According to Harold Bloom, “What We Are Seeing Is…the Fall of America”
Harold Bloom, Yale literature professor and cultural critic, is one of America’s most prominent and provocative intellectuals. Unabashedly, he has always spoken up for what he calls “the fight for truth and beauty” making a lot of foes in the process, but also some friends. As one of the first critical voices against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, Bloom landed in the hot seat with the satire “MacBush” in 2004. Lately, he sparked worldwide outrage by calling Harry Potter “garbage”. Speaking at his home in New Haven where he is recovering from a recent health scare, a pale and weak Bloom seems to have symbolically embodied what he calls the “poor state of the nation”.
“I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthya was to Rome.
The horror of what is taking place in Iraq exceeds my worst fears five or six years ago (after Bush came to power). I am horrified at the disastrous mistake involved. Imagine the complete madness in trying to occupy a large Arab country in the middle of the Arab world, a culture we know precious little about, and who speaks a language only a handful of our specialists can speak, with armed forces which we have limited control of and with a large army of private soldiers… The whole thing is a scandal…a series of lies. I don’t understand the motivation for the war, but suspect the real reason for the war, which one would suspect of a country which is a third oligarchy, a third plutocracy and a third theocracy, is that it simply is a profitable machine.”
Sitting in the middle of his living room and in the brown leather armchair from which he has given most of his interviews in recent years, Bloom sighs deeply and a sad grimace spreads over his expressive face. It soon switches to anger, as he expands on the consequences of the war and, ultimately, of Bush at power: a growing national debt and a weakened dollar in tandem with a spiraling war budget, as well as America’s lost credibility on the international stage due to the Iraq war and the situation in Afghanistan. Not to mention Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s rendition program.
“We have caused a monstrous mess. We don’t even count killed Iraqis. God knows how many Iraqi women, children and men have been killed by our accidental shootings, which we are such experts at, or by other Iraqis. No, ‘Benito Bush’ (Bloom’s pet name for President George Bush) deserves, if we had a functioning civil law in the world, to be condemned for crimes against humanity. Bush is ultimately responsible for this war,” Bloom says pointing angrily with his index finger in the air as his dark eyes burn below a pair of thick dark eyebrows and a crown of unruly white hair.
“It is bleeding our nation, and I can’t see a solution in the near future. We are obviously so deeply involved concerning blood, money and the situation on the ground that it will be very hard for us to pull out.”
But Bloom has no illusions that there is any real pressure from the Democrats to pull out of Iraq at the moment.
“The truth is that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hoyer and the other Democrats who lead the Congress Party in the Senate, are far too cunning. They will talk about wanting to end the war and so on, but the truth is that they know they can’t do anything about it and it suits them as they can blame the Republicans for the war in the upcoming elections. But the ugly truth is that we can’t stop the war now. We are responsible for Iraq now. We have crushed it so now we own it. I have never seen this country (America) in such a bad state. But how big a percentage who actually cares, I don’t know.”
If the war in Iraq is the most palpable example of the decline of America under Bush’s reign, Bloom cites the U.S. media as another casualty.
“‘Media-ocrity’ is what I call it. It is awful what kind of media we have today. Nobody dared to stand up and criticize Bush when he unlawfully went to war on Iraq. It is depressing, and shows what direction this country has taken since he came to power - a power which did not rightfully belong to him. The media is not playing its role. The Bushites are bullies and for a long time nobody dared criticize them and just swallowed their propaganda and lies. People have become scared. In this kind of climate, nobody is interested in the critical voice. You ask about the role of the intellectual in America today and I have to say: What role? What intellectuals? There is no room for them in the simplified and dumbed down world of today’s media. We used to play a role, and there are still a few left, but we are a dying breed. Nobody seems to be interested in nuance anymore.”
This is where the real danger lies, he says.
“Democracy, whether in Sweden or the United States, depends on the voter’s capacity to think. If you have read the best of what has been thought and said, then your cognition and understanding is on a much higher level than if you have read Harry Potter or Stephen King. So what this decline into half-literature and mediocre media really means is de facto a self-destruction of democracy.”
“Political correctness is the death for the mind, for literature. I am terribly outspoken and don’t try to hide it. I care passionately and I say so. I want quality when it comes to everything, and insist on it. I believe in the aesthetics, the beauty of good literature and I believe in wisdom. People get angry because of that and think it is an attack on them.”
Harold Bloom has long been a central, yet lone, figure in the American cultural debate.
In the 1950s, he battled T. S. Eliot, whose New Criticism then reigned in literature classrooms. In the 1970s, he sparred with the Deconstructionists, a group of mostly European intellectuals who argued language was essentially devoid of meaning. In the 1990s’ Culture Wars, Bloom, who advocated an aesthetic approach to literature against feminist, Marxist, new historicist, postmodernist, and other new methods of academic literary criticism, found himself facing off against feminist and multiculturalist critics after publishing “The Western Canon,” which many found too biased towards white male writers. A great admirer of William Shakespeare and a defender of the 19th century Romantic poets, Bloom has written some 30 books, notably the influential “The Anxiety of Influence” and “The Book of J,” which makes the unorthodox claim that parts of the Bible were written by a woman.
“I don’t think most people understand me, but that is life. I am often portrayed as an anti-feminist. Of course, I am not against women’s equal rights in society. It would be madness and unintelligent not to support that. What I am against is applying a political agenda to literature. It kills it.”
Contemplating his own legacy and work, Bloom describes himself an anarchist who refuses to adhere to any school or paradigm; “an agnostic Jew” who takes great pride in always having encouraged his students to go their own way — manifested by the fact that “none of his former students’ work resembles the other.”
“I might be remembered as what I myself disparagingly call a ‘period piece,’ a rather large period piece. One tries to justify one’s existence, one wants to believe one can do something good with a life of teaching, writing and reading.”
Once at the center of the American intellectual debate, Bloom today considers himself a marginalized guerilla fighter - an old dinosaur with the self-invented nickname “Bloom Brontosaurus”.
“(Big sigh) We lost the war. What can I say? Nobody is interested in quality any more.”
But supporters and fans still write Bloom, like the teacher who describes the discussion she has had with her students. Bloom, now sitting at the computer in the salon, reads her email aloud:
“Some of them are quite upset with your harsh words regarding the Harry Potter books, as you can imagine. As a teacher I love the article and agree wholeheartedly with you, and so now we wonder if you are still out there writing more controversial articles.”
Looking up bemused, Bloom responds, “How funny!” and asks his wife, Jeanne, to type his reply:
‘As I am getting very old, I must avoid any quarrels. With best regards, Harold Bloom.’
Bloom sighs again, puts his hand on his forehead while slowly shaking it, and says with a resigned smile: “But you are right, Jeanne. What is one known for? To have attacked Harry Potter and Stephen King!”
Eva Sohlman is a Swedish journalist and writer with credentials in print, radio and TV. She is presently Editor and Producer of The World in Focus (”Världen i Fokus”), a Swedish TV program which reports world news and in-depth studio interviews. The show follows Eva’s international career reporting for Reuters and publications in The Economist, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Copyright © 2008 The Women’s International Perspective
- I don’t understand the motivation for the war, but suspect the real reason for the war, which one would suspect of a country which is a third oligarchy, a third plutocracy and a third theocracy, is that it simply is a profitable machine. -
“Profitable” is a bit generous. War allows a massive dose of cash to be directed to well-connected interests - but the cash isn’t earned cash. More like credit card cash advances.
If it were actually profitable, empires wouldn’t keep collapsing.
But I guess, if someone gets the cash, but doesn’t have to pay off the card, it would feel every bit as good as profit to them - a strong motivator, indeed.
Nice article!
Such a hagiographical account of Yale should be balanced by the following:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9932/
Not much meat on the bones of this one. Bloom doesn’t say anything that most CD posters don’t say on a daily or even hourly basis.
His only comment that might spark “controversy” is his damning of Harry Potter & Steven King — who I don’t think are bad at all. They should only be our worst problems! Far stronger cultural evidence of the “Fall of America” is the existence of filth like FOX News; the “Glenn Beck” show on CNN; or the fact that a neo-liberal warmonger like Thomas Friedman has such undeserved prominence.
His framing and perception of our current “state of affairs” is on the mark and carries such tremendous weight in terms of his perceptive understanding and insight into the human story and the current chapter of folly which is consuming us as a nation — a people — a planet.
He’s right about the dumbing down of America and the decline in literature standards. It is pretty shocking that Shakespeare and 19th century writers are being replaced by modern ones in universities.
