It's the Empire Stupid

[Truth2Tell]

Want to address the root of our present American condition? Forget about the $700 Billion Wall Street bailout. Forget the collapsing housing market. Forget the failing auto-makers, the rising jobless claims, the derivatives bubble, the swelling food-bank lines and the failing state and local governments. Forget those diversions.

Well, ok, don't forget them - but don't imagine addressing them will get to the heart of anything. These accelerating miseries are symptoms - nothing more.

The problem is a bad case of Empire. We've got it and we can't afford to keep it, either financially or morally. Simply put - we are going broke trying to rule the world and we need to stop it and stop it now. Presently we spend Billions per month on simultaneous wars of aggression. We spend Billions more maintaining 1000s of foreign bases and outposts. We spend Billions more yet on colossal weapons symptoms and munitions. And we top it off with Billions for covert interference in the affairs of other nations.

If the news isn't of bailouts and bread-lines, it's of torture, rendition, gulags, cover-ups, dead civilians, refugees, suffering, spying, lying and mayhem. These are just some of the very predictable results of an Empire based - financially and politically - on war. This is what we - in a very collective sense - have wrought.

Sometimes, as Democrats, it's comforting to imagine that the financial decline or the moral depravity is the exclusive work of the evil Bush regime. But really our present state of affairs is the inevitable result of years of endless war and suicidal militarism. As long as the widely accepted American political paradigm includes the notion that we can and should project our "exceptional" will on our fellow humans, we will continue the present downward spiral. And it will accelerate.

Until we - Americans, Democrats and Obamaniacs all - make a resolution to change the way we do business with humanity - really change the paradigm, close bases, end wars, end interference, reduce the military, the whole shabang - we are doomed to flail about with hapless financial bailouts and ineffective moral outrage over symptoms.

I therefore respectfully ask my President-elect to not only end the big TV wars, but to really wind down the war machine. Change the paradigm. Use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lead Americans down the path of your choosing to take us to a better place.

We don't have much time left. End the Empire before it ends us.

[maxsolomon]

1. but... but... we're DIFFERENT!

america is special - exceptional, even. you see, GOD chose us & gave us this empty, fertile land.

:sarcasm: :puke:

WSB's Thanksgiving Prayer:


Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes, thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

[BeFree]

2. The world won't survive..

...if we don't end our imperial dreams. Unfortunately, globalism is the answer. We become more like the rest of the world as the rest of the world becomes more like us. There is a middle ground where we all shall meet someday, if we live that long.

To get there from here is going to require Americans back off from the growth is everything mindset.
And no one is sure if we can do that. Can you back down? Can you live with less?

The environmental factors require us to back down. Financial matters do too. Are we gonna be wise enough to say enough!?

[knowbody0]

4. the planet fixes herself, one way or another

we need to face this reality. technology shrinks the globe. we are all one.

[Truth2Tell]

14. but neo-liberal globalism is not the answer.

peaceful, just and inclusive globalism may be. :)

[knowbody0]

3. I'm amazed Halliburton is never mentioned

these days. The no bid, outrageous contracts in Iraq etc. Billions.

[Truth2Tell]

5. Halliburton is a symptom.

"We are all Halliburtons now."

[Orsino]

6. It's the feudalism.

We worship money so long that we sanctified the rich, and now let them order us to do just about anything.

[arcadian]

7. Hey! That's benevolent empire to you, Mister.

n/t

[Truth2Tell]

15. Or bloviating Empire? nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. The trouble with empires is that they become dependent on their colonies.

Or, if you prefer, client states.

We rip them off for their natural resources, their labor, and must "protect" them with military force. Thus, we must endlessly pay to, in reality, protect the income and goods they provide us.

When they rebel by producing their own products, sell them to us for less than we can manufacture them, we gnash our teeth and cry foul.

They didn't "steal" our industries and jobs, they built their own and are doing exactly what we did earlier.

