Бесплатный фрагмент - You will die under the briddge

Chapter 1: The Golden Age (That Never Was)

Shut the hell up for a second with your sniveling, rose-tinted nonsense about the «golden age of America.» You know what I’m talking about. Those saccharine postcards with a roast smoking in the oven, a little house with a white picket fence, one car, and three happy kids. Dad works at the factory, Mom bakes a pie. And this dad, working a single job without a degree, was supposedly able to buy that very house, two cars, and send all those kids to college, before dying happy at 70.

What a load of sanctimonious bullshit.

This «golden age» was the most brazen and successful brainwashing campaign in history. It existed for a very limited group of people. For white people. For heterosexuals. For those who toed the line. Try to deviate from the course — and your «golden age» instantly turned into the hell of redlines on a banker’s map, outlining the ghettos, and the whistle of a police baton.

It wasn’t a golden age. It was a gilded pen.

While they were showing you these pictures, the system was already sharpening its knife. While you believed that hard work and honesty would lead you to that same house, the smart guys in suits were already turning the very idea of housing into a clever scheme for extracting your money. They looked at your future home not as a place to live, but as a number in their portfolio. A lottery ticket. A bargaining chip in their game.

And you know what the most disgusting part is? You still believe in it. You still think the problem is that you «aren’t trying hard enough.» No. The problem is that you were declared a loser in a game whose rules were changed while you were watching sitcoms.

And now let’s dissect this «paradise» bone by bone, until nothing is left but a stinking stain on the page of history. You think this mythical factory worker just walked into a bank, smiled, and was handed the keys? What kind of fairy tale is that for underdeveloped man-children?

This «affordable» house was built on three pillars, which were long ago killed, butchered, and fed to the sharks of Wall Street.

Pillar one: Your grandmother’s financial servitude. Interest rates in those «blessed» times weren’t just high — they were predatory. Double digits. Your grandfather didn’t pay his mortgage for 30 years; he paid for his entire conscious life, pouring sums into the bank that, in today’s money, would seem like a madman’s dream. He wasn’t paying for a house. He was paying tribute to a financial system that had barely cracked the door open for him, leaving him chained to the assembly line for decades, afraid to even sneeze for fear of losing his only shelter. This wasn’t a mortgage — it was a debt pact with the devil, where in exchange for a roof over his head, he surrendered his freedom, his dreams, and his right to make the slightest mistake.

Pillar two: American-style apartheid. While white families smiled on the postcards, entire communities were forcibly cut off from this «prosperity» by a system no less potent than Johannesburg’s. «Redlining» isn’t a term; it’s a death sentence. Banks and the government in collusion drew red lines on maps around neighborhoods where Black people, immigrants, the «wrong» people lived. A mortgage? Forget it. Insurance? Dream on. Infrastructure investment? Only over their dead bodies. The state, the very force that was supposed to ensure equal opportunity, was the chief architect of this ghetto. It deliberately deprived entire generations of the right to the very asset that for others was a springboard into the middle class. They didn’t just prevent them from rising — they put a foot on their throat and sentenced them to hereditary poverty. This «golden age» was gilded to the thickness of one layer of skin. White skin.

Pillar three: The wife as a hostage. This idyllic little house with pies had its price, and it was paid primarily by the woman. Her career? Her ambitions? Her financial independence? Don’t make me laugh. She was chained to that kitchen, to those children, to that white picket fence, behind which lay a prison without bars. Her labor — housework, childcare, maintaining this «hearth» — wasn’t considered work. It was unpaid service, a mandatory addendum to the mortgage. The economy of the «golden age» rested on the unpaid, invisible labor of half the population. That house wasn’t her castle. It was her cage, comfortably furnished and society-approved.

And while you whine about how good things were, answer this — good for WHO? For a narrow, privileged group, selected by race and social standing, whose well-being was built on the systemic oppression of everyone else? On the bones of those who weren’t allowed into these neighborhoods, on the labor of women who were given no choice, and on the financial slavery of those who did get their piece of the pie at the price of a lifetime of debt.

This myth still poisons you. You look at your miserable six-figure student debt, your rent that eats your entire paycheck, the impossibility of saving for a down payment, and you think: «What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I achieve what they had?»

Because WHAT THEY HAD NEVER EXISTED IN THE WAY IT’S PRESENTED.

You can’t achieve a lie. You can’t buy a fairy tale. You’re bashing your head against a wall, trying to replicate an illusion, and you blame yourself, not the rotten system that was engineered from the start to keep people like you on the sidelines. It’s time to rip that pink filter from your eyes and see the harsh, merciless world where you were preemptively declared the loser. Only then will you stop throwing a fit about the past and, perhaps, find the rage within you to start breaking the system that shackled you to it.