When I took an english lit course a few years ago we read Mary Wolstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women and she says something like: “some people say women shouldnt engage in male activities like hunting–on this I totally agree.”
In my class some students were offended by this without realizing that she was speaking as someone who was against hunting, not someone who said only men should do it. Many of the 19th century writers advocated vegetarianism(including her own daughter, in Frankenstein).
Oh poor Harold, it’s so much worse than even you think. College students are in a self-induced coma. Professors live in terror of each other and their fat-assed administrators with tenure (the mechanism for guaranteeing intellectual freedom)in the balance. More than half of all colleges use temporary guest workers like me to maximize profits and, with their record millions, tell students to pay more in these “hard times.” Critical journals lick the behinds of a few well-established tyrants. And few can believe this, but do you know why you haven’t seen a single college/university go on strike as they did in the 1960s against our last international crime called Vietnam? Because these bookwormy hackademic fools cannot conceive of themselves as “workers.” Only “workers” go on strike. They aim to be “professionals” living somehow beyond or without politics—EVEN WHEN IT MEANS that their students will be cheated of real faculty and their peers will be used and exploited beyond bankruptcy. And what do the media say? We have a “teacher shortage”!
What We Are Seeing Is…the Fall of America
True, It’s a done deal. I’m just trying to figure the fall out. I say the elite will scapegoat minorities and imigrants.
Let’s never forget who got us into this mess. At the end we should strip them of all their wealth, take their citizenship away and put them in a rusty old boats with instructions to never darken our doorways again.
That is very compassionate compared to what they have been doing to other people.
Please remember that Harold Bloom is an old-school, reactionary, paleo-conservative - in the manner of Paul Craig Roberts, William F. Buckley, or Pat Buchanan. He is not against the US imperialist endeavor, just some of the excesses in how it is prosecuted - recall his book “the Closing of the American Mind”.
These old-scool conservatives, with their hatred of anything that smacked of “socialism”, seem to be blind that they set the very trends in moton that have led to the capitalism-caused “decline” that they lament, so I have little sympathy for them.
And, that these paleos, and what passes for the US “left”, are finding so much common ground, is a pretty scary situation.
PJD (12:23 pm ) writes, “Please remember that Harold Bloom is an old-school, reactionary, paleo-conservative - in the manner of Paul Craig Roberts, William F. Buckley, or Pat Buchanan. He is not against the US imperialist endeavor, just some of the excesses in how it is prosecuted - recall his book “the Closing of the American Mind”.
– Actually, that book was written by ALLAN Bloom, not Harold!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Bloom
People bring up Nazi Germany, Mussilini etc… Wrong comparisons.
The US is running much down the same path as the Roman Empire, and our culture/society is much more in line with Rome.
from 395AD-476AD (476 being the official dissolution of Rome), the emperors were nothing more than figureheads - the actual rulers were the behind the scenes folks who also controlled the military, controlled the currency, and manipulated the government. The Emperors rather simply functioned as the propoganda, rhetorical and distraction wing of the Oligarchy - keeping their populations in line, and constantly insecure.
By this period, the Roman Military was at it’s smallest, and weakest strength and simply could not militarily control it’s vast territory. The American military now is at it’s smallest troop levels ever in the past 70 years or so, plus they’re having such a difficult time recruiting, and war weariness within it’s own ranks to boot. Look at American troop deployments in over 36 foreign countries, not to mention the vast Naval Fleet in the Persian Gulf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_military_bases_in_the_world_2007.PNG
and now we’re going to have 100,000+ in Iraq (regardless of who you vote for - even Obama said 50,000 will remain by 2017, wishful thinking). Plus Africom starts up this September 2008.
The attitude of the period was also the same. The arrogant belief that the empire could never fall, or was too strong to fall. Kind of an illusion of invulnerability, so the necessary steps to prevent the fall were never taken. And most of the empire didn’t want to admit it was irrelevant anymore, but when the invaders came, they couldn’t deny it any longer. That’s what will happen here as well - despite an economic collapse, complete loss of influence and respect worldwide and a scuttled foreign military, Americans are too dense and arrogant to admit the loss of America’s standing as preacher to the world. We live on an Island, a regimented bubble of our own “reality” completely oblivious to the rest of the world.
Much like then, the fall will heavily impact only the lower and middle classes. The Villa’s and wealthy, elites etc of Rome didn’t take a hit at all. It kind of reminds me of Joe Kennedy saying “If it weren’t for the papers, I never would have known about the depression.” That’s the way it works, you and I suffer, not the folds actually responsible for causing the fall. And that’s what caused it. The fact that Rome simply could not expand, it could not plunder, invade, and occupy, could not enslave other countries (by debt)… and it’s economy eventually collapsed on itself. America’s economy is now dependent and based on constant excessive expansion, plunder without limits - which is to say, it’s a war based economy (if black ops, and coups don’t work). “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” — Al Bartlett. But if there is an actual limit, IE, you’re military can no longer expand your economy by invading and plundering more Countries, it falls back on to itself. It’s not like there’s a lack of profitable and equitable nations out there, there are tons (hence Africom) - at this point in time we simply lack the operationable ability to invade and occupy any of them for plunder and exploitment.
Anyhow, Take a look at Iran, they lack the capability of invading and occupying Iran. We’re spread to thin - which is why they have to damn well make sure the fleecing and plundering of Iraq works out because they know full well they can’t plunder anywhere else for quite some time.
So get used to being in Iraq.
johnston296,
Thanks for the link. What a horrific story. It is sad how Yale compromises student safety for protecting its “country club” tenured professors. Sadly, that not only happens at Yale, but at many other colleges and universities.
There has been talk that the US is in a decline phase for quite a while now. It always seems to pick up when there is a right wing Administration in the White House.
I think the truth is we are at a crossroads. It could go either way at this point. We have to prevent the ownership class from pushing a short term, wealth maximizing agenda.
At some point, someone has to stand up and say, “Look, those of you that were planning to monetize your massive fossil fuel reserves as a basis for your fortune are S.O.L.”
At some point, the party is going to be over. At that point, we will have the opportunity to forge a much more positive relationship with the civilized world and with the Earth itself.
dustinchicago said:
“I like the idea of incorporating ‘we the people’, I’ve often thought of incorporating my family through a family trust and collective ownership of our homes. But is that really incorporation? Any lawyers in the room?”
It seems you and I are the only ones that like this idea here, but I’m not a lawyer so I can’t give a legal opinion. I can only hope someone like Ralph Nader will take up the cause. Although incorporating We the People may be an idea whose time has come, it seems our well founded suspicions and hatred of anything corporate is the greatest obstacle to this novel solution that would turn corporations into friends and public and environmental benefactors.
Imagine corporations working for peace instead of war, for clean alternative energy instead of nukes, oil and coal, paying We the People fair dividends for the use of our airwaves, public lands, ocean resources, minerals, public buildings, roads, etc., preventing pollution, species extinctions, resource depletion and overpopulation, competing to give us the best free education and universal healthcare, investing our dividends in green corporations and on and on. They would have to do these things in order to do business with We the People Inc.
Banks and corporations have the power. The quick and easy way to take the power back to We the People is to incorporate into the largest, richest and most powerful corporation for whose (public) resources all others would have to compete. But this can only work if We the People obtain equal shares of non-transferable stock in order to achieve a one person, one vote corporation where each of us receives dividends equally.
The results would be a lasting permanent direct democracy that unlike our present representative system of legal bribery, is practically immune to oligarchy bribes and coercion. That like the Swiss direct democratic system, would give us the highest per capita income, no wars, no drug war and no drug problem, no immigration problem, no pollution, the best education and healthcare, a healthy environment and no boom and bust economy.
Incorporating We the People would give us a direct democracy with all the advantages of competition and cooperation that until now have been mutually exclusive.
I would like to see that gutless chimp spend 1 hour of his miserable life
in the presence of Mr. Bloom. I will bring the cheese.
HANG JANE!
Don’t be fooled with our current downturn. I don’t agree with changing the Middle East by use of force, but it is changing. For all the doom and gloom we now have, Bush continues to be confident in his long-term legacy building because he knows that Iraq has trillions of dollars in oil that can be used to build a modern state. The main question now is did Bush over extend the military and ruin our good image around the world in a lost cause or will this misadventure work (as long as you don’t care about the death and destruction caused by the war) by creating an Iraqi state that is moderate and gives us access to oil so we can stop being so dependent on the Saudi regime?
