Monday, May 14, 2007

It's Imperial Greed and Fear that Fuels a Stupid Economy, Stupid

(Carl Bernstein to Bob Woodward)

BERNSTEIN:

"I finally got through to Sloan--it was all a misunderstanding that we had: he would have told the Grand Jury about Haldeman, he was ready to, only nobody on the Grand Jury asked him the goddamn question."

- from the script of-
All The Presidents Men (1976)
Written by Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and William Goldman.

Imdb


In a May 12, 2007 post, entitled 'Empire, Empire, Pants on Fire' at the Libertarian Website Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau makes good points. Thoreau says in the post,

"The only solution is for We The People to refuse to accept Empire"

Agreed; and that got me thinking, and writing...

The Empire needs soldiers, The Empire needs a Draft.

To get a Draft bill through the Congress they’ll need a galvanizing event, A New Pearl Harbor

Sorry.

That again.


But... How can we extract ourselves from this Imperial Economy, with out committing economic suicide?

This fustian bargain that oppresses our existential us, deserves an autopsy.

So here it is.


To me, the long view political schematic looks like this:

The main theme of America in modern times is, The Great Depression <--> How to avoid another.

When the economy appears secure, then the other great threads appear, war and peace, and justice.

A starting point for the baby boomer narrative could be the heady summer of 1968. The future seemed to offer an end to imperial ambition and a re-birth of free individual expression; through a revolution in thinking. The age of Aquarius was the popular phrase.

But by 1975, under repression by the Nixon Administration and the FBI - and a loss of momentum in the peace movement - much of America begrudgingly retreated to a continuing evolution of the civil rights movement. The baby boomer's and the civil rights activists, like their parents, knew their strength lay in protecting the rights their parents had won in the New Deal, and rights they had just won through L.B.J. and Martin Luther King Jr's. great society vision.

By the 1980’s that morphed (devolved?) into vested self-interest. In Canada civic and National tax revolts were the most popular expression of this “real-personal-politic”. Lead by the neo-cons but attracting support from left and right of center - the process victimized spending on social programs, while guaranteeing voters income tax exemptions on investments.

The game has played out such that the economy is now being propelled by consumers purchasing unregulated, shoddy commodities with little value, financed by cheap credit, derived from mortgaged property. An economy based on the consumption of the new, new, and the garbaging of the old new. Americans are living a modern delusion rather than The American Dream - all the while leaving a nightmirish waist footprint for their children.

This ‘Bull’ economy is the political under pinning of the de-facto push to empire.

Last summer I perceived a mechanism in the commodities market. A powerful combine created a bubbled market in order to manipulate it with leavers; news, money and commodities - thus tying the market to their global corporate exploits.

Some economists believe this bubble accounts for $15.00 of the new world oil price, and is inflating natural resources prices in turn. I'm not saying there isn't a peak oil scenario functioning, I'm saying certain groups are manipulating that fact for strategic reasons.

Baby boomer's retirement funds, help float the market and benefit from the bubble. Ironically, if asked, I expect a large majority of Americans would not support Empire, even if they were promised great dividends...

..but nobody's asking 'the goddamn question'.



mh

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