Pretending It’s Just More Politics

Cut the drama already! It's just another election.
Right? So, chill. Everything will be back to the way it was in no time.70

Here, in America, we love our politics. We take great pains to say we don't, but we do. These athletic contests we hold periodically allow those of us with an appetite for any channel of respect and superiority to proffer up “the right answer according to me,” along with every manner of dramatic persuasion. It seems that we have an unending ambition to have been the ones with insight or perception remarkable enough to either prognosticate our future dilemmas or offer up spectacular solutions which testify to all who watch of our remarkable savvy or, perhaps, even our startling genetic, intellectual prowess.

We also have an indulgent taste for predicting exaggerated dire adversaries and other threats.

We comfortably perceive our politics as an indulgence directed at “better” or “worse” answers. After all, in the past even our worst decisions have been survivable. So far in our entire national history we’ve sought out every answer by dissecting the more acceptable alternative topics not included in the “burning question of the day.” To date we’ve never paid too great a price for our foolishness or naiveté. We’ve never been successfully invaded, conquered, attacked or damaged -- nationally -- so gravely that we could not endure and recover.

Having never been laid that low, our pretense about politics continually provided the narcotic implication that we dealt with every challenge from a position of strength, that is, strength sufficiently great that we would inevitably emerge to correct our errors. Living in that unlikely fantasy, we encountered no events so troubling that we couldn’t disregard them in favor of debating nuances of our national reality as if they were the substance of everything.

Some of our population saw the contest between the extremely old and the frighteningly new in the last election in just this superficial manner. All the banter seemed quite comfortably moribund, couched in no more than another set of traditionally indulgent details to be chewed as fat by fish wives whose entire universe extended only to the last tents in the market square. We moan and reassure ourselves about our skeptical superiority, romantically akin to desperately swimming to the nearest lifeboat -- or any accessible flotsam -- after a sudden and disastrous capsize, then, once again, devolving into endless arguments of inane ideology before scrambling on board.

The United States is not smoothly dipping through another period of “corrections” for some trivial miscalculation, anticipating a few weeks or months of being denied a few normally available prerogatives. Our descent is suspiciously steeper than that, and deeper. We are apparently dumbfounded at the full scope of the damage now that it is revealed in a more rational light.

We have been, perhaps, mortally injured. We may not survive the damage we’ve suffered. The stakes are that severe.

It seems that not a single tool of our national sustenance remains in tact after the last outrageous subversion. We face the possibility that neither our military, our economy, our Constitution nor our spirit has survived in a form strong enough to hold us together while we frantically rebuild what we have left. The final looting of the treasury might be the bright spot. It suggests that the thieves believe the currency will have value again someday.

Of course there’s still the currency exchange.

Obama might be a solution to this national hemorrhage, or he might be just a hopeful triage or, at least, a soothing first aid placebo able only to comfort us for our final denouement. His election may have harnessed a horse which can pull us through this Bush crisis or maybe offer only a lessor promise, that is, a delay and a respite until its final, inevitable outcome.

A few matters are becoming more clear. Yes, we were stunned at the $700 billion cash affair. Those of us who paid just a little more attention to the news now know that the total is actually approaching $8 trillion and that the credit swaps and other doodad parasites imposed on our economy amount to more than $500 trillion.

By the way, that last figure is more money than there is in the world.

We are led to believe that we dare not simply stop, but that we still need to pay it back. Otherwise, those folks who managed to take it will return and scare us even more.

We are led to believe that it was something ugly that “just happened,” that is, “just happened” like a sudden rain storm or a flood. We are led to believe that those who profited so much cannot really be expected to repay the larceny extracted during their schemes. We are led to believe that the same thing would have happened no matter who was in charge of the country. We are even led to believe that the whole business actually has very little to do with us, that it is a problem inhabited by pain and recovery only for the stratospheric elite.

There is a storm coming.

Remember the endless discussion during the most violent period of the Iraq invasion? "Gosh, is it a civil war or not?" The new version addresses whether or not it is a recession, or, even a depression, as if anyone walking on the earth here could still wonder. We may need a new, even more depressing term to describe what awaits us.

The current job loss figure is around 15,000 per day. The value of trillions of dollars worth of retirement investments is around 40% of what it was a year ago. The individual tax burden of Washington’s most recent largess amounts to around $140,000 for every taxpayer. The ninnies of the far right still explode with fractured indignity at the prospect of talking to the enemies they’ve made for us.

Just another election?

Just another correction?