Empires fall because of over extension of their resources and military. However, some empires are strengthened when their over extension is not fatal and new lands, resources, and power are achieved.
I strongly disagree with the use of military force to change the world according to our values, but I realize that our military force is strong enough to change the world. Iraq still has a chance to develop into a wealthy state connected to America and that is why Bush continues to pursue policies that harm lots of people in the short term in order to achieve his long term goal.
Mastershake: Thanks for your post. Very relavant.
IMHO we are all screwed. The inertia of America’s downfall is too strong to stop at this point. Though I like Ezeflyer’s idea of incorporating “we the people”, nothing we do within the existing system will succeed. The system itself is rotten to the core and will crash under its own weight.
We cannot rebuild the “Peoples’ House” until the existing house is destroyed down to its foundation. And maybe even the foundation needs to be replaced. In light of peak oil and climate change, maybe the foundation of 200 years ago is not adequate. Maybe we need a Global Peoples’ House. No more nation building. No more profit at the expense of the planet or the real people anywhere on Earth.
A new day will dawn when all the people of the world will build that new house. And I know that it will not be completed in my lifetime. The best I can hope for is that we can pass on the right knowledge and lessons learned to make the next foundation stronger and better than the one we are standing on now. And to fight for the tools the next generations will need to build it.
Peace Coup: Your optimism is stunning. And totally out of sync with reality……
Peace coup,
So you are saying that the death of thousands has been worth it? Abu Grahib and Guantanamo too? I guess you feel that way when it is not your family the ones dying for Bush’s good intentions for the future.
peace coup (1:18) - In other words, you disagree with Bush, but you also agree with him. You disapprove of using military force to change the world, but you also think it’s OK in the long run.
You see the possibility that “this misadventure (can) work … by creating an Iraqi state that is moderate and gives us access to oil.” In other words, the “misadventure”, in your view, might very well turn out to be an excellent idea, as long as we get the oil.
To summarize your position, Bush’s actions in Iraq are deplorable, but also very good. Right?
Bloom’s quote:
“Imagine the complete madness in trying to occupy a large Arab country in the middle of the Arab world, a culture we know precious little about, and who speaks a language only a handful of our specialists can speak, with armed forces which we have limited control of and with a large army of private soldiers… The whole thing is a scandal…a series of lies. I don’t understand the motivation for the war, but suspect the real reason for the war, which one would suspect of a country which is a third oligarchy, a third plutocracy and a third theocracy, is that it simply is a profitable machine.”
“It is simply a profitable machine”… what an understatement. Not a word about the control of oil, the speculation and threats to oil security — pushing up the costs to $100 a barrel. Whether or not the U.S. wins this war, Bush and his oil cronies make the big bucks, just look at the billion dollar record profits for Mobil/Exxon last year. How can Bloom simply call it a “profitable machine? If we go into Iran, it’s likely the price of oil will go up to $200 a barrel. All the speculation over the availability of supply can certainly manipulate the oil prices. It’s not just “profitable” it’s a “CRIMINAL UNDERTAKING.” That’s more “appropriate,” Mr. Bloom.
peace coup is not saying Bushism was either good or right. Our Iraq war is already in progress and our past deeds are done. Whether anything “works” or turns out even half well (for anybody) from here depends on who we now elect to lead. You will soon only have opportunity to criticize Bush in retrospect, and ought to be spending your efforts now to get someone better on 1/20/09.
RichM January 17th, 2008 1:44 pm
I agree with what Peace Coup said. I think his/her point was that, despite all the death, destruction, havoc, and disease etc. Iraq has been tremendously successful for the Oligarchy, Defense Contractors, Oil Companies etc… Basically, they don’t give a shit about American security, well being, and certainly don’t care about the Iraqi people. It’s been a phenominal success for Bush and the elites.
I agree with RICH M’s comments. I also agree with the statement ‘we own it’ in reference to Iraq.
That is exactly the words used by Colin Powell, when he told George W. Bush, numerous times, “If you attack Iraq, you will OWN it”, when Powell was attempting to stop Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, from invading Iraq. Powell didn’t go far enough with his protests however. Colin Powell should have held press conferences and spoken out loudly to us and to our Congress, before he finally read that false NIE report to congress. Was he threatened? Hmmmmmm.
Another man who could have__ and SHOULD have __ put the brakes on Bush’s Iraq disaster, is George Tennant, the former director of the CIA. Bush FORCED him to alter that NIE report and insure that his lies were not revealed to us and to the public. Was Tennant threatened also? Tennant should have held press conferences and told EVERYONE in the world, what Bush and Cheny ordered him to do, a treasonous and incredible crime if there ever was one.
Had Tennant done that, it would have not only stopped Congress from authorizing military use against Iraq, it would have insured Bush and Cheney would have been impeached and there would never have been the invasion of Iraq.
Then we have “Bob Woodward”, who interviewed Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and general Tommy Franks, BEFORE the invasion and the presidential election. All of Woodward’s conversations with those men were taped, and Woodward had a book published using those taped interviews, PRIOR to the last presidential election. If a majority of Americans had read that book, read those taped conversations, “IF” our press and media had been honest, and made that book a top issue, Bush would never, not EVER, have been re-elected. It is unlikely he would have taken three states.
None of those most appropriate and vital things happened. The if word truly is the biggest word we use, “IF”. Nope, it didn’t happen, Powell and Tennant chickened out and the press made a joke of Woodwards book. The media’s political pundants and White House press, stated Woodwards book was just political spin, written by a “liberal” to help the Democrats in the coming election.
‘We the people’ for the most part, didn’t listen to Woodward, he being ‘liberal’ inclined or not. Bush had his way, and had his “God” backed and dammed, illegal and unjust war. And ‘we the people’ are screwed, __ the sad truth is, ___ we screwed ourselves and we do own Iraq whether we want it or not.
Iraq is a gift from President Bush and his administration, an albatross that is not tied around our necks, it’s hanging from our asses and dragging us under. We ARE going to fall and do so much more quickly than Rome did. After all,__ this is the jet age.
PEACE COUP, you’re either a nut case or one of the White House speech writers.
I would not click onto Nut Case’s blue code name there. Any that do are giving him/her your E-mail address.
Peace Coup,
I think you do not understand the dynamics of our fossil fuel economy.
The goal in Iraq is to control the oil, not to have access to it. If memory serves, not a drop of Iraq’s oil goes to meet our ongoing needs.
The key is control. Those who have control over fossil fuels have their hands on the levers of the global economy because the economy is so intimately linked with the value of fossil fuels.
This is not my thinking, but comes straight from Noam Chomsky, who has argued it quite decisively in my opinion.
Now, let’s turn back to Iraq. Why did we invade Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003? The answer, related to the concept above, is that Saddam Hussein became unpredictable. He stopped following the rules of oil supply set forth by OPEC. Those rules specify that, in spite of the fact that Iraq has 4x the reserves of Iran, that Iraq is pegged a production quota exactly equal to Iraq.
This OPEC policy maybe was enacted to keep a balance of power in the region, maybe to keep Iraqis from growing too powerful and starting some nasty business with Iran. i don’t know.
At any rate, Saddam had decided to ramp up production, and the fear was that OPEC would lose control and the markets would become too volatile. Obviously, if Iraq dumped oil on the market for its own benefit, a lot of people would be upset if the price tanked. Not the public in America, of course, who are irrelevant to any of this except as obedient consumers of oil and of stickers that read “Support the Troops.”
This is all explained in the work of Greg Palast.
Now, following this path, what was the initial reason for attacking Iraq? The neo-cons were upset at OPEC’s stranglehold on market dynamics. The idea of the neo-cons was for the US and its allies to replace OPEC by gaining control over Iraqi oil. Bust OPEC. Maybe this is a sensible reaction to 9/11 given it was almost completely a Saudi operation.
Now, enter Big Oil from Houston. Big oil, the old guard who actually know a bit how the world works and aren’t a bunch of rubes with Phd’s and draft-dodgers moved in. These guys blew up the Coalition Provisional Authority, fired Paul Bremer, and took the reins.
The goal of big oil was to restore the old balance where Iraq obeyed its OPEC quota. This EXACTLY means KEEPING THE OIL IN THE GROUND.
So, in fact, it is the exact opposite of what you think in your comments above.
Check out Noam Chomsky and Greg Palast. I have yet to read anything that disproves the theories or undermines the arguments and evidence they present. Try for yourself, and run a bullcrap sniffer on it.
