The political/economy of empire

Posted on December 10, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

The US is an empire, in case you hadn’t noticed.

The political/economy of the US empire is the deep state.

The deep state in America is largely composed of the military/industrial/complex, the oil and gas industry, and Wall Street. The policies that they pursue shape and influence the economic and foreign policies of the American empire to their benefit.

When people think of empire, they imagine Roman legions, wars of conquest, and slave labor. Or Great Britain with its army of public servants administering a far flung empire where the sun never sets. These and other traditional empires tended to be about the acquisition of fertile lands or resources, the enslavement of people for exploitation, and the conquest of trade routes.

The US empire is of a different nature. It’s a corporate empire, where weapons, energy and finance play an outsized role. The US system of military bases straddling the world is not part of territorial occupation, but rather serves to maintain a stable of client states that US banks and corporations can dominate. In that way, the US employs its military to perpetuate American corporate preeminence.

The US empire has evolved from WWII, when the US sought to maintain its empire of client states by overthrowing leftist governments and installing pliable right-wing dictators or army officers. Think–Iran with the shah, or Guatemala with Colonel Armas.

The US empire of the 21st century is much less concerned with who rules its client states. Now, left-wing or right-wing governments are ok. The US empire uses market forces, such as trade agreements, debt bondage, and structural adjustments administered by the IMF, to control these governments.

In fact, the market can often succeed where military efforts of conquest fail. Take Vietnam. 40 years after the US was defeated by the Viet-Cong, and forced to retreat, Vietnam has largely acceded to US led globalization, including engaging in free-market reforms, privatization, and submission to IMF structural adjustment programs. After defeating the US militarily, they’ve been conquered by economic means, and surrendered to debt bondage and structural adjustments.

This reliance on economic means to maintain the US empire is what gives Wall Street its outsized role in national affairs, and why it’s been the leading member of the American deep state. It’s also why the Obama administration bailed out the banks instead of homeowners in the wake of the Wall Street crash of 2008. After all, Wall Street banks are essential to maintaining the American corporate empire, while homeowners are not.

The problem for the US empire in 2016, is that with it’s economic and financial power waning, military superiority seems to be the chief means by which U.S. imperialism can attempt to maintain global domination.

The election of Trump, exposes deep divisions within the deep state. What we see is that the incentives for the various members of the deep state are out of alignment. The empire of chaos thing certainly works for the MIC, while for energy and finance, endless war makes it hard to do business.

In my opinion, Trump intends to advance the US corporate empire, but in a different manner. Trump’s cabinet selections so far show finance losing out while energy and weapons are prospering

Stay tuned.

Update: Marcy, at Emptywheel says-–“It seems there’s a fight for the brain of Trump, even while he seems to be preparing to delegate all this stuff to his advisors.”

 

 

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Member Berries

Posted on December 6, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

To retake our country from the deep state we will have to end the American empire.

To end the American empire we have to challenge the narrative of American exceptionalism, that has been promulgated with the help of a corporate media that’s become undistinguishable from a state-controlled media. For example, the American media is always pro-war, and always pro-corporate-empire in accordance with US foreign policy.

American exceptionalism fuses the symbols of the state with those of the Christian religion, where actual knowledge is less important than fervent belief.

Most Americans have a Disneyfied version of US history, where America is the indispensable nation, laboring to spread peace and democracy.

Thanks to this corporate media portrayal, America’s real history of slavery, genocide and empire, is magically scrubbed away.

The election of Donald Trump with his campaign slogan–Make America Great Again, has appealed to this Disneyfied version of history, and also exposed the longing among his supporters for an imaginary golden-age of America. 

All of this was recently satirized by South Park, in an episode entitled Member Berries. The member berries, are small purple berries that utter nostalgic phrases that reflect American history–as imagined by straight, white, Christian-conservatives.

Member when Reagan was president and there weren’t so many Mexicans around and no gays?

The brutal reality facing Trump is that he will need to end the US empire to Make America  Great Again. He will also have to move past trite appeals to a member berry past.

Since we have two political parties I would be remiss if I didn’t address the Democrat’s use of a false and misleading history. After all, the Democrats have their very own member berries. Take the recent election loss–the Democrats, rather than examining Hillary’s shortcomings as a candidate, and their shitty policies, blamed it on the nefarious Russians.

Member when Hillary lost because Putin hacked our election?

