Introduction
I consider this article, which is actually a six-page essay that I’ve divided here into two parts, to be one of the very best pieces of socio-political writing that I’ve penned to date. In fact, I’m confident that if you read it in full you’ll get a fresh, fleshed out viewpoint that isn’t compromised by an allegiance to the limits of the corporately canonized “left” and/or “right” mainstream news media narratives. Also, this is going to be my last piece of writing of this type for a while. In 2026 I’ll be moving on to another form of expression. You can consider this my end of the year term paper, or my parting shot, or my New Year’s greeting/farewell. Whichever shoe fits you.
PART 1:
The Rise of Neoliberalism Begins Circa 1980
In the late 1970s in England and in the early 1980s in the US, there was a resurgence of the British version of economic liberalism. This resurgence first manifested in the administrations of Margaret Thatcher in England and Ronald Reagan in the US and became somewhat confusingly known as “Neoliberalism”. A central feature of the form this ideology took was to demonize “liberal left” programs and institutions that lifted the US out of social and economic despair 40 years earlier. Things like labor unions, social safety nets and progressive taxation of the wealthy were all put on the chopping block.
In the 1980s, it was professed that deregulating the economy, ie: letting the economic market regulate itself, would allow the “corrective market hand” to operate unhindered by human fallibility. Neoliberal free market ideologues such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek claimed that when the markets were freed up and larger sums of wealth were allowed to flow to the top that this would produce a “trickle down” effect which would eventually benefit every sector of society.(1)
Now, 40 years on, it’s clear that the near reverse has happened. By the 1990s the privatization of public institutions began in full; the deregulation of international trade (NAFTA, 1994) produced capital flight, increased de-industrialization and the outsourcing of American jobs; the deregulation of the mainstream media (Telecommunications Act, 1996) enabled takeovers of TV, radio and the news media by uber-wealthy moguls; the deregulation of the banking system (Repeal of Glass-Steagall 1999) allowed for an unprecedentedly massive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the banking system and their affiliated oligarchs; the de-democratization of the US electoral system (Citizens United Act, 2010) created a stable of politicians in both major political parties that are completely beholden and dominated by multi-billionaire donors and superPACs.
Add to all of this a shifting of the burden of taxation away from the very wealthy squarely onto the shoulders of the middle class and people in or near poverty. This sweeping shift in US economic policy, which was initially heralded by conservative Republicans in the early 1980s, was later coined “Neoliberalism”.
Clinton Era Deregulation = Reagan Era Deregulation on Steroids
To add to this confusion of terms and factions, in the early/mid 1990s, the Democratic Party in the US began discarding its liberal (left-of-center) ideology and started adopting the Thatcher-Reagan inspired policies of “neoliberalism”. In fact, many consider the Clinton era (1992 – 2000) to be the steroid era for neoliberalism. Under the direction of Alan Greenspan, who was also the main economic advisor to both Nixon and Reagan, the Clinton administration did away with the bulk of the restrictions on privatization and large-scale corporate takeovers.
The last two decades of the twentieth century, the Reagan-Clinton era, basically amounted to a neoliberal coup. This takeover paved the way for what has come to be known as “globalism”. Initially, “globalism” was a politically neutral term that mostly had to do with how technological acceleration had produced a new level of interconnectedness among what were previously distant, separated parts of the world. In the 21st century though, the terms “globalization” and “globalist” refer to a socio-economic ideology that professes the imminent need to spread Western neoliberal democracy via the use of economic coercion and military force, to all parts of the planet as quickly as possible.