Some would argue that the “fall of America(ns)” is deliberate and was planned a long time ago:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0116.html
peace coup January 17th, 2008 1:18 pm:
“The main question now is did Bush over extend the military and ruin our good image around the world in a lost cause or will this misadventure work (as long as you don’t care about the death and destruction caused by the war) by creating an Iraqi state that is moderate and gives us access to oil so we can stop being so dependent on the Saudi regime?”
Reputedly Chinese proverb: “May you live in interesting times”
Peace coup, you ask an interesting question. Given that US foreign policy is that of empire (irrespective of empire’s incompatibility with democracy), given that death and destruction are irrelevant (despite our first hand experience to the contrary), given that a “moderate” (whatever that is) Iraqi state can be created, the US can transfer its energy dependence from Saudi Arabia to a new Iraq.
Firstly I would say that empire is incompatible with democracy. Empire requires an enduring state of war. War without end strangles civil discourse. In so far as Americans wish their land to be democratic, empire is a non-starter.
Death and destruction are negative human experiences, experiences that most sane people seek to avoid where possible. To bring death and destruction about for material gain is the act of someone who has appreciation for neither life nor creation.
I hear the term “moderate” used in American discourse. As far as I can determine, it is a codeword for someone or something that does what the US government wants. Iraq was apparently “moderate” when Hussein was gassing Iranian soldiers defending their country from invasion. Iraq is thus “immoderate” once it began resistance to empire (see above) and will therefore be “moderate” again when American oil companies are well established to shift the profit centre away from the embarrassingly undemocratic Saudis of 9/11 fame.
So, to sum up, yes the US army could change the world. The US military can kill (have killed) millions of people. A small group of Americans, former generals among them, profit. Nobody I know has. Then the survivors regroup and counterattack anyway they can against any American they can find. You are seeing this cycle of force/counterforce in action now in many places in the world. How this could be considered change for the better, I don’t know.
Peace Coup and RichM, yes I think it is true that Bush has paid no heed to any criticism but has kept his eye on the mechanical rabbit (oil and a politically moderate Iraq)but it seems to me it was doomed to fail from the get-go. Here you have a man and his advisers plus 130,000 kids trained to kill enter a Country and dealing with a culture which they have no understanding-they hate us. The conservatives in Iraq have played Bush like a fiddle, taking our tax dollars and giving us a smile and nebulous promises. In the end the Iraqis will cut the U.S. lose when we quit plugging more money into the cause. What our leaders will be dealing with is the question “do we keep trying to change things in Iraq with our blood and money or do we leave and lose the whole investment?” Iraq will eventually be aligned with Iran no matter what the U.S. decides, faster if we pull out now, slower if we keep pumping money into their pockets but eventually we will lose them politically as well as the oil.
Thats the way it looks from the cheap seats
Mirf59 is absolutely right. Controlling the market price of oil means eliminating any mavericks out there. Oil companies want oil to stay in the ground just enough so as to raise the price to an acceptable level in their eyes. In fact a war with Iran would be VERY PROFITABLE for American oil companies simply because the cost of oil would skyrocket despite no increase in the cost of production. Iran and Venezuela (also in Bush’s ‘bad books’) are the two leading oil maverick nations today and therefore the main target of corporate sycophant neo-cons.
Lord Fly
In a place beneath light, just out of sight,
a man lies in wait.
The man craves authority.
He believes it will make him real.
The HammerMakers find him useful.
They believe he will make them rich.
In time, the man rises to power.
He is head of the HammerMaker party.
He styles himself “Hammer-in-Chief”.
He is very proud.
Flexing his power, he announces a great threat:
There are flies in the barns!
He tells the people that flies are evil-doers.
Hammer-in-Chief declares War on Flies.
He vows to wipe them out and make the people safe.
He sends thousands of people into the barns to kill the flies.
He arms the people with hammers.
Proudly, they march to war.
The HammerMakers sell many hammers.
Hammer-in-Chief is very proud.
The people swing hammers at the flies.
Mostly, they miss.
Mostly, they hit the barn.
Sometimes they hit each other.
Years pass.
Many people are dead or wounded.
The barns are a shambles.
And full of flies.
The flies are happy.
The HammerMakers are happy.
Hammer-in-Chief is very proud.
The people are bewildered.
Hammer-in-Chief announces a new plan.
Send in more and bigger hammers.
The HammerMakers become richer.
Hammer-in-Chief is very proud.
More years go by.
More barns are wrecked.
More people die.
The people suffer.
They are covered with flies.
A stranger appears.
The people turn sad eyes to her.
She explains:
“Flies are not the problem.
They are a consequence.
Your real problem is manure.
It’s where the flies breed.
Your barns are full of it.
Put down your hammers.
Find a shovel.
Clean your barns.”
The people try this.
It works.
* * * * *
The people go to see the Hammer-in-Chief.
They take a shovel with them.
* * * * *
In a place beneath light, just out of sight,
the flies lie in wait.
Fondly, they remember the Hammer-in-Chief.
They name him lord.
He is very proud.
And what you are seeing is the sound of being flushed into the abyss of history.
s/b HEARING.
Multitasking leads to errors and foolishness.
In 2008 I am going to stop doing it.
I haven’t read past PJD’s comment confusing Harold Bloom with Allan Bloom. Big gaffe. Harold isn’t a “paleo-conservative” and most critics of academics like Bloom don’t know anything about their years of writing and teaching. Bloom doesn’t have a political axe to grind. Calling Bush “Benito” only places the bastard in his proper historical context.
We need more voices like Bloom’s, and less half-literate condescension from the many PJD’s everywhere. Also, he’s right about Harry Potter and Stephen King, but those are just offhand comments. His writing has been a commitment to real literature, not the blockbuster fluff that most Americans settle for.
jlocke123 January 17th, 2008 2:35 pm
Check that moderate.
Americans certainly have the highest hopes for the Iraqi people, but certainly dont’ give a shit about the deplorable disasterous conditions there, nor the 150,000 - 1 million Iraqi’s slaughtered, nor the 4 million or so refugees etc.
That’s the thing with moderate and conservative Americans… THey don’t really care about the War, carnage, or death unless they see it affecting them. The illusion they’ve built up is that they’re not affected by it, even though they actually are. Their failure to see how the war affects them is why we’re still in Iraq, and why we will be there for decades to come.
Potter was an endless chain of brutality against a hapless protagonist. I don’t need that crap in fiction — there’s plenty of it in the real world.
Harold Bloom’s premise is correct. But ivy league intellectuals are losing relevance today, along with higher education in general. There’s more free flow of knowledge, more dedicated and bright activists, sharp minds, etc. outside of academia these days than inside.
King George I’s S&L fleecing was apparently just a test case for the fleecing of the banking industry as a whole. Great job!
mirf59 and alexnosal, you are dead on. The price of oil has tripled since the invasion of Iraq - mission accomplished.
In spite of the Orwellian legislation like HR1955 Chomsky recently said that America has become more free and informed than in the 50’s. The comments and the article don’t really specify what will bring on the fall of America. Will the fall be precipitated by lack of demand for consumer products made elsewhere yet profiting some Americans in other ways or by a willingness of countries to cooperate thus reducing demand for US weapons?
Does wealth just disappear? Perhaps the problem is too much wealth or money that does not know what to do with itself…. at the top of the monied hierarchy a truly tangled corporate, interstate web of bets to improve their various bottom lines many of which may be self-defeating in the long run. For instance what if instead of dumping subsidized big agriculture grain on poor countries we helped them achieve small scale self sufficiency, could they not become a healthy market for fairly traded products?
Or perhaps doom predictions are just a lapse in our stone age brains!
Stone Age Brains of Empire
From the stone age to the broken empire
From the cave to the gated nest
From the fertile valley to the Bagdad bust
The still stone age brains have reinvented hell
and called it their moral right
the everlasting fire of might
The media shills pumping bellows of fear
with infectious slogans of patriot pride
for state sponsored cruelty has nothing to hide
as their stone age brains were firing neurons inside
We may have had a dream but it died
We have become what we tried to hide
We have become the empire kingdom
The one we rebelled against..the same old might
with a strange new strangle hold on right
This guy saw it coming a long time ago:
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out,and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he walked on earth.
–Robinson Jeffers
“Shine, Perishing Republic”
EMPIRE PIE. What is going to bring us down to a third world, or even worse world status, from our once status as a powerful and leading nation, is the coming depression.