It's "our" corporations that moved to China, India, Honduras, Costa Rica, etc, to exploit their labor. Yet, like our predecessors, we blame them for wanting to throw off our yoke.

[Truth2Tell]

9. We the people endlessly pay, yes,

but the elite benefit - the Masters of the Empire.

[jwirr]

10. I read Paul Kennedy's book "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers"

years ago and this has been the basis of my thought ever since. Then along came Chalmers Johnson's book "The Sorrows of Empire" and that capped it. We are overstretched just like every empire before us and we can either pull back or go down. I would say it might even be worse for us because of oil peak and climate change. They are also two big problems that are not going to make things better.

[Truth2Tell]

11. Johnson always nails it.

Here he is a few months ago on the relationship between the military industrial complex and the financial meltdown:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7LEgD7_Jbk

[chrisa]

12. Solution = The "New Dawn"

Slash the CIA budget completely and zap the program all together.

Make all CIA documents public to the American citizens and the world, and then apologize for what we've done in the past. Promise a new era of cooperation.

Denounce military industrial complexes, empires, and imperialism.

Slash the military budget to 30% of what it is now, and move to more state militia type armies.

Remove all US bases around the world. Hand these bases over to the forces in those countries.

Give all members of the CIA at home and abroad a job in the FBI or Law Enforcement, and make a Constitutional Amendment banning any CIA-type organizations from ever existing again.

---

That should free up quite a bit of money. Share the wealth by building schools, libraries, parks, and urban beautification. Do this based on models of FDR's Four Freedoms, and the New Deal. Obama could call it the "New Dawn." These processes would require quite a bit of jobs, and allow for some spending. With this, we could also:

Promote Native American prosperity by helping them get out of poverty, and bring their culture back to America.

Help get the poor in inner cities jobs, and build cities up; so that people will want to go there again.

Create new Nationalized projects to find other sources of fuel than oil.

Promote Education for all families.

Slash tuition prices so that school is afforable to all families.

Give help to single mothers or fathers, and give them incentive to go back to school. Give them subsidies to put their kids in daycare, and give them money to go to school. The end (a greater contributor to the economy) justifies the means (increased education budget).

[Truth2Tell]

13. I agree with those ultimate goals

Of course politically what you describe is a fantasy. If Obama would just begin LEADING us in that general direction we might have a shot at survival. It would likely take many years - maybe a generation - to change the deeply ingrained nationalist American culture enough to accept a "New Dawn," much less a whole New Day. But we need to begin before we end.

[Uncle Joe]

16. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Truth2Tell.

[Truth2Tell]

22. Thanks for the rec Joe! nt

[shadowknows69]

17. I suspect President-elect Obama has already been informed by the MIC

That bad things can happen to people that try to stop the war profit machine. I have very little hope left if our leaders persist in the delusion that Afghanistan is going to turn out any better for us than it did for Russia.

[Truth2Tell]

20. I suspect that if he hadn't given the MIC the right signals

early in his Presidential run - either implicitly or explicitly - he would never have been considered a tier one candidate to begin with. You don't get to *actually* run for President in America if you plan to tip over the boat. But he could always go slightly rogue - especially after he spends some time consolidating his power. JFK did.

[ColbertWatcher]

18. "change the way we do business with humanity"

Agreed. The problem of empire is in the details:

Why don't we have soldiers and mercenaries, but no genuine peacekeepers?

Why is more spent on the secret "defense" budget than on implementing a comprehensive universal health care system?

Why were facts and research considered to have less value than party loyalty

Why is one political party actively working to diminish education and the court system in this country?

Why are public assets used to develop infrastructure systems only to be purchased by private entities when they prove effective?

[Truth2Tell]

21. Ahhh, the mysteries of the universe....

:)

[G_j]

19. so simple, yet taboo,

and absolutely true.

you can count the congress-people who dare challenge the military industrial complex on one hand.

[Mari333]

23. 100% agree n/t

[slipslidingaway]

24. Agree K&R n/t