John Publius - The God That Failed: Liberalism and the Destruction of the West

The God That Failed

Liberalism and the Destruction of the West

John Q. Publius

The God That Failed
Liberalism and the Destruction of the West

John Q. Publius

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The central feature of the corrosive system destroying the West, neo-liberalism, is its namelessness, that is to say that it largely operates anonymously, in the shadows, or by not calling something by its real name: human rights, liberal democracy, et cetera. It is a power for cowards.

The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no nameIts anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and powerthe slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystemsBut we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has or had a nameSo pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwins theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power. -George Monbiot

S omethings not right. All around us, society seems to be sinking into decay, and we dont recognize, let alone even know, the people living right next door to us. The media sells illusory progress with the latest gadgets and fads, and for all the talk of social justice, theres scant justice to be had. Filth, violence, dereliction, and despair fester as the wounds turn septic, and the people are sick to death literally.

Look at the results in the United States: The latest CDC data show that the U.S. life expectancy has declined over the past few years. Tragically, this troubling trend is largely driven by deaths from drug overdose and suicide, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield states. Suicides and drug overdoses are among the leading causes of death in the US for people under fifty. The odds of dying from an accidental opioid overdose in the US are greater than those of dying in a car accident, according to findings from the National Safety Council (NSC). The lifetime odds of death by suicide are 1 in 88. The lifetime odds of an accidental opioid overdose are 1 in 96 compared with 1 in 103 for vehicular death. Drug overdoses killed almost 64,000 people in 2016 (over 42,000 of which were from opioids). Drug overdose deaths rose above 70,000 in 2017, at least 47,000 of which have been attributed to opioids.

For all Americans, the mortality rate for drug overdoses in 2016 was 19.8 per 100,000, an increase from 16.3 per 100,000 in 2015. The drug-related mortality rate per 100,000 in 2016 for whites was 25.3, blacks 17.1, and Hispanics 9.5, meaning whites are much more likely to die from drug overdoses than blacks and Hispanics, respectively. Of the over 42,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, 33,450 of the victims (79.6%) were white, and for whites, there are roughly 6 suicides for every 1 homicide; among blacks, there are about 3.5 homicides for each suicide; and the ratio among Hispanics is roughly 1:1.

In 2018, the highest US age-adjusted suicide rate was among whites (16.84 per 100,000) and the second highest rate was among American Indians and Alaskan Inuit (14.12). This contrasts sharply with Hispanics (7.2), Asians and Pacific Islanders (7.16), and blacks (7.03).

The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged white men in particular and white males of all age groups accounted for 69.67% of suicide deaths in 2018. Also from the CDC:

• 36% of men aged 20 and over are overweight (2013-2016)
• 38% of women aged 20 and over are overweight (2013-2016)
• 35% of men aged 20 and over have hypertension. (2013-2016)
• 34% of women aged 20 and over have hypertension. (2013-2016)

The people are clearly sick, which is also clearly by design. This begs the essential question: what is the purpose of a government if its rulers do not govern in the interests of its people?

For the ruling class, the answer is to protect and expand their profits and to act out their warped grievances and disdain. They are at best haughty and unconcerned, but there is something darker lurking within many of them, perhaps best exemplified by the comments made by Purdue Pharmas former President and Chairman Richard Sackler at the OxyContin launch party: The prescription blizzard will be so deep, dense, and white. Its people like the Sacklers and vulture capitalist Paul Singer who are killing this country and getting unfathomably rich in the process. It is not a stretch to say that their behavior is not just malicious but downright lethal.

What we are dealing with here are a number of mutually reinforcing and often-inextricable phenomena. Many of these effects also intersect with the consequences of atomization and demoralization, leading to an explosion of white deaths by despair. The members of the ruling class dont care about you. In fact, they hate you. How else to explain the massive mark-ups on prescription painkillers in the middle of the worst drug epidemic in American history, or the medias silent complicity, or the fact that advertisers of these terrible drugs specifically targeted the elderly and veterans, who are disproportionately white?

Things are going so well for rural and working-class people in this country that heroin overdoses among Millennials aged 24-35 quadrupled in the time period 2010-2015. As Josh Bloom explains:

In 2010 Purdue Pharma, after years of formulation research, got FDA approval for a new version of OxyContin a high-dose, extended release form of oxycodone. Prior to that, addicts knew that by simply grinding up the pill, they could defeat the extended release formulation, and get as much as 80 mg (16 Percocet pills) of pure oxycodone. The new formulation put a stop to this, since when users tried to grind up the pills, they got a gum which could not be easily used. OxyContin use fell off of a cliff, as desired, but the solution was problematic. Addiction is a demon, cutting off one supply does not cure it, and addicts switched en masse to heroin, and the number of overdoses more than doubled in just three years.

From the CDC:

During 2006, there were 2,088 drug overdose deaths involving heroin (age-adjusted rate of 0.7 per 100,000 population); during 2015, there were 12,989 deaths (age-adjusted rate of 4.1). The rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin increased slightly during 20062010 but more than tripled during 20102015; the rates increased from 1.2 to 3.8 per 100,000 for persons aged 1524 years, from 2.2 to 9.7 for persons aged 2534 years, from 1.6 to 7.4 for persons aged 3544 years, from 1.4 to 5.6 for persons aged 4554 years, and from 0.7 to 3.4 for persons aged 5564 years. In 2015, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin was highest for persons aged 2534.