In the US, this globalization process has seconded all other needs, including the basic needs and wishes of the voting public, to global neocolonial expansion. The result has been a further hollowing out of the American industrial base and its workforce. Suffice to say, this process of de-industrialization has produced a shift in the US from an industrial economy throughout most of the 20th century, to a finance based service economy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This current economic form is centered largely around the fluctuations that occur on Wall Street which are driven by economic speculation rather than by mass manufacturing.(1a)
“Globalism” and the 21st Century Culture of Perpetual War
Clinton era deregulation in the 1990s enabled a massive amount of capital flight and the outsourcing of a large section of the American job market. These conditions led to the transfer of wealth upwards to a largely unrooted, nonprovincial elite. This 21st century assemblage of oligarchs and international bankers have made unprecedentedly huge profits over the course of the last few decades via a combination of neo-imperialist conquest, mass media monopolization and insider informed market speculation.(1b),(1c) This is the unspoken though ironically quite well documented agenda of multi-billionaires like Larry Fink (head of BlackRock), Klaus Schwab (head of the W.E.F.) and George Soros (financial speculator, philanthropist) when they speak of their aim to create a global “Open Society”.(1d),(1e),(1f)
In the very short youtube clip at citation number (2) the rise of the new multilateral, multipolar world order is discussed as an alternative to the perpetual bloodshed and destruction that the bipartisan neoconservative globalist project has wrought in the 21st century so far.
In reality, what these globalist oligarchs have mainly been generating over the course of the last 25 to 30 years are violent overt and covert regime change operations, US/NATO funded and aided color revolutions, wars and proxy wars all over the globe. Through so-called “democracy spreading” government agencies such as USAID, which combines seed funding for neocolonialist takeovers with a range of genuinely helpful human services in countries all around the world, these globalist oligarchs have been able, until quite recently, to cloak their primary aims in a facade of supposedly pro-democratic altruism.
Interestingly, their promotion and imposition of global “democracy” has often been achieved by overturning democratically elected governments that have been replaced by dictators, US picked stooges and, in the case of nations like Syria, Al Qaeda terrorists. In the youtube clip at citation number (3), Jeffrey Sachs discusses how these double agencies, in collusion with the CIA, are used to fund and further US/Western neocolonialist expansion.
US Democrats Take Up the Mantle as the new “Party of War”
Unfortunately, over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, the aforementioned oligarchs have (via their control of the Western “mainstream” media) been able to conflate their warlusting imperialist endeavors with what it means to be part of the 21st century “left”.(3a) As a result, any challenge to these modern day robber barons’ psychopathic warmongerings gets lumped in with the agenda of the “right” or with that of MAGA. This blatantly transparent deception (to anyone who puts a modicum of genuine effort into studying it), this ridiculous reduction of the matter of government funded illegal invasions and mass killing to a partisan political issue has practically made “peace” a dirty word among a sizable portion of the so-called “liberal” political class in the Collective West.
It’s almost as embarrassing as it is morally reprehensible to watch and listen to some of these “educated” pundits within the Democratic party in the US and/or the Labor party in Europe rail on about the (genuinely) frightening aspects of Trumpism while they condone mass slaughter and colonialist annexations of every stripe (as well as genocide) as long as it’s carried out by their political faction. Their essential philosophy being, “My wrong makes a right. Your wrong is just wrong.”
To be fair, this hasn’t been the case with all of the Democratic party (which I am still technically a member of), many of whom have stood their ground against the mass violence and genocide perpetrated by team blue (as well as by the Republican party, of course) in this century so far.
(End Of Part 1)
PART 2:
Neoliberalism Crushes The New Deal
By the year 2000 the liberal (left of center) New Deal inspired economic policies of the US Democratic Party had been largely abandoned in favor of neoliberal policies. Since that time we have endured two major economic collapses in late 2000 and in early 2008 and a near complete takeover of all major US institutions by private corporations during the Bush Jr., Obama, Trump and Biden eras. The transfer of wealth upward hasn’t slowed down at all over the course of the last 45 years. In fact it has been speeding up almost exponentially since the Reagan era.
Since 1979 there has been no increase in real wages in the US. Previous to the 1980s, real wages in the US rose in every decade since the year 1820. Neoliberalism, along with a few other key factors, put an end to American prosperity as we’d known it for a century and a half. In the link at citation number (4), economist Mark Blyth describes the matter in more detail. I also penned an article that outlines the details of the collapse (which began in the mid to late 1970s) of the 150 year old “American Dream” at citation number (5).
