There is a town in Russia called Asbest which is the center of Russia’s asbestos mining; one of the so-called “monotowns” wherein the Soviets created engines of their economy by centering an entire town region upon one industry. In this case it was asbestos; mined in a huge open pit where miners blast clouds of chrysotile asbestos dust over the town and its residents. In the words of one resident, “Every normal person is trying to get out of here. People who value their lives leave. But I was born here and have no place else to go.” From the aptly named NY Times article city in Russia unable to kick its asbestos habit. (The idea of habits and addicts underlies the following).
The Soviets didn’t mess around when they were building economic engines. Look at the Aral Sea - which died to irrigate vast economic engines, industrial plantations of cotton production. In Stalin’s Russia you either put up with the ravages of the economic engines or shut up (or went to the gulag). And Russia, after the Soviets, hasn’t changed much in the priority it puts on its economic engines - priority over everything else, like human rights and a livable planet. But now the money goes to oligarchs who rapidly took over the old Soviet engines and turned them to lining their own pockets - the new Russian Free Market entrepreneurs.
The Soviets’ were locked in a power struggle with a system that had similar priorities regarding its economic engines but also had to put up with an annoying rhetorical commitment to constitutional democracy. This was the great battle between “Godless Communism” and “The Free World” led by “The Leader of the Free World” - the President of the United States. Even though the “Free World” may have been just as brutally committed to its economic engines, its rhetorical commitment to freedom and democracy forced it to appear to value other things besides economic profit and, hence, produce reams of heavily lobbied legislation which its economic engines complained about vociferously as wasting valuable time and efficiencies in requiring them to deal with “burdensome government regulations.”
One would imagine that these rhetorical limitations would have hampered the “Free World” in its competition with the brutally unregulated Soviet system, but, surprisingly, the system that had to deal with the rights of people and their lives on a living planet, albeit as minimally as they could get away with, is the one that won.
Free marketeers will tell you that this is all wrong and that the Soviet system’s failure is illustrative of the “power of the Free Market.” When everything is run by the government then the “entrepreneurial spirit” of the people is crushed and those economic engines run poorly, if at all. But this falls apart when you look at the unfettered totalitarianism of Soviet Russia. It is clear that the Soviets placed absolutely no “burdensome regulations” upon the activities of their economic engines: drying up the Aral Sea or building an open pit asbestos mine in a community of workers required to work in that mine were perfectly fine as long as they generated economic growth. For the Soviets, government was solely about industrial output and production.
The engines of the victorious “Free World” also have first priority in government because they create jobs. One of the ways they create jobs is by importing and manufacturing asbestos products; for the chlor-alkali industry - producing chlorine and sodium hydroxide and in the manufacture of brake pads and clutch plates. Most of this asbestos was originally imported from Brazil, but Brazil recently came to their senses and banned the production, distribution and use of chrysotile asbestos. So now our job creators import asbestos from Russia, from that mine in the town of Asbest, whose town anthem is “Asbestos, my city and my fate.”
And why do we still use asbestos? Because it is cheaper than the alternative. Consumers want lower prices, so cheaper chlorine, sodium hydroxide and automotive brake and clutch pads are what the “Free Market” demands and this enables the people in Asbest to continue to have jobs - jobs which are killing themselves, their town and their environment. From the NY Times article:
Valentin K. Zemskov, 82, worked at the mine for 40 years and developed asbestosis, a respiratory illness caused by breathing in asbestos fibers, which scar lung tissue. “There was so much dust you couldn’t see a man standing next to you,” he said of his working years. For the disability, the factory adds 4,500 rubles, or about $135, to his monthly retirement check, which would be enough to cover only a few restaurant meals.
Still, he said the city had no other choice. “If we didn’t have the factory, how would we live?” he said, gasping for air as he talked in the yard of a retirement home. “We need to keep it open so we have jobs.”
Yes, that is, indeed, the question, if we didn’t have our economic engines how would we live?
Human misery and the destruction of our livable planet must, of necessity, take a backseat to this because… otherwise… how would we live? The choice seems to be between living in misery or not living at all. Not a choice one imagines a Free People would be forced to make.
This is all distraction, you know. We get distracted by the fact that Uralasbest, the mining company that brutalizes the town of Asbest, has recently put a picture of our great Businessman-President upon their product because he said some outrageous things in the past and has given them his seal of approval as a hard-headed industrialist would in the face of pansies who worry about human lives and the life of the planet.
We can get distracted. And we do. We watch a tragic, vulgar farce while the theater burns around us.
This vulgar farce is, itself, a profit center for some of our very own economic engines; it has long been known that “if it bleeds, it leads” - sensationalistic stories are what sells eyeballs to advertisers. The moral content of those stories matters little and the rhetorical commitment to protect “public ownership of the airwaves” and “the public interest obligation that is exchanged in consideration for the free license to broadcast” are nothing but some throwaway lines in that vulgar farce. Les Moonves wrote a good one when he addressed the “bomb throwing” of Donald Trump: “it may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.”
Our Businessman-President whose supporters claim has been very, very good for jobs and the economy has long been a mighty generator of profit for these media-based economic engines; Twitter will never suspend his account even though he has continually and chronically broken their rules. We know, therefore, that these rules are merely rhetorical distractions from their main concern for profit and shareholder value. And now these media conglomerates worry about being labelled “the enemy of the people” by one of their primary profit generators. While necessary, it is hard to remain fully committed to the dangers in that outrage. The phrase “if you play with matches you can get burned” comes to mind. Nevertheless, one is obligated to sympathize.
Calvin Coolidge - the “business of America is business” guy - said we must be wary of “the enormous power, autocratic and uncontrolled, which would have been created by joining the authority of government with the influence of business.” The fact that silent Cal got this right so long ago tells us that we are engaged in a very old, vulgar farce. Business has long sought to control the levers of power in government. And what would their ultimate control of those levers of power look like? Asbest is one such example.
Trump has definitely put our democracy in peril. He needs to be removed from office ASAP. But that will just be treating the symptom, not curing the disease. Our democracy was not exactly robust before he squeaked into office. The numbers were about 63 million for Trump, about 66 million for Hillary and - and this is the really telling number - more than 90 million not voting at all.
Elections are supposed to be the foundation of democracy. The opportunity for an informed electorate to vet the prospective candidates and make an informed decision about their qualifications for office is what campaigns are about… right?… heh.
The spectacular levels of corruption achieved by the Trump campaign are not changes in substance, they are changes in intensity. Campaigns have long been heavily financed marketing and advertising farces proclaimed by very serious people as being about the “will of the people.” Public relations firms have long shown us that “the will of the people” is for sale and informed consent was lost many years ago, along with a functional educational system that taught critical thinking. It is now a matter of who is able to buy the most media air time and put out the cleverest ads. Campaigns are economic engines all to themselves and media conglomerates depend upon them for profit generation.
That’s why bomb thrower Donald Trump got so much free airtime; he sold a lot of ads. And he still does. The media thrives on vulgar words and offensive bomb throwing; it needs eyeballs and eyeballs love looking at the latest bloodly accident, the latest outrage. The trauma that began on Tuesday November 8, 2016 continues on in a daily barrage of outrage and vulgar farce. And we continue to watch and be re-traumatized over and over again.
To end up living in Asbest. Because while we watch the farce, our theater is burning down and only Asbest is fireproof.