Wars, empire, and the politics of perception

Empires always fail. Not every now and then. Always.

Wars are the primary reason for the inevitability of failure. They're expensive and lead to economic stagnation and decline.

Empires seldom need to fight the wars they do. Their wars become "wars of choice" because the empire doesn't need to fight them.

Late in the life-stages of empires come wars that are simply a veneer for occupations. From these spring insurgencies. With these, often the reason for fighting emerges after the initial invasion, to rationalize the increased use of force to combat the growing insurgency.

In every case, the push for war is driven by a constituency which benefits the most from war. If the policies of the empire are dominated by bankers, it's not by coincidence that the empire's actions cater to the interests of bankers. Likewise, if the military industrial complex carries the most influence, then government budgets will flow to those industries.

The high cost of war is a blessing for the beneficiaries of the spending, which can turn around and invest in political candidates whose war drums sound sweetest to their profit-hungry ears.

Now if you go to Groton, Connecticut or San Diego, you won't find many people clamoring for an end to the wars. That's because much of our war budget gets spent on military hardware built in those places.

Entire industries have grown up feasting on the trough of military spending, a sum which consumes over one-half of our entire federal budget when things like care for veterans and interest on past war debt are considered. In every example of a empires-gone-bust there's been a group which has profited tremendously. With our present day case, I'd look at the bankers who profited by increased government borrowing as the culprit.

The more borrowing, the more interest the borrower must pay. For holders of government debt--the bankers--the best way to increase profits is to make government borrowing more expensive.

Go back to the examples of the Austrian Hapsburgs, and Rothschild bankers of the World War I era, and you'll see vast amounts of wealth move from the public treasuries to bankers through spending on war.

In an age of fiat currency, governments can spend infinite amounts of money. Typically, this means the currency will buy less and less as time goes on. We have that example here in the US. Prices for petroleum before the 2003 Iraq war were under $2/gallon. Now they're trending around $4. Take another commodity with a fixed supply: gold. It was under four hundred or so. Now it's $1600+.

Typically bankers would protest if the purchasing power of the dollars they held would go down so dramatically. It'd be as if their assets had shrunk by one-half or one-third.

Now if the currency were redeemable in gold, or consisted of coins made of gold, the financiers of war would have no problem with more government spending. Perhaps the finite supply of gold could mean an end to war.

Modern day America has come up with a way for bankers to continue to profit even as the purchasing power of the dollar declines. They do this in a process called quantitative easing, or the purchase of government debt by the Federal Reserve. Banks borrow infinite amounts of money through the Fed's lending programs and turn around to use it to buy government debt. This keeps the Ponzi rolling.

As long as interest on the debt can be provided--whether through taxing the citizenry or additional borrowing--overspending and debasement can continue. The latter, which can be called inflation if consumer spending increases, means the dollar will always buy less and less.

Debt burdening is class warfare on steroids. Sadly, it's those who are dependent on salaries and wages, or pensions, who will be unable to increase their incomes. They'll have to bear the effects of debasement.

Like we saw in Greece, the only way out will be rigid austerity, which will dramatically cut spending. As much as we might malign Europe for its problems, we have an even bigger one here. Why? Our government is completely unable to restrain military spending. The noxious propaganda machine driving the war state has done its job too well. No politician dares to look soft on terror, or as if they're not supporting the troops. The result? Multibillion dollar submarines we don't need, vast unaudited sums spent far away, and ever-bloating budget that increases the size of government (alongside all the drones and trappings of a growing surveillance state.)

Militarism and over-expansion are the perfect methods for private bankers to increase the amount of government debt they hold, and how much interest they receive for holding it. Banking profits are a function of their cost of borrowing from the Fed, which is nearly zero. A ten year Treasury yields about 2%--not so much, so they have to buy huge sums, thereby subsidizing additional war spending alongside higher profits for their industry.

Of course none of this war profiteering makes the news: it's glazed over in scary stories about bogeymen in some faraway land who are out to get us. Given the facts, the people might discover the wars that their governments fight are not done to protect them at all, nor vital in any way to our nation's security. Instead, they are the means by which sweetheart industries increase their profits.

The politics of perception

In an age dominated by the media, it's no wonder that governments like to package their wars in a form more palatable to citizens, most of whom are too stupefied in celebrity worship and various forms of entertainment to think critically.

Ours is a culture obsessed with amassing maximum income in order to buy physical possessions.

Our society is unbalanced. Examples of gross disparities in wealth abound. Not since before the great crash of 1929 have the haves of American society has so much, and the have-nots so little.

The young today came into a world of chain restaurants and media saturation. Both parents worked, abdicating much of their children's maturation process to institutions. Time is always in short supply, as time is money, which means money consumes the time families once had to share.

Perhaps the family unit is breaking down. Perhaps the family model has always been breaking down. {One time I told a friend how things had broken down in Mexico and he confided that they had always been breaking down.}

I'm not one to judge, I'll tell you that. So many socially conservative people today want to blame a breakdown in family values. If cornered, they might defend the position by saying how gay marriage, too much television, the schools, or some other force was to blame.

The culprit for the breakdown in moral authority varies depending on who's doing the blaming. Whatever their politics, the problems never originate with the person doing the blaming--no, their children are only mad better by their parenting.

Many parents today seek to protect their children from the evils of someone else's moral misconduct. It's always someone else, an outside actor, that causes the harm and sullies the pool.

Rather than confess that they've lost control, it's easier for the predominately White reactionaries to blame the social decline on someone else, on some external force. Liberals, with all their tolerance, are a juicy target. So are regulations and bureaucracies.

Politicized, in the form of partisanship, the reactionaries' response to societal change motivates them not to improve or correct things but to go back to an America that never was and only exists in the imagination of people on the Right. You'd think that all had been perfect, just before their side lost the political war that precipitated the decline in moral values, or so they believe.

Of course there's no attention paid to the failings of their President, the one who started the unnecessary wars under false pretexts while outing an undercover agent in a time of war. No that wasn't bad. Why? Because Bush was a good guy in their eyes, a hero. He could never have done no wrong, no more than could have it been their bad parenting or mistakes that contributed to the decline in our society.

Political opportunism has Obama makes a perfect target for these people who are so troubled by the world they've seen transform so much so fast.

Gas prices too high? Blame Obama. A lack of jobs? You guessed it, Obama. It's as if there's no bad thing that can't be pinned on the President. They conveniently ignore the war of choice that's resulted in a doubling of gas prices, or the falsified intelligence for which no one has faced any reckoning.

The predominantly White cultural reactionaries have started their witch hunt. Cheered on by racists and demagogues like LImbaugh, they've convinced themselves that it's Obama that's the problem. Like the cultural decay, it's never their failure to control the evil outside influence, whether it be the TV, gays, or whatever. {See the Alternet article by Joshua Holland on how the brain circuitry of conservatives might account for this.)

Racism and reactionary behavior do blend. Unfortunately for the demographic that so likes to blame The Others, the demographic changes have swept across the land are far-reaching and permanent. A change of profound cultural significance, the increasingly non-White population doesn't see itself as the problem any more than the Whites blame themselves fro failing to adapt.

Whites are a minority now in a lot of regions. That demographic change can be disconcerting, not just for them but because of the big cultural swings in the norms of conduct among subgroups. Modern day America is a true melting pot. In an election year, race can be a huge factor shaping voting.

I don't think non-Whites will rally around a non-White candidate simply because they are both not White. I think non-Whites will rally around a non-White candidate because they're more likely to share similar political values.

* * *

Obama got into office based in large part because of his relative youth, enthusiasm, and gifted campaigning skills. If he's to win a second term, he'll need to execute his campaign as well as he did in 2008.

I wonder how much of Obama's appeal is artificial, seeded in the idea that just because he's not White, he represents change. Change did happen. Yes, good things can come from nothing more than a popular upswell, and Obama mastered that bubbling fountain quite well.

Then again, campaigns are about money. The American public is obsessed with its image of itself. If one candidate can fashion a more favorable image in the minds of the electorate, then he'll win. Why? It's not that the choice of candidate is made consciously but rather in a stream of subliminal decisions. In this respect, a process of identifying more closely with one candidate, their hero, over another, the antihero, runs in the back of the voter's mind like some antiviral program, grinding away but seldom acknowledged.