In fact, with the exception of less than a handful of semi-outliers, every current US politician in the upper tiers of government is more or less a proponent of the neoliberal ideology. What we’ve witnessed in the 21st century so far is the total “triumph” of Western neoliberalism and the corresponding collapse of US (and European) prosperity. Make no mistake about it, every US presidential administration since 1980 (Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump) has been a neoliberal administration.(6)
The Birth of the American “Uniparty”
The result of all of this activity has been what essentially amounts to an unspoken unification of the Republican and Democratic parties’ basic ideologies. The “liberal” faction within the donor class simply propagates the idea that any challenge to their agenda is a fantasy created by the right. This has the effect of turning off many otherwise well-meaning people to the idea that their party essentially shares the military, and to a large degree the economic agenda of the faction they’ve been groomed to despise.
The “conservative” faction within this donor class does the same thing of course, but in a form that accords with their own objectives. This proliferation of confusion has, up until now, maintained the division between the increasingly marginalized masses of the supposed “left” and “right”. I wrote a piece outlining the effects of this “uniparty” in an article you can access at citation number (6).
Multipolarism and the Impending End of 500 Years of Western Colonialism
There’s no longer any question that the world has changed drastically over the course of just the last 3 to 5 years. The US dominated “unipolar” era (1990 – 2022) is over. The world has already transitioned. We’re living now in the beginning of the “multipolar” era.(7) In fact, the Western colonialist era, which we’ve been ensconced in for about 5 centuries, is beginning to disappear. The new alliances that have recently formed in the Global South (China, Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil, etc.), are outstripping the Collective West in the domains of manufacturing and overall economic growth as well as military strength. Whether or not we’re in favor of this paradigm shift isn’t a question that should be interfering with our acknowledgement of the fact that it’s happening. We’re already there/here.(8)
The belief that the US can, by proxy or otherwise, bomb and kill its way back to unipolarity is a pipe dream, and an incredibly dangerous one at that. Yet this is essentially what the elite neoliberal/neocon oligarchs and their political pundit servants in both the Republican and Democratic parties (Lindsey Graham, Bill Kristol, Ted Cruz, Victoria Nuland, Liz Cheney, Chuck Schumer, John Bolton, etc.) and in Europe (Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Layen) are pushing for. Their end game is war and more war. (9),(10)
Donald Trump’s Apparent “Israel First” Policy
It remains to be seen what the Trump administration is actually going for as far as its foreign policy objectives are concerned. Aside from Trump’s (correct) decision to reopen channels of diplomacy with Russia and China, there’s no clear indication that his administration has a serious understanding of the massive global transformation that’s already upon us. This is evidenced by Trump’s unwillingness to accept the futility of taxing and threatening countries (like China) that aren’t phased or threatened by the US anymore. In fact it’s we who need their exports, their resources to make our deindustrialized country run. The Biden administration was stuck in the same time-loop. These baby boomer politicians can’t seem to stop tariffing like it’s 1999.
If Trump is foolish enough to begin an actual land war with Venezuela or Iran he’ll wreck any chance his administration has of fulfilling its promise to shut down the neocons’ culture of perpetual war. At this point it’s genuinely hard to predict whether Trump will be able to actually put America first when push finally comes to full-on shove in the Middle East, or if he’ll continue to bow to his warlusting Zionist/AIPAC/Israel First donors.
Sidenote: Most Israelis, including the religious rightwing zealot hardliners in Israel, the ones who make Netanyahu (who’s a genocidal sociopath) almost look like a moderate, actually preferred Joe Biden’s brand of auto-submission to Israel’s demands over Trump’s.(10a) The point being, that if you think there’s a lesser of two bought-off genocide aiding and abetting evils among the 2 major political parties in the US, you’re greatly mistaken.
