Future of America under American-led Empire
Craig B Hulet? - 18.09.2003 22:26
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. (Source: Major Ralph Peters
Bloodied Child of Iraq
By Craig B Hulet?
I was asked recently to make a short, or not so short, statement of what I thought realistically may come about over the next, say, five plus years here on my native soil, America. Actually I am asked this all the time by a specific group of people, call them my circle of interested parties. I have always restricted such comments to very private segments of society as the mass of people, the masses if you will, simply are not ever ready for “reality,” in any form.
My take, for over thirty years, on where my country is headed consists of a two-fold approach: the first approach is to put forward sufficient data, factual information, empirical evidence all in a specific format whereby an individual will understand what may happen, has already happened though they may be unaware, and what ultimately they might do in the face of it; call this my optimistic approach. Or call it my public approach because the public, whenever they hear something never before heard, it sends the herd stampeding if one tells them too much “like it is.” Call it, if you must, not telling all-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth-so-help-me-God! (Or feeding them pap, for those not ready for meat) It is something always practiced by most when speaking (or writing) to the petrified herd.
The other approach is more metaphysical I suppose, conjectural or suppositional. When asked to write about where my personal sense of it truly resides and “tell it like it is,” it is another question altogether. Nobody wants to hear this, believe it’s true and most cannot stomach it. Publicly it just isn’t done. Written? it is literary suicide; spoken? It is verbalcidal. The Question? What is this Empire we speak off? What will America and American's face under its rule? What will it be, this imperial project? This is what I hope to address here.
"There is Tranquility in Ignorance, but Servitude is its Partner."
The reasons why few will say what they know, are obvious to those who have been involved in the major corporate atmosphere, the U.S. military, intelligence and security fields and even some specialized academia. To speak of what you really know about this regime over the past fifty-five years is to risk your career, your job, your reputation, marriage, family and friends; in its severest reaction to something you might reveal about this newest form of Empire is to be smeared, slandered, banned, your client base asked to cease supporting your work, advertisers are harangued to drop their ads, and yes, even worse: you might actually end up dead. The public will not care that some or all of these things happen to you or anyone else. The progressive-Left will not care unless it is one of their own (and there are only some one million Leftists [total] in America); the radical-Right will not care unless it is, as well, one of their own (there are some three to five million of these on American soil, and they are largely harmless). The general public will never care what happens to anyone because they’re way too busy having fun, from dawn’s light to setting sun. Indeed, the “public” will not even know you existed. Why?
In America we are dealing with a level of illiteracy downright frightening. Political literacy, on foreign affairs, war and peace issues, we are absolutely a stupefied muddle of illiterate dopes. The entire world holds Americans in, well, shock & awe, if you will: shocked by our stupidity -- awed by our own disbelief in that fact. Americans arrogantly believe they are the smartest, best and most moral people on earth. They are arrogant “because” they are ignorant; the greater the ignorance the more stupid the more stupid the more arrogant. That is why they are arrogant don’t you see. The first implies the other. Don’t believe me, listen to shock-radio, hot-talk, hate-talk, Pacifica Radio Network and Fox-blarney for but a week, and you too “ought“ to be in awe (if you’re not we know why don’t we?)!
Sad to admit, we are a hateful bigoted nation, still. A nation of money-grubbing, manna worshipping, personality cult voyeuristic overweight slobs. Bill Clinton represented the general masses more than any president to date. To put it all in context. The eighty to 100 million which claim to attend church every Sunday, are the same that stare numbly at pornography daily (whether hard-core Internet [still the Internet’s No.#1 viewed $ item] or the highly professionally produced, written, edited Hollywood fanfare called R-rated movies and television programming). They are, as well, the very same ones getting others, or having their own, abortions in the largest (Christian) numbers (do the math for heaven’s sake, it ain’t Lesbian Thespians having abortions!).
That is not the worst part. It is these Volk that will believe everything, anything, no matter how absurdly untrue, George Bush the Smaller says. Many if not most on the Christian right think what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan have biblical overtones. Some, let us guess about half that figure, even believe “this is the END TIMES” and they will come out of all this secular war-making sitting to the right, that would be the very far-right, hand of God. The most hypocritical of these choose to believe they will remain here on the present planet justified in righteousness, with all their stuff, homes, cars and toys, in what they call “Stewardship” of the earth (meaning their stuff).
