I also think there are those in power who are fine with the idea of inflicting massive quality of life cuts on the domestic proles with the idea that liberal brainwashing and appeals to standing up for these “values” will get them to continue to submit as their quality of life catches on fire and jumps off a cliff. I think these are the same as the ones who want to force a new cold war separation and favor full confrontation, destruction of quality of life domestically to allow reshoring at least until manufacturing could be moved elsewhere.

We’re seeing this now with the Russia/Ukraine thing with liberals so far at least willing to freeze or at least resigned to their deaths by freezing being the cause of the bad guys and that their valiant liberal leaders standing up to Russia are not to blame, helpless as they are, or doing the right thing. We’ll see how that holds over the winter but I’m not optimistic for a mass movement against them, if Europe buckles it will be because the pain point for the European bourgeoisie is too great and they buck their American masters.

These elements of the imperial core bourgeoisie see the idea of clawing those profits back via domestic exploitation increasing dramatically plus the only chance to stop communism/China/multi-polar-world-order as the best option for them. They would love to plunge their domestic and too uppity for their tastes proles into desperation, the brink of and actual starvation and a much weaker position where they feel they won’t be able to resist the exploitation and which will they think kill the union and worker rights pushes now worrying them. I worry that they may be right that those in the west are incredibly brainwashed to the point enough will submit like dogs to this and blame it on external forces, matching an increase in extreme reaction and fascist violence that simmers but never quite boils over, just slowly burning its victims like women, POC, LGBTQ+ etc who are so alienated and betrayed by divide and conquer appeals to men, whiteness, etc that there’s nothing they can do to form a viable revolutionary coalition to push back or protect themselves.