John Fitzpatrick. About New China, the Koreas, Myanmar, Thailand, and also about Japanese and Chinese writers and poets. The main emphasis is on North Asia and the political tectonics of this very important, powerful, and many-peopled area.
Saturday, 18 February 2017
On Trump: I think that, about ten years ago, something went wrong, world-wide. The GFC occurred and this sudden change in how much money existed in the general flow of life caused repercussions across the globe. The Arab Spring arose around distribution of what money was left available (no one talks about that Arab Spring anymore) and wars were fought, here and there, but mostly there, over that. Then came refugees from those wars. At the same time, there was a shift from nation-states to large cities in terms of available money conduits. So, the major cities grew more powerful and the rural parts of countries became less able to manage. I was living in Bangkok back then and noticed the remarkable shift of wealth and hope from the country itself to the major city. It was easy to see in Thailand because there is only one major city, really, where all is invested and all is most certainly used up. The problems in the UK were not really about foreign refugees etc, or European immigrants, but rather the decrease in money available across the general public areas. Thus Brexit happened. In the USA the result was Trump. In all these upsetting scenarios the root cause was simply some bad decisions made world wide in the early 2000s, and, unfortunately, bad decisions on such a grand scale do lead to uncertainties and the rise of a kind of ‘primal over the cerebral’. I don’t think that people world-wide are any more or less racist or separatist or protectionist naturally, but they simply can’t find anyone else to blame…and nothing has been explained. The problem is that because of the impact of the GFC, no ready answers will be available for another ten years at least. These big adjustments always take at least 20 years... and no one is going to like this.
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