Our Fascinating Shared Future: The Re-Humanization Process
Here’s the indisputable deal: We’re going to have to get used to the idea that the US as well as the rest of the Collective West, ie: Europe, Australia, Canada, etc., are going to need to work together in good faith with the nations in the Global South, ie: China, Russia, India, South Africa, etc., if we’re going to survive as a human race. A tipping point will eventually be reached, ideally sooner rather than later, when we, the Collective West, will begin to (collectively) realize that a considerable portion of the information we’ve been fed over the years about the supposedly totally anti-democratic, unredeemable Global South isn’t true. When this happens the process of global humanization will begin its lift-off phase. The same is true vice versa. Although, from what I’ve gleaned from my four year long (and counting) deep dive into the matter, the Global South is a little bit closer to the goal (of openness to paradigmatic change and mutual acceptance of its global human neighbors) than the Collective West is, believe it or not.
But why linger in tit for tat land?! It’ll be exciting and fascinating to be a part of what happens when the phantasmal line between the forsaken “left” and the forsaken “right”, and for that matter, between our planet’s “Collective West” and its “Global South” finally dissolves, and we unite in the common endeavor to save our shared future.
Nonviolence or Bust
The future of our human species, if it is to survive as a project, is one of nonviolence. Our future nonviolent human culture will no longer be crippled by what will be looked back upon as infantile forms of repression and oppression that exist today as economic violence, physical violence/war, as well as psychological, racial and religious violence. The way we currently feel about slavery is going to be the same way we feel about war and economic tyranny in the future. The links at citation numbers (11),(11a),(11b),(11c) feature bits of the nonviolence centered teachings of Martin Luther King; Silo (1938 – 2010) an Argentinian philosopher who spearheaded a nonviolent humanist movement in the late 20th century; Leo Tolstoy, the world famous Russian author who was the founder of the modern method of nonviolence known as “Active Nonviolence”; and the American author Henry David Thoreau, who penned the infamous nonviolence based tract “Civil Disobedience”
Humanity’s Bad Hair Stage/The Eyes of the World Are Watching Now
Hopefully 100 years from now, people will look back on this grotesque period of reciprocal destruction (of perpetual wars) as a kind of human pre-history. This isn’t just wishful thinking. In fact it’s the only sort of thinking that’s going to eventually lift us out of this 10,000 year-long bad hair stage we’ve been stuck in as a species. Until then it’s our responsibility to hold the line and to not give in to the current cult(ure) of violence.
Where do we start? “Only inner faith and inner meditation can end the violence in you, in others, and in the world around you. All other doors are false and do not lead away from the violence.”(12) Choosing this doorway, this path of self-initiation, is actually the true “Royal Road”. It’s the first step and most important step on the road to the eventual humanization of the earth.
And what does this mean, to “humanize the earth?” It means to say “Yes” to the process of human evolution and to the possibility of overcoming suffering in oneself and in others instead of “No”. It means to freely choose, via an act of inner faith, to do all one can to lift up and champion what is best in oneself and in others. It means to learn without limits. In synthesis, it means to treat others the way you would wish to be treated. Regarding the question, “When should we start?” Well, if not now, when? We’re alive now. The cameras are rolling. To quote a well known singer and human rights activist, “The eyes of the world are watching now.”(13)
CITATIONS:
1b-https://www.pressenza.com/2025/07/all-wars-are-bankers-wars/
1d-https://leaders.com/news/investing/look-whos-investing-in-ukraines-future/
1e-https://fastercapital.com/content/Soros–The-Mastermind-Behind-Financial-Speculation.html
2-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EaILCcQoSc
3a-https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/14/matt_duss_democrats_party_of_war
4-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmtK2thXOUs
5-https://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ViewInternal_Document.cfm?contenttype_id=5&ContentID=8401
6-https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-collapsing-american-dream-what-comes-next/
7-https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202502/1328926.shtml
8-https://www.meer.com/en/89030-brics-and-the-rise-of-a-multipolar-world
9-https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/are-democrats-more-neocon-than-republicans-now/
10-https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barack-obama-neocon-despi_b_736307
11-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBgs9PpdUAw
11b-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zljP9yilaJg
