In one of the novels I analyze for my book, a mega wealthy movie director burns down the house of one of his workers in order to film the man’s devastated face when he discovers the incinerated house. The rich filmmaker believes that since he compensated the loss of the house with a cash gift, it’s all good. That the fire destroyed the family heirlooms, the photo albums, and the beloved knick-knacks of the worker’s family is of no interest to him. The worker can now buy a new house and all the new stuff, so what’s the problem?
The movie director is, of course, very left-wing.
I always think of this scene when I read the endless chatter regarding how the looting and the destruction during leftist riots is not a big deal because “insurance pays for it.”
The entire mentality of (neo)liberalism is here on full view. Everything is replaceable, and a new, shiny version is always better than the old one. The idea that objects are repositories of meaning and people are repositories of culture is alien to them.
The novel is Salvar el fuego by Guillermo Arriaga. I can’t recommend it highly enough. And yes, it’s five trillion pages long but each page is a linguistic delight.
Clarissa's Blog 
When I was relatively newly arrived to the US, a nice American family had me in their home for dinner. We talked about Europe and different wars (such as different problems on the Balkan peninsula) and they very kindly suggested (with all sincerity) that it would be a good thing for the US to bomb my home country, because we could get new infrastructure (such as roads and railroads) out of it. It was hard to be angry with them, because they were so very charmingly clueless, but I will never forget that conversation. Your post reminded me of this. Funny thing is they were probably considering themselves conservative.
Later on, I had a conversation with a Russian student, who also suggested that all the Russian expansion to take over the neighboring countries (and that incidentally suppressed the culture and languages of those countries) was a good thing, because it built a new infrastructure in those countries. At that point I understood that mentality of people from very large countries, such as the US and Russia, is similar in some sense, perhaps you would call it more neoliberal than that of people from smaller countries who had to fight for their survival. In any case, EU has done a lot of damage to the smaller countries it swallowed and now the mentality is more homogeneous.
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“I always think of this scene when I read the endless chatter regarding how the looting and the destruction during leftist riots is not a big deal because “insurance pays for it.””
Their other talking point is “It creates jobs.”
Bastiat is turning in his grave.
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Yes, let’s cut off people’s legs, make more jobs for doctors and caretakers. Truly, the stupidity has no bounds.
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Or make them believe they can “change genders”
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It’s all part of it, yes. Cut off body parts, sew on body parts. People are Lego pieces that can be unmade and reassembled at will.
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