Given I am no prude, no fundamentalist church-going dispensationalist Christian, and in fact a bit of an anarchist about most things cultural and social, I‘ll not be tolerated long by that crowd. (Put another way: I don’t give a damn what you do on your own time, in your own home, it is none of my business, period.) Politically I am quite neutral about everything except what “is.” Not what ought to be, as I do have my personal philosophical notions; ideas which I keep to myself. About what may just have happened politically, I understand the why of it, and the whom it happened to, and all that too was always predictable given sufficient data. Thus regarding what will happen, I do have a sense of it all, but you likely won’t like it one bit. It isn’t pessimistic though it seems so. It is realistic, if you are without dogma: set-in-stone Left-leaning or Right-reeling; both really reeling from listening to their own intoxicated blather. And the two extremes do so love to hear themselves go on. And then, of course, I may simply be dead wrong, making a fool of myself, something I do quite naturally.
My sense of it, this Empire: The Strategy of Interdependence
Right then, that out of the way, I will spell out what I get from my 55-some years of adult participation in the great American political delusion. While it is all a shame, and I am ashamed often to admit being an American these days, I know America’s light must not go out: so goes America, as the foundation of liberty, so shall go the world. If democracy (not the lunatic-Left’s version) disappears here, it is lost to the world in a matter of time; if the idea of freedom which founded America (not the rabid-Right’s version) disappears here, it shall be lost for at least a full generation, if not two; if the hope for world peace in some section of the world, like the Middle East (not the radical-Rabbinical version in Israel) is lost on the world, it shall not return until the newest high-tech dark-ages have run its course.
And this I fear is my sense of it. I only speak to my fellow country-men, Americans and those which have chosen to emigrate to this soil and try to live free for maybe the first time. That is how almost every single one of us, or our forefathers, came to abide on this section of global landscape. In the hope of finding freedom; the hope of ensnaring that intangible, justifiable joke called justice; the hope for a future. As Hans Kelsen might have warned "to seek real justice" in the political realm is about as sane "as seeking it in the courts of law!"
Instead we are, nearly every man, woman and child, throwing it all away. Affluence, money, both in-and-of-itself and the incessant dream of more of it, has obliterated the soul of nearly each and every one of us. Including the children. Since 9/11, our leader has lied to everyone regularly; not to mistaken him for a “truly” elected president, (not the nonsense that the Republicans stole the last Presidential election, that is just stupid) instead meaning that, by and large, absolutely nobody even voted, with the exception of those dogmatic Republicans and Democrats voting for their long-held jobs in federal, state and local government (do the math). This funny little fantastic Fuhrer has pursued policies, violated the laws, awestruck all with his abuse of awesome powers, passed executive orders and Kowtowed both Houses of Congress into obscene obedience; he has, in short, set course for a level of tyranny not seen since our last four “leaders,” Clinton, Carter, Reagan and Bush the Larger (not one so pernicious as this present presence in our midst) when each obediently served the very same masters!
Empire isn’t built in a day, they, each in their own way, their own rhetoric, their own methods built upon each other’s site. From foundation, mortar, frame and roof, they all built this global regime. Using blueprints laid forth in the immediate aftermath of World War II, refined and redrawn as technology evolved, they used a strategic foil, the strategy of “interdependence.” That is what it was called for many decades: a global regime of economic interdependence: a strategy of interdependence. The blueprints drawn-up in the smoke-filled rooms of the secretive citadels of non-governmental organizations (NGO) where future leaders are trained-up, tuned-up and their thoughts molded and shaped to serve the interests of this emerging regime: Empire.
But not a Roman Empire, as the Roman people shared in its booty; its triumphs were their triumphs. This newest regime, is global, this newest regime is authoritarian, but this newest regime is not American. Thus, it will only serve its masters as all Empire’s do, but Americans will see no benefits and neither share in its triumphs nor its vision, its wealth nor its prosperity. You will share, many of you worse than others, minorities, the poor, the weak, only in this regime’s cruelty and wrath. This newest metamorphosis and evolution to Empire and imperial vision is a corporate regime, American-led, but really Western-led; elite ruled and Western/Northern in its corporate reach. The global regime is Corporazioni. Corporatism is its ideology. Materialism its power and wealth; money its God: The “U.S. Dollar,” but in its coming conversion to raw electronic funds transfer at the point of sale (EFT/POS) in real time. As former CEO of CitiBank, Winston Lord once wrote a decade ago, “under this new financial regime, there is no place to hide.”
When I say it is a corporate regime I mean just that: i.e., corporations, multinational and conglomerate, monopoly and cartelized in an ever-shrinking merger of one after another multinational firm into a centralized monolithic structure which will dominate every aspect of everyone’s lives. And there is nothing more totalitarian than a monopoly corporation. It is these masters of industries, who have grown from mere Captains to Rulers of Kingdoms, the size of which old Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan did not even dream of. Of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are corporations. Did I call these corporate cretins “masters?” I must be an obscure right-wing conspiracy theorist to have suggested this. Well, only to the disingenuous faux progressive-Leftists whose operations are regularly financed by these very same masters’ trusts and foundations.