The depression will arrive in the near future, because we have wasted our resources and money on the unjust and disasterous war and occupation in Iraq. We’re friggin broke, that’s a fact. Certainly our government will still have our military, only we won’t be able to pay the troops. We won’t be able to maintain the fleets of bombers, or our naval fleets. Here’s a screamer, about half of our military equipment spare parts, are now manufactured in China.
We’ll still have atomic weapons, we will still be a threat to the rest of the world in that regard for awhile, but we won’t be able to stop 12 million armed Mexicans and South Americans from pouring across our southern border. That threat was posted by a Mexican on the thread yesterday, the one about cluster bombs. He was very serious, callng us ‘Gringo sheepees’, and stating when the signal comes, they will begin their revolution here in America with the a;ssistance of black Muslems. The signal will be the depression. I believe it is a very likely scenerio, we’d be practically helpless to stop it once our own rioting begins in ernest.
We won’t be able to stop the looting and burning of our cities when the depression begins, and armed gangs of people are roaming the country and fighting for food, medicines and fuel. It will be Katrina magnified thousands of times. A Katrina in every large city and metro area of America. Just imagine the anarchy and total loss of law and order and here comes Santa Anna’s revenge to re-claim the Alamo. ___ Don’t beleive it? We better face reality and believe if we don’t impeach Bush and Cheney right away quick, it can happen.
Just pointing out why the Bush crowd seems so ruthless in achieiving their goal. They think the death and destruction is worth it. I don’t.
New hot industry——laser guillotines.
Well PEACE COUP, from the several posters who diagreed with you here, if that’s all you meant, your comments sure didn’t come across that way. You sounded like Cheney talking to Rush Limb-bow. Maybe you could re-write it?
It is not just a “Fall”, it’s nose dive.
mirf59
I agree with your points about the oil.
We seek control more than just access.
To the Bush Administration, that control is worth millions of lives if necessary. That is why they try to mislead the country or hope we remain distracted from what is really going on.
My point earlier is that the US military has the ability to illegally sieze the prize. Controlling that prize will alter the course of history (in America’s favor) for the next century. That is what the Bush Administration is doing.
They should be impeached and tried as war criminals for their violent strategies in direct opposition to international law.
Peace coup,
Yeah. I agree. We have to be ready to renounce this business of killing foreigners for the stability of our financial markets. That’s what it boils down to.
But, there are some indications that this could lead to a collapse of the dollar. Maybe it means $5 or even $7 per gallon at the pump. Maybe it means another depression.
One theory I’ve heard is that petrodollars offer artificial stability for the US dollar, and that the military-industrial complex is a band-aid substitute for the vanished manufacturing base of the economy. Viewed through that lens, Bush et al are doing the hard tough job no one wants to talk about, and delaying the time we all have to pay the piper.
But, we’re not having an honest conversation. The honest conversation would be citizens among themselves, asking each other — are we willing to risk some of our short term financial stability to keep these innocent foreigners from being slaughtered?
I fear the answer is “no.” Many Americans don’t give a lick about brown people. Many do, but are not willing to look at this situation honestly. Certainly, the guys that own the oil companies and the TV stations want to make sure they have a chance to cash in on reserves that are worth trillions, and the value of poor Americans is zero — foreign people don’t even enter into the calculus at all.
Ultimately, we have to stop punishing politicians and political parties if the price of gas is too high. This plays right into the thinking that leads to these wars. Those with political aspirations can always tell themselves, rightly, “If I allow the price to go up, or the economy to become too volatile, my career is over and my Party will go down the drain.” It’s the economy stupid. Like a mantra during every election.
That’s where each citizen needs to take a long look in the mirror.
This article got me thinking about Empires.
Empires have risen and fallen throughout history.
The main question is “are we seeing the fall of America?”
I’m not so sure.
If Hitler’s army had not been defeated by the Allies in World War Two, then his state would have solidified its control over most of Europe. Catherine the Great used her charm to gain access to trade routes and resources when most people thought she was a weak and scandal ridden leader. What if King Phillip or some of the French Kings had not wasted so much money on fighting foreign wars?
The point is that Empires use all sorts of tactics to expand their power. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not.
Just because we have not had complete success in Iraq does not mean we are seeing the fall of the American Empire. Bush and his supporters are willing to sacrifice people and treasure in order to control the oil. Since he controls the United States military, he has the ability to continue a long-term illegal occupation of Iraq and their resources.
We need to oppose all leaders who use illegal and immoral means to achieve their goals.
Okay
mirf59,
Good observation about politicians doing whatever they need to do to keep oil prices low (and them in office) instead of doing what is in the best interest of our selves, nation, species, environment, etc…
I saw a report a couple of years ago showing the President’s approval rating being on the same trend line as the price of oil.
This is why we need to continue having discussions like this one so people are more informed as we all make our democratic decisions.
Okay ~Peace Corps~, we just disagree that we will fall. It is not just the iraq issue that is going to do us in, that is just the final straw. There several major reasons, the money we now owe China, our loss of manufacturing jobs, down from 34% of the work force to 12%. Every manufacturing job creates five additional jobs. Another is the housing crisis, another is the sudden high cost of everything and no fair increase in wages, outsourcing of million of jobs and the lack of money in the lower 95% of the population. The coming depression will destroy us. It isn’t 1929, it won’t be the same as the last one. Far from it.
“but suspect the real reason for the war, which one would suspect of a country which is a third oligarchy, a third plutocracy and a third theocracy, is that it simply is a profitable machine.”
The real reason for the war was OIL. Iraq has the world’s second largest reserves of light sweet crude oil, after Saudi Arabia, and Saddam was excluding the US and British oil companies from the oil leases while instead cutting lease agreements with the French, Russians and Chinese, and was also threatening to demand payment in Euros. So the Bush Administration went to war to secure control over Iraqi oil to benefit of US and British oil interests and ensure the dollar’s role as the world’s international exchange currency. Since the Administration knew that the US public would not buy a war for oil or dollary primacy, the war was instead packaged and sold as part of the “War on Terror”.
We know the country is tanking. So what are we going to do about it?
This is a question for KEM PATRICK, peace coup or whoever has an answer.
We (collectively) seem to be saying that it is immoral to kill to keep oil prices low. We seem to agree that the profits from said oil are unevenly distributed. We may be witnessing some ultimate decline in the US economy.
What evidence is there that there is (however small) some economic benefit for the majority of Americans (even in the short term) derived from the Iraq conflict and oil takeover by US companies. Is there one? Is it from lower oil prices? Is it from battle tank production jobs?
I would have thought that the massive borrowing required to finance the war coupled with the diversion of domestic government spending would have more than cancelled out whatever positive standard of living bump could have come from Iraq.
Amen, Harold ……… God it feels awful to know that whomever gets the Democratic nomination now, and Republicans let an honest election take place, America is toast.
Perhaps the question best considered now is whether it’s best for us to go quickly, or drag it out?
Hey my friends: I know this is not very important, and even irrelevant, but i have noticed that the roads, and sidewalks in the good old USA are begining to look like a third world country. Most sidewalks have cracks, the local governments don’t fix them anymore like before. Why? because they steal the money? When empires are falling, corruption is rampamt
“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
“Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
“Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!”
– Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
USA has 2 options: Socialism or Barbarism
Laugh ‘em to death. They have no defense against pure scorn, but even the critics stop short of it. (Maureen Dowd is an exception.)
We need a bunch of H.L. Menckens. (The late Molly Ivins: another exception.) Can only women do it? Even on the Diane Rehm Show
the most critical commentators rigorously pull their punches, day after day.
Read “War is a Racket” by General Butler.
The US will drop in prominence, not off of the face of the earth.
Germany and Japan did pretty well after disaster fell on them in 1945.
England (British) and Italy (Rome)are comfy many years after their empires fell too.
So what if the US economy takes a hit. We had an intellectual and technological monopoly on the world (US superiority) for a while and boo hoo, it is gone.
I’m not losing any sleep over it.
Bloom nails it! We now have the power to choose among idiots and crooks! I simply cannot contain my excitement. Isn’t the good old machinery of “dumbed down” medocrity simply grand?
Gail January 17th, 2008 2:35 pm
Some would argue that the “fall of America(ns)” is deliberate and was planned a long time ago:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0116.html
I am reposting Gail’s comment. I read this article and it gave me a whole new way to look at our current situation. It’s a little like looking at the whole forest instead of just one tree at a time.
Please read this article and come back here to discuss it.
