* liquidate unions

* avoid environmental laws

* take advantage of cheap labor

Both parties fell over themselves in paving the way for US businesses to move the bulk of their manufacturing outside the country.

The Chinese millionaire kids who are buying houses for cash are a product of the distillation of thousands of once blue collar jobs that burned to move production overseas.

Any derision in the quality of Chinese made goods should be directed at the companies themselves. Those factories are built what they are told to build. That brand that was once a mark of quality that is now making a shoddy product is just extracting value. Your Macbook Pro and that power tool in name only are made in the same place.

This depends on how you and I are using the terms. If you realize that I am using those terms somewhat synonymously, then what I said makes sense. You can disagree with the way I am using the words, but you can at least understand why I would make the claims that I did if that's how I am using those words.

I could have said "big business" which is closer to meaning "wall street" but this is semantic shorthand, and some misunderstandings may happen.

Western governments encouraged it! “They’ll want to democratize!”

This is the end result.

I am 100% sure that Russian state-sponsored trolls are largely responsible for the current state of the "culture war".

Do you remember when Facebook reported how much Russian state actors had spent on disinformation spread on that platform during the Trump presidential campaign? It was of the order of $100,000. Pocket change, to turn the brains of an entire nation into argumentative mush.

The two are linked. Those who wish to see Western culture fail, just want us at each others' throats.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kvvz3/russian-facebook-trol...

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...

That was just their advertising budget. It doesn't include their hundreds of thousands of sockpuppet accounts operated by their clickfarms.