Imagine holding the 23rd century history book which accounts the story of the world. Perhaps, mid way through there is a chapter describing the period of the democracies, two or three centuries around the second millennium. Place the story of the events of the last eight years toward the end of that chapter.

Now, for the “politics as usual” crowd of cynics, try to ignore it. Convince us that it amounts to no more than a wild, silly exaggeration. Just another election.

So, how are the levees? It's Pearl Harbor Day.

Fill in the holes. Exactly what could this turn into? This is an account of a similar situation as it developed in Argentina (you know, that country in South America where the ruling class were crooks):
http://seekingalpha.com/article/111315-america-s-economic-collapse-how-bad-will-it-get

The "Art" of "Knowing" about Iraq

Can We Penetrate the Nature of the Iraqi Government?
Can We Do It Even Under A Media Blackout?

It’s high time to start with our version of the W.W.II German disclaimers, only we will need to smooth out some ruffled feathers with our national behavior in Iraq rather than declaring a lack of knowledge about “death camps.” Of course, we can only know what we have been told about the invasions and the subsequent occupation. How could we be held responsible for events about which we were never informed?

Frankly, if we place all that we have been told in one column on the right, then add a column on the left noting our inescapable other conclusions about the same topics, we would be facing a “loose brick” in our wall of presumptive innocence. Although the administration, with the help of its trained monkeys on AM radio, has carefully crafted a position for us about the whole affair, a position which provides a wonderful foundation for our “complete innocence,” those among us who can still claim to “know nothing more” is a dwindling population.

Our “innocence” has grown a little frayed, a little “road weary.” We can no longer wear our white wedding dress quite so effortlessly. The nagging alternative to this blissful blind faith grows into a more and more inevitable observation every time we add one of our famous “but’s” to the argument. “Well, they said this and this and this, BUT, what about that and that and that?” The innocent image the administration has offered to us tasted pretty good at first, but the bitter contradictions just seemed to keep on coming after those first few delicious, vengeful bites.

So, we admit it. We can no longer assume that we have ever known what was actually happening in Iraq.

As for self-deprecation, during the formal invasion I proposed loudly that we would never be able to just steal the oil. Such a blatant crime would collect too much international baggage even for someone as implacable as Dick Cheney. Instead, I suggested, American “looters” would nibble away slowly, imperceptibly, at the Iraqi fortune with truly awful oil field service contracts, bad distribution agreements and the like, all benefitting respectable corporations such as Brown and Root and Halliburton.

I was wrong. After spending five continuous years reporting on Iraq, from Iraq, NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, estimates that around 500.000 barrels of Iraqi oil are pilfered every day. At $125 per barrel, that amounts to roughly $62,500,000 worth daily or about $24 billion per year.

Jumping right beyond this unaccounted-for-oil, let’s return to the question of what we know about what’s happening in Iraq. What do we know about our partners in democracy, the people running the Iraqi Government? Again, we have the “official” version of who these folks are. The administration would like to depict them as amateur but enthusiastic “founding fathers,” making possible all the wonderful things that Iraq will become if we just “stay the course.” Veritable copies of Thomas Jefferson or, perhaps, Ben Franklin, honest, hardworking nation builders eminently deserving of our respect and support.

Never mind the five year long argument about reconciling the country, never mind the idea that millions of Iraqi’s are possibly less than pleased with monthly death rates of 1,000, 2,000 or worse, depending on the moment. These same stalwart democrats continue to give their all to this mission of theirs, year after year without any progress, lucky breaks or inspired results.

Don’t be too critical. The model of democracy offered up as an example for them to follow was none other than a United States government reeling from every sort of corruption, lack of oversight and ridiculous ideology. What did we expect?

As for the missing oil, pause for a moment and consider the material reality of stealing half a million barrels of oil every day. Sure, these clever Iraqis have developed some very sophisticated tricks. Under filling and over reporting oil tanker loads in Basra. Undetected diversion lines from the main oil pipelines (undetected?). Outright criminal corruption done in the broad glare of the Iraqi daylight.

Yet, we are led to think that the noble Iraqi government leaders, in their daily struggle in Baghdad to form a new democratic nation, somehow remain aloof from such a dirty business. They learned from their American sponsors that a position in government is akin to a natural resource, a birth into a privileged nobility or a generous trust fund, suddenly discovered.

Now, years later, we have managed to create a class of politicians cast in the exact mold of the Republican Party that has run our own country, full of subterfuge, excuses, convenient confusion and graft, not to mention outrageous hubris. We taught our Mexican neighbors how to hold crooked elections. We taught our Iraqi partners how to perfect corruption.