Thanks
There is no longer any viable or remotely powerful political alternative to the radical reactionaries of the Republican party. The Democrats gave that up a long time ago. H. Clinton - Obama - a couple of thoroughgoing phonies and political dog trainers who will maintain the Empire at any cost. The United States is now a $200 used car driven by George D.U.I. Bush, careening wildly down a dead end highway at 110 miles per hour, with no brakes and a bunch of stoned and drunken yahoos crammed into the back seat, boasting about all the bitches they’ve fucked and the booze they’ve chugged. Is . . . is that a cliff ahead of us? Oh, shit! HIT THE BRAKES!
Know this: even though the world is absurd and (due to the way human beings treat each other) apparently devoid of any meaning, there is such a thing as a reckoning. And we’re about to have ours.
So, umm, Screwing the country over is bad, but screwing your students is ok.
I think that if you are to raise your moral compass, it’d better be clean.
Bring the troops home, why so they can shoot at us?
That’s what I am afraid will happen.
When we are forced to bring troops back to the U.S. because once we are spread so thin that it really weakens us, we’ll be bringing’em home alright. To squelch and growing resistance driven to desperation by poverty.
And what will the rest of the world do while we are oppressing ourselves.
Who will help us? That’s why we need to think about where we are going to get our food from. Especially if you cant afford things from the store. And many of us wont. I almost cant now.
If you are going to discuss why the U.S. started their “war on terror” and then invaded Iraq, then you should at least discern the real “why” behind those actions or you’ll never be in the real conversation such as it is engendered in the current geopolitical sphere. The control of oil regions was the primary concern and goal, but it had nothing to do with profit. The money and the extra control over the lives of populations was but a subsidiary to the primary goal, that primary goal being that a supply of fuel was to be available in the future for the corporate governments’ war machines. And the reason which spurred such war actions now, in the twenty-first century, was eloquently thrust into the forefront of discourse by those who the corporate governments really fear; i.e. the recent flyover of Stephenville, Texas, within the past week.
Mordechai Shiblikov January 17th, 2008 7:07 pm
“Know this: even though the world is absurd and (due to the way human beings treat each other) apparently devoid of any meaning, there is such a thing as a reckoning. And we’re about to have ours.”
Yes, Mordechai, our “day of reckoning” is getting closer every “banking” day.
Lord Fly:
Thou hast a manner of cutting to the chase…
“Flies are not the problem.
They are a consequence.
Your real problem is manure.
It’s where the flies breed.
Your barns are full of it.
Put down your hammers.
Find a shovel.
Clean your barns.”
Kudos!
Alas… for this overdue stable cleansing, there is not yet a Hercules in evidence.
However…
When the rotting corpse of Boobus Amerikanus swarms with voracious maggots,
it’s putrescenct stench a loathesome ubiquity…
odious even to the jaded nostrils of Joe Six-pack…
And survivors, denizens now in a once-complacent land, grow tired of eating roots…
their self-indulgence and willful ignorance conquered by gnawing hunger and harsh reality.
When the zoo (which saw them artfully transformed from men to docile, dependent beasts)
becomes mockingly and confiningly apparent…
Then shall their witless obeisance to Hammer-in-Chief and his pig-minions be transformed
into righteous indignation, loathing anger and o’erweening self-recrimination…
Then shall Hammer-in-Chief, along with Hammer-Maker and his statist lackeys
experience the wrath of the awakened Saxon…
The manure shall then be composted for the croplands…
The deeds of the flies exposed to the light…
And the parasites, finding no hosts for their sustenance,
…will be no more.
But not yet, Lord Fly… not yet.
jmacneil: What flyover? More info please.
Mordechai Shiblikov: I love it! I can see it now. Well written. Thanks for the laugh.
MeYouWeUs: Better our military soldiers than Blackwater. At least our military has to follow a few simple rules. And I don’t think they are going to be too keen on blowing up their neighbors and friends. Blackwater is a whole different problem.
This was reported on several of the MSM’s broadcast stations, so it can be assumed there must be undeniable credibility of the witnesses or else the story would have been discredited. The witnesses that they interviewed on CNN stated that the craft was approximately one mile long and half a mile wide, but, as all things in the sky appear smaller than they actually are due to the distance/perception ratio against an open background, it must be assumed that the craft was actually much larger. That perception phenomenon is seen everyday by us when we look at the appearence of our own aircraft in the sky.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/14/ufo.sightings.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch
Damn, Al Qaida is getting tricky — and Kucinich was right after all. Well, if we can’t subjugate it, it must be an enemy. Shoot it down! Or so they say.
A UFO supposedly crashed in Aurora Texas (refer to the “Aurora Encounter”) in 1897. This one was evidently sent out about a century later to locate its lost sistership.
Unless I see some aliens, I’ll have to attribute it to bad beer and eating too many hot chilli peppers or something.
The problem with the Bush Administration is that it has been so bad, so often, in so many ways, for so long, it has destroyed our ability to be appalled. What would have once utterly horrified us, now seems commonplace, even expected. What would have once had us out in the streets mad enough to do something about it, now seems impossible to confront because so few seem up to the battle, not to mention the fact there are simply too many evils and insanities to fight at every level. It feels almost like trying to keep the tide from rolling in. Worse, too many people are embarrassed about their early complicity out of fear in the aftermath of 9/11. It is all so depressing it paralyzes our ability to respond to this hideous disease infecting the capitol and the halls of power.
Skeptimist…
Just noticed my faux pas… ’scuse me! Kudos, anyhow.
I am not entirely sure how we would get enough people to do this, but it seems to me that if we really wanted to make the Bush Admin. sweat, we ought to start considering secession from the country.
Yale and Harvard have not produced any capable
leaders. The Clintons and Bushees are a by-product of the produce. For some reason, loyalty to the country has dissapeared of the map. FDR was a president for the common good of the country, whey can’t we find men like that anymore? Has dedication and loyalty been thrown out with the conservative agenda for money and greed? Of course it has. When Daddy Bush invented “The New World Order” and Nafta,
Bill Clinton jumped for it, and he went from being a tennant in subsidized housing to becoming a multi-millionaire. Bring back the Guillotine..
JLOCKE123, you asked me what profit motive, however small, did our government hope to gain by invading Iraq?
I believe the head hogs thought that if they controlled the oil in Iraq, they would prevent Saddam from selling his oil to China, Russia and whomever paid for the oil in euros. They also falsely believed, it would be cake-walk, that the Iraqis would love us for killing off Saddam and would embrace Democracy.
Colin Powell advised Bush that he was full of shit and if he invaded Iraq he would own it and have more trouble than a pregnant pig in a slaughter house. Powell was correct. Any gains Bush or any other idiots in Wahington or CEOs of big business thought we would gain, certainly faied to emerge. There was no monetary gain, or any other type gains.
Shit, we ruined a country, poisoned it forever with depleted uranim dust, killed over a million people so far and ran another four million plus out of their homes and country. We destroyed their infastructures and insured they and every other nations citizens both hate and fear us. In the process of managing to accomplish those swell things, we broke our bank and ruined our army. The entire Iraq issue was a full blown disaster from day one.
Now if we’d done it like the Roman Empire operated, go in there with a million man army and murder every single person, man, woman and child who couldn’t do slave labor in the oil fields, declare Iraq was a territory of the United States and then steal their oil, gold and any other booty and ship it here, we would have made a nice profit.
Personally I don’t approve of that type of behavior, or of the type we presently operate under with the Republicans and Bush. I don’t know if that is the answer you were looking for from me, but that’s my answer. Bush and his gang are murdering criminals and so far they’re getting away with it, primarily because of two people, Pelosi and Conyers. Secondly, because of “We The People’” not seeing this coming years ago, being informed and taking the time to vote. Pogo was absolutely correct, and he said his famous piece in 1949. “We have met the emeny__ and it is us”.
Hey, Claudius, how would secession work? One state at a time? I think maybe we should stay focused on impeachment. Dickhead first.
I agree with lawlessone. This shit has been coming so fast and furious from so many directions I’m getting whiplash just trying to keep my gaze on all the bouncing balls. I decided last August that I had to focus on just one to three balls or I would lose my mind. For me, impeachment hearings are first and foremost. And the whole FISA fix thing is the next one in line. The third ball is the one I play with that makes the most sense today. And of course, while juggling those three balls, I have to keep up on the news and what’s happening. My days are pretty full right now.
I only juggle two balls Rebel, and only play with them a few times a week.