Yes, there are masters. There is an elite. Since the dawn of time there has always been an elite for Christ’s sake, where have you been? Stuck over there with your itching ears plugged into Pacifica Radio’s rabid racists on the Left? The phony academics that tell you to ignore the persons that personify their office of power and instead, supposedly wisely, “understand the ‘problematic’ of the ‘institutional dynamics’ which evolve within the vast ‘methodological substratum’ of ‘empirical research.’” (And why have a method when you can have a methodology?) All this supposedly understandable only within this great noesphere of professorial wisdom. And of course only this wise and chaste vanguard can supply you with “The Truth,” -- i.e., Chomskyism’s select. (Sounds like a Safeway brand of big fat sausages.) And do let us all remember what The Iron Chancellor said of sausage-making: "The people should never see how laws or sausages are made." -- Prince Bismarck
Or have you rushed to judgment of those such as myself, following along with Rush Limbaugh’s mimicked Hannityism, in your joyful judgmental bias against everyone not a cigar-smoking Republican gerbil? Or are you so desperately foolish to factor O’Reilly in?
The Empire: State within a State: Imperium in Imperio
Although I shall never give-up the good fight, I was born to it, and shall continue to spew forth my richly textured empirical analysis in some forum far or near; yet, I must give up the truth if asked. America must go the way of all regimes, all governments, specifically all democracies, all empires and all imperial projects. We too shall pass into darkness and hell. Our shabby democracy has not been put through a shredder by enemies of liberty, so much as we did it to ourselves. Whether you are the one-issue orientated voter that never sees the bigger picture, or the apathetic, non-issue, could-give-a-damn-about-anything but yourself, non-voter, or the “I always vote” Republican, Green or Democrat, no matter who is running and how foul their stench (often literally), ... we all have lost the race. The elite, who may pose as this or that, R) or D) after the state from which they hail, masked and veiled as liberals or conservatives, it is they who have won. And now known to all what I have argued for over twenty years, “they are the very same men that rotate in and out of government and return to the real power, the multinational monopoly corporate system. Bush Senior, the Larger, has been our best example, who returned to the real power for these past ten years. But so too were the Clintons masked and veiled, vile to the core; and now comes a White House Cabinet of elitists so vicious and dangerous as to defy the very foundation of liberty. The key to understanding these new and ruthless demigods is one word: monopoly.
Monopoly, for the dogmatic howlers on the Left, repudiates free enterprise right along with you Leftists!... Corporatists, and its ideology Corporatism, for the self-righteous on the Right, repudiates both full socialism and true free enterprise, while you still, amazingly, think GE is for free enterprise and Bush the Smaller is an American patriot! With this much blind stupidity of “activists,” insufferable insanity of the masses, democracy had no chance. Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.
Look out at what we have: A corporate state that will send every job worth having, blue-collar and white, (both kinds: white-collar and white-boys) overseas as the corporate leaders successfully formulate their personal financial objectives through their government policy making appointed positions. They are, in nearly every administration now, the same guys by name. Left-fascists “used” to call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist for stating this baldly some 15 years ago; they are quite silent on the point now because of the clear truth of the matter, that is to say, its obviousness. This goes on whether R)s or D)s are holding office. This will go on whether it be Lady Hillary of WalMart or Little King George, Lord Kerry or Sir Gore. How desperate have the Democrats become? They would place an American Four Star General on this throne just to remove any Republican! Think about that! Democrats finding hope in a military man (and former baby-killer?) who simply had to mouth "I'm for abortion rights and gun control," and they buy it? Amazingly, the Democrats are even blinder now than before Clinton! Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.
Look at where we presently are: Patriot Act I & II, Homeland Security under the newly positioned cabinet level office, stamped almost 100% approved by both Houses of Congress. DARPA, and the global surveillance system already operational with both the CIA and NSA operating domestically: Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 historiography. The U.S. Department of Defense merely Empire’s foreign legions for foreign occupation of select foreigner’s lands for commercial acquisitions. And every Empire is commercial. Never mind that nobody votes at all any more.
Look at who we are: In every corner of America nearly everyone is on some drug, something to make them happy,...no happier, just to get by. They think they are heroes because they suffer a little stress. The film industry shoves their peculiar dishonest and defiled culture down everyone’s throat then wonders in stupefaction that they are both held in worshipful esteem (by those who share their malignant narcissism) as little Princesses and simultaneously hated (by those who disagree with it, but they too still stare numbly at the damn tube). Never mind that nobody gets to vote on this “programming” of the masses.