It's called the politics of identity. Whichever candidate identifies best with the voter is the one who wins the vote. Far from producing random outcomes, identity politics is a highly deliberate and controlled process. Like any formula, the variables are controlled down to the way a candidate looks, what they say, and how they say it. There's no limit to the spinning, and twisting to jockey for prime space in the subconscious of the voter.

Repeat exposure does more to shape the voter perception than does the quality of the message. Send a message frequently enough and it'll be branded, so deeply perhaps that the voter doesn't know it's there.

Take the consumer society: a company makes its brand on the consumer by broadcasting a message so many times that it brands itself as surely tot he consumers' brain as does a brand on cattle. In our consumer-driven, society, it owns us. And we, unknowingly, give up precious space in our minds for the commercial invasion. Like automatons, we buy with a false impression of choice. In fact we've decided what to buy long before we get to the store, or lift up the phone. The decision's been made for us.

Back to politics. People on the Right won't vote for Obama, and they'll do it consciously. No subconscious branding needed. They were never going to vote for him, simply because they don't identify with him. Of course they'll try and explain away their decision not to vote for Obama, to make it all sound logical. 

The Left has its indoctrinated supporters as well. However unlike the Right, the Left seems more concerned with the reasons why their candidate should win. This emphasis on the faculty of reason is perhaps one of their great Achilles' heel, since those on the Right is more prone to unify based on less ineffectual instincts like blind nationalism, or the fear of change.

Race might not be thrust forward by political analysts as the difference maker in the upcoming Election. But it is the most limiting and segregating factor when it comes to the politics of identity. The most obvious difference we have with others is the color of our skin.

Due to rising numbers of non Whites, the Right will have to contend with the politics of identity that unify Obama and people of his race--who were going to vote Democratic anyway. With our population about 14 % black, roughly that Hispanic, and 8 % now Asian, non-Whites constitute a vast voting block.

I don't think non-Whites will be able to make their choice in a vacuum sterilized of any issues of race, and they'll identify more with someone of similar race. With about 20% of the electorate White and liberal, Obama's reelection boils down to voter participation. If 100% of non-White voters vote, he'll win.

Due to demographic realities, the sustained effort by the Right to disenfranchise minority voters will continue. A Romney victory depends on it.

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Is the Tea Party an alien waiting to burst inside the GOP?

[This post was originally published at OpEdNews.com.]


Tea Party candidates emerged victorious in many of their primary races. Come General Election, Republican ballots will reflect the Tea Party tilt. I'm not sure if they're any Democratic Tea Party candidates. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if Tea Party candidates are Republican candidates, or that the Tea and Republican Parties can exist under the same roof.

The beauty of the Tea Party is that any and all can claim membership. Like a snake's skin, people can cast off essentially meaningless party affiliations and become TP'ers. Breaking the shackles of conformity to a two-party system is most definitely needed in an era of very limited choice yet the Tea Partiers seem intent on change the GOP from within, a radical transformative process that appears to be working as TPers win nominations.

Being new, the Tea Party is subject to interpretation by the descriptor. We can't say Tea Party candidates all behave the same, which raises the issue of how firmly Party members should conform.

TPers do seem to want to return to some utopian ideals not that different from religious colonies in America early in our history. To a purer and more fundamental existence, not an unappealing offering in times of great fear and uncertainty in a backdrop of great, rapid change.

Early Protestant missionairies built on the idea of a "citte upon a hill," a place where people could live free of government intolerance and practice religion in any form they see fit, away from all the tired old rivalries of Old Europe and the persistent oppression. America was founded on this premise, the premise of freedom.

For now the Tea Party offers an open tent--a populist style of tolerance typically ascribed to the Democratic Party. As the Party's non-existent platform takes shape, the tent will shrink as the party platform hardens.

Compromise is vital in politics. We all agree to disagree for the benefit of shared political goals. A willingness to bend is required for compromise. Like amateur politicians, TP candidates may be too committed to their ideals to be open to compromise. They may see where they stand on issues as immutable, closed to discussion. This is a mistake as the firmness of one's position needs to be tempered by the practical limitations imposed by politics. Getting it done isn't as simple as "git-r-done" although the latter does seem simpler and easier to achieve.

Real government requires compromise, attention to detail, and nuanced reflection. The whole point of the Tea Party is that they're un-sanitized. They're a messy, pickup-driving, trash-talking, sitcom-watching bunch with no goal higher than letting you be you within that big sticky mess, the cotton ball of candy they call a party but is really nothing more than a collective of tax-hating, Constitution- and Gun-loving reactionaries.

If government is no longer on the people's side, principles which the Tea Party purport to represent do represent a welcome change. For example, if our fiscal imbalances are leading to the destruction of our nation, then the TP principle to cut spending is undeniably vital. Yet how could that be accomplished?

On spending, at some point there needs to be a hard either/or choice between military priorities and domestic ones. Faced with a nasty recession, tax revenues will be quite limited. Of course we all hope TPers can impose some fiscal restraint, but I don't see how they can be re-elected as Tea Partiers--and the party retain any credibility--unless its candidates in office vote no to military spending, which must challenge the cherished faith in the US military held so religiously by most Right wingers.

Calling the kettle black

The Tea Party can't change the Establishment from within as it is likely to be corrupted by it.
All politicians have a tendency to end up being compromised in Washington. Washington, D.C. has a myriad of delights from which to draw any number of scandals. Insert new politician, drunk with power, Tea Partier or not, into that environment and you'll make the humble proud and the pure unpure. It's the New Rome and all delight in her pleasures.

By succeeding, the Tea Party un-succeeds. By triumphing over Establishment candidates, they become the Establishment. In time, absolute power corrupts absolutely, whatever the candidate claimed as a candidate. As a matter of fact, the more audacious and anti-establishmentarian the message, the MORE likely and total the compromise, as the Obama case showed.

On one hand, the TP victories have brought new candidates, outsiders. They intend to bring change and oppose the Establishment. In a campaign, messaging takes precedence, though, and if the American people want to believe in hope and change, they deserve to be lied to, so recently as Barack Obama's "Vote for me and get change." The real message might go: "Vote for me on the promise of hope!" Translation: if I do all the things I say I'll do, there will be change. But first you must vote for me.

Image

In the media spotlight, the presentation of a balanced image is critical, polish is a plus, and professionalism key. Tea Partiers seem lacking experience in these areas. They do have the benefit of being outsiders in a period of great anti-incumbency sentiments.

Campaigning is a brand statement. Political races are run no differently from corporate sponsorships or marketing campaigns. In age of constant media bombardment, consistency in messaging is vital, as brand marketers know. A big chunk of the message attempts to get viewers (voters) to identify with the candidate.

Barack Obama's campaign of 2008 heralded grand new visions of change and hope as their cornerstones. What we get at the end of the long campaign road may not be what is promised. Then again the product--the candidate--is only bought every four years. Voters may be more apt to forgive flaws and cracks in their purchase--little inconsistencies they may be able to overlook when next it comes to time to buy.

Nowhere did we see this more clearly than the devolution of Barack Obama the Campaigner to Barack Obama the President. In the first, we have someone we want to believe in, a source of hope. In the President Obama, we have a cold tactician willing to compromise anything, with anyone. Barack the Campaigner was likable, a celebrity, someone you could see yourself drawn to. Barack the President is "the decider," a Byzantine clositered emperor who negotiates with men of power to get things done, Chicago-style. Untouchable, distant, impersonal. Sanitized.

Unlike a free market where consumers are free to buy any number of products, we in the American political process are limited to a choice of two. Or possibly three, if you include the Tea Party, which is supposedly a choice within one of the two. "Cream or sugar?" the marketers might ask. "Sugar," the purchaser might answer. "Nutra-low or regular?" the server might inquire and we'd answer.

In the same way, the Tea Party presents itself as just another flavor within the existing political grid. It's not changing the system by itself, simply trying to alter the political dynamic to reflect an under-served constituency.

The tactic of trying to dumb-down one's image and impressions to connect to Whites isn't the same as the general population. For one, the states with large Latino voters--key to winning for the GOP--might not like Tea Party support for Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law, which they saw as racist.

