So Many Lessons in a Terrible Week

Russian barbarism tops the list. A professor in the Netherlands explains the right-wing circus. But in this misery, also opportunity for better days.

Even in normal times, we have limited attention spans and are hooked on the adrenaline kick from punchy headlines. But last week was head spinning.

For me it went like this: Russia attacks a nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The mayor of Chicago is accused of – and denies- using graphic obscenities. Ukrainians flee on crowded trains reminiscent of WWII. The most powerful democrat in Illinoisans is indicted. Russia uses cluster bombs in cities. Something about truckers. Ukraine resistance tougher than expected. The Supreme Court decided something, or the new nominee met with Senators. Maybe both. Russia kicked off twitter. Jobs numbers are good. Baseball delays opening. UGH Ron Johnson. Masks coming off. Russian threatens to use nukes.

By Friday I knew I had to do better. I contributed to a Ukraine relief fund and then took the time to read more broadly and to go deeper into the stories that matter. I am glad I did.

Russia’s unprovoked savagery tops the list. I had followed the unfolding war, but now started to think about the consequences. However the battle ends, the global economy that America created after the Cold War has been shattered. 

The consequences are both painful and full of opportunity. According to the World Bank (per the Washington Post), remittances from migrant workers in Russia make up about 30 percent of the economy in Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. That is entirely gone now. In those countries devastating poverty will sharply increase. That is perspective we should have when we pay more at the gas pump.

Dean Baker, an economist who has long criticized the way we did globalization, argues that we made choices almost exclusively to get cheaper workforces for corporations in the name of efficiency. He points out that we could have made different choices and now be living with less income inequality and higher standards of living for everyone.

The decoupling of Russia from the global economy and President Biden’s commitment to buy American with every dollar in the infrastructure bill, means we now have a chance to re-write the global economic rules in favor of people rather than with an exclusive focus on capital. A less unequal America could be in our future.

None of this justifies the suffering Mr. Putin is bringing to Ukraine.  But it is important to look up once in a while, even in the midst of a horror like this.

There were other important stories this week that got little attention. 

The United Nations convened 270 researchers from 67 countries to look at climate change. The so-called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its report.  It is devastating. Climate change is happening faster and its effects are more widespread than expected.  The assumption that we can adapt to the changes as they come may not be realistic. We should certainly expect massive migration as habitats change dramatically.

Here at home, the February jobs numbers are in and growth continued to outpace every expectation. The economy added 678,000 new jobs and unemployment is down to 3.8 percent. Corporate profits are up too.  This is great news, but inflation is likely to get worse because of the war, particularly if Europe agrees to forego Russian oil and gas. We have no windfall profits tax, so prices and profits will rise. 

Iran has announced it has reached a deal on its nuclear program. While it is too early to read much into this, one can imagine Iranian oil making up for Russian stocks, but then, wait, what?  Didn’t we just talk about climate change?

All this is to say, the world remains a complex and deeply interconnected place, even as the post-Cold War order comes unraveled. We would all be better off if our time was spent understanding these issues and building our policies accordingly.  But no. 

These things also happened: The jackboots on the right would rather arrest the parents of trans youths (see Texas). They would have us argue about whether the Ukraine War is really an effort by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to eradicate a secret lab where Dr. Faucci is preparing evil bioweapons (see interviews with conveying truckers). And while we are distracted, they will work to end our democracy, so we never have to think about anything important ever again (see efforts to disenfranchise voters in dozens of states). 

The French Renaissance writer Rabelais wrote great wild stories. His most famous, Gargantua and Pantagruel, created a kind of circus world that attracted people frustrated with the politics of the day. A young scholar in the Netherlands, Dr. Lisa Gaufman, Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has written a fascinating paper that shows how this circus metaphor applies to the American right. What many of us see as simply crazy, is the conscious creation of the right, a place with its own rules and a kind of coherence that passes for reality. It’s a world with permission to behave rudely, with acceptance of intolerance and violence, and with implacable hatred for the institutions of liberal democracy that they see as corrupt. 

As the indictment of Illinois’ longest serving and most powerful Democrat should make clear- they are not wrong about the failures of our system. In both the states and the federal government special interests, corrupt interests, and private interests have bent our system in terrible ways. 

The difference between those who would join the circus and the rest of us is just this: we still believe in democracy and are willing to do the hard and slow work of making a more perfect union. They have given up and want a short cut that feels safe. Well, there are no short cuts that do not end in chains. The many good people living in Russia are complicit in terrible crimes because they gave their sovereignty to a monster.

So many lessons in one terrible week.