
Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America - tomkat0789
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/02/russian-style-kleptocracy-infiltrating-america/154749/?oref=d-dontmiss
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SamReidHughes
Despite the title, the article doesn't mention any American kleptocracy. Just
the American financial system supporting foreign kleptocracy.

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heyjudy
True and it's true the title is a clickbait overreach without direct evidence
in hand, however it's still true that America's decline has been a mostly
gradual one and the rich have captured politics and media to lower their own
taxes and make regulations favorable to them. As it gets worse, privatization,
including public-private partnerships as just the beginning, comes in and
takes the valuable and vital parts of communities and society, and sell them
off to semi-corporations to charge people for what their taxes already paid
for. With time and worsening conditions, vampiric, cannibalistic strip-mining
of parts of civilization needed to function ordinarily are sold off, destroyed
or replaced with more expensive, substandard substitutes. Today, you're hard
pressed to find a water fountain or apart from a library, find anywhere
convenient for a public meeting that doesn't require commercial activity.
Parks are fewer and farther (except maybe the mandatory public spaces in NYC,
that are often in/on top of sterile buildings).

I don't want to sound like a sky-is-falling doomsdayist, but when/if it gets
nearer to such a perceived fall of empire, there will likely be overt theft of
public and government resources committed almost exclusively by the ruling
class, as happend in the Soviet collapse.

Beware the era when the politicians in countries like Brazil or the US, who
listen almost exclusively to their rich supporters, stop listening to average
citizens and many people stop voting. The French Revolution was also itself a
failure of empire due to extreme inequality, and the Yellow Vests are a
modern, more mellow resurgence "relief valve" release of dissatisfaction that
is by no means an isolated occurrence: Occupy, Brexit, Trump, etc. And as the
world becomes "flatter," there will be more and more similar situations
happening across countries, and far-right autocrats, rising nationalism,
rising xenophobia and populist revolutions are currently some of the most
widespread phenomena. Nationalism is especially concerning because it's a
leading indicator of another global war.