Chapter 2: The Great Rupture: Demons and Repubs Enter the Fray

Alright, listen up, all of you who still believe one of these two parties will save you. Right now, we’re going to break down the greatest con in American history, where both Democrats and Republicans were at the same table, carving up the country, while feeding you a fairy tale about an «ideological war.» While you were foaming at the mouth arguing about abortions and gun rights, they were quietly taking control of what really matters — your right to a roof over your head. They turned a home, the only real foundation in a normal person’s life, into a financial weapon of mass destruction.

This slow poisoning began decades ago, when the smart guys in Washington and on Wall Street realized a simple truth: you can make a lot more money off patriotism and the «dream» than off anything else. And so it began. From both sides, like giant pincers, they began to squeeze you, the average American, wringing out the last of your sweat and the last of your pennies.

On the right, under the banners of the Republicans, they sold you the old, old fairy tale of the «sacred invisible hand of the market.» Their rhetoric was obscenely simple: «The government is your enemy! Deregulation is your freedom!» They screamed about freeing bankers, developers, all these «job creators» from the suffocating grip of bureaucrats. What did that mean in practice? This:

— Unleashing the jackals. Financial institutions, which were once somewhat restrained by the fear of oversight, were given carte blanche. They were allowed to turn housing from a basic necessity into an abstract chip for their casinos. They started slicing and dicing mortgages, packaging them into incomprehensible securities, and selling them to each other like hotcakes, creating a financial pyramid whose foundation was your home.

— The cult of «homeownership.» They cranked up the narrative that you are nobody until you own real estate. This wasn’t just advertising; it was an ideological bludgeon. They shamed renters, called them losers, implanted the idea that renting is throwing money away. All to herd you into mortgage servitude at any cost, so that you, desperate for «status,» would take loans you could never repay, just to check the «I’m a homeowner» box.

— The war on renters. Any attempt to strengthen tenant protections, introduce rent control, or tighten maintenance rules was met with hysterical howls about «infringing on property rights.» Whose property rights? The large-scale landlord buying up whole blocks! Your rights as a human being who simply needs a place to live didn’t interest them at all.

And while the Republicans played the role of «liberators of capital,» their «arch-nemeses» in this spectacle, the Democrats, were honing their own, no less hypocritical role.

Their strategy was subtler, sweeter, and therefore — more dangerous. They spoke the language of «social justice» and «expanding opportunity,» but their actions led to the same abyss.

— The road to hell paved with good intentions. Under the slogan «Housing for all!» they started pressuring banks at the federal level to issue more and more mortgages. «Let every family have their own home!» they cried. And the banks, encouraged by the government, started giving loans to anyone. No income? No problem! No job? You’ll do! This was called «subprime» — a pretty word for outright financial insanity, where people were handed matches and gasoline and told: «Go set your own financial fire, we’ll just stand back and watch.»

— Creating a monster. Instead of building affordable housing through direct government programs (which would have been sensible, but expensive), they chose to incentivize the private sector. The result? Large developers got generous tax breaks and concessions, but they weren’t building modest housing for workers; they were building expensive townhouses and condos for the rich. Because it’s more profitable. The Democrats created a system where it was profitable to build for the select few, not for everyone.

— Playing the saviors. When the pie started to crumble in 2008, they took the stage with great pomp to «save» the economy. And who did they save? First and foremost — the very bankers who orchestrated this circus! Your homes — went into foreclosure. Your savings — evaporated. And they — got multi-billion dollar bailouts, generous bonuses, and the assurance of their own impunity. You were thrown out on the street, and they were rewarded for a job well done.

And here is the result of this «great rupture»: two guards who were so fiercely pretending to fight at the entrance were actually in cahoots and taking turns picking your pockets while you watched their show. The Republicans removed the rules and unleashed the predators. The Democrats lured you to the slaughter, handing you a credit agreement instead of a ticket to the «American dream.» And when it all collapsed, they threw up their hands and said: «It was a market cycle. No one’s to blame.»

Everyone is to blame. And as long as you divide yourselves into «them» and «us,» you’re just playing their game. It’s time to finally understand that the war for your housing is not between the blues and the reds. It’s between you — and them. And they are on both sides of the aisle.

And now take a deep breath of this «free market» they created for you. You smell that? It’s the stench of burned-out lives and scorched opportunities. Because the consequences of their game turned out to be more monstrous than anyone could have imagined. They didn’t just crash the economy in 2008—they planted a delayed-action mine under the future of entire generations.

When the dust from the crisis began to settle, did you think they learned their lesson? As if. Instead of nailing the guilty and rebuilding the system from scratch, they did what they do best: they didn’t patch the hole — they just moved it into your future home.