Then, there’s the fact that both parties rely on the neoconservatives to articulate US foreign policy, even though this is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight and has been responsible for a series of cascading failures, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, and now Syria. The neocons also use member berries as part of their Straussian deception.

Member when Saddam gave nerve gas to Al Qaeda so they could crop dust American cities?

As you can see from these examples, member berries aren’t just an appeal to an imaginary past. They are part of a sophisticated and ongoing ruling narrative, deployed to maintain the corporate empire and deep state.

This narrative is starting to break down, hence the hysterical reaction to the “fake news” controversy. In my opinion, this is largely due to fact that the US empire is falling apart, and the effects are starting to be felt here at home.

With a military budget almost the equal of all other countries put together and hundreds of military bases around the world, the US is drastically overextended. In the meantime, much of our country is descending into third-world status. Our elite living in their urban bubbles may not see this but in much of the fly-over parts of the country, where the people who actually fight America’s wars come from, and go back to with their PTSD, missing limbs, addictions and related financial burdens, there is a serious concern about the costs and failures of our belligerent foreign-policy.

And now Trump inherits the failing US empire, and deep state that’s frantic to put off this eventuality. I wonder if they’ve informed him of all the sordid details of empire? Be nice to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Back to the duopoly. Both Republicans and Democrats use misleading narratives and member berries to lure their supporters into voting against their self-interests.

As writers and intellectuals, we need to challenge this misleading narrative forcefully.

Going further, it’s not enough to simply challenge the dominant narrative of American exceptionalism that both parties use to maintain control. We need to offer our own narrative–where we can save the American republic by ending the American empire–and use the resources to rebuild our infrastructure and our manufacturing capability, while embarking on a post-carbon economy, putting millions of Americans back to work.

If we had something besides a corporate media, we might be able to discuss such proposals.

Instead we get member berries.

Update: Don’t think for a second that our elite are immune to the effects of member berries. I’m amazed at how much of he US political, economic, and media elite exist inside a Beltway bubble of group-think; reading the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times and Politico, and watching CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

Update 2: New York City and Washington D.C. liquor stores are now stocking Member Berry wine.

 

 

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Stage–2

Posted on November 29, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

US neoliberal and neoconservative elite are going through the stages of grief in the wake of the election of Donald Trump.

Judging by the recent McCarthy-style smear campaign in the Washington Post, they’re still stuck at anger.

On Thursday, the Post published a new article by Craig Timberg complaining of a “flood” of so-called fake news supported by “a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy,” To advance this conclusion, Timberg points to PropOrNot, an organization of anonymous individuals formed this year, as having identified “more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.” 

Ironically, the Washington Post, along with the New York Times, published the ultimate “fake news story”–Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction—justifying the invasion of Iraq.

The real crime of those on the list is challenging the Washington consensus, where neoliberal economic and neoconservative foreign policies are sacrosanct. According to new McCarthyism–either you must accept everything the US government says and does at face value, believe it implicitly and support it whole-heartedly, or else you’re a Russian dupe.

Damn, they’re on to me.

The fundamental source of the Post’s hysterical accusations is that our ruling elite has lost control of the narrative. Hence the anger, and hysterical and frantic efforts to marginalize and discredit any dissenting narratives that undermine or question the power of our corrupted, self-serving ruling elite.

The neocons who supported Hillary are especially butt-hurt. After all, just last month they were preparing for a much more muscular foreign policy when Hillary assumed the presidency, as this article at The Washington Post, in October, made clear.

“In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief. 

The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.

It is not unusual for Washington’s establishment to launch major studies in the final months of an administration to correct the perceived mistakes of a president or influence his successor. But the bipartisan nature of the recent recommendations, coming at a time when the country has never been more polarized, reflect a remarkable consensus among the foreign policy elite.”

The neocons dream of a more assertive foreign policy (read: more war) under a Clinton presidency is not to be.

So sad.

If Trump can break with the neocons on the idea of endless war it would go a long way towards helping make his presidency bearable.

The US neoliberal economic consensus, embraced by Clinton and other prominent Democrats, has also taken a hit, and they have reason to be angry. The election of Trump has thrown a wrench into the reliable neoliberal economic policies that our bi-partisan elite have pursued for the last 40 years.

Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research, argues that the election of Trump, “promises to reshape the entire global order, and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.” Reddy is especially critical of economists who pushed neoliberal economic policies, even as they have been repeatedly demonstrated as ruinous for most of the worlds population.

“Mainstream economics championed corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. Economics made the case for such agreements, generally rejecting concerns over labor and environmental standards and giving short shrift to the effects of globalization in weakening the bargaining power of workers or altogether displacing them; to the need for compensatory measures to aid those displaced; and more generally to measures to ensure that the benefits of growth were shared.  For the most part, economists casually waved aside such concerns, both in their theories and in their policy recommendations, treating these matters as either insignificant or as being in the jurisdiction of politicians.  Still less attention was paid to crafting an alternate form of globalization, or to identifying bases for national economic policies taking a less passive view of comparative advantage and instead aiming to create it.”

Reddy says, that, rather than being neutral observers, neoliberal economists, “actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure preferences, etc.”

The election of Trump is a repudiation to the elite ruling orthodoxy in America. The American people voted for a change from the destructive neoliberal and neoconservative policies our elite have insisted on following.

The bi-partisan ruling elite hate the idea of their loss of power, prestige, and most of all their control. So they’re lashing out in anger.

As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded as a hostile act.

Update: Under attack.

“Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Washington Post legitimated a thin, amateurish site whose principals have libeled not only Naked Capitalism but also Ron Paul’s institute, former Reagan Administration officials David Stockman and Paul Craig Roberts, well-respected progressive stalwarts, such as Counterpunch, Truthout, TruthDig, and Black Agenda Report, as supposed Russian propaganda outlets with foreign “coordinators.” Moreover, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, this site called for everyone on its list to be investigated by the FBI and DoJ for Espionage Act violations.

The common denominator for all these websites seems to be skepticism about the failed Clinton coronation.”

 

 

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Like Ike

Posted on November 22, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Before he took office, President Obama professed his admiration of President Reagan. Lately he’s behaving like President Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, after creating the military-industrial-complex and nascent deep state, famously warned against it. As he was leaving office.

Many Americans remember Eisenhower’s farewell speech and have a nostalgia for his time in office. However, a careful reading of the history of his administration offers a much darker interpretation. The men that Eisenhower choose to cary out his foreign policy–John Foster Dulles, as Secretary of State, and Allan Dulles, as head of the CIA–turbo-charged the Cold War and embarked the US on a fateful program of corporate imperialism. Projecting the dangers of communism, the Dulles instituted a massive arms build-up, while deposing recalcitrant Third-World governments. On their watch, Iran and Guatemala were overthrown, and pliable dictators installed.

Now it’s Obama turn. After helping inequality explode, Obama warns of the dangers of inequality. As he’s leaving office.

As President Obama prepares to depart, it’s more imperative than ever for us to understand his legacy.

In hindsight it appears that Obama was a chameleon. While conservatives saw him as a Kenyon-Muslim-Socialist, herding them down the road to serfdom, liberals viewed him as their community-organizer-savior who would usher in the new–New Deal.

Neither view was correct, as Obama has turned out to be another corporate neoliberal.

When it comes to inequality, Obama neglects to mention that when he entered the White House in 2009 he had a historical opportunity to address runaway inequality. In the aftermath of the Wall Street crash the country was angry at the bankers that had caused the crash and eager for bold leadership.

Obama soon demonstrated that he wasn’t really interested in serving the public but in protecting Wall Street.

On 27 March 2009, Obama secretly told the chieftains of Wall Street assembled at a private meeting inside the White House, «My Administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks». «You guys have an acute public relations problem, and I want to help… I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you».

This protection should be viewed in light of Obama’s financial benefactors. After all, Obama allowed Citigroup to select the men who would serve in his administration. Chief economic advisor Lawrence Summers, whose advice to President Bill Clinton in 1999 had encouraged him to terminate FDR’s Glass-Steagall separation of consumer-banking from investment-banking (Wall Street’s casinos). And, Timothy Geithner, who was the G.W. Bush era’s N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank President and thus king of Wall Street, became U.S. Treasury Secretary. Geithner went on to foam the runway with American homeowners to cushion a bank crash landing, causing millions of evictions.

Thus did Obama cement into place the massive inequality, he’s now at pains to decry. «Poverty Rose In 96% Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». And, the income and wealth of the billionaires soared like at no time since 1923-1928. Meanwhile, the share of income and wealth of bottom 90 % wealth holders» both declined.

