Valkoisen miehen rappio - osa 3

Olen raportoinut valkoisen miehen kuolleisuuden voimakkaasta kasvusta USA:ssa pariin otteeseen. Kuolleisuuden nousu on nimenomaan itsemurhien ja päihdekuolemien nousua.

New Economic Thinking -lehti käsittelee aihetta ongelmaa ja havaitse yhtäläisyyden Venäjän kuolleisuuden nousuun kommunismin romahtamisen myötä.

Epidemiologists are not used to considering ‘despair’ as a leading cause of death.  Yet, just as ‘stress’ transitioned with better diagnostics from colloquial psychological annoyance to full fledged physiological affliction, economic ‘despair’ may be poised to make a similar transition thanks to potentially groundbreaking research from economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.

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These results bear a striking resemblance to another demographic crisis:  Though we are used to thinking of the Cold War as an economic and political contest without casualties the fall of the Berlin Wall showed us that when economic systems and expectations collapse, people die just a surely as they do in a shooting war. In the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, life expectancy in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe fell dramatically. In Russia alone, it was estimated that between 1989 and 1995 there were 1.3 to 1.7 million premature deaths as life expectancy fell from 70 in 1989 to 64 in 1995.

The proximate causes there too, were a significant increase in suicides and drug and alcohol abuse, leading to an increase in cardiovascular and liver diseases.  The primary victims?  Middle aged men and women. Once again, in-depth studies found that it was not direct deprivation, nor collapse of the health system that were driving these deaths.  Rather they could be traced to the psychological stress likely brought on by the shock of the severe economic transition.

Unable to cope with the aptly named “shock therapy,” older (mostly) men essentially drank themselves to death. The country has still not recovered, with mortality rates amongst working age men considerably higher than other EU and BRIC countries.

Itse en usko, että stressin syy on taloudellinen, vaan uskon että kyseessä on jonkinlainen identiteetin romahtaminen. Valkoinen mies tai neuvostoihminen on menettänyt poliittisen (ja taloudellisen) kehityksen myötä identiteettinsä. Valkoisen miehen identiteetti USAn yhteiskunnan ytimenä ja perheen päänä on romahtanut. Samoin kävi venäläiselle miehelle. Itsemurhat nousivat myös Itävallassa ja Unkarissa Habsburg-valtion romahtamisen jälkeen.

Ennustankin, että valkoisten kuolleisuus tulee laskemaan, mikäli Trump tulee onnistumaan presidenttinä - siis onnistumaan valkoisen miehen silmissä.