Will this be the last decade of the economic miracle which was America?
Miracle?
Yes, the United States gained a reputation eagerly offered by the down trodden of the world when its promise was first unfurled. Here was a land where even the most modest of men could work hard, be clever, solicit only a smattering of good fortune from the gods in play and, although previously unthinkable in the old world, prosper.
Now, the Eighteenth Century was hardly the first appearance of the remarkable middle class in the long history of the world's economies. The ancient Greeks admired the vivacity of a trading class of freed men in old Athens. Even before them, we must assume that Babylon was also fairly endowed with the ancient Sumerian equivalent of used car salesmen, tort lawyers and other brave opportunists who managed to court comfort, security and wealth in roughly the usual, albeit somewhat alien, success stories of the day.
However, these previous successes had been exceptional. For every well heeled middle class exception there had been hordes of slaves doomed to toil to their early deaths and even rarer pockets of unimaginable, dynastic wealth for the noble families who were friends of the Pharaoh, Emperor, Sheik or recently victorious invader.
Not so in the United States. Here, the exceptions flourished like flies at a messy picnic. Further, however unlike the previous models, a fortress nobility, ensconced in unassailable inheritances of birth to death money was crowded out of the economies of the masses. Instead, innovation, invention and efficiency were the constant origins of such a wide spread "new wealth."
There is an educational note to be attached to those old Crassus and Hapsburgs, unfathomably rich elitists who were not always so rich. For example, the Crown of the Austrian Hungarian Empire began as a family of highway robbers, slowly amassing wealth at first by outright crimes, then later as "toll collectors" on the main arteries of Medieval commerce.
However, only decades later, the Hapsburg wealth had grown so great as to legitimize these old Dark Ages crooks into a royal family, all aglitter and equipped with a formidable army. Once the crucial pivot point -- a sort of critical mass of wealth -- had been crossed, all became valid, royal, pure, and convincingly derived from the Divine Rights of Kings.
Ooops. It seems there are those among us who dream of this plutocratic obscenity repeating itself once again even in this distant, future century.
What is their socially recidivist plan to accomplish this retreat to medieval economic brutality?
It turns out to be discouragingly similar to the mechanism employed so successfully by the Hapsburgs. These economic reactionaries believe that they can follow the pattern of their brutally checkered forebears with a scheme to accomplish the same goals.
The outline is simple enough. Do business for a time, not with the goal of necessarily being competitive and successful, but rather with the sole intention of accumulating enough money to finally obscure the free market discipline by artfully purchasing sufficient influence in the government to establish an unassailable monopoly.
Exagerrating again?
Hardly. The examples are compelling and undeniable. We have seen the story unfold in some highly visible encounters already, and there are undoubtedly many more still in the carefully crafted and sustained shadows.
Example One - The Health Care Nobility
We have observed the health insurance monoliths and their wholly owned Senators gut what might have otherwise been a fairly rational health care reform proposal. This would not have been possible if the Pharma and HMO benefactors had not previously fortified themselves with vast discretionary monies to lubricate the process.
Now, having established the initial base of the new health care economic autocracy where there will be no unpleasant alternatives, they quickly employed the fraudulent media pundits, their special Senators and their immense corporate image handlers to deflect the attention of the hill billies and bigots with incessantly repeated, supercilious psuedo-ideology.
The health insurance giants are already well established plutocrats. Now they are "waiting in the wings" for an inauguration to the corporate equivalent of the Divine Right. MeanMesa has already posted a number of essays concerning health care, links to a few of them appear below. There are more in our archives...
Example Two - The Royal Petroleum Families
Now, considering that America is packed full of almost more cars than people, one might think that producing petroleum products would be essentially a "no brainer" when it comes to generating a robust profit -- something akin to "selling whores in a lumber camp." Even the most modest effort at corporate practices should, theoretically, find a vast market filled with willing buyers.
Teddy Roosevelt "downsized" a few petroleum fascists along with an equally rancid collection of steel makers and rail road tycoons, but this species seems to have "1,000 lives," always re-emerging as a hybrid Phoenix a few decades later. Worse, these new little birds are born hungry, squealing and squawking for a nice meal of Federal subsidies ($16 Billion a year to Exxon), rapacious speculation ($4 per gallon gasoline) and, of course, ever deepening, constant de-regulation (the current Gulf disaster).
When the Texas dynasties of "good old boys" finally accumulated enough dough to start shopping for Senators the government was finally "renovated" to a state where the public interest was no more than a cynical, road weary campaign slogan to be trotted out at election time.
Example Three - Gangsters and Banksters, All Too Big To Fail
As the autocrat and his corporatist minions in the Senate patiently dismantled the regulations imposed at the end of the Republican Great Depression in the 1930's, the brokerage houses opened their bottomless "McDuck Money Bins" to unleash their own latest wave of "pseudo-ideological piracy." No matter how fervently the population of American voters wanted regulation, their "wholly owned" GOP Senators began -- at once -- to feverishly pull the teeth from the new born legislation which might prevent future bubbles and future calamities.
The "free market" disciplines were left in the dust bin in favor of new investments in election campaigns, all designed to protect their burgeoning royal, Wall Street dynasties. By the way, disabuse yourselves of any lingering hope that this plan didn't work. These pimply little monkeys can now claim ownership of 60% of the total value of the nation, not to mention the $60 Trillion dollars worth of casino derivatives and other financial "doo-dads" they've embedded into a staggering world economy.
The monetary "fortress" of the financial nobility is defended by a continuing threat to wreck the entire economy should any demands of their fatwahs and fiats be resisted.
The Final Insult
We Will Destroy Any Politician Who Won't Play Along
... resistance is futile ...
Perhaps the most egregious outrage of the autocracy was the insertion of a majority gang of rabid neo-con ideologues to our Supreme Court. The sketchily publicized decision of a few weeks ago empowers absolutely any of these well funded, reactionary plutocrats to contribute without limit to political campaigns which will destroy any candidate who might oppose their scheme.
For more reading, sample the following archived MeanMesa posts on the subject.
The message is simple enough. If you, MeanMesa visitor intend to live here,
RESIST!
Photo courtesy of http://britishreactionstotherevolution.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tale_of_two_cities-16.jpg
Photo courtesy of http://britishreactionstotherevolution.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tale_of_two_cities-16.jpg
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