You cannot have Empire without nihilism
As it happens, unfortunate wanderers often put to the test the halls of safety, bringing to light by their mere presence the values that have been cultivated in these, and revealing whether those who are prosperous have learned that the outcasts' misfortune commands their care. For he who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth should be the first to know its value... --Homer
You ask what we can do about it? Part and parcel of Empire is that the masses must be ignorant, naive and or stupid. It is a given by the elite that “we the people” are a combination of all three. “Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among people.” -- John Adams (August 1765)
Try to understand this newest form of Empire. Take a map of the world, lay it out flat on the table. Circle each major city, each major port, each major airport, all in red. Now circle each region where strategic raw materials rest: oil, natural gas, chromium, phosphate, coal, iron ore, magnesium and the major bodies of water, each in blue. Now overlay this map with a clear acetate film. Mark in black every major monopoly corporation’s significant operations except retail: manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration, and major overseas expansions like in China. Now in purple (naturally, the color of Royalty) mark the flow of foreign direct investment globally from the richest western nation’s headquarters of the monopoly merchant bankers to where? -- now, for the first time, China’s entrance into the new world at the top of foreign direct investment, thus reveals itself. But understand this, America as America has no part in any of this. America as America is merely one political tool of this regime, a commercial banking and industrial regime which needs America only as government to build the new order in its legal apparatuses. The new global regimes of power and governance are the World Trade Organization, NAFTA and GATT; The World Bank; The Bank for International Settlements; the UN, NATO, Group of Eight, International Monetary Fund, and on and on, the soupy alphabetically ad nauseam. It is these regimes of power and governance that, so it is intended, will govern all that matters in the world of finance, manufacturing and production. These organs are made-up of the same corporate elite that negotiate and orchestrate the rules that shall govern all that matters.
Remember the map you set out on your table. If you look closely, squint your eyes a bit, you will see that the names of nations disappear. Only the names of cities, areas of resources, waterways and the regimes of governance named above remain. It is these that are set to become but city-states in a borderless world. There is no America, China, Great Britain or France; there is no Iraq or Afghanistan, but regions where the people must be brought to heal. Just as the Los Angeles Police Department has its headquarters and decentralized precincts, whereby they send in their troops to quell a riot in a disgruntled part of its fiefdom, so too shall Empire settle matters in its regions where Empire needs peace. Peace, so as to exploit the resources of the region in its behalf. Not in America’s American’s behalf (as Rome did for Roman’s). But to quell a region and control its people and things (resources, rivers and waterways, airports, roads and financial institutions). I have called this process worldwide Global Triage (Triage: from the French term for choosing who in emergency room treatment gets treated and who is allowed to die); it applies quite well: this regime will decide who lives and dies globally in every region that matters. And for precisely the reasons outlined:
There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. (Source: Major Ralph Peters, from “Parameters” " http://carlisle-www.army.mil" , Summer 1997, pp. 4-14: US Army War College)
Each and every area of life, of commerce, modified and synthesized, organized according to western GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Procedures) methods by the WTO, IMF, the World Bank, ExIm Bank and the host of hosts, Empire’s foreign legions, the Pentagon. Just as the LAPD, supported by the U.S. Marines, silenced dissent during the L.A. Riots, so too does Empire police these small cities of unruly ruffians in Baghdad and Kabul. Soon enough, Damascus and Jerusalem. But you get the point, wherever Empire needs to exert itself for control of resources, waterways, whether there be diamonds or iron ore, rice and beans, trees or bamboo...if it matters to Empire, all will succumb: triage.
Bloodied Iraqi Child
Americans, do dare to understand this, America doesn’t matter anymore to Empire. America is a mere cog in the wheel whose subject’s living standards must come down. Jobs Americans thought were theirs will be theirs only if they speak Farsi, Hindi, etc.; accept living in India, Pakistan or Malaysia. Soon, very soon indeed, companies like Boeing will not just move their headquarters to Chicago from Seattle and Everett, Washington State, previously known as one of the fifty states of America, but to Beijing, in what was famously known in the past as the Peoples Republic of China. These feudalistic monopoly corporations will, one and all, go where the wages are very low and the local Junta will enforce a non-union labor force receiving little or no benefits.
I recently heard an argument that India was sending its surplus population to America and they were filling American high-tech jobs at three times less pay. The wrong thinking here is this: There are no more Americans nor Indians, so there is no surplus Indian population doing anything. In a borderless world we are, every single one of us, global workers; therefore the Indians that follow ITT from America today on to Malaysia next, going where the jobs are going, are fulfilling their destiny under Empire. If Americans will not learn the language of foreign lands and take the jobs offered therein, they will remain here in what was once called America and live in a steadily declining job market, a steadily declining standard of living. I guarantee Bush the Smaller (or Lady Hillary of WalMart) will not stop steadily spending your earnings! I did not state above “citizens” either; citizens of Empire are either serfs or subjects, subject to Empire’s dictate, that is why they are called subjects. Serfs are the ones that cannot or will not adjust to Empire’s new demands. Their kingdom destined to be serfdom. A hi-tech feudalism is implied in global Empire; it is especially applicable when Empire’s masters, our rulers, are of Corporazioni’s ilk.