President Eisenhower’ favorite pastime in office was playing golf with wealthy industrialists.

Likewise, Obama enjoys golfing with his wealthy benefactors.

After January, he’ll have plenty of time to work on his game.

 

 

 

 

 

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Don’t mourn, organize

Posted on November 15, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Trump is going to end the world, as we know it.

Or, something.

Liberals are always more energized and pugilistic when a Republican president gains power.

My biggest peeve with liberals, is that they were aghast at the behavior of Bush, but couldn’t be bothered when Obama was committing the same crimes. The only difference was that Obama represented team Blue. That, and he was much more articulate, with a lovely, intelligent wife, and two beautiful daughters.

My liberal friends are just convinced that Obama could never be as bad as Bush.

Except, that he was.

It’s all about moral consistency. If something is evil, it’s evil, no matter who’s doing it.

And, let’s be honest, the Democratic party has abandoned working-class people and progressive economic policies. Instead the Democrats have embraced financial neoliberalism, where the policies of deregulation, privatization, austerity, and corporate trade have devastated America’s once vibrant middle-class. These Americans living standards have declined precipitously. They’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their pensions, and they’ve lost much of their safety net. They see a bleak future for their children.

These Americans used to be reliable Democratic voters. They even voted for Obama. Once Senator Bernie Sanders lost the nomination, the Democrats hardly made any effort to recapture these voters.  Perhaps because their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the very embodiment of the establishment policies that has created so much misery for these groups. These voters instead went for the change candidate–Trump–though there’s a pretty good chance his policies will make their position worse.

My liberal friends, while rightfully upset, need to see this as a historic opportunity.

When activist Joe Hill was waiting on death row he wrote a letter to union organizer, Big-Bill Haywood, urging him: “Don’t mourn, organize.”

The same principle applies in the wake of Trump’s surprise victory.

Even though progressives and liberals are upset and depressed, with more than a few threatening to move to Canada, they need to realize that now is the chance to put their outrage into action and gear up for a long struggle.

Naked Capitalism is running a series this week to remind us that, “The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time begin defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.”

In my opinion, it’s time to go on the offensive, and develop public policies that are universal. Progressives have been on the defensive for so long that they’ve forgotten how to articulate a positive agenda for what a progressive world would look like. We need to never forget that Bernie Sanders demonstrated conclusively that progressive policies are popular with the American electorate.

“The only way out of these dead ends lies in committing to a defined agenda of institutionalized, economic justice because this affects all. Social justice cannot be secured absent economic justice. Any such agenda is going to be anti-corporate, anti-poverty, pro-education (and job re-education), and pro-regulation. It has to be citizen-based outside of existing political parties. This kind of program can be articulated as pro-community rather than pro-faction if the organizing is done. This has to be pursued from a defined agenda, unapologetically, and from a pro-citizen(ship) position regardless of other more discrete goals.”

As I’ve said before–with great change comes great opportunity. Milton Friedman and the movement right understood this concept and had a program–neoliberalism–ready when New Deal policies faltered in the 1970’s. It’s the same thing for progressives. If you want a better world, start thinking about how to make it so.

Despite all the doom and gloom, the election of Donald Trump actually represents an unprecedented opportunity for change in both political parties and a chance to reform the underlying political and economic power structures in the US.

As Margaret Mead, the great democratic campaigner, said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Let’s get busy.

 

Update: Joe Hill also sent another letter in which he implored Haywood, “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”

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For the good of the country

Posted on November 11, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

How did a monster like Trump win?

The short answer is that Hillary was a uniquely horrible candidate, as I detail here. She was also the establishment candidate in an anti-establishment election. The Democratic Party also bears a large part of the blame by sabotaging Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate who offered populist economic policies instead of identity politics, and could have beaten Trump, as polling data bears out.

The longer answer is historical, and may shock and surprise many of you. After all, you didn’t learn what I’m about to detail in school.

Since the early 1930’s powerful Republican elite have committed crimes against our republic, while Democrat elite have largely refused to investigate or hold them responsible. The rationalization for this was that the exposure of these crimes would be divisive, so these crimes were kept secret, for the good of the country.

Essentially, the conservative ruling elite has been protected from the destructive consequences of its predatory dominance by a serial failure to hold them accountable.

