As we wrap up the eight-year psychological warfare campaign against the American people known as the Bush Administration, it's time to look forward to the wars of the future, those which will be waged against us under the likely management of the Democratic Party.
But to catch the view ahead, we must take a new look behind:
It's easy to forget, after the many traumas of the past three thousand or so days, just how discontented the country was in the Clinton years.
By the end of Bubba's run, it had become clear to millions of Americans that the "Center-Democratic Third Way" was really just a fancy pronunciation of "corporate rule." We discovered that "Globalization" was the new lingo for "You are unemployed or working a double shift at the IHOP."
And the environment was, as ever, available for despoliation to the highest bidder, despite the presence of the bestselling author of Earth in the Balance in the vice-presidency.
Notwithstanding the distracting figure of Monica Lewinsky on the Oval Office carpet, Americans were starting to smell the coffee, and it wasn't Fair Trade Mochachino. For the Ruling Class, it was high time -once again-to relegitimize the system.
Enter George W. Bush, Super Good Ole' Boy Cowboy Freak Eastern Establishment Republican Man, a self-professed friend to the monied interest and a "stupid" and "incompetent" warmonger.
It was almost as though the Oligarchy was teaching us a perverse civics lesson: "Don't think there's any difference between the Parties, huh? Vote for Ralph Nader, will ya? We'll learn ya! Heeere's Dubya!"
Here's eavesdropping and secret energy deals, here's 9-11 "incompetence" and that invasion where the Pentagon somehow couldn't find the WMD they had sold to the mad dictator just a few short years before. We had George II dead to rights, didn't we?
But I would argue that we grossly "misunderestimated" Mr. Bush, though he warned us not to. You see, he wasn't the one who we should have been "estimating" in the first place. What we must always consider, to the extent we can, is the more or less permanent government, the one that doesn't change every four to eight years, the one comprised of the machine politicos, bankers, intelligence bureaucrats, admirals and generals and CEO's.
That bunch has behaved, within the limits that we the people set on them by our vigilance, just as they have since our country was founded: as badly as they can. And even as we are getting swifter at figuring out the con, they are getting better at conning the swift.
Bush was too obvious a bad guy, people! The mainstream media has sounded suspiciously like a Marxist rag for many years now, with its extraordinary renditions of crony capitalism, evil military contractors, torture and "Where's the WMD?"
Why didn't the Bushies just plant the WMD? It was done all the time in Vietnam, and it would have been easy-- the boys at the Pentagon carry that stuff in their overnight bags.
From the Stolen Election to Katrina, the Administration seemed to go out of its way to play the idiotic villain, and the media forwarded the press releases.
Why? Why so much effort on the Establishment's part to prove that Bush is a Very Bad, Very Stupid Guy? The short answer, in my view, is a campaign on the part of Oligarchy to re-delineate the "difference" between the two parties. If an election is worth stealing, then the two parties must truly be at odds, right?
Along the way, these "exposures" boosted our waning faith in the Fourth Estate, our ever-more-ironically named Free Press. The President may be incompetent and corrupt, but at least we can read all about it!
My friends, they have fooled us again. "Incompetence" is the oldest cover story in the book. Reconsider all the "mismanagement" in Iraq. If you're a Pentagon contractor, the occupation has been managed very well, hasn't it?
Where would the military brass be without their indispensable enemies? Is it too much to imagine that the occupation was designed to cause chaos and civil war, as in divide and conquer? That among the many goals of the Military-Industrial-Complex is to "create more terrorists"?
Which brings us around to Obillary Vs. Hibama. When one or the other or both of them take office, how will they dash our hopes, as they invariably must, given that they both serve the same group that Bush (and Bill Clinton, and Bush I, and Reagen, and Carter, etc.) served before them?
Let me make a prediction. There will be a reduction of the 400% over-the-top-crazy-war mongering rhetoric, by say, 35%, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief.
Then around the time of the first hundred days or the next "terrorist attack", whichever comes first, will come the sad news from President Obillary or VP Hibama: "We're really sorry about not having affordable health care for y'all, and the deplorable state of our public education system, and the fact that we are still not using readily available electric cars. But you see, the previous administration has made such a mess of things--the economy, the environment, Iraq--we have more than enough to do just to keep our heads above the rapids...."
Did anyone catch that little moment in the last debate when Senator Obama promised that, as president, he would send more troops to Afghanistan? Of course both he and Hillary are of the conventional opinion that the war in Iraq has distracted us from our real war, war "A," the War on Terror, (an abstract noun currently taking cover in a cave in Waziristan).
Obama counts among his foreign policy advisers Zbigniew Brezinski, the man who admitted in the pages of Paris Match to creating the Mujahedeen, the forerunners to Osama's Al-Qaeda, six months before the Soviet invasion, in order to provoke the Russians to invade and so "bleed the Bear." Just the man we want guiding the "change" crusade, Barack. Hillary's people are as bad or worse.
And that's the trouble with Obillary vs. Hibama, isn't it? It's the same trouble with Republicrat vs. Demublican, Coke vs. Pepsi, and War "A" vs. War "B"-no matter how they try to dress it up, its really no choice at all.
I think I'm going to vote this year, though. There's a ballot initiative in the works in New York to hold a new 9-11 Commission, one that's not quite so obviously a white-wash. And I look forward to voting for Ralph Nader, just so I can proudly say I did. And after that? In the great tradition of Henry David Thoreau: war-tax resistance. Because what General Alexander Haig said back in the Reagen years still holds true: "Let them march [or vote] all they want, as long as they pay their taxes…" We're starting to catch on again, General.
5 comments:
Wonderful! Welcome to my blog list. Isn't it great how word is getting out and about these days?!
When I voted for Nader eight years ago, I - we - knew it was going to be a long, arduous and risky fight. And so it continues to be.
Ultimately, we're going to have to sit down and talk with the corporatocracy. That means we're going to have to have, and be prepared to use, power. And the source of that power once the voting is all rigged, will be our purchasing power. Who is the cutting edge in figuring out effective ways to make use of that power?
"The French Revolution, one of Europe’s most important political upheavals, was largely the work of Masonic lodges dedicated to the overturning of the monarchy and an end of the established Catholic religion...
The influence on history of mysticism, the occult and secret societies is generally dismissed by Western academics. Mainstream historians choose to ignore this aspect because they believe it has no real significance to world politics. In fact it is only through acknowledging the role and influence of the ‘occult underground’ that important world events can be fully understood and placed in their real historical perspective."
www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/key.html
www.geocities.com/integral_tradition/key.html
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"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem.": Howard Zinn, from 'Failure to Quit'
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"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority" Stanley Milgram, 1965
Milgram was a psychologist who performed a series of experiments that proved conclusively that obedience to authority was so ingrained in the average US citizen they were prepared to cause lethal harm to others when instructed by authority figures to do so.
All those who took part were first asked if they would be capable of killing or inflicting severe pain on their fellow human beings. 100% replied categorically 'no'.
http://tinyurl.com/2vf8j
"Our position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions." : Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in his opening statement to the tribunal
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Crime Against Peace: A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so is a crime: Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocJac14.htm
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"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." : Woodrow Wilson
What, are anon and I the only ones checking in and posting here? Goddamn country is asleep at the switch.
Here is Peter Camejo's response to a so-called Progressive who won't vote for Nader.
http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/04/25/which-side-are-you-on/#comments
Spells it all out fairly precisely, I'd say. Although it all - all these issues - should be in the context of global warming. One of these days, everything, and I mean everything, will be in the context of global warming. I kind of wish Ralph would have gotten there first.
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