That first idiot Bush didn’t invent the “new world order”, he merely informed the world that the corporate governments believed it was then a fait accompli. It was Ronnie Raygun who first spoke publicly of it when he addressed the UN general assembly about the “star wars” program and dreamed allowed of wishing Aliens would confront the Earth so that everyone would start working together as a global society. That speaks volumes of the kind of worthless trash that is running the corporate governments, when they acknowledge that the only way that they will consider working together is so that they can make war.
Rebel Farmer,
We would have to convince local politicians that it is worth doing. I doubt state and federal politicians would do it. I am all for impeachment, but given the fact that our two-party system has enabled corporations to help themselves to our treasury and fleece the public, while using Shrub and Dick as front men, I have my doubts that it will happen. Believe me, I would love to see those two morons behind bars, but since our politicians are engaged in this fiscal orgy with corporations and really do not give a fig about any of us, perhaps we ought to have discussions and develop a plan for secession.
After we fall, perhaps we can finally become a decent nation, one that first and foremost minds its own business and attends to its own problems (of which, as we know, it has plenty to keep it busy 24/7), instead of telling everyone else how to behave, and, if they don’t, bullying them into submitting to its will.
Here is why the USA went to war: It is a video speech by Dr. Michael Parenti, in which he explains that US Imperialism didn’t fail in Irak and in the middle east. The whole juggernaut war machine of plunder and exploitation against the people of this world by US Imperialism is not failing, indeed, it is a success for the upper right wing class of USA, it is a false notion that Bush and the upper class of USA are failing, are collapsing and were a mess in Irak. They did pretty good, neocons know how to do their job:
Here are the videos by Dr. Michael Parenti:
Lies, War and empire- Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZTrY3TQpzw
Lies, War and Empire - Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaTPDFsDdIk
Joseph Paquete: FDR was a capitalist, even though a “welfare capitalist”, he was a capitalist. Remember that both Neoliberal (neocon) capitalism and welfare capitalism benefit exclusively and specifically the upper classes, not everybody, we must move on into Socialism of the XXI Century
Yes, you can smell the frogs cooking.
Hey you all i have a question: If a new revolutionary social government takes over in USA like the Bolivarian Revolution, like a new JFK, or even a moderate, centrist such as Kucinich. What would we do with Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Larry King, Bill O’ Rilley and others? Would we forgive them? or would we lock them up in a prison?
JMACNEIL I saw a UFO once. Hundreds of us did at an isolated SAC B-52 base. It too was huge, about a half mile in length and it hovered over the area of the flight line at a very low altitude for about five to seven minutes. It happened durng the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was broad daylight, no clouds in the air and over 500 men, commmanders, high ranking officers, pilots and flight crews, mechanics and air policemen. About 200 air police arrived in trucks and crew cab pickups. It never made any news and was never officially reported to my knowledge. It was there, a dull metallic gray, no visible openings, no lights and no noise. It was a huge cigar shaped UFO, and when it departed, it zipped off towards th east at an incredible speed and blinked out of sight in about three or four seconds.
Hardly anyone ever talked about it either to my knowledge. We just didn’t, and that’s weird. It was as if it never happened, __ but it did. Uhhhh Paul, we weren’t drinkng any beer or eating hot chili peppers either. If you haven’t seen one yourself, skeptism is perfectly understandable and justified. I’d have to see one to believe they come here too. __ I did see one, they’re real.
“What would we do with Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Larry King…?”
Send them to the hospital for hemherroid surgery.
It sure is funny how quickly the CIA and their ilk will (pretend to) embrace even socialism when the topic that is most prevalent among the hierarchies is mentioned. It wouldn’t do to let the masses in on the real conversation topics among governments and militaries the world over. I guess that must be because then the general populations would find out just how much fear permeates all of the evil governments. It must be terrible for them who have been evil for so long to finally be up against a foe who considers them to be absolutely impotent and who will not desist until those evil scum are defunct and remain as nothing more than a postscript, and bitter example, for history.
http://www.marxist.com/election-2008-us-working-class.htm
Election 2008 & the U.S. Working Class
By the Editorial Board US Socialist Appeal
Monday, 14 January 2008
The campaign to elect the next President of the United States is in full swing. The Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses have begun, accompanied by a media frenzy intended to make it seem as though there truly are significant differences between the candidates, and to distract working people from the pressing problems we face. As we go to press, the race to nominate the next presidential candidates of big business is still wide open. But the real question is, who will represent the working class majority of American society?
With most Americans fed up with Bush’s overtly anti-worker policies, the endless wars, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession, it would seem that whoever gets the Democratic nomination has the best chance of winning the presidency in November. But for millions of people, this is not so much because they really see the Democrats as offering something fundamentally different, but simply because they have no alternative. In a political system dominated by two corporate parties, the beneficiary of discontent with the ruling party is often “the other party.”
Barack Obama won a surprise upset in the Iowa caucuses, defeating long-time front runner Hillary Clinton. Exit polls showed that the state’s voters saw him as a relative outsider to Washington and a “candidate of change,” while Clinton was perceived as being part of the status quo. In New Hampshire, on the other hand, Clinton was the winner, with Obama close behind in second place. John Edwards came in third in both states, but as the primaries move South he may be able to make some gains with his populist and “worker friendly” rhetoric.
For those who had sincere illusions that someone proposing even mild reforms like Dennis Kucinich could make a dent in the Democratic Party apparatus, his zero percent result in Iowa should provide food for thought. And in a symptom of growing polarization in society and discontent among the middle class, Republican Ron Paul, whose libertarian brand of populism, protectionism and anti-war rhetoric have won him a certain base of support, received 10 percent of the Republican vote in Iowa.
Whether voters look to either the Republicans or the Democrats in hopes finding a solution to their problems, many of the fundamental concerns are the same. Exit polls taken during the New Hampshire primaries show that 79 percent of Republican and 98 percent of Democratic voters rated the economy as the most important issue. The war in Iraq came in second for voters of both parties, and for Democrats, health care was close behind.
But what do any of these candidates actually represent? Other than a few sound bites carefully calculated to win over voters on polling day, can they meaningfully address the issues that really concern us? If the Democrat’s record since winning the 2006 mid-term elections on a wave of anti-war sentiment is any indication, it sure doesn’t look that way.
Among Republicans in New Hampshire, immigration was voters’ third most important concern. The Republicans have again raised the specter of “illegal immigration” this election cycle in order to divert attention from the real problems of rising unemployment and declining quality of life by scapegoating immigrant workers and their families. This is a classic “divide and conquer” strategy that needs to be energetically combated by the labor movement. But where are the Democrats on this? Do they uncategorically reject these attacks on our fellow workers and call for equal rights for equal work, for immediate and unconditional legalization for all? Not by a long shot.
And on the question of the war, do the Democrats take up the demand of the majority of Americans for an immediate withdrawal of all troops, advisors, and government contractors in Iraq? To stop giving Bush billions of dollars that could instead go toward creating jobs, and providing quality health care, education, housing, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure? And given the health care crisis facing millions of uninsured and even insured Americans, do the Democrats propose anything that breaks the HMO and pharmaceutical industries’ death grip on our health?
The bottom line is, well before the caucuses and primaries allow the public to “choose” the candidates, they have already sold themselves to the highest bidders by proving that they will defend the interests of corporate America. Hillary Clinton, once portrayed as a champion of health care for all (though the reality was far different) is now the largest recipient of campaign donations from the medical industry. And as Obama’s star rises in Washington, the lobbyists’ money is following fast.
Despite their dismal record, the Democrats, for lack of an alternative, will likely be swept into the presidency next Fall, although based on their role in 2000 and 2004 nothing is certain. But they will inherit an economic nightmare of debt, a falling dollar, rising unemployment, a gaping trade deficit, and possibly even an outright recession.
The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index plunged to 47.7 in December, its weakest since April 2003 (a reading below 50 indicates contraction). Oil recently reached a record $100 per barrel, which will eventually lead to even further rises at the pump, squeezing millions of workers’ already tight budgets.
The stock markets are increasingly nervous as the NASDAQ index recently fell by the largest amount since October, 2001. And the Labor Department reported that just 18,000 new jobs were added in December, the lowest number since August 2003. At the same time, the unemployment rate rose to 5 percent from 4.7 percent in November – the largest monthly rise since just after September 11, 2001.
Corporate earnings are also set to decline dramatically as the crisis in the housing and mortgage industries continues to spread and affect everyone from small construction contractors to the largest banks in the country. Many economists are warning of the danger of stagflation: inflation combined with stagnant or shrinking growth and rising unemployment. Some even say we have already entered a recession, with a jump in the jobless rate and slow economic expansion predicted for the final quarter of 2007.