This is the future. Borders already do not matter, you just have not felt the weight of what this means. When borders no longer matter, then being American doesn’t either, as what was known as America simply no longer exists. Put plainly -- when borders no longer matter neither do you.
It is certainly not just myself, deluding myself, that what we have here is Empire in its rawest form, its religious form, as all Empire's tend towards a sense of the divine. Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, recently wrote an intriguing piece titled “Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks’ nightmare scenario--it’s their plan.” He argues that the neo-conservatives have a vision for what they want to do in the Middle East and deception has always been part of their ideological make-up. In one telling paragraph he captures the argument when he wrote that the current crop of neo-conservative hawks have a vision for the world, a vision not “unlike,” but “exactly like” a religious epiphany. Regarding the present plan for the entire Middle East, not just Iraq, he stated it this way:
The hawks’ [other] response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. ‘We need to be more assertive,’ argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia.’ Hopefully, in Boot’s view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States 'occupying the Saudi’s oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region.'...What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics. (emphasis added, The Washington Monthly, 2003.)
Understand this as well. It doesn't matter that all Empires fall, every imperial vision comes to an end. This will be cold comfort when it is pressed forward at your expense, your children's expense, if not their lives, your future. It never matters that the Empire will fail, it is always that "it will try."Bush the Smaller, God-forbid a Four Star General, or Lady Hillary of WalMart, will, each of them in their own way, their own speed of endeavor, their own stratagems will continue to try. Try as you might, face nothing else, but face this fundamental fact. It is in their trying that your future holds such bleakness.
Therefore, what can we do about America evolving, and now evolving very rapidly indeed, into Empire? Well, exactly nothing. Nobody can do anything about this; nothing, nada, nyet. One can join the elite (though the doors are mostly closed now), work for them (though they need fewer and fewer every year), or try as you might to "become"one of their minions, monopoly corporate dupes, lobbyists, or elected D)s or R)s. Or you will either learn to live with it, or die; live within it, and survive (and only those which truly understand all this will have any chance at all for that). And survive meaning just that and no more, scratching out a living as your standard of living slides ever closer to the most putrid form of poverty. Or live on Empire’s fringe, outside of affluence, in an Emersonian moderate poverty, outside of the system, outside of its laws... "outlaws," that is to say. That is what Homeland Security is really for. To protect the homeland, the Empire's roots, its body politic from the likes of you.
What must happen
Look at what will have to happen, eventually, for the Empire to succeed. This future is clear to some. Empire and the imperial ambitions that go along with it mean specific things: Greater governmental spending, higher taxes, lowered standard of living for the masses, greater burdens on the working man and woman. Universal service and sacrifice of all the subjects of Empire. Everyone must pull their weight, tote that barge...the youth will see imperial service selectively; drafted...if not a year or so after the next election is won by Sir George the Smaller then certainly soon enough thereafter. It would go down easier with a Democrat in the White House of course, and should that miraculously take place (which the odds are something like winning the lotto) the designated white Democrat in the White House will act even more swiftly to enact this selective service for the country. It would go down so much easier with Lady Hillary of WalMart signing-off on it. Why? Because liberals and D)s cannot find the courage it takes to take on one of their, supposedly, own. What if this decision were taken by a Four Star General? You know the Democrats could not then bring themselves to even a furrowed brow, a frown.
One thing that always amazes me is how pragmatic Democrats can be; they will endorse anything, anyone, that might defeat a Republican in the White House. For decades the Democrats have led the anti-war movements (often late in the game); they have been the leaders in denouncing the military. Now, because their line-up to take on Mr. Bush is so weak and the nation’s masses have war-fever, they are considering a man whose sole credentials are his four stars and his vast array of contacts with defense contractors, monopolists to a man. Defense contractors, the bugbear of every liberal for decades. Now that the regime has Homeland Security, Patriot Acts I & II, the CIA and NSA can operate domestically and all this vast centralization of police power is under direct control of the White House with its new Homeland Cabinet Post...give it over to a Four Star General...there's some bright thinking.
It's inescapable. One way or another you are going to support this Empire. Whether through capitulation and submission, or through raw cowardice; the latter revealing itself more each day in more and more subjects as Lord Bush the Smaller passes imperial decree after executive decree and our leaders fall silent in a cowardly spectacle. Watch Bush the Smaller as he ratchets-up the fear-mongering so effectively with the silly colored terrorist alerts: yellow, red, etc.; what blarney, bullocks, what hubris this child of an elitist carries in his breast!
