so on were a natural byproduct of a different generation with a different mentality, (The Second turning, boomers).
But according to Blyth, policy holders worked actively to shape this nascent mentality -through tv commercials, school teachings- towards getting more women in the work force would have combatted deflation. Individualism was therefore encouraged. (Mark Blyth, // or see Bezmenov).
But according to Blyth, policy holders worked actively to shape this nascent mentality -through tv commercials, school teachings- towards getting more women in the work force would have combatted deflation. Individualism was therefore encouraged. (Mark Blyth, // or see Bezmenov).
“This is part of why the 1950s-60s are looked back upon as a kind of Golden Age for the middle class, especially for people who worked in manufacturing at union jobs with good wages and benefits. And broadly speaking, this policy was successful!”
Mark Blyth
2. “But full employment led to inflation—and by 1975, inflation had gotten so bad that creditor classes within these countries (investors, banks, wealthy people) started to revolt, and put in politicians like Reagan and Thatcher who focused on strong anti-inflation policies, and who changed the way that everyday people thought about the economy by appealing to voters’ interests as consumers (“low-priced products from China are good! High-paid union labor is bad!”) instead of their interests as workers or union members.
Over the next thirty years the world was transformed from a debtor’s paradise into a creditor’s paradise. [...] Productivity rose, but the returns all went to capital. Unions were crushed while labor’s ability to push up wages collapsed due to the twin shocks of restrictive legislation and the globalization of production.”
Mark Blyth
https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...ot-a-fluke-why-trumpism-is-a-global-phen.html
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-11-15/global-trumpism
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