More importantly, along the way a false narrative and history has been established.

The election of FDR and the implementation of the New Deal was a shocking development to the ruling elite of America. This loss of power and prestige was so traumatic that many of them contemplated changes to our representative system of governance. Gazing at Europe for inspiration, Mussolini and Hitler, came in for special praise. Now, here were leaders who understood how to mesh government and big business together with minimal interference from pesky workers.

The Republican elite also attempted a coup against their nemesis, FDR.

Like I said before, they don’t teach this in school.

The coup never progressed very far and the plotters weren’t all that clever. The Marine Corps general they tapped to lead their coup–Smedley Butler–was a true patriot, and promptly informed the Roosevelt administration of the nefarious plan. FDR, for the good of the country, kept this plot a secret and went about the business of helping America recover from the Great Depression.

The corporations that had helped foment the coup showed their gratitude by withholding investments in the US, while aiding in the rearmament of Nazi Germany. One of the darkest secrets of the pre-war era, was that US corporations and banks financed German reconstruction under the Nazis, especially their rapidly expanding armaments industries, in exchange for priceless industrial patents. This funding of German industry continued through World War II and involved some of the most powerful and well known US corporations, such as GM, Ford, and IBM. It also involved powerful US banks and investment houses, and influential Republicans, like George W.’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, and the Dulles brothers, Allan and John Foster.

After the war Democrats failed to hold these Republican officials and the banks and corporations accountable for this treason. For the good of the country, of course.

Did Republicans appreciate this gesture?

Hell no.

Emboldened Republicans responded by playing the hardest of hardball. After Truman’s surprise victory over Dewey, bitter Republicans attacked the Truman administration over supposed communists infiltrating government at all levels, with the insinuation that the New Deal was basically a communist front. The House Un-American Activities Committee, with Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon playing key roles, led the way in using the Red Scare to pummel the Truman administration as being weak and overrun with communists. The effect was to seriously weaken and discredit the New Deal reforms and turn the American people against them.

In my opinion, this Cold War hysteria never would have gotten the traction it did if the Democrats had exposed the connection between the Republicans and the Nazis. With passions against the Nazis running high after the war with the revelations of the Holocaust, there would have been scorn and revulsion at the treason of these men and institutions.

Jumping ahead to to 1968, Democratic president LBJ had announced that he would not run again for president, and was working to end the Vietnam war by negotiating with the North and South Vietnamese governments. Richard Nixon, the Republican, was running for president against Democrat Hurbert Humphrey, after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. According to investigative reporter Robert Parry, in his book, America’s Stolen Narrative, there exists strong evidence that Nixon’s campaign secretly sabotaged the peace talks in an October surprise as a way of ensuring Nixon’s victory. LBJ learned of this treason through NSA intercepts but was convinced to keep quiet after Nixon’s victory, for the good of the country.

Again, in 1980, according to  America’s Stolen Narrative, there is strong evidence that Ronald Reagan’s campaign officials carried out their own October surprise by meeting with Iranian officials and sabotaging the negotiations that the  Carter administration was engaged in to return for the hostages seized by the Iranian Guards when the Shah was allowed into the US for medical treatment. Even though Carter and many other Democrats suspected this treason, there never was an investigation. Again, for the good of the country.

In the wake of 9/11, Bush administration officials, led by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, attacked Democrats for being weak on terror and engaging in moral equivalence with a hostile enemy. However, recent history shows these very same Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center were created and sustained by Republican national security officials and deployed as a means of foreign policy to this day. But of course, timid Democrats did not challenge this false narrative after 9/11 because it might distract from the War on Terror and wouldn’t be good for the country.

In 2008, after eight catastrophic years of Bush, Obama was elected on a pledge of “Hope and Change.” Immediately Obama announced that he would look “forward and not backward.” For the good of the country, of course. A lot of good Obama’s magnanimity got him. As soon as Republicans saw they were in the clear, they turned around and repaid him by obstructing everything he tried to accomplish. From the moment Obama entered office, right-wing conservatives embraced the posture of hell-bent opposition. Recall, in Jan. 2009, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh expressed his hope that Obama fails. One month later, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proudly embraced Limbaugh at a conservative conference. The fringe rhetoric of far right activists had quickly become the de facto governing strategy of the Republican leadership, as they adopted a posture of obstructionism.