The only guarantee in a system like ours is that talk is cheap. I don't know if perception is reality, no matter how many times the impression of a candidate is made in our message-weary minds. And the two parties really aren't all that different. Sure one comes in and another out, but the more things change, the more they stay the same, as the French say.

Impacts going forward

Tea Party candidate numbers will be insufficient to accomplish change yet they could be a catalyzer--enough to redirect policy changes. Congress--the only avenue open to Tea Partiers at the present--requires building constituencies through compromise in order to pass meaningful legislation.

The Tea Party aims to do great things but won't constitute anywhere near a majority for several more election cycles. The intervening period offers plenty of opportunities to fall from their principles. Also, sustaining a political organization requires iron-like discipline, a gang of Karl Roves who relentlessly attack the talk shows, radio, the Web, on a nightly basis, then get up at first light to fax out talking points to party activists, media figures, and sympathizers. It's precisely because maintaining a consistent political message requires organization that organizational hierarchies, authority, and control overshadow whatever individual positions candidates hold.

And I guess the first goal of every Tea Partier elected will be, you guessed it, re-election. Once made insiders, how can they preserve their outsider status--linchpin of their popularity--two or six years from now (the time span until the next election for Federal office)?

While an overabundance of popularity may get candidates elected, it's infinitely harder to keep voter interest over periods which may span several years. It's easy to get and stay excited about a candidate when an election's just a few months away; far harder it is for the public to like them--or much less care--months into office, especially if things aren't going too well for them.

Primaries wins by TPers have limited choices to Tea Party versus Democrat in the General Election (GE). Demographics for the GE are really quite different from primaries in most states. Whereas single issue voters can shape primary wins, the GE is more about where candidates stand on a broad number of issues.

This presents a new dynamic to manage and a cadre of highly trained professionals to sell a different message. It won't be enough to overpower Establishment candidates within the GOP. Cowboy boots and country roots may not be enough to win. And on this issue race could greatly smear the Tea Party as its extremist elements advocate greater freedom for the States in their fight against illegal immigration.

The American population has been racially diversifying for years now, to the point Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian--largely a group that votes Democratic--now combine to more than 40% of our population. This demographic change sets a largely non-White audience against some messages which were designed to woo GOP voters.

Any candidate seeks to identify with the broadest possible audience. To avoid alienating as many people as possible, Establishment candidates need to be careful not to denigrate the TPers for whatever principles they have. Nor should their opposition--which appears at present to be solely Democrats.

Some have said that the placement of Tea Party candidates within the GOP could help the sole plausible alternative in virtually every district: the Democrats. Yet it's hard to believe Democrats have much credibility left when it comes to the bringing change mythology, so I don't think TP success means the GOP suffers. It's also possible that the GOP can latch on to some constituencies their previous eight years in power alienated: the anti-Bush, the anti-interventionist crowd who hate the GOP establishment passionately.

Some GOPers defeated in the primary will run as independents. A three-way race could get quite interesting. A third party candidate won't likely be viable in a three-way Presidential race, especially if the support for the Tea Party candidate comes mostly from within the likely pool of GOP voters anyway. Still, the Tea Party's Open Tent might be a draw for people who don't typically vote. Barack Obama was able to bring many of these people into his camp in 2008, especially first-time voters.

How many more disaffected persons are lingering out in the fringes we can't know. I just can't expect their numbers to be so high as to radically change the election results, which means TPers will need independents to go Republican, which after Bush and the unpopular wars he started isn't likely to happen but could, as more Americans now consider themselves independent than either Democratic or Republican. A vote for the TP candidate could be considered a protest vote, which considering how poorly we're being led, may be inherently a good thing yet yield to disastrous results. Still I admit I'd get a good dose of schadenfreude seeing the Demos get beat up. It's just the notion of what could come after that scares me.

For real change, the Tea Party really needs to be independent of the two parties, I believe. To try and assume their party can exist within the GOP is stretching the fundamental purpose of creating a Tea Party, which must be to bring real change. Now infiltrating the GOP might be easier than going the independent route yet there is a threat that GOP moderates could turn away, scared by TP rhetoric and populism.

Maybe if the GOP splits up, the Democrats could, too. We could use a progressive party. The Establishment Democrats aren't getting it done and their leader, Barack the President, has abandoned a progressive agenda in favor of more war, corporate favoritism, and relentless spending.

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Gulf spill shows scope of corporate control

BP manages its own leak with minimal interference from Washington. In a strained news conference--his first in 10 months--Obama did assert control but it just made the disaster seem to be less under control. The lack of an assertive federal response has really exposed just how much control corporations have over our government. Conspiracy theories will abound, as they have since 9/11.

The money connection is at the root of our government's subservience to industry. The corruption floats to the top. As we saw in the mortgage crisis, the worst culprit in the Deepwater fiasco is the company with the most influence in the White House. BP gave more money to Barry Soetoro--now known as Mr. President--than any other oil concern. Goldman Sachs was the biggest donor among financial entities--look at the preferential treatment they received.

And now with the Gulf spill, we see the payback, just like the response to the mortgage crisis.

As I've been saying for years, campaign contributions yield reciprocal benefits, a quid pro quo in which corporations influence and even set policy. This special treatment is most evident in times of crisis, which seem these days to regularly emerge from a lack of enforcement.

We're starting to see inconsistencies in the way the Deepwater spill is being managed. In Washington, the head of a government agency a thousand miles from the disaster recently claimed, alongside BP executives, that there were no plumes of oil beneath the surface. Evidence of a cover-up? Perhaps. See this ABC News video on a visit to a federal research boat that exposed the oil plumes here.

There's more to plume denial than trying to massage public perception about the scale of the disaster. There's the very strong motive of minimizing the scale of the disaster in an effort to protect the President's inadequate response. The agenda--make the response seem less bungled if the unfixed problems are...well...disappeared.

Then there's use of the toxic dispersants. Apparently huge quantities of less toxic dispersants were waiting dockside, ready to be used weeks ago. One possible motive for the dispersants is to mask the size of the spill by keeping it beneath the surface. Apparently the dispersants do keep the oil from rising to the top. In a technical process I can't fully explain, dispersants reduce the size of oil globs to tiny proportions, almost atomizing them. Unable to combine with gases, they tend to float suspended below the surface until, slowly, very slowly they eventually come up.

The whole bungling of the choice of dispersants sends echoes of Katrina, in which the government's response was too late and mismanaged. Rather than facilitate the best possible deployment of relief and rescue resources, FEMA charged in and assumed control. Boats and rescue teams like that sent from the State of Florida were forced to wait hours before getting the go-ahead. Salvation Army trucks were stopped. The list of mistakes seems so vast and incompetent that conspiracy theories about FEMA's real intentions can't help but arise. If we really in an age of conspiracies, the Deepwater leak will undoubtedly spawn endless theories about why our government did--or didn't do--what it should have.

I guess if the oil doesn't come up as quickly, the American people will be less concerned about the failure to more aggressively interdict the spill. If on the other hand, all the oil were to gush into the gulf current, then go up the Keys and east coast of Florida, we'll then there'd be a panicked call for stopping all drilling. Instead we saw approval for a new well head coming this week, despite Obama's hollow moratorium on new drilling. It's like a Bush-era redux: say one thing in public and do the exact opposite in private.

Another serious complication in the effort to stop the gusher is BP's likely intent to continue to extract oil from the well. This is a goal that the mainstream media hasn't advanced; re-starting the well, or at least drawing as much oil from the leak is likely seen as a small win for the company's bottom line, especially if there are millions of barrels still down there. Sure, BP would just as well have the leak stop, if for no other reason than the clean-up costs (delayed and minimized by the legal process as they likely will be.) Then again, a company that's participated in criminal behaviors will likely see the environmental cost as part of doing business.

At this time, BP was actually on probation for its failure to maintain a Texas refinery where numerous safety violations were reported prior to an explosion in 2005 that killed fifteen. It's also responsible for numerous violations and leaks at its Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska. [Sorry Supreme Court, I guess the concept of putting a corporate person on probation doesn't quite work out here, unless of course the probation will land the poor corporate person in bigger trouble for Deepwater than they would have otherwise faced, an unlikely event.]

