I can tell you that we have never heard this from our mainline press.
I am simply taken by this reading. As I can see this is our demise and we are becoming a third word nation and in a hurry.
I do not for the life of me, see how this administration can threaten and flim-flam the rest of this world and think they are doing the world a favor!
I would love to hear your opinions on this. I personally do not see how we can sit by and allow this to happen even for another day. We, as Americans, have to do something and soon.
If they think invading Iran will be the next big thing next to cookies and milk, then what next for us, even as we look forward to a Clinton presidency. I can not conceive this as a joy in my heart.
Today it’s not much, but what seems to resonate more and more every day as real truth are the “conspiracy” theories of the 911 truthers and the anti-Illuminati crowd. This destruction of America theme is just far too prevalent to be the random occurence of events.
Wow. I almost hate it when people put everything together in one place like that – it’s depressing and scary to think about what a colossal loser we have at the top in times that need someone who can think and act with something less than epic hubris.
The US these days reminds me of a quote from the M*A*S*H TV show. Hawkeye likened M*A*S*H 4077 to being aboard the RMS Titanic and making one’s way up to the deck only to find out that the captain was Daffy Duck.
Except Daffy Duck at his worst wasn’t this incompetent and greedy.
Thanks for posting that, Brenda.
Very nice find!
As I can see this is our demise and we are becoming a third word nation and in a hurry.
Yes. And a point of great interest is whether this is the result of incompetence or is actually the plan. A case can be made for either possibility.
In either case, the roots go back to 1980. US oil production peaked in the 1970s, and America became vulnerable to political oil crises, as was demonstrated twice before that decade was out. What to do? President Carter advocated a move away from oil dependency, which, given its key role in our economy, could only mean strenuous efforts at conservation, energy efficiency (remember the lowered thermostats and 55 mph speed limits?), and augmentation by other energy sources (solarized homes, &c.) Some thought was also given to redesigning the energy infrastructure and investing in a new, non-oil–or, at least, reduced oil–technologies.
Carter’s proposals did seem to conflict somewhat with the Capitalist dogma of achieving ever-higher profits by producing ever more stuff–which is inherently wasteful of both energy and material resources. The American public did not like it much either. (Remember those dinky cars?) We elected Ronald Reagan on the promise that he would re-open the taps on the bar and get the party going again.
It took him a few years, but finally a deal was cut with the Saudis and the oil flowed and has flowed ever since–until this past year when peaking oil fields have led to visible curtailment! But there was a price: The Saudis in effect became our banking system. This was a little like spending your rent money on booze–it can work for a while, but it will not work long.
When Clinton finally became president things were getting desperate. Off-shoring industry was a way of maintaining profits while cutting prices–whence NAFTA and all that, which simultaneously finished off both American industry and unions–while information technology was a desperate hope to replace industry with a new economic enterprise representing real value. It almost worked: Although poverty continued to grow (a trend which started with Reagan) Clinton finished his terms with the balancing act still going.
Both domestically and internationally, Clinton’s policies were too subtle for Bush and his neocons who followed. Implicitly, Clinton understood how fragile an economy that consumes more than it produces inherently is. He also understood that if a country wants to appear strong after it has become weak, its shows of force should be dramatic but limited. He was careful to get international support for his wars, and to build a functioning coalition of allies.
Whereas Clinton was concerned with keeping the US going, Bush was concerned with taking profits. His business partners have done and are doing well, and they will likely retire in splendor to some far corner of the world (like Paraguay). Meanwhile, his approach was to turn the economy into a Ponzi scheme–selling paper to pay the returns promised on paper already sold (partly to build and sell houses to people who had no means to pay for them) at the same time that his go-it-alone foreign policy required allies that were too VISIBLY bought–revealing our basic weakness.
That Bush’s policies are openly brutal and depraved is just the icing on the cake. It makes it very hard for foreign leaders to look the other way and pretend not to notice–as they very nicely did in times past. And, having been made to notice, they are compelled to act, and to distance themselves. The US has been steadily losing friends, and is moving close to becoming a pariah. This does not HAVE to happen, but it looks to me like it WILL happen–most Americans are either too clueless or too mean of spirit to choose otherwise.
We are now in the onset of a financial collapse that will bring behind it economic collapse. This will not be like the Great Depression: It will be worse. Survival may well become centered around local availability of basic necessities–food, water, clothing and shelter. Whatever progressives might do about national politics, it would be wise and useful to think about how your local region can maintain human life in the absence of a functioning economy.
This I think is the crux of the issue. Kevin Phillips details the Bush Family’s actions as a business intent on operating at the nexus of intelligence(aka national security), financial services and oil/energy in order to maximize their profits. He further explores that topic in American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Oil, Religion and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century
Unfortunately we as a people have allowed them to manipulate our political processes and to rule. We will be paying the consequences for the next generation at least.
That’s a great article you linked to. Can be paired with John Darwin’s recent book, After Tamerlane. The Global History of Empire, which leads one to exactly the same conclusion.
To take a contrarian stand: maybe Bush did us a favor. Given the deep-seated aggression in American history, that we don’t like to face up to (the extermination of the native Americans, enslavement of millions of Africans), and that we see in the fascist fantasizings of our right wing, we and more importantly, the world at large may be better served by American defeat in Iraq and a world where we are a player, but no longer the dominant player.
Until our foreign policy and the popular opinion that supports it is run by adults rather than adolescents, we are all better off having things at that level determined by the Europeans, Russians and Chinese, who have a long, if somewhat painful experience in these matters. One hopes they have learned their lessons, and that eventually we will, too.
They have risen to prominence again on the backs of the working class there. They privatized public services, caving to international pressure, and hundreds of thousands died from the lack of services in the 1990’s, a story rarely told.
The US spent its years as a superpower overthrowing democracies, installing bloodthirsty but pliable tyrants, engaging in dirty wars, and stealing all but the ground itself from under vulnerable third world populations. Our power corrupted us. Perhaps as a less powerful state, we will have an opportunity to be less corrupt.
Personally, I don’t want the US to be a superpower. I’ve seen the idiots we elect. In my lifetime, from Nixon to Bush II, there has not been a single president I would trust with that much power. (And that includes Jimmy Carter, who started the massive military buildup Reagan merely continued, and who was prone to making the occasional scary-ass millenialist comment himself.)
It might be argued that vast power can be turned to good aims, but the fact of the matter is that it very rarely is. For every village USAID has brought clean drinking water to, we have carpet bombed a dozen others. I say we hang up the crown and if anyone must run around fucking up the world, let it be someone else.
One thing I note in the article is that a lot of this rising economic power and international deal-making is based on and financed by hydrocarbon-based energy resources. While the US is still (IIRC) the biggest carbon-emitting industrial power, China is going to soon surpass us if they haven’t already (since they have considerably less environmental protection regulation).
And meanwhile, the polar ice sheets continue to melt.
Even if the US could get its corporate monsters under tighter regulation, cut our own carbon emissions back, it’s beginning to look as though we will no longer be in a strong moral or economic position to persuade other growing nations to do the same.
And yet the idea of a foreign policy based on something other than “Keep America Safe from Terrorists!” hasn’t even seemed to occur to most of the current Presidential candidates — certainly not to the Republicans, though I think some of the Democrats (Obama, Kucinich) might have a clue.
Important article — thanks for calling attention to it! Lord knows the Traditional Media isn’t going to print anything about it….
China last week became the world’s biggest air polluter, …