As you can see from these numerous examples, there is a clear pattern of Republican crimes, followed by Democratic timidity and failure of accountability. The Republicans have learned that they can get away with it, and emboldened have turned around and projected these crimes onto the Democrats. The result has been a triumph of conservatism, where the left spends all of its time fighting off these faux scandals while the right goes on the offensive, cheered on by a media that’s learned where its career advancement lies.

All done, for the good of the country.

I’ve used the phrase, for the good of the country, throughout the essay, and I’m sure many of you understand that I’m being facetious, so let’s unpack it shall we? For the good of the country is a phrase our ruling elite likes to toss about, but it hardly means for the good of the country. I suspect that, for the good of the country, really means, for the good of the deep state. And, the deep state is made up of: the military/industrial complex, Wall Street, the oil and gas industry, and powerful corporations. In my opinion, the rise of the deep state in America traces directly back to the collusion between our conservative elite and the Nazis. The secretive nature, reliance on violence, and belief in a corporate/state fusion are all hallmarks of fascism.

The result of these crimes and lack of accountability has been the creation of a false and misleading narrative and history. Americans don’t know where to place the blame for the shit-circus their life has become. They may not understand the details, but they know that something has gone tragically wrong, and that all the elite institutions, including corporations, the government, and the media have been complicit.

This election was an anti-establishment election with the American people essentially offering up the one finger salute.

Come on down, President Trump.

Update: Matt Taibbi, reprising Hunter S. Thompson, at Rolling Stone, puts the blame where it belongs.

“Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party’s failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

 

 

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Border Guard

Posted on November 7, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Going into one of the craziest elections in American history it’s important to remember how we got to this point.

Hint–both parties have contributed to a slow-motion economic crisis.

The Republican party, as it exists now, is an absolute disaster for working Americans. The problem is that the putative opposition party–the Democrats–does not offer up much resistance to the pro-crony-capitalist policies that the Republicans put forward. In fact, too many Democrats are neoliberals pursuing corporate policies while offering identity politics as a fig leaf.

In an interview with  Jacobin on the ramifications of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Adolph Reed Jr., professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that neoliberal Democrats use identity politics, like race, as a way in which to impose boundaries on what is permissible as a liberal.

“These responses to Sanders’s critique throw into bolder relief just how fundamentally antiracism and other identitarian programs are not only the left wing of neoliberalism but active agencies in its imposition of a notion of the boundaries of the politically thinkable — sort of neoliberalism’s intellectual and cultural border guard.”

Reed, one of the more thoughtful political scientists in US academia, makes the obvious argument that economic issues, of the sort that Bernie campaigned on, benefit all the groups that the Democratic party fobs-off with identity politics.

“All through the campaign I asked how a federal minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour (the current minimum wage is $7.25) is not an issue pertinent to black Americans and Latinos, who are disproportionately likely to be low-wage workers? How decommodified national health care is not a “black issue”? Or free public higher education? Or massively increased public investment? Or renegotiating existing “trade” agreements and blocking the Trans Pacific Partnership, which would further strengthen corporate power against all working people? And so on. No one has argued that black, or other nonwhite, Americans indeed would not benefit disproportionately from implementation of those items of Sanders’s platform.”

Tomorrow we are faced with, once again, a lesser-of-two-evils election. Our urgent goal should be to move past the limited policies offered within our political dichotomy.

Reed says the goal should be to build a political movement that offers true working-class policies.

“I think we should build on the more visionary aspects of the program, e.g., the demand for free public higher education, de-commodified health care, etc and the vital fight to stop the TPP, and yes of course against discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc and also against neoliberal policing and the constantly expanding public/private carceral apparatus, which we have to understand and insist that others also understand is a class issue.”

Whoever wins is going to inherit a shit-show. The neoliberal economic policies both parties have pursued for the last 40 years ensure that we face a divisive future.

Be careful out there.

Update: In the wake of Trump’s surprise win, it appears that the Democrat’s reliance on identity politics was not the elixir they imagined it to be. Yves, at Naked Capitalism has a good run down of why.

“One of the reasons for the ferocity of the howling from the Democratic Party hackocracy in the wake of the unexpected Trump vicory is that they are effectively cornered animals. As political scientist Tom Ferguson explains, the Democrats can’t get the number of voters they need with their traditional coalition of Big Finance money plus identity politics without delivering tangible benefits to workers, which they have abjectly failed to do. But the power of money in the Democratic party makes it well nigh impossible for them to devise the sort of populist policies that would appeal to voters that Trump has successfully peeled off.”