Now as for the Obama regime, the goal is to Cover-Its-Ass. I think passing the buck like it did is only a signal of weakness, and subservience to the corporate interest. The inadequate response speaks legions to the millions of people who trusted Obama to run government more efficiently. In addition to being a disappointment, I'm thinking the regime will be gone in 2012. Republicans might win big, but in our duopoly, this means that rather than bring change, the Republicans will screw things up, albeit in a different way.

Fertile ground for conspiracy theories

In my conspiratorial mindset, who benefits (qui bono) is a powerful means of connecting the motive with the end result. Like the Exxon Valdez, it's likely that BP will delay and fiddle on paying claims (of course they say that all claims will be honored etc. but nothing is in writing.) Good luck getting those years of wages back like the fisherman in Prince William Sound. So BP wants to reduce the perception that the disaster is as big as it really is, a point echoed in the somewhat dismissive comments about the leak by BP CEO Tony Hayward early on.

Obama's administration has responded poorly to the crisis. Not one to pass up the chance at a conspiracy behind the ineptitude, I'll venture that the inadequate response is somehow designed to achieve some policy goal for the administration. With cap and trade legislation before Congress, one can't help but wonder if the globs of oil which will be washing up are simply the product of error. Just like 9-11, we're caught guessing at motives behind the inadequate response.

The animated series South Park explained the conspiratorial inclinations of Americans quite well in an episode several years back. The idea that 9-11 occurred as an intentional plan makes the shock and horror of the incident easier to understand, the story line went. So stunned we're we the American public, that we had to believe that our government must have known. So self-confident are we that our government can prevent an attack of that magnitude, that we collectively assume our government must have known, as it surely could have stopped it.

As much as I like the reasoning, and as reasonable as the logic behind dismissing 9-11 conspiracy theories might sound, I'm simply not convinced. Maybe I'm too confident in our government's ability to sniff out the terror plot. Or maybe there are facts which I can't dismiss, and that lingering doubts about the Official Explanation make me prone to conspiracy theories.

Role of a corporate media

Without the oil spill, or mortgage crisis, the public is less aware of how tightly government and corporate interests are intertwined, due largely to a corporatized media. It takes a Deepwater, or a coal mine disaster, to prove just how total this corruption is, and how absolute.

The masses are also conditioned by the feeble corporate media establishment. BP advertises on many of these networks. We know media consolation brought down many investigatory responsibilities traditionally assigned to media companies. As Rupert Murdoch bought network after network, independent journalism declined and has been replaced by a heavily commercialized, bland, celebrity-centric version with dumbed-down content.

Newspapers and magazines are more about selling books and promoting movies than challenging prevailing assumptions. Without a diligent media devoted to unbiased coverage, we've actually lost the ability to monitor the actions of corporations. No where was the message elevated over content more than during Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The people were sold on hope and possibility. The reality was different. The night after his election, before even assuming office, Barack Obama instructed then-Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson to give Citigroup a $308 billion loan, according to Matt Taibbi.

Gullible people are prone to be surprised when the truth gets out--if it gets out. Most of the time, Americans are too distracted and consumed by the rigors of everyday life to devout much time to news, and the invariably dull but precious process of guarding our democracy. Our corporate media spares them the inconvenience. Easy it is for most people to assume there's nothing they can do, that they must accept what their government tells them to accept. As we saw in Hitler's Germany, even reasonable and generally good-natured peoples can be easily manipulated.

In the Nazi regime, there was this important tool devised to manage the masses. Hitler said that if people were inclined to disbelieve that their government would do something so obviously against the people, they'd disbelieve anything, so the more outlandish the conduct, the better the disguise. In proud nations, no one wants to think that their sense of nationalism is misplaced. So in some form of mass hypnosis we simply deprogram our minds to the possibility that our government could be behind something truly evil.

I've commented that the US is lucky no Hitler has risen to exploit the ignorance of the masses. Hitler used blind faith in nationalism and militarism to convince Germans of the dangers posed by internal and external enemies. With our military overcommitted in two open-ended wars, and our budget bursting with tax receipts dropping, the low road to stirring nationalist ideals is a bust, a weed-covered, muddy morass.

So the next trigger that the government will turn to will likely be the need to protect our shores, not from corporation who pose great danger, but from dissidents and anti-government types--whoever poses a threat not to Amerika but the Establishment.

Public fatigue in the terror war has already set in. Perhaps the fear button won't be enough to induce the public into a frenzy. Just like the boy who called wolf, our anti-terror policies have devolved to the point we call any of our enemies al Qaeda. Our drones rain down missiles on Pakistanis.

I've been hammering on the government's propaganda in Iraq and Afghanistan and I won't stop now. As long as the corporate news is content to regurgitate official news releases as original reporting, the quality of the content will be abysmal. I guess we can't blame the American public, as so few have the time or energy to do research on the war, or see if the government's previous goals were reached.

Can our current military achieve the goals set by the politicians? One of the biggest blame-getters for the Vietnam failure were the politicians. Nixon shouldn't have been selecting bombing targets. One important lesson Vietnam gave, and has been forgotten, is that war's are ultimately political exercises. The North Vietnamese may have lost virtually all its engagements against American firepower, but the impact of the perpetual stream of casualties on the domestic population kept growing. After a certain point, no one wanted it to be their child sacrificed in a war without end.

Afghanistan is heating up. We're facing a determined foe in the "graveyard of empires." Fighting an insurgency is a time-consuming and expensive endeavor. As long as we can avoid a draft, and casualties come from volunteers alone, the domestic political impact might be minimized. Still, in time, we'll see stiffening antiwar resistance.

It's just that the impact--especially the fiscal one--is severely delayed. It wasn't until 1971 or so that Nixon abandoned the gold standard. Any student of economic history knows what happened in the Seventies.

Tough sailing ahead

We'll people, that's where we're headed: back to the 70's and stagflation. Slow growth (once inflation is factored out) is a certainty. We're seeing declining tax receipts, which means government spending will become increasingly monetized--printed out of thin air. The Federal Reserve banks are destined to profit as the interest on the national debt--which the Treasury must market through the Fed--grows. Interest rates will rise into the double digits.

Our nation's economy is in a state of decline. The only way we can recuperate appears to be by our government's borrowing money, then spending it on census workers. As people like Peter Schiff have been saying, the government's spending has supplanted private sector growth, and is in fact delaying and weakening a potential recovery.

Our problems are also demographic. Baby Boomers dominate the agenda. Aging, they're inclined to amass as much personal wealth as possible in the time they have left. This doesn't bode well for future government outlays on medical care and social security.

As much respect I have for Baby Boomer's devotion to work, I believe the time has come to replace them yet they are obviously irreplaceable. Still, to build an economy beyond the Boomer years, we'll need to invest massively into younger people, something that really isn't happening as education spending falls. With there vast skills, Baby Boomers mentoring younger people in the workforce is not only crucial, but increasingly urgent.

Down on dollar

As you can suspect, all this doesn't bode well for the value of the dollar. I've been watching the increasingly propagandized, Larry Kudlow-dominated CNBC rant on about "troubles in Europe." What a crock! Greece compromises a tiny portion of the European economy. The Euro is down somewhat but this is hardly a contagion. And of course American traders love to introduce the idea that the US dollar is the safer bet.

I'm not predicting that Europe will be a haven of fiscal discipline, or that their currency will maintain its value-after all it's a fiat currency like the dollar. the whole point of the whole dollar vs. Euro exercise is to obfuscate the face that our spending is completely out of control. And the biggest reason for overspending--and the easiest way to rectify the fiscal deficit--is to stop spending on senseless wars. Yet we can't and won't. And I think the Afghans, like the Vietnamese, have something to do with that. Better that we leave now than blow our wad. If we are in fact competing with Europe...and Asia for that matter...we need to realize that those governments don't have such a unnecessary burden of military spending to deal with. So if any currency is destined to collapse, it'll be the dollar first.

I'm not an investment adviser. I have nothing invested in dollars at the present. I like the Norwegian krone, and Singapore dollar. Swiss francs interest me as well--I know there's an ETF called FXF tracking that currency and it's down.

I wouldn't expect these foreign markets to do especially well if our economy tanks. Nor would Europe's. However, it's my opinion that the relative strengths of those currencies, and their sounder fiscal practices, will make them attractive compared to the over-militarized policies which will invariably drain the value of the dollar.