While you, burned by the crisis, were afraid to even think about a mortgage, the real sharks already sensed a new opportunity. A crisis is a fire sale for those with cash. And who had it? The very financial institutions that had just been saved with your, mind you, tax money.

— The Great Buy-Up. While you were losing your jobs and couldn’t pay your bills, while millions of homes were being foreclosed, new masters of life took the stage — private equity funds, hedge funds, private investors. Fed by cheap government money (again, your taxes!), they came with suitcases of cash and bought up real estate in bulk, whole neighborhoods at a time. One family home lost by a desperate family — that’s a tragedy. Ten thousand family homes bought by a fund — that’s a «brilliant investment strategy.» They turned the American dream into a conveyor belt for producing rental slaves.

— The new landlord is not your friendly old miser, but a soulless algorithm. These new owners aren’t people. They are corporate machines run by artificial intelligence that squeezes the maximum out of rent. Your tears, your late payments, your personal circumstances — that’s not a reason to lower the rent. It’s a statistical error. You can’t negotiate with them, you can’t complain to them. They are serviced by call centers on the other side of the world, where an operator reads you a script while a robot prepares your eviction papers. Your home, to them, is a line in an Excel spreadsheet, and its profitability must grow every quarter. Otherwise — you’re next.

— The Democrats responsible? Of course. They, who proclaimed themselves defenders of the «little guy,» watched this great buy-up and… what? Gave a few fiery speeches about «injustice»? Held a couple of useless hearings? They let it happen. Because their masters are the same financial titans from Wall Street, just making donations to the blue fund instead of the red one. They were treating a wound with a band-aid while the cancer of corporate housing capture metastasized across the country.

— The Republicans? Their response was predictable. «The market will sort it out! Private property is sacred!» For them, a corporation buying a thousand homes is an «efficient allocator of capital.» And you, trying to buy one single house for your family, are… what? A sucker who missed the giveaway? Their ideology has blinded them so much that they can’t see the difference between a free market and a market rigged in favor of giant corporations that they themselves spawned with their deregulation.

The result? The 2008 crisis wasn’t a cleansing fire. It was a system reboot in favor of a new class of feudal lords. They didn’t just gamble away your future — they SOLD it. Sold it to the highest bidder, and they paid for that deal out of your pocket.

Do you still believe one of these parties will offer you a solution? They already have. Their «solution» is your lifetime rental from a soulless machine that will raise your rent every year until you run out of money. And then you’ll remember the title of this book. Because the bridge isn’t a metaphor. It’s the next logical address for everyone who lost their game.

Chapter 3: The Bubble and Its Aftermath: The Crisis That Taught Us Nothing

Remember 2008? Of course you do. All those panicked faces on TV, talking heads mumbling about «subprime,» «derivatives,» and «systemic risk.» And you stood there watching it like some incomprehensible Hollywood blockbuster. It seemed like some complex, high-level matter that the smart guys in suits would figure out.

Bullshit. It wasn’t high-level matter. It was the simplest, most primitive, most vile robbery in history. And you were robbed. Personally. Even if in 2008 you were a schoolkid who had no idea about mortgages — your future was already on the line and LOST.

Let’s break down this scam without their fancy words, in a language even a child can understand.

Step 1: Selling the dream on credit. Banks, egged on by politicians screaming «Every American should own a home!», started pushing mortgages on everyone. The unemployed, undocumented bums, your dog. They didn’t give a shit. This was called «subprime» — which translates to «shitty loans for suckers who will never pay them back.»

Step 2: Alchemy, turning shit into gold. Then the real magic began. The bankers took thousands of these shitty, worthless loans, piled them into one big heap, and with a straight face declared: «And this — is now a reliable, top-tier asset!» They cut this toxic garbage into pieces, wrapped it in shiny paper with «AAA» ratings (which were given to them by prostitute rating agencies for money), and sold it on. To everyone. Pension funds, foreign governments, each other. It was a financial pyramid where entire countries took the place of your grandmothers.

Step 3: The music stops. Sooner or later, someone had to ask: «But the emperor has no clothes!» That someone was the first poor bastard who couldn’t pay his «shitty loan.» The song ended. The chain collapsed. Those who bought these «reliable assets» suddenly found themselves holding stinking, worthless shit in their portfolios. The money evaporated. Banks that just yesterday seemed like unshakable fortresses turned into beggars overnight, pleading for handouts.

And here comes the most cynical, most disgusting moment in this whole story.

The government, the very force that was supposed to protect you from such scams, looked at this and said: «Oh dear! Everything is going to collapse!» And they rushed to save… who? You? The thousands of families being thrown out on the street for defaulting on the very loans they were pressured into taking?