This is the picture facing the next President of the United States. In these conditions, we can be sure that he or she will be looking out first and foremost for the corporate interests that got them there in the first place. So no matter which major party candidate “wins” next Fall, we can predict one thing with absolute certainty: working people will lose out. U.S. workers will need to go through the “school” of the Democrats, and learn through painful experience that this corporate outfit in no way represents our interests. But sooner rather than later, we are confident that the majority will agree that we need to break with the parties of big business and build our own – a mass party of labor!
I know why most americans are ignoring a lot of things about the war, are not well informed about world politics and international affairs, geography etc. Because life in the USA is so exhausting, the capitalist system of USA requires people to work like 10 hours a day just to sustain their basic needs, this leads to tiredness and fatigue and blocks people away from acquiring knowledge and information. So the only thing that american people can do after work is TV, movies and resting.
We need revolutionary leaders to wake up the masses. Or a military coup or something, there must be a solution, i would hate 4 more years of the democrats or republicans.
We need something new !!
Nietzsche said it:
“Mankind can attain an unlimited knowledge, but what stops men from acquiring knowledge is fatigue and lazyness.” -The Will to Power
Next thing you know the NSA will have their diversionists clogging up the thread.
See? What did I tell you? Those morons have no sense of scale, or comportment. It’s not as if that Alien spacecraft subject wasn’t referenced to one of their own propaganda stations, but perhaps it was one of those confusions that result from the machine being too large and one set of idiots not knowing what is permitted. Or, it might just have been the result of a brain-cramp, like when the parent company of CNN called themselves A-hole Time-Warner. Now there was an entertaining lapse from a company that spends tens of millions of dollars on image every year.
Bobbity: Are we done yet? I thought it was getting a little warm in here…….
Hey Cladius, what kind of surgery do they do to turn these guys into eunichs? Since Kem seems to know what to do with balls, maybe he has the answer.
Couldn’t have said it better myself “Democracy… depends on the voters capacity to think”. And for those who can think, as Ritter said, they have chosen to become consenters instead of citizens.
We are doomed. Was it the Fluoride, Vaccines, Prozac in the water, etc? I mean, 3-5% of the people see it, but unless you have 70% on board, nothing can change. Nothing. And the minds are closed, they just do not want to hear it, because they have been brainwashed by the Orwellian babbling of the cult-phrase “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories”, by those behind the conspiracy. I mean, 70% of people are agitated, they know something is wrong, but they still think it is just an individual thing or party thing that can be changed with their vote.
The slide started in 1913 with the Fed & Income Tax, but the fall started when JFK was killed, and picked up steam when the TLC was empowered, and on 9/11/01 they stepped on the gas. My guess is we hit the ground in 2008 - 2009 as critters are expecting great change from their new leader. Could be earlier if the powers have decided that Bush/Cheney need to stay on for a litle longer.
Perhaps its time to acknowledge that what’s coming is not Revolution but Evolution.
Leaving the teeming mass of idiots behind sounds just fine to me.
Now If we can just keep them from killing us all ’cause the TV told them to.
Gonna be fun.
-matti.
What destroys empires is the loss of belief among the citizenry that they are the darlings of the divine. The christofascists are the last guardians of the American belief that the US was given a sacred destiny, and while the material components & motives of the war have to be continually analyzed & exposed for view, the ideology that makes them possible is the one that guaranteed the inviolability of the sacred soil — the creation of a Security agency to guard the chastity of the “Homeland” is the sign of the now-inescapable awareness that there is no divine protection for the nation which all of us were taught to regard as untouchably sacrosanct. When you’ve been the favorite of the divine, things like equality and rights are mere formalities, and people are only fodder for the national divinity to devour.
How long it will take us to get out of the depression and the coming civil wars will depend on how readily people surrender the national divinities & the superstitions surrounding them.
Bloom, a thoughtful ‘outsider’, an honest thinker, nevertheless wrote several (bestseller) books in the 1980’s-90’s that gave powerful legitimation to the growing disease of neocon, anti-Enlightenment maddness.
Now, Bloom, arguably in his sentimental, semi-dotage, sees America failing; self-destructing; becoming its existential Opposite.
He now bewails an outcome that his earlier, roasting critiques of Liberalism helped empower.
No matter his current handwringing about America’s implosion, he still fails to understand or acknowledge his own intellectual role in legitimating the political worldviews of neoconservativism (read: plutocracy; fascism; normative absolutism.)
Withal, I still sense a noble soul in the man — but corrupted by an unquitting ego that can’t admit any big error in personal thinking.
So far, anyway.
jmacneil January 17th, 2008 10:57 pm - great post.
I think its been “war and fear” for so long amongst “the evil ilk” that large parts of their minds have suffered from atrophy and the associated loss of mental faculty and capability. Now they are hunkering down in trenches of impotency.
Learn or die. Seems like an easy choice to me. Oh but I suppose it does require a bit of humility as well as letting go of ego. Hard to do for some who thought they were on the pinnacle.
Discussants seems to be continuing to confuse Harold Bloom with Allan Bloom.
Harold Bloom and Allan Bloom are not the same.
I wouldn’t care if Harold Bloom was a high school dropout and never wrote a book in his life. What he is saying about the fall of America is common sense, combined with the fact that history tends to repeat. There is no sesnible argument that we are near bankruptcy and have no frieds in the world. We still have a strong military, but what good does that do to prevent an economic collapse which will bring any nation down?
“His only comment that might spark “controversy” is his damning of Harry Potter & Steven King — who I don’t think are bad at all. They should only be our worst problems! Far stronger cultural evidence of the “Fall of America” is the existence of filth like FOX News; the “Glenn Beck” show on CNN; or the fact that a neo-liberal warmonger like Thomas Friedman has such undeserved prominence.”
RichM, I believe the author calls this stuff symptomatic of the dying of our culture. That his article restates what many of us speak to every day is affirmation in my opinion and , as he has a national, if not international forum, and we simply do not, makes his words important in my opinion.
Regardless of this authors political history every note he plays rings true. Perhaps the imminent mortality he faces now causes this paeon to the obvious, but what does it matter as long as it is being said, and with such eloquence too?
The problem with running Empire or any other inherrently immoral business (based on forced subjugation, the reverse of the Golden Rule, however you want to phrase it), is that it’s innately hard to find good people willing to work an immoral job.
“Evil genius” is what they need, but it’s generally been a fictional archetype, perhaps an outright oxymoron.
The Bilderbergers/CFR/Trilaterals, or whoever they are, should realize that while they may attract reptilian intelligence, human-hunting carnivores, power cannibals, power-worshiping sycophants and the like — they will NOT attract the genuinely best and brightest this country has to offer. They may be at an advantage for force & money, but they have a severe shortage of brain cells to run their Empire.
It really doesn’t take a brilliant historian to see how anachronistic Empire is in the modern era. A similar revolution, imbalance of power, occured in computers. We’ve somewhat left the days of the mainframe/dumb-terminal era. It turns out that local workstations, distributed and node computing (this runs Google) by peers is perhaps best of all.
The Bilderbergers are clinging to a version of control, tyranny and history that ended with Charlemagne. If we could just return to the gold old days, they think. Hard luck for them.
Paul B,
The crocodile brain is doing suprisingly well these days. It certainly rules the roost here in America, if you can pardon the mixed metaphor.
The most spectacular evidence is our President. A real A1 meathead. Could such an idiot be President of any other powerful nation?
Can you imagine how painful the conversations are when he meets with Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin?
I would like to think we are seeing the last convulsions of a dying beast and not a further entrenchment of an already well-established primitive leadership dynamic. But, I’m afraid I’m not convinced.
The key enabling element seems to be the passivity of the public. Just like the submissive battered spouse, we sit idly by — further enflaming our tormentors.
Let’s face it — we’ve had the more advanced political system available for 3,000 years dating to Athens. Can we really say we’re doing a better job of running it today than those in togas back when?
Socialism was a step forward, but it ends up humanity is too selfish to run it.
I have often bashed conservatives for supporting eugenics. But, maybe they are onto something. Maybe the way out of this thing is to run DNA tests on babies. Those with strong anti-social tendencies can be barred from public service. This would no doubt have eliminated most of the chickenhawks that are running the show right now — draft dodgers pushing plastic tanks around the War Room table.
mirf59 - that is dangerous thinking. They will not be beat with their own percieved weapons of domination. Much more likely is that if they refuse to learn their own weapons will be thier unmaking.