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Support for Bernanke and health care "reform" damaging Obama

I've been reading with considerable chagrin the seemingly endless well of support Obama has for Bernanke. This from HuffPo:
"'He has my strongest support. I think he's done a good job,' Obama told ABC News.
"What we need is somebody at the Federal Reserve who can make sure that the progress that we've made in stabilizing the economy continues. I think Bernanke is the best person for that job,' the president said."

I may not be the greatest of political minds, but I don't see how Obama can tap popular political sentiments by supporting Bernanke. Obama seems to be apologist-in-chief for Wall Street and its shameless plug for public aid. I don't know where the President gets his news, but he must not know that Wall Street recorded record profits and bonuses last year.

Much advantage came out of sweetheart loans and credit facilities offered by the Federal Reserve, which dwarf the $700 billion TARP. Dumping toxic debt for US Treasuries is a great money-making proposition for Friends of the Fed, a group of private bankers spearheaded by Geithner. In these exchanges, taxpayers are left holding the losses, which are socialized. The profits, meanwhile, go to Geithner's and Bernanke's cronies on Wall Street.

Obama couldn't offer a juicier political plumb to the Republicans than his enduring support for Wall Street and its agents in his administration. The more difficult the economy, the more contrasting the opulent lifestyle of the New York banking elite with the mainstream popular consciousness. As millions go jobless and homes foreclose, the Bernie Madoff-type gamblers who control the Fed's money-making machine are feeding major discontentment. The scene from Gangs of New York where the homes of wealthy Upper West Siders are raided comes to mind...

Projecting infinite support for the bankers' allies inflames nearly infinite popular rage bubbling under the surface. In the past, this anti-incumbency may have been limited to groups like the tea-baggers. Yet the Republicans have considerable experience hijacking popular movements, and could easily direct the anti-Washington emotions into a far broader political force to use against the Demos.

According to the article, McCain advocates holding Bernanke to account. The Republicans' reaction to the bailout crisis has been shrewd. They've picked at Obama's close connections to Wall Street, without directly criticizing him they can take shots at Bernanke at Geithner, who really do make ideal punching bags, being insiders. Should any attempt at in the real economy recovery fail, the Republicans will be able to blame Obama's policies as favoring the elite Wall Street bankers at expense to the general public. Rather than create distance between himself and Wall Street, Obama's become their apologist. Obama received many millions from Wall Street, and the quid pro quo has been protection for their profits through the crisis, which was a product of their unchecked greed.

Bernanke was at the heart of the creation of the mess, the creation of the housing bubble.Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan encouraged easy money policies that allowed so much capital to flow into already inflated mortage securities markets. As chairman of the New York Fed, Geithner protected the interests of Wall Street prior to his selection as Treasury Secretary.

In one sense it doesn't matter whether Bernanke averted a larger crisis. The amount of money which flowed into privileged Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs is a tremendous political liability. The American people are tired of being treated as second-class citizens and made to fork over billiosn for what's essentially a bankers' mistake (although of course the MSM packaged the collapse as a purely subprime phenomena--waiters getting McMansions--when in fact the derivatives trading based on mortgages was fifty times larger. Even today, the total notational amount of derivatives exceeds $260 trillion, I believe, an amount no bailout can cover in the event of default. Yes, you could argue that such a massive pile of IOUs constitutes a risk of systemic collapse, but not if the shadow banking system hadn't been created which made permissable such huge over-leveraged bets.

Already a year into his administration, perhaps Obama can no longer draw on Bush ineptness to blame for economic problems. Bush and his laissez faire regulatory policies may have helped set the circumstances that allowed mortgage fraud, but Congress--majority Democratic since '06--gutted the regulatory environment and Glass-Steagall.

Obama likely wants to keep Geithner around because their replacements create even more uncertainty, which Wall Street certainly doesn't like. It's highly unlikely that the political liability Obama created by supporting Bernanke will be worth whatever support Wall Street can provide in terms of future campaign donations. If however Obama is willing to sacrifice himself politically for the bankers, he will leave as his one-term legacy a new low in bowing to the corporate interest over his own.

The best summation of the case against Bernanke's re-nomination comes from Webster Tarpley (his website is here.) Tarpley includes a letter to be sent to one's Senators here.

So thorough has the Senate been compromised to Wall Street, I'm not sure if Bernanke can be opposed. According to another HuffPo article, through bureaucratic maneuvering Democratic Senators are lowering the bar to only 50 votes required for re-confirmation.

I am guessing a vote in support of Bernanke nomination might cost incumbents 5 points or more if they face election this year. That's assuming of course that they face populist opponents, or rivals who aren't as compromised in their loyalties to Wall Street. As we saw with Goldman Sachs, Wall Street insiders have a habit of winning no matter who wins.

Terrorizing the stock market

Geithner's threat that the stock markets would go down if Bernanke weren't re-nominated (video) has generated a myth central to the mainstream media's reporting on the crisis. The idea, just one in a tapestry of misinformation, is that Bernanke is good for stocks. With relentless spin, the financial media casts each day's market performance on the idea that Bernanke's will be re-nominated. When performance is bad, it's blamed on the "uncertainty" associated with Bernanke's failure to be confirmed.

A market so soft as to require coddling by the chairman of the Federal Reserve can't be so strong. Actually rejecting risky banking practices actually represents a helpful step towards economic self-healing. If we are to believe the economy needs more liquidity--i.e., the Fed purchasing more Treasuries--then the market is surely incapable of generating growth independent of the price of money--a bearish sign indeed. Constantly adding more debt--the dollar is really an IOU by the Fed--creates a bubble as those "assets" flow into markets, reinflating them.

It may be testament to how frail our economy has become that we rely on so much "production" in the form of GDP from our financial services sector. If we had an economy making things, perhaps the Fed, or even interest rates--wouldn't be so vital. Instead, as our manufacturing economy has declines, it's been replaced with the service sector--a euphanism for underpaying, menial jobs, and the financial sector, whose share of GDP has risen to 40% or from approximately 15% in 1980. Not surprisingly, with this shift in economic priorities has come a media habit of Fed watching, reading the proverbial tea-leaves to divine the future direction of the economy.

Enough of all that. As I'm sure you know, things have gotten worse for all but the richest of Americans. It is worth noting the role the media plays in glossing over the real state of our economic decline, which of course ushers in greater apathy and complacency.

Health Care Reform spun by media

It's worth noting the media spun the Coakley defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race as a referendum on health care reform. Yet the health care reform presented to the Senate could hardly be considered progressive. The massive build-up in forcing people to buy private health insurance is better considered a coup for the for-profit insurance industry. Look no further than Evan Bayh (D-IN) for an indication of where health reform stands. Bayh's wife serves on the Board of Wellpoint, the largest health care insurance company in the U.S.. If Bayh supports the bill, it can hardly mean it threatens the status quo, or Wellpoint's profits.

I did read one article that properly characterized the Massachusetts vote as criticism of the so-called health care "reform." The Republican victor in the race, Scott Brown "built his entire surge against Coakley around his promise to be the 41st senator to block the bill -- this in Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts. He must be pretty confident that the bill has become politically radioactive, and he's right." (Robert Kuttner, "A Wake Up Call from Massachusetts", HuffPo 1-18-10)

Kuttner goes on to bring up Senator Byron Dorgan, who "began the year more than twenty points ahead in the polls of his most likely challenger, North Dakota Governor John Hoeven. By the time he decided to call it a day, Dorgan was running more than twenty points behind. The difference was the health bill, which North Dakotans oppose by nearly two to one."

I'd read that many progressives had stayed away from the polls. Participation was down. Also, as Bev conover points out, the hand-count favored Coakley. Black box voting means there's always a chance of election fraud.

In the end, health care pseudo-reform poses as a measly, inadequate replacement for a public option. Rather than represent real reform, the Obama compromise is weak, overpriced, and friendly to insurers. Posing as reform, the health care bill's demise represents a victory for common sense and a rejection of spiraling health care costs.

I do think we need reform, as do many Americans, so I'm not opposed to it outright like some are. I've heard many people, coincidentally those with jobs and health insurance, complain about "Obamacare." They've been thoroughly propagandized by hate radio and the Right to believe they're better off paying for it themselves, at least until they're 65 and Medicare will be there--theoretically--for them.

