5 thoughts on “The Inevitable”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Leftists are relentless when following their ideology.
“How many times, now, has this been followed by this.”
As often as effect followed cause. Seizure of property is usually only tyranny’s front porch. Worse awaits once you go inside.
Wow. This reminds me Russia after the “Bolsheviks” wrested control and implemented communism. Private property was seized, labour was conscripted, peasants were robbed of agricultural production to feed the cities at normal trade broke down. The result was a massive drop in production and mass chaos. At the time Lenin wrote that improvements were being achieved steadily and “is being achieved in spite of the difficulties, without world parallel, difficulties due to the civil war organized by the Russian and Western Capitalists”. The “commodity production” of grain by the peasants (to avoid starvation) was an economic vehicle by which the Russian peasant (whom Lenin derided) is turned into a huckster and profiteer.
But Zimbabwe is worse. It’s one thing to be the first to try to implement a bankrupt economic theory and it’s another to implement the same thing after it has produced failure after failure for more than a century. It’s mildly comical that Mugabe blames the same forces that Lenin did but managed to learn from none of Lenin’s mistakes.
I have the cynical gall to suggest that, after the appropriate expressions of indignation, the situation in Zimbabwe, as well as N Korea, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Iran, among others, provide an ongoing laboratory for the study of triumphant collectivism, and its effects on the lives of the people who have fallen under its sway.
The Soviet Union is gone, China is pretending to be a more liberal state, but all the while claiming the mantle of socialism in a schizophrenic dance that Sybil would be proud of, and the resurrection of leftist policy in Latin America and elsewhere has many of the media pundits all atwitter over something else they can point to to show how much the world has rejected the US, so let’s not miss a very real opportunity to rub collectivists collective nose in the large pile of steaming fecal matter that Mugabe and his policies have dumped on the hapless Zims who haven’t been able to flee this trainwreck in time.
Every time an American belches, the leftist press and various other scolds around the world exult in gleeful headlines proclaiming, “US releases more greenhouse gasses.”
We should make sure that the ongoing catastrophe in Zim, as well as the others cited, are front page news in every paper and magazine around the globe, and the lead story on every newscast.
If we can’t, then it’s time to go about finding the ways and means to see that we can, and do, as soon as possible. I find it hard to believe that the richest country on earth, with the most powerful media entities in history, can’t find a way to highlight its enemies’ failures, and its own successes. All that’s missing is the will to do it.
Sadly, there are people on the faculty of the U of C (and every other university) who
1. praise Mugabe
2. will point out that counter-revolutionaries are the target
3. describe how to make sausages and omlettes
4. recall that Cecil Rhodes committed genocide and is to blame
There are others who will shrug their shoulders and say “This is Africa” and tell the story about the Alligator and the Scorpion.
Mike Resnick has written nearly a dozen books on post-colonial Africa, one for each colony, which have fascinating insights into the transition from tribalism to nationalism (let us avoid loaded terms like “civilization”, “modern society”, “western values” and “democracy” ).
I suggest that nationalism is a concept which does not rule in Africa or the Middle East. Tribalism has secular sway. Religion provides the basis for supra-tribal common interest. As do natural resources such as oil and tourism.
Zimbabweans are fighting tribal battles best fought with fists and clubs but are using tanks, cluster bombs and machine guns. Each combatant hopes he will be the Last Man Standing and that he will be able to fend off the foreign invasion that always comes at the end of civil war in Africa – or at least be able to defend his tribe.