Thank you, President Bush. Perhaps you and the Secretary of State can retire to a refurbished Chevron oil tanker, the Condalezza Rice, docked at some friendly port in the Persian Gulf once you have finally finished with us.

An H-Bomb Love Sonnet: Part I

How to Quit Worrying and Love the Bomb
Part One: H-Bombs as a Antidote to Incompetence - Cleansing Nuclear Fire? 23

Those of us who experienced the perpetual terror of the Cold War can probably remember thoughts about just how incredibly awful all those h-bombs made the world. Who could imagine that the day might come when we looked fondly upon these mega-death arsenals as our last bastion of national defense?

We face many types of crises. Thanks largely to the immense and cynical greed of those in our government, it seems that every avenue of our culture is challenged, seriously corrupted or in an outright failure state. But, leaving all that aside, let us focus on the rather concrete problems we now face in our national security.

Given the system of our choice of government, we are inescapably compelled to place our trust in the Commander-In-Chief. The velocity of events in the world clearly require that viable decisions be made far more quickly than what would be possible if they required the methodical education of the citizens. Only the most direly Polly Anna would dare believe that no threats exist.

However, the consistent descent in the quality of these leadership decisions has, without any particular influence of ideology or partisanship, led us to a critical lack of trust. You can still dance with the words if you wish, but right now our government has taken both your sons and your treasure (and your son’s treasure, and probably his son’s treasure) into a exquisitely sleazy political gambit, and it has become a horrific disaster. Our government and, especially, its executive branch has lied to us.

Just as we remember the terror of the Cold War, we also remember the shameless, unending lies of the Viet Nam War. The body counts. The indescribable yet inevitably concrete evil of the enemy. The daily “turning points” toward a final, yet continually mysterious success. By the end of this mortal national toothache, twenty years or so later, no one believed the President no matter who he might have been.

Mr. Rove designed the political features of this nightmare. The military requirements suggested by the Generals would mean nothing. The size of our invading army would be determined by political expediency. No one in the nation would be asked to pay for anything. The entire affair would be financed by money borrowed from Chinese savings accounts. (There ceased to be any here, long ago.) The public relations for this train wreck would be managed by scaring the hell out of everyone who might possibly oppose it. Poison gas. Nuclear bombs. Terrorists. When that fell apart, he added a bit of Bush-style Texas religion. The enemy was “evil” or “criminal.” Our military goal became liberation instead of defense.

The generous commentator might describe it as “unfortunate.”

Still, whether we believed all these terrifying innuendoes or not, we citizens were still not too concerned with our national safety here. (“Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”) Without ever actually saying it in so many words, we were all lulled into a comfortable conclusion that, even if we lost in Iraq and suffered all of his manufactured threats as actual fact, we would remain safe and secure. You know. Stop by the grocery on the way home from the office.

No matter how obviously bad everything was going “over there,” life here would continue to be about the same.

So, it must be time to direct our thoughts back to our H-bombs.

There exists the unsettling possibility that an actual threat to our “home” security might arise while we still enjoy the genius of this Commander-In-Chief. Is there, now, anything he could tell us that would, once again, garner our trust in a way sufficient to defend ourselves? We could probably still respond in a self-preservation manner, but only after enough blood had been spilled to inject some credibility back into his rather hollow character.

Even then, as we licked the wounds of our next horrible injury and sat in our homes terrified, someone like Mr. Rove would continue to work at manipulating the scene to a partisan advantage. The media would be managed with even more frenzy. The mushroom clouds and the poison gas would be trotted out as reasons justifying even more cheap grabs for power. Worst of all, some of us would believe it all. “You go to war with the President you have, not the President you need.”

Well, world, count on this. No matter how incompetent our greed crazed President may be, there is someone left (after he fired all those disagreeable Generals) who will still push the button on all those old nukes. Regardless of how much damage this government can inflict on our military, our State Department, our reputation, our economy or our national spirit as it pursues its childish ambitions, this old and constant weapon can still be unleashed.

Yes, we have lost a ground war to some trailer park east of Cairo. Gloat all you wish about that, you enemies of ours, but remember that somewhere within us, we have a continuing impulse to survive the errors we have made in our fear and greed. Listen up, all of you who would attack us. Granted, the cowards in charge would probably have no stomach for it, but still go ahead and cultivate your worst fears. There still exists an American finger for that American button!

Has this Cold War weapon become our last bastion? The only one beyond the debilitating touch of these grotesque leaders? Do we really want to spend our years in this period of imperial decline hiding behind our Minutemen?

It's ugly, but it seems like that is exactly what we asked for. Twice.