Update II: Lambert has a great rejoinder to identity politics.

“racism/sexism/xenophobia” are forms of politics, and that they are the evil twin of identity politics, and together are the only forms of politics permitted by elites.

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Multipolar Future

Posted on October 31, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

The US has been the sole-superpower for the last 25 years. Those days are coming to an end with the US facing a multipolar future.

The problem with this development is that the neocons in charge of US foreign policy are feeling butt-hurt. Their impotence and anger are manifest. Unfortunately, the neocons hubris and vanity just might kill us all, as they wage a desperate attempt to maintain the American corporate empire through increasingly brutal military means.

Perversely, the reliance on military and covert paramilitary methods are the reasons why the US has squandered the opportunity to be a different kind of empire. The neocons, through their heavy-handed policies of going to the dark side, have ruined America’s unique strength; its soft-power. By and large, the rest of the planet believed in the story of American exceptionalism while they admired the US because it generally wasn’t like other authoritarian empires. But, the neocons, with their extreme belief that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses, have largely destroyed whatever good will that remains with their brutal policies of occupation, torture, regime change, and assassination.

Federico Pieraccini, at Strategic-Culture, examines the ramifications of our multipolar future.

“The failure of the foreign doctrine of the United States was a direct consequence of the arrogance and the utopia of being able to dominate the planet, seeking to extend indefinitely the unipolar moment and forging a worldwide system culturally and economically based on the will of Washington, reinforced by a power and military posture without precedent.

The certainty is that the future will turn fully into a multipolar model, and this obliges Washington to struggle in every way possible to remain relevant. To date, apart from nuclear agreements, every choice has been counterproductive and wrong. Will Washington’s elites ever learn, or will they eventually become irrelevant?”

The end of the American empire is the actuality that dare not be spoken of. Whoever is sworn in as our new President will have to deal with the consequences of this momentous event that might possibly be the deepest and most dangerous crisis of our history.

The challenge facing those of us who yearn for a different America, one that lives up to the potential our founders envisioned, is to bring about a peaceful end to this empire.

Our dilemma is thus–to save America, we need to destroy the empire, or it will destroy us.

 

 

 

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Hypocrisy is thy name

Posted on October 23, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Only our unique American exceptionalism could create hypocrisy so great that it threatens to blot out the sun.

Historians have documented that empires fail when the discrepancy between what elites say and what they do grows too large.

It’s hard to know where to begin, but for me the most blatant hypocrisy is the one that lies at the heart of the so-called “war on terror.” After 15 years of fear mongering about Al Qaeda terrorists, it turns out that the US is using the very same Sunni terrorists as proxies to effect regime change in Syria. For anyone paying attention, this dirty-little-secret has become difficult to miss. It’s been acknowledged here, here, here, here, and here.

Now that Russia has intervened decisively in Syria to aid the government of Bashar Assad against said Al Qaeda terrorists, the corporate media is awash with concern about Russian and Syrian “barrel” bombing, with the victims of these dastardly attacks trotted out to crocodile tears. That the US regularly bombs hospitals, wedding parties, and civilian infrastructure, is magically forgotten. Even more hypocritically, while the US decries Russian and Syrian war crimes, it’s ally Saudi Arabia is busy bombing defenseless Yemeni civilians, using US made cluster bombs delivered by US F-15’s.

However, our foreign policy elite, sensing a Hillary landslide, are pushing for more war in Syria, never mind that an attack on Assad and the Syrian army risks a nuclear conflict with Russia. Veteran investigative reporter Robert Parry says that, “Virtually the entire mainstream U.S. media (and much of the progressive media) are onboard for a U.S. “regime change” operation in Syria and for getting tough with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

There’s plenty more hypocrisy.

On the economy, who are you going to believe, Obama, or your lying eyes? Recently, DNC chairwoman, Donna Brazile, tweeted this boast. “Under President Obama, the economy has experienced a record 70 straight months of private-sector job growth. Over 14 million jobs!”  However, a recent study entitled Problems Unsolved and a Nation Divided, by Harvard University points out that, despite claims of an “Obama Recovery,” in fact, the U.S. economy has continued to deteriorate in the aftermath of the “great recession.”