Muslims persecuted by the thousands, mild-mannered peace activists barred from flying on the airlines, individuals arrested at airports for joking they have "a bomb in their wallet,"as others, even the elderly, are strip-searched while in a wheelchair, still others declared "illegal combatants." (A term not even found in American jurisprudence, another indication America is no more.) Because they once upon a time traveled to a far off land? America has become a nation of cowards. But we have seen all this before:
"Finally, the German nationalists, the right-wing conservatives, who venerated 'honor'and 'heroism' as the central characteristics of their program. Oh God, what infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward! One might at least have expected that, once their claim in January proved illusory--that they had 'tamed'the Nazis and 'rendered them harmless'-- they would act as a 'brake'and 'prevent the worst.' Not a bit of it. They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews, the persecution of Christians. They were not even bothered when their own party was prohibited, and their own members were arrested." (Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler, FSG, p.131)
We cannot see what Mr. Bush and his most vile crop of neo-conservatives plan and execute before our befuddled eyes. Lord Bush the Smaller is already thinking what Bill Clinton had already proposed during early 2003: running for a third (and fourth?) term in office after his second term begins to wind-down. He can simply claim national emergency (it has precedent). Only after the election is won will Bush contemplate the already proposed universal draft of the youth for reasons never spoken. We will be told we have to "go it alone," the great nation that we are, to bring justice and democracy to Iraq, to set the course for liberty in the Middle East, to end the death of American soldiers beleaguered in war zones afar. This is why Lord Bush is brow-beating an unwieldy United Nations to throw their troops in the fray. He knows full well Germany, France, China and Russia (and a hundred others) opposed the war resolution at the same UN, oppose it still. Why would they (then) bail out an arrogant U.S. president who has lied all along, along with Tony Blair, to get "US" in the war in the first place? They will not, and Bush knows this. But with their refusal he can later berate them one and all to the American people as "the reason" we must go it alone. And we love it so to hate the French and Germans. And along with his cohort of media whores at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and Fox "factors this in" he can convince American mothers to send their children to die. And this can be so easily accomplished, all so easily, legally. We have seen all this before:
"Constitutional lawyers define it as a change of constitution by means not foreseen therein. By this definition the Nazi revolution of March 1933 was not a revolution. Everything went strictly 'by the book,' using means that were permitted by the constitution. At first there were 'emergency decrees' by the president of the Reich, and later a bill was passed by a two-thirds majority of the Reichstag giving the government unlimited legislative powers, perfectly in accordance with the rules for changing the constitution." (Haffner, Ibid., p. 124)
Americans have made their politics their religion
The truly ignorant or naive American may be forgiven if they think, along with their historical counterparts of Germany, circa, 1933, that, "All this was still something one only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had gone before. There were brown SA uniforms on the streets...but otherwise it was 'business as usual.' " (Ibid., p. 109) They could not see the brown shirts who were the "media representatives" of the 1933 Reich, then pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once browbeating, then slandering opponents, shouting them down, then beating them for real if need be. We have our own regime enforcers as "media representatives," of Amerika, "Media Brown Shirts," ... pamphleteering, stumping, soap-box rants; at once browbeating, then slandering opponents, shouting them down, then beating them for real if need be. The beatings some critics have taken have utterly silenced them, and we have seen many a critic banned, fired, ruined financially. Is it less an act of violence to ban, silence and slander than to whack 'em over the head with a black-jack or night-stick? Isn't it interesting that in Amerika the night-stick is called a baton, as though wielded by a short-skirted adolescent in a parade? Just as Mr. Bush Junior did at Yale as head cheerleader.
It did not begin with Empire acting in its divine capacity that Empire took on religious overtones. Americans have long made their politics religion rather than a secular act primed to escort our means of governance. All sides have made politics their religion which is why it has the flavor of carnival, a spectacle, just as it was in the Germany Haffner witnessed. The feminist dominated Greens, the corporate Democrats and certainly the symbiotic relationship of the present crop of Republicans with fundamentalism’s dispensationalists bears witness once again that yet another democracy has lost its way. And this one lost its way to evolve into an American-led corporate empire. Not a spoken of, thousand-year Reich; not spoken of that is, and that's all.
And if the term Empire still doesn’t sit well with the present reader, the reader needs to grow-up. And Americans hate to grow-up these days. If the term Empire bothers some change the definition, fine, words and their terms of usage change all the time as knowledge and reality sinks in and the truth can only be understood by the new terms and phrases of the day. But Empire, an American-led empire, a corporate empire, "is" what the current administration is all about. Not only in the Middle East do we make war, but the world over if necessary. As the tenacious John Pilger recently wrote while sitting in on a meeting of journalists and aid workers in Iraq,... "It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the 'test case', says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing 'incredible' levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is 'debated' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue." (Independent.com, 2003)
The fact that a man with so little political sense, a total lack of every intellectual attribute needed for secular political governance was endorsed by the "gray men" for Governor of California on the sole basis of "name recognition," and the bizarre truth is that Californians, (being a bit odd themselves according to some) might just vote for him to win, is a shame on us the U.S. We know "who" by "name" will rule California even if Noam cannot bring himself to "personalize the problematic." What, then is our future?