I wonder if the anti-Obamacare people will like paying these bloated costs when they're older. While they can complain about the inadequacies of the reforms, few are in a position to bear the costs of their retirement, much less the burdens associated with gaps in government-paid health care. While they're young and employed, they detest government-provided care. When they're old, less employable, will they so eagerly shun the safety net?

Looking at the numbers, there's no way Medicare will be able to cover all the projected health care expenses for the Baby Boomers. Coupled with worsening state budget situations, and a freeze on domestic spending proposed by Obama, a major crisis looms and hole in the safety net widens.

Already, a bigger and bigger chunk of Social Security payments go to feed the gap between what Medicare pays and what supplemental insurance provides. (Just check out an older's person's annual Social Security return.) Retirees will have to eat more and more of their own health care costs. All that money they'd paid into Social Security and Medicare has simply been absorbed.

Without cost controls and a major effort at wellness, the total costs of health care will continue to zoom. As a result premiums will increase. Theoretically, bringing more people onto health care insurance rolls can reduce the burden on Medicaid. Then again, if Massachusetts--the only state with mandatory health care insurance for all--is an example, premiums will sky-rocket.

The costs of health care are simply too high to be borne by the elderly. They will be met by higher taxes. In the absence of real change, get braced for the giant health care ripoff. Don't fret, just get ready to go abroad for treatment, if you can afford it.

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We're complicit in Obama's Grand Illusion

Talk of the White House crashers and Tiger Woods' infidelity dominates the mainstream media.

Obsessing over celebrities, Americans are spellbound in a state of mass delusion. We live vicariously through the lives of celebrities. We inflate celebrity to superhuman status, then collectively gasp as our superhumans show their fallibility, like Tiger Woods. Superstar athletes are praised, and sport elevated, to the point image and reputation matter more than the people underneath.

We're compulsively drawn to ignore our lives and fixate on celebrities in a form of escapism. Addictions pattern themselves similarly. The addict can go on borrowing, or using, indefinitely. It's only when some transfixing event strikes that the addict realizes they have a problem. Until then, everything's honky dory even if the facade is crumbling.

Politically, celebrity worship masquerades within the pageantry of a Presidential campaign. The celebrity-in-chief is President Obama. His campaign epitomized the rhetorical over the practical, image over the reality. So slick was the illusion that most Americans missed the deception; they instead got caught up in the spectacle of the campaign.

The interests of big government and big companies overlap. As more money flows into the political sphere, it's only natural that companies seek to expand their influence, in a trade of campaign contributions for political favors.

Groups with the most influence end up benefitting the most. Key constituencies include the National Security State/MilInd complex (legitimized through the Terror War) and banking/financial complex. Outside the top two tiers of the pecking order, there's Health Care and Prisons (legitimized by the Drug War). Stripped of not-for-profit competition, health care reform appears to be a mammoth giveaway to the insurance industry. Watch premiums rise even faster than the 20% or so that is the norm these days.

Politicians sell their control over regulations, which are channeled to benefit established players, who've cultivated the closest ties to government. Of course there are dire effects from influence-peddling: weakened regulatory standards led to the financial crisis last fall (coupled with plentiful cheap cash from the Fed).

Without greedy hedge fund managers and Citigroup lobbying for an end to Glass-Steagall, the crisis wouldn't have occurred. Neither would have a solution so beneficial to industry been offered as part of the disaster capitalism/opportunism which rose as a result of the regulatory failure. In this respect the response showed how cronyism and corruption dominated both the cause and its solution (which represent nothing more than an expensive band-aid).

There's the General Motors example. Even better is Citigroup, a company that received $308 billion from government as Barack Obama's first act subsequent to his election.

Like so many others, this story never made it to the mainstream press, whhich was busy covering the historic election and euphoria it generated in anticipation of change to come.

The Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone blows open the corruption of the Obama administration in his recent article, titled, "Obama's Big Sellout."

A government that runs on behalf first of corporate stakeholders could be called an oligarchy or fascism. America may not yet be exhibiting the raw ultranationalism associated with fascism, but it's possible we're in a more benign form like Mussolini's definition of fascism. The Italian dictator predicted that a benign form would do well in the US, largely because Americans were uniformed and gullible.

Debt spree

Bad as it is, there's growing government, then there's the current Congress and its spending binge, which is at $1.4 trillion+/year for the foreseeable future. Then there's the private Federal Reserve with all its lending to financial institutions (these far exceeded TARP). Under the Constitution, only Congress has the right to spend our money.

No matter how arrogant or foolish our notions of self-grandeur, we've become a debtor nation, and a bad risk at that. The Chinese dictate with increasing leverage how we spend our money, The recent cash for clunkers was a Chinese invention, not an American idea. Apparently the Chinese wouldn't accept our currency but demanded collateral--in this case the scrap steel from vehicles whose engines had been sabotaged.

Then there's the taxes to pay for wars, wars we don't need, that have next to nothing to do with our security. The 9/11 strikes weren't planned in Afghanistan, but rather Hamburg, we will learn from KSM torture-tainted testimony. They weren't carried out from there but rather from our own shores, with training in Florida.

As a result of overspending, reduced medicare benefits are inevitable. The elderly do vote, so the friends of health insurance company who killed off the public option had better be careful. Then again with Leiberman (I-Insurance Industry) carrying the all-important 60th vote, they may have little to fear.

Reduction in social spending have long been a target of Right-leaning economists. Under the so-called Chicago school, many neoliberals carry Ayn Randian style views about entitlement programs. These ideals led Obama to restrict any health care reform to that which wouldn't incur any deficit--deficit neutral. This stipulation confounds the budget-busting spending for wars without end, which will increasingly compete with a shrinking pool of government funds, unless of course they choose to simply crank up the printing presses, which creates inflation, or what is known as the stealth tax.

The spiral into debt which Americans have entered as individuals and families is repeating itself as a national crisis. Like the debtor, our government knows full well that it's operating beyond its capacity to repay, just like some credit junkie maxing out the credit cards. Then one day, it hits--the day of reckoning, the hitting bottom. It's really no different addiction to addiction.

Like an addict who's been used, we're willing to continue to live in a state of denial. It's easier to let things go then face the truth we've been lied to and manipulated, election-after-election. Meaningful transfers of power rarely happen as Congressmen with campaign war chests bloated with corporate contributions win time after time. Obama used a theme of change which by now has been relegated to throwaway status. I wonder how long politicians will avoid it.

Why is all this so important? Well, we need to mature as a culture, to the point we can understand where we're going to end up. Also, we need to understand that media and the very state of media saturation which we live is not an opportunity to learn, grow, or share, but rather a delusional form of reality avoidance.

Now I'm not going to say obsessing on something or other from time to time will doom us all. I am saying tat we, the American people, need to accept that being unhappy is part of life. We don't need to over-consume. We need to lead a way of life that's sustainable. A big part of rebuilding the social fabric requires warmer, face-to-face, and more real communication than a one-way relationship with personalities in the media.

If we don't change, and let ourselves be led by a group of conglomerates in reducing our lives to the point, as Rachel Corrie put it, that we're nothing more than the choices we make as consumers.

Americans can feel passionate about their communities, and so people may put down their phones and really talk to one another, face-to-face, to deal with problems we face in our communities.

As one example typical throughout the country these days, I noticed schools here in Indiana are facing massive budget cuts. Should cutting education come before other priorities? The state plowed over $500 million into Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Yeah, the Colts are good and all that, but can we afford to shortchange our education in order to build them a stadium?

As a Colts season ticket holder, I remember the previous building, the RCA (Hoosier Dome) as being perfectly adequate. The newer building may be impressive, but did it have to be so big and expensive? (Before you condemn me for my lack of loyalty, let me remind you that I sat through two season when the Colts were 3-13!) But seriously, can't we restrain ourselves--or does everything have to keep getting bigger, or fancier?

If I'm a reactionary, let it be to the ascension of common sense over the unending and unfulfilled quest for happiness that seems to dominate our lives. The latter is unsustainable and the earth is telling us so, as it strains to accommodate the world's replication of the American lifestyle, with its gluttonous appetite for energy and raw resources.

