November 4, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
Since I am 100% against letting the Republicans run things any more, I am happy that Obama is probably going to win this election. It is time the US got beyond our own dark roots which is all about slavery and racism. A harmonious nation is one that has opportunities to all people of all races and all religions. I despise ethnic/religious dictatorships like the ones that litter the entire Middle East. The US nation is a nation, not a religious enclave. This is why I totally oppose Palin. She is a religious nut who wants the Apocalypse. And McCain is a lost soul. Wealth destroyed him.
And there is no one running at the top two parties who understands what is going on here. If Obama does understand, he is forced to play with his own cards so close to his chest, even he can't appear to see them. This is due to our media as well as our business class. The terror of our system is from these forces: they are united in trying to keep the US on track to go down into deindustrialized hell.
Great wealth is being concentrated at the top via the modern system which is all about luring the American people deeper and deeper into debt. Collectively as well as individually, we owe more and more and save less and less. We are encouraged to do this as our entire banking and trade systems are reset so they encourage debt and destroy savings. The virtues which we call 'old fashioned' are being reforged into a new, destructive moral code.
During the previous dozen elections, I have actually heard responsible adults say to me, 'Who cares about the next generation. I want tax cuts.' People who worry about their own grandchildren would vote for tax cuts which would burden their grandchildren's entire lives. When this is pointed out, a number of people would say, 'MY grandchildren won't have to worry!'
There was and still is this pet belief that the grandparents would leave a great boon to the heirs and thus, make up for dumping a mountain of public debts on them. Alas, this belief is collapsing as the grandparents who voted for tax cuts are now piling debts on top of their own homes as they struggle to keep up with inflation.So an entire generation will probably inherit not only vast tax obligations but also will inherit virtually nothing. As I look along the great curve of history, it is not hard to see over the horizon. All we have to do is mentally take wing and fly into the dim future. We can see clearly if we see the past. People who live in the 'here and now' cannot foresee the future since they are often ignorant of the past.
This collective ignorance of the past isn't the fault of the ordinary American voter. It is a fault of all the people at the very top. They are quite aware of the past. But instead of trying to understand it, they use it to justify the present.
When 'The Decline and Fall of Rome' was written by Gibbon, this was done as a warning to the newly-born British Empire. Gibbon got bogged down in all the details of the Byzantine Empire and lost sight of the general sense of decline that afflicts all empires. But he needed to write a plain history for others, first. The historians and radical thinkers of the 19th century explored the fascinating topic of the decline and fall of all empires. Even with this, many thinkers were filled with hubris: they thought their own empires were somehow different!
But none were. Even if an empire was built on the foundation of a democracy, they failed. We know this from history! The Athenian/Spartan imperial complex first killed off democracy and then fell to the sword of Macedonia. Then the new ruler, Alexander the Great, marched off to destroy other, older empires. Empires that were failing internally even though they were at their own military zenith!
For this is the most startling feature of most imperial collapses: they happen when an empire is spending its greatest sums on self-defense. The British empire bled to death when it was its strongest, not weakest. WWI killed the British Empire. It continued to expand but was fatally wounded and it didn't take much a push to collapse it entirely in WWII.
In WWI, the British and French fought the Germans to a stand-still pretty quickly. In WWII, Germany swept in nearly effortlessly. Japan, in the East, rolled right over both French and English colonies with barely a pause. The lessons our 'Greatest Generation' has not learned from all this is obvious: the WWII propaganda is all about how great the West was and how our greatness defeated the Nazis and Japanese.
Not, how very weak the previous imperial rule of Europe had become. And why it was weakened. Our Presidential candidates cannot run on a platform that discusses the loss of US military and diplomatic power. But it is a very necessary conversation for the US people! We can't evade this anymore.
England's industrial base was destroyed after WWI. Today, Britain has virtually no industries at all. They make believe that this is no tragedy. Why, Britain is just this small island complex! BUT SO IS JAPAN. Is Japan deindustrializing itself? Obviously, not! There are now no British auto makers. There are still very big German and Japanese auto makers. No British subject runs any automobile systems. German and Japanese auto manufacturing plants are being built and run all over the planet!
The US native auto industry is collapsing here at home. General Motors and Ford build more than half of their cars overseas. So they continue onwards. But they are deindustrializing the US relentlessly. It is only a matter of time before only foreign owners will be building any cars here. And they will do this only because it keeps political heat off of them. If they just export cars to the US, they get exposed to political calls for tariffs and barriers.
One major feature of all imperial collapses is the problem of taxes and the increasing burden of past spending. All empires basically go bankrupt. And a key component of this is military spending coupled with corruption at the core. To fund the military, it ceases to be a joint effort of the people and becomes a privatized military system which protects only the wealthy and leaves the population as foreign interlopers who must be prevented from interfering with the ruling class.
We see this, again, in Britain: I read in the news this week that the government wants to bring in Gurkas from former colonies in Asia to patrol Britain! These mercenaries are exactly like the ones Romans used to keep their own people at bay. Bringing in foreigners who are of a different ethnic/religious group who will swear fealty ONLY to the ruling elites who pay them: this is a certain sign that the British people are finished as a political power. They are now merely tax sheep to be sheered when necessary.
It is a slow process: first, you let the population spend on bread and circuses. Then, you enslave them with the burden of the debts caused by this largesse.
The United States already recruits our troops in foreign lands. Then, our imperial overlords send these troops to other countries to occupy them and exploit the natives there. This is tremendously expensive so the overlords merrily charge all of these expenses to the bills owed by the public at home. That is, our grandchildren. They will be enslaved by these military and trade bills we are charging to the future!
No one wants to stop this because it is right now, painless. We imagine that if there were another Pearl Harbor, we would just up the output of our factories and....Britain could barely crawl along during WWII and certainly has no industrial base to activate today if they needed it again. And the US is rapidly approaching this same, dire situation. Now, on to the news today:
Continued>>>
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