High-Tech Corporate Feudalism
Of course, one can always argue differently. I shall make my own point, as I said, "my sense of it." The major U.S. monopoly multinationals with their ongoing mergers and acquisitions globally will continue apace. Not even Arnold can stop the economic attrition in California wearing out the workers, blue collar and white; jobs sent overseas following entire operations already operating, moved to markets more amenable to profit and fewer benefits. Not even Arnold can address the sheer enormity of tax dollars slipped into the hands of GE, Bechtel and Halliburton, Brown & Root. Not even the Terminator can rid the planet of the high-tech feudalism this monopolistic oligarchy brings to the land. Indeed, they own Arnold. Why else would a Captain of industries (Bechtel, Boeing, etc.), Herr Schultz, endorse this bad-actor for the position, the input, unless he can control the output?
What democrat could alter the landscape, even if he or she would, when each and every one is bought and paid for by precisely the same Corporatism which presently owns both Houses of Congress, the White House and white presidents? Lady Hillary of WalMart? Please!
Empire may mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Again, it may even be difficult to define today (so I’ve been told) for some. But I may have less of a problem with it than most and not because I am so darn smart. Simply because I have little allegiance to anything except liberty and I concern myself only about what "is."
Where we will be in a few years is just not that difficult to imagine, not that hard to figure. The debt and deficits alone are staggering; never has the trade deficit and the federal monetary deficit been as high as a percentage of GDP, and nearly equal. Total obligations of the enormous federal crime families is a robust 44 trillion dollars. My calculator doesn't have that many zeros! Never has personal individual debt been quite so enormous, nearly every working man, woman and child is presently bankrupt by any rational mathematical standard applied, which of course logically explains record personal bankruptcies. Corporate debt is at record levels, which of course logically explains record business bankruptcies. Unemployment figures have never been so manipulated by a system of mathematical make-believe to make us believe we have a recovery in progress without the productive participation of some 30 to 40 million workers. Workers not looking for work is why they are not counted. As though the fact that they have given-up looking for that job, where there are 700 applicants for every meager-paying service job, makes them less jobless! Workers working only part time and often only a few hours a week are not unemployed by the reckoning of our masters, they are simply "marginal."
GDP means Gross Domestic Product and it is indeed gross to claim we have any worthwhile products produced domestically any longer. The only thing America can be said to actually produce is more debt. That is the future story one day writ large. Made in America my a posteriori.
What of the stock market one naively asks, thinking "it" has some relationship to the domestic economy being prosperous or in a recovery for the many? The reality? An ever growing process of overseas investment in unproductive acquisitions. The very same process that little dark magician and his crew performed on the world stage for the Clinton myth is in for a repeat performance, a slick kind of ... "come on Alan, take a bow!" One more time we print the cash to pay the diabolical debts and raise taxes to re-collect what was spent on defense and foreign infrastructures where empire wants to expand. We are to rebuild Iraq but we cannot fix the roads in America? We can bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan as it slips away here in America and America's children cannot find a decent education? And the little dark magician keeps conjuring-up his mystical magical manna.
This is done to the glee of the raw speculator in stocks; stocks again so overpriced as to defy even the little magician tortured mind. Yet another day of reckoning is in the future. Another round of false millionaires, each as logically mathematically bankrupt as the former, each shall find their dreams dashed in the coming market "correction." Don’t you love the language we are taught to use... a "correction." Sort of like a typo -- just a little white-out in the old days, replaced now by Microsoft Works program spell checker -- and what a hoot, it wasn't that bad.
Except for those that cannot find a job after they have lost everything, and at fifty-five years old find themselves working non-union in the Garden Center at Lady Hillary's WalMart. But this may not happen for a few more years, certainly interest rates will not rise significantly "before" Bush the Smaller gets re-elected! Bush the Senior.the Larger, will not have it. And again, Bush the Larger has been back in power for ten years, not, like so many silly progressives and Democrats wrongly hoped and believed, sidelined like some aging running back for the Dallas Cowboys. No, the "must happen" correction, must be held off until after that little stage play the mad magician performs is in curtain call. Nobody the wiser still.