In time, it will have to end: the American lifestyle of bigger cars, bigger houses, and rising standard of living that is. What will kill it? Less consumption is probably the only cure for excess consumption. Maybe Americans will freely choose a lifestyle that's more harmonious with our environment. Maybe we'll have to.

Not just the money

Of course there's the ever growing State, with its ranks of bureaucrats and red tape--the problems the whole Reagan Revolution was supposed to solve. Worse even than all the spending is the lack of accountability for those in power. They can, and do get away with everything we let them get away with--which at this time is everything.

Recent revelations indicate that Blackwater personnel operated alongside the CIA, acting as agents of our government. Of course the use of these mercenaries allows the CIA to circumvent laws and accountability for their actions.

For now, these forces do most of their dirty work across the Rubicon. The Rubicon River distinguished domestic Roman territory with that of the provinces and barbarians. In the modern lexicon, this could be translated as do the nasty over there, rather than back home.

When will the forces that we release on supposed terrorists find their way home? The slaughter at Fort Hood seems to indicate many people associated with the wars we fight abroad will be forever tainted in one way or another. It bears remembering that over 50,000 Vietnam veterans took their lives. Fort Hood was the Army's worst base for suicides, averaging over three per month.

I don't think we have to be scared about what veterans with untreated PTSD will do in our neighborhoods. We could all be the victims of sporadic violence. Instead we should look at the government's blessing of Blackwater/Xe as evidence that the government believes itself beyond the law, and those who act as its agents beyond criticism and moral boundaries.

Look no farther than detainee063, a day-by-day summary of the treatment of a Guantanamo detainee. This torture has been going on for years. We don't know who's responsible, just that bad things transpired. Is it such a leap to think that those same abuses of power might some day make themselves back to our shores. And maybe these acts will be justified not by threat of terror but instead something motivated by a narrow political agenda.

Apparently what Blackwater people do meets with our government's blessing, which purports to act in our name. Exactly who are these shadowy mercenaries operating at the fringe of international legal accountability? Sanctioned by government, whatever these people do will be considered by the world as being done in our name, at our government's bequest.

Confederation vs. federation

Emerging in the rampant spending and naked power grab by the Federal government is a states' right conflict. The states have lost time and time again to the Feds, which isn't perhaps that much of surprise considering the cases are decided in federal courthouses, paid by federal funds, run by Department of Justice attorneys paid with federal taxes, and judges appointed by the President.

Then again I suppose we're supposed to buy into the horribly naive notion that justice can be served apart from the political system controlling it. (This was why the Plame prosecution could go no higher than the Libby conviction--no DoJ can convict the administration to which it belongs. In another Bush-era travesty at the federal level, a number of DoJ attorneys also walked out in protest during the Monica Gooding political appointee scandal. (Federal attorneys are supposed to be above partisan litmus tests as requisites for hiring or advancement. It didn't work that way and seven or more prosecutors lost their jobs due to politically biased performance reports.)

Under the Constitution, states can reject federal control. Federal government operates at the pleasure of the states, not the other way around. Fact is, the Constitution isn't being followed in a myriad of ways. Declaring war without the explicit consent of Congress is but one example.

John C Calhoun, a champion of states' rights, believed the states were the ultimate authority, not the federal government. The 10th Amendment puts it this way:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the State are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The Constitution thereby limits the authority of the Federal Government! This isn't exactly news, but in this Orwellian age (one of universal deceit), that's a fact (truth) worth repeating (constituting a revolutionary act). Remember this fact. Spread it to everyone you know.

How liberating it is to think that we--the people--don't have to give the federal government any powers beyond that granted it by the Constitution. Yet the Constitution does contain a mechanism to change itself, so it's hardly a static document. If we pass an amendment, we add to the Constitution and can thereby abrogate--or lose--rights we previously had not given to the federal government.

Take the 13th amendment, which created the IRS. Why would the people want to be taxed? Well, the 13th amendment was passed not by a democratic vote but through approval of 2/3 of the states, as stipulated in the Constitution. Or was it? A strong case could be made that amendment wasn't passed by the requisite 33 states. Records can't be located indicating the state legislatures in a dozen of those states ever passed the 13th amendment. Congress itself passed it near Christmas, while many of its members were on break.

So if it sounds strange that the Constitution would be altered in order to create a federal tax system, it's because the rules were bent, undemocratically, in order to create a monetary system based on a private banking cartel, the Federal Reserve.

To generate revenue for the bankers, the IRS was created at the same time. Our payments to the Treasury actually go to the Federal Reserve! The interest on the government's debt--our debt--actually goes to the private, for-profit banks who lend our money back to us, through government borrowing.

Without the IRS and a means to tax, it's unlikely that private bankers would be willing to lend to our government, so the two work together, with the IRS providing a reliable stream of income back to the lenders of the people's money. These banks also borrow the most money, for rates of interest subsidized by the Federal Reserve. So they borrow our money from us, and make us pay interest on it. Their profits are the net of what they can borrow for and loan it out, minus losses.

The inadequacies of this system are becoming painfully clear, as trillions in the people's money gets lent to banks through TARP and Federal Reserve discount windows. The big banks meanwhile have been reticent to lend, and instead plow their borrowing back into Treasuries. Government debt provides a low but reliable rate of return for essentially nothing, as the loans extended to them by the Fed come at rates of interest near zero.

So the central banking scam continues. Through devaluation of the dollar/inflation, Americans have lost 96% of their spending power since the creation of the Fed in 1913. Inflation means higher wages, and that allows the IRS to collect more and more revenue, without raising tax rates. Yet as inflation rises, the increase in revenues can't cover the massive interest on our debt, which will rise as interest rates go up to fight the inflation.

More taxes are coming, courtesy a climate crisis declared by Obama just last week. I can't recall the exact wording--and mainstream reports are non-existent--but Obama essentially proclaimed CO2 a threat on a level of terrorism, which grants him essentially unrestrained powers to fight the threat, just like the War on Terror exempts the President from the Constitution and War Powers Act.

Defending the American people is offered as the excuse, but no where in the Constitution does the President have this right to defend the American people, only the Constitution, and therefore the right doesn't exist.

We're headed from a federation to a confederation. As Jefferson said, we the people have the right, not privilege, to reject the form of government we now have. How could it happen? Peacefully, through an Article V convention. A more expedited transition could also come in the wake of collapse of our economy or monetary systems. History indicates that these latter events will bring immeasurable pain and hardship, but often do usher in revolutionary change. Why? Because as a wise man once said, we only change when the pain of change becomes less than the pain of going on as we are.

Government increasingly is as chief source of revenue for many people, and these numbers will climb as economic hardship and growing numbers of elderly demand more out of government. This dependency on handouts creates a general sense of entitlement among the recipients. Already half of us pay no taxes. How many more can fit at the trough, either working for government or being subsidized for it? Eventually an economic system encumbered by too many dependents collapses, as the Soviet Union showed. If the wars and our present spending is to serve a greater good, it will be shrink the time frame between realizing we must change and ignore our financial problems.

A good article on the debasement of our currency titled "Requiem for the dollar" is available in the Wall Street Journal. Note the non-conventional source for the origin of article-it comes from James Grant of Grant's Interest Rate Observer.

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Escalation a liability for Obama

Barack Obama has been consistent in one thing: his policy in Afghanistan. While Obama promised change from Bush-era policies for a lot of things, he was always a hawk on Afghanistan. Swayed by Barack's charisma, many of his followers wrongly assumed that change meant reason in Afghanistan.

Obama did promise a departure from Iraq. If his hawkish position on Afghanistan is a constant, we can hope he'll be equally consistent on Iraq.

Without change, the outcome is clear: more devastation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan is occupied by a rapidly growing American military force while Iraq's appears to be gradually declining, without an exit though. Thanks to the Bush-era SOFA agreement with Iraq, the US military has basing rights and plans to keep 50,000 troops there indefinitely. (The constitutionality of SOFAs in general is questionable as they're de facto treaties with other countries, which must be approved by the Senate-Iraq's wasn't...)

The base where a battle a few months ago in a remote base that took 10 American lives has been abandoned. If they died protecting it, why abandon it? A hallmark of our Vietnam experience was taking then giving up territory. Look at the movie Hamburger Hill for an idea of the impact on morale that kind of fighting strategy made.

