It was probably more ballsy than it felt to fly to London at the onset of a major outbreak of war in Europe. I figured that as long as every oligarch’s money, mansion and mistress was in Belgravia, London would be the last thing to catch a nuke. Maybe I was even correct. But being in closer proximity to watch Europe – especially Germany – figure out just where its fossil fuels were coming from, and watching companies try to close up shop in Russia, it drove home something that has been at the forefront of my mind for half my life, and it is the principal shortcoming of globalization in McWorld:
You cannot do business with bad people without eventually being complicit.
This is something Apple is learning the hard way – they have to accommodate the totalitarian government of China, because their manufacturing and no small part of the sales base is in China. Germany is finding out that getting their natural gas from revanchist-fascist Russia is a bad idea. Things like Crimea or Tienammen Square should have been a warning shot to people – you are getting in bed with some bad, bad folks – but people always excuse it with the risible notion that “trade and commerce will open things up and spread Western democratic values.”
Look at China, thirty years after they crushed Western democratic values at gunpoint. How’s that working out? At least have the decency to admit “we don’t care about right or wrong, it’s just business” and then prepare to be judged by who you choose to do business with. Which brings us back around to the ongoing Trumpening of the entire Republican Party, the ongoing Southernization of American politics, the whole ball of garbage that is our modern 21st century body politic in America. Anyone who told you that it wouldn’t make a difference whether Hillary or Trump was president – after the experience of “there’s no difference between Bush and Gore” – can be safely ignored and should probably be pushed in front of a train. Because the GOP got into bed with bad people for the sake of winning, and as a result, we have a judiciary full of time bombs for the Confederacy. Like a thirty-something lawyer who never tried a case, was rated “unqualified” by the ABA, and was promptly confirmed to a lifetime appointment by a Republican Senate after the election of 2020 and now has the power to overthrow the CDC’s judgement on masking in the middle of the fifth wave of C-19.
If I could render “buy the ticket, take the ride” into Latin, it would be on my family crest already, and it applies here in spaces. The GOP took the Host of the Beast, and now the Republican Party is a literal Confederate insurgency relying on the threat of violence to push its power. And if there are no political remedies, if the judiciary itself is rigged now, then there are not a lot of options available.
Time to see what Ireland’s options are for investment citizenship.