There is Nothing for You Here

Before Trump’s first impeachment trial (ah, the good old days), I had never heard of Fiona Hill. I watched her testimony and was so impressed with her, and even more impressed when I learned more about her. She was born in 1965, same as me, the daughter of a former coal miner in postindustrial northern England. Her family, though better off than some others during those very bleak years, was legitimately poor, and the class divide made it all but impossible for young Fiona to make it beyond secondary school, let alone to university. 

But through a combination of luck, brilliance, hard work, and the help of a few people of good will, Fiona Hill did make it to St. Andrew’s University and then to the United States for graduate study at Harvard, where she eventually earned a PhD. She studied Russian and became a foreign affairs expert, serving as a translator at NBC News, a National Security Council staffer, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and now the Chancellor of Durham University in her native northern England. 

I admired her already for her fearless testimony during the impeachment trial, and for her many other accomplishments. But I admire her even more now that I’m halfway through There is Nothing Here for You. A combination of memoir and political history, the book examines Britain and the United States’ failure to take care of the working class and poor in the post-post war years. As a Russia expert, Hillihas first-hand in-depth knowledge of the collapse of Russia after the fall of Communism, and she warns that the US and UK are headed down the same path if we don’t stop the greedy rapacious oligarch bastards from grabbing and hoarding everything and leaving the rest of us destitute. 

OK, that’s not EXACTLY what she says, but it’s close. I remember reading about the rapid privatization of industry and public utilities and land ownership following the fall of the Soviet Union and how a handful of aspiring oligarchs bought working class people’s state-issued shares for far less than their value because most people were desperate for cash to cover food and shelter and other necessities. Pensions were no longer paid, and healthcare was no longer guaranteed, and millions of Russians who had been poor but at least secure were all of a sudden destitute, often homeless, left to beg on the streets. Meanwhile, Putin and a handful of his friends smashed and grabbed until they owned pretty much everything of value. 

I think about this a lot. I hear older people, some of whom still support Trump, confidently assert that they’re not worried about their Medicare or their Social Security because the government “can’t” take those entitlements away - but can’t they? They’re threatening to privatize National Park land, and have already started bulldozing Big Bend to build more of the stupid border wall. The Department of Education pretty much no longer exists; and in some places, school is only in session for four days a week. Regulations and consumer protections are disappearing - from the CFPB to the CDC experts who used to monitor cryptosporiasis outbreaks. The social contract between us and the government - we pay taxes, they provide services - is no longer in effect, at least as far as the services part goes. What is to stop them from cutting all services altogether? What is to stop the billionaires and their servants in the White House and Congress from taking away every protection and service that we expect from the government, and then just grabbing all of the country’s wealth and resources and dividing it all up among themselves? If Russia is any example, then nothing - there’s absolutely nothing stopping them. 

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So what is to be done, Dr. Fiona Hill? 

Yes, that was intentional. If they’re going to be out here calling people Communists, then I might as well quote Lenin. NOTE: I AM IN FACT NOT A COMMUNIST. I feel that it’s necessary to state that in writing. 

I’m still in the middle of the book.I should finish reading it before I start writing about it, but I suppose the answer to the question is to restore the social safety net and strengthen our institutions and demand that the government fulfill its obligations to its citizens and to safeguard our elections so that we can elect the people we want and then demand that they do what they promise to do. I’ll be interested to see how Fiona Hill suggests that we do all that. She saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Putin regime firsthand. She lived through the Thatcher-led downfall of the British working class. And she observed the workings of the first Trump administration from the inside, as a non-political national security professional. There’s no one better qualified to tell us how we can get out of this mess. I very much want to see us get out of this mess.