And what will we hear in the very near term? "Nothing any different from what has gone before." But what will in fact happen must happen. More smaller business failures as the trickle-down from Corporatism's domestic economic attrition in affect effects one and all; more unemployment not less. The IRS has targeted small businesses as the audit of choice. Of course they have, the smaller large companies and the smaller small businessmen cannot afford the Big Eight to do battle with this manna collecting monstrosity. An evil so great some few Libertarians have called it the "eternal revenue system." That sucking sound wasn't just jobs going overseas Ross, it is the whooshing sound of the collective toilet flushing individual taxpayers into the general system's septic-tank where the biggest curds float to the top, the rest sink quietly out of site. "All this [was] still something one only read about in the press. You did not see or hear anything that was any different from what had gone before."
What are we to do with the aging demographic in America? Soon enough those retired, or the older unemployed or, unemployable is the new term, those on the many doles will simply out number the youth working and being taxed to pay for the retired Volk. Given everything else noted above, add even greater unemployment among minorities and young people, add further domestic economic attrition through corporate expansion overseas, what is a tyrant to do? Draft the little buggers is but the only real world solution; none too few other analysts have suggested this as one such future solution. When we see adults, between twenty-three to thirty-five scooting about on mountain bikes, decked-out in childish garb, out having fun like the nine year-olds the bikes were originally meant for, how can an honest broker of thought not endorse another military draft? We have a nation of grown men acting as children, with no thought of the future with the sole exception of "having more time off," having "more fun," and escaping further into a neurotic festival of mutual exhibitionism. The worst? the ones strutting about like John Wayne, sunglasses perched on their proboscis, acting bad-to-the-bone...for attention, over the fact that he has a new shiny truck with a still newer ATV in the back! Draft the buggers does come to mind if there is to be any hope for this state of affairs whose affairs are in a terrible state. While I cannot say I approve of this solution, because I do not approve of just about anything the American-led Empire is doing, it is a solution I can state categorically "they" are looking at.
Alas, what I sense is not going to affect me too much with the exception of my beleaguered compassionate-side; this darkness coming over the land shall be the ruin of so many an innocent. Those enlightened self-interested greedy little malevolent monkeys, the nihilistic narcissists and dead-beat creatures that personally gain by all this, the politicians, the monopoly corporate cretins, the mob lined-up at the various troughs, bleeding one and all, every "other," well, I don’t much care for them. But you could have guessed that right off. The fact that this coming corporate feudalism will bear little resemblance to tyrannies of the past is little comfort. That it is high-tech, well lighted, air-conditioned and instantly gratifying in such a gratuitous fashion, will make it seem, to many, a benign kind of tyranny. A kind of benevolent beast. These four horsemen will seemingly come bearing new gifts for all, SUVs and home mortgages with little or no interest rates "for sixteen months with no payments until September." We’ve all heard the call. It is the stuff which imprisons the soul.
The Things That Matter
The only way Empire, even American-led as it is, can and will mend its profligate ways domestically? Taxes must be raised; therefore the masses must be razed, put to work and taxed too. Oil and gas must be raised, from mother earth; therefore the Middle East must be razed to protect American interests. Whose interests? Not mine. Not most of you. But we know whose interests are being looked after, explored and protected. Don’t we? Interest rates must be raised, to protect that flimsy piece of medium we exchange for things; things whose cost continues to rise effortlessly, ah, the almighty dollar, and inflation is the most secretive of all the razing to come.
No, the charade must come to an end, the correction must happen, the wars will not end, the expansion overseas and the global military "footprint" will enlarge to encompass everything "that matters." And everything that matters will come under an absolutist feudal corporate control. Things that "don’t matter," like what you watch on TV; your desperate need for yet another new pair of shoes; the need to strut before your crowd with your stuff exposed; the need to "get ahead" of your neighbor, your sibling, yourself. That invisible treadmill so many cannot bring themselves to get off because "it is all they are," all they have. Things that "don't matter," like who you have sex with and for heaven’s sake "why" ... all will be allowed you, as these things don't matter to Empire. Indeed, it is the "stuff of Empire" which is meant to enslave! If you learn no other expression learn these two: The "things that matter" (Empire will control absolutely) "things that don't matter," (you know) are yours to keep. Even your life is yours to fritter away as so many have in America before you.
What matters to Empire? You will work. You will pay. And pay until it hurts, you will pay and you will obey. The future is clear to some. Ignore it at your own risk. What can you do? You? You actually mean "you?" I haven’t got a clue. That is, well, up to you isn't it?
End 09/15/03
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Mr. Craig B Hulet: Security, Military Affairs & International Relations Expert (Author: "The Hydra of Carnage: Bush’s Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law: An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire." Available @ www.kcandassociates.org); Hulet was Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Ret.) www.craigbhulet.com --Hulet can be reached at:  cali@localaccess.com
Copyright 2003 The Artful Nuance and Craig B Hulet
 E-Mail: cali@localaccess.com  Website: http://www.kcandassociates.org
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