There’s also political hypocrisy, where the political elite and their corporate media allies have united to decry Trump’s questioning of American political legitimacy. The corporate media solemnly assures us that our American political system is sacrosanct. Never mind the election of 2000, where Republican political operatives staged a riot to prevent a recount in Florida, that would have elected Gore rather than Bush.

In a hilarious turn of events, Russia is trolling the US with an offer to monitor US elections. “In what can only be described as an epic attempt to troll both Obama and Hillary, and an apparent move to embarrass the United States over Trump’s claims of that the upcoming presidential election will be “rigged”, Russia has asked to send monitors to US polling stations for the Nov. 8 vote, according to reports by Russian media.”

Then, there’s the tax hypocrisy. The political and media elite are aghast that Trump hasn’t paid his fair share of taxes. But Trump is hardly the first elite to game the tax system. In fact, right now there is a scheme afoot to trade the financing of much needed American infrastructure for a tax holiday on the profits that US corporations have squirreled away in offshore tax havens.

“Last year, behind the scenes, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., quietly tried to lay the groundwork for a classic Washington, D.C., bipartisan solution — i.e., the kind of deal that both parties’ big donors adore and regular Americans would despise, if they ever heard about it. Under U.S. law, multinational corporations based here theoretically must pay taxes on their profits earned anywhere around the world at a rate of 35 percent. However, they don’t have to pay U.S. taxes on overseas profits until they repatriate the money back to the U.S…The prospective Ryan-Schumer deal doesn’t have many details. But it would change the law so that profits earned by U.S. multinationals overseas, including the $2.4 trillion overseas now, would be taxed whether or not they were brought back to the U.S. — while also radically reducing the tax rate on those overseas profits. This would essentially make the 2004 tax holiday permanent.”

Whoever wins the presidential election in November is going to face a growing crisis of legitimacy because of the ongoing hypocrisy. The American people may have slept through the last 40 years but they are starting to wake up. And, they are pissed off.

If Hillary wins the election, and all signs are pointing that way, she could face a danger greater than the loss of legitimacy. In my opinion, a domestic insurgency in the United States is a real possibility. The Americans that she castigated as “deplorable,” are the ones who, by and large, have served in the military and are heavily armed.

This could get interesting.

Update: Here’s more confirmation of the Al Qaeda connection.

“Buried deep inside Saturday’s New York Times was a grudging acknowledgement that the U.S.-armed “moderate” rebels in Syria are using their U.S. firepower to back an Al Qaeda offensive, reports Robert Parry.”

 

 

 

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Decorum

Posted on October 16, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Let me get this straight. Pussy grabbing is bad, but assassinations, torture, and invading a largely defenseless country are cool?

Image: Michelle Obama, George W. Bush

Watching the 2016 Presidential election has been illuminating.

In my opinion, what bothers our elite, who are united in revulsion against Trump, is that he never learned how to maintain the proper decorum. Unlike Michelle, Barack, and W, Trump didn’t go to Harvard or Yale, institutions that serve as sociopathic finishing schools for America’s elite.

Regarding our sociopathic elite, I’m reminded of an article I read years ago in the New York Times, that I can’t find now, where Madeleine Albright tutors students in the finer arts of dinner behavior. This was after Albright, former Secretary of State under the Clinton administration, had admitted to Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes, that the sanctions the US had imposed on Iraq that had resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth the price.

For such a horrible candidate, the Donald has unintentionally performed a public service by clarifying what our values are.

Misogyny bad, mass murder of far-away brown people, not so much.

No wonder our elite despise him.

Update: Matt Taibbi gives us the Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail angle:

“Trump’s shocking rise and spectacular fall have been a singular disaster for U.S. politics. Built up in the press as the American Hitler, he was unmasked in the end as a pathetic little prankster who ruined himself, his family and half of America’s two-party political system for what was probably a half-assed ego trip all along, adventure tourism for the idiot rich. 

That such a small man would have such an awesome impact on our nation’s history is terrible, but it makes sense if you believe in the essential ridiculousness of the human experience. Trump picked exactly the wrong time to launch his mirror-gazing rampage to nowhere. He ran at a time when Americans on both sides of the aisle were experiencing a deep sense of betrayal by the political class, anger that was finally ready to express itself at the ballot box.”

 

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