Killing from afar is far easier than confronting the enemy up close. Starting in the Gulf war, our military was criticized for fielding a Nintendo-type force, using high-tech weapons far from their targets.

We've expanded the 9/11 retort to include Pakistan, who's ravaged by drone attacks by anonymous triggermen, presumably American operatives in some faraway location. These strikes are said to target terrorists but we have no way of knowing just how many civilian deaths are caused. In this sense, anonymous drone attacks are a convenient accountability-dodging method, one the CIA probably would have loved to have during Vietnam.

Vietnam was marked by low morale, and led to fragging: intentional friendly fire. I can think of no more visible sign of distress within a military than when they start killing each other.

We had the modern equivalent of a fragging occur down at Fort Hood the other day. The alleged shooter Hasan can't be justified in murder, except perhaps in some twisted sense that he was protecting Muslims. Many of the casualties were coming back, not going out, so I don't think he can claim to be protecting Muslims. There have been numerous incidents of Afghan soldiers murdering American and NATO troops in cold blood. Similarly, in VIetnam, many in the South Vietnamese army harbored sympathies for the enemy and contributed to many lost American lives.

Obama's been sold on the mistaken belief that more troops will mean a different result. Obama has raised "N-strength"--Pentagon jargon for the number of troops. Does the equation of N times firepower multiplier equal a number capable of winning the war? And what is the impact of time? How does extending the time frame increase the likelihood of "winning"? I think Vietnam, our longest war prior to Afghanistan, showed that the longer a force occupies a country, the less it's tolerated, and the more nationalistic and pan-Muslim support builds in opposition. Israel's ongoing animosities with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians may give an indication of kind of deep-seated animosity we'll have to contend with, being infidels in a Muslim land.

Discussing the Afghan war with a supporter recently proved a touchy subject. When I said we were losing, he refuted me, saying we were winning. Next, when I asked why we there, my ideological opposite came short of any reason, plan, or goal. How then can the military achieve its goal--to win--if it doesn't have coherent goals?

I'm not going to pigeonhole supporters of the war, saying they're neo-liberals even if they are. Nor will I say that Obama is a pure hawk. Instead I'll say that supporters of escalation in Afghanistan suffer from a lack of good reasons for the actions of their commander-in-chief. Why escalate?

If we'd seen more progress with time, I guess extending our presence would be a positive. But the escalation hints at the inability to achieve our goals, not success, which would encourage a draw-down.

In time the reasons will come, floating to the surface out of stream of sewage regurgitated by the lamestream media. If nothing else, the Washington establishment stage-manages wars, albeit to an audience that appears majority antiwar both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consummate media master, Obama, Axelrod, and his crew of showmeisters will try to repackage the Lie that escalation will help us.

Politically, the escalation is a gamble. The tradeoff for escalating might be swaying Republican voters and Democratic conservatives, who've made their visceral anti-abortion positions known in the recent Health Care Bill.

The Reagan Democrats may be easily convinced that escalation is necessary. But I doubt the Democratic base will rally behind Obama, even if he keeps his promises about Iraq.

Obama thinks he can gain some Republican votes by escalating, but this is true only if the Republican candidate is to the left of Obama on other issues. A socially moderate candidate like a McCain might lose the conservative Democrats to Obama based on the militarist/expansionary position in Afghanistan. A conservative's conservative need not fear Obama's hawkishness, he can always pander ever farther to the right on foreign policy, militarism, and ultranationalism.

Any Republican candidate will endorse militarism/escalation in a rush to grab votes on the Right. The Republicans will try to appear even more hawkish than Obama, no matter how far right he strays.

Closet militarists, DINOs (Democrats-in-Name-Only) will support the escalation. Bothered by Big Government, Reagan Democrats will secretly vote against Obama anyway, based on their predilection to support Republicans in matters of national security.

Limited to a duopoly, the net result of the status quo is a persistent absence of a candidate opposed to escalation. In this regard, the establishment wins--it continues to impose its consensus favoring escalation no matter which of the two candidates are elected. It's kind of like Goldman Sachs--they win no matter who wins.

The protest vote might make a huge impact in 2012 based on disillusion based on Obama's rightward turn after his election. Take out 3-4% for a Nader/McKinney/Paul and perhaps a number of betrayed-feeling liberals sitting out the election and Obama's second term is out. Yet if the Republican candidate is ultranationalist, anti-environment, etc., a Bush, maybe the lesser of evils thing will work in Obama's favor. Personally, from what I know about the Far Left and hardcore libertarians, the protest movement will oppose Obama.

The political winds may have already shifted. Two governorship and a House seat were at stake in recent elections, Republicans won in Virginia and New Jersey. The media played down the significance of the losses but I'm guessing the DNC is worried. The health care bill has provided the Republicans with a lot of ammunition.

Three Democratic Congressmen in Indiana were going to vote against the measure, concerned about the possibility of Federally-funded abortions; an amendment to the bill persuaded Baron Hill (D-In) to vote in favor.

Ellsworth, in the western part of the State, is seeking over a billion dollars for a new terrain I-69 through the southwestern portion of the state. Funding might be jeopardized by the imminent budget shortfall we have, considering the $1.4 trillion deficit we're running. Then again, what another billion of top of that?

I don't expect Obama to win in 2012, and I think the midterms are shaping up into a catastrophe for Democrats. The Democrats' lack of conviction and leadership in foreign policy sends a double message. Unfortunately, a lack of a real antiwar candidate will steer the military industrial complex onward, depleting further our national treasure and sacrificing ever more American lives.

Eventually, we'll have to change our policy in Afghanistan, and downsize or even get out. But we're there because of ignorance and apathy among Americans, and their willingness to surrender our foreign policy to well-established foreign policy lobbies like that of Israel.

Obama's been too Bush-like in the lack of prosecutions on practices like extraordinary rendition. Even if our Courts don't hold participants responsible for the illegal practices like harsh interrogations, other nations can. An Italian court just found 23 American former CIA employees guilty, making them fugitives from justice.

Obama's defended warrant-less eavesdropping, the practice of spying on Americans. We're building massive data warehousing facilities that will track and store communications between Americans, and few people seem to care. If we continue to lose our civil liberties, it'll be because we've offered them up, in exchange for promises of security.


I can understand why many people might support an escalation, but I'll never agree with them. The reasons for disagreeing really don't matter any more. We'll simply have more war, no matter who's in charge. The Washington establishment is too firmly rooted, and the depth of American ignorance and apathy legend.

It's only when things get bad enough that Americans will understand that their government works not for them but for corporations, many of which who thrive off the ongoing death machine that our out-of-control Pentagon has become. Results of these wars will be years in coming and probably financial depravity will be the outcome.

Like all wars before it, the government's overspending will force inflation onto the public, a stealth tax. With inflation, lenders will lose while borrowers--cheif among them the government itself--will be able to repay good money with bad.

Energy prices are headed straight up, thanks to the Carbon Tax and Trade policies that are heading through Congress. Americans will have to use energy more efficiently, or face higher taxes on their consumption of carbon-based energy.

The overspending will eventually manifest into hyperinflation--flooding the world with dollars. Already the dollar has dropped to a multi-year low against other currencies. Spending their dollar reserves, India just bought tons of gold from the IMF. China is awash in dollars. For the first time, they publicly scolded the US on our spending (Reuters). A danger faced by any inter-government lender, the Chinese are rightfully concerned that we'll just print up we owe and send it to them.

Producing far less than we import, our nation is unable to export our way back into prosperity. So we're left to push piles of money around, or work at reduced wages in what's sold as a "service economy." No wonder we're experiencing so much unemployment--by allowing free but unfair trade, foreign competition has gutted our manufacturing sector.

How best to restore the economy? Recently, I saw an idea that we should fully nationalize the banks. Government could loan out at reduced rates directly to the public.

It's been said that for the amount of the TARP loans, we could have bought outright most of our nations' banks. With a staggering amount of derivatives still on the banks' books, nationalization will be a likely solution offered in the event of another collapse. It's doubtful Bernanke/Geithner and whoever might be President could weather a storm like that they had over TARP a second time. The American people wouldn't accept it.

Right now, the banks aren't lending. They're content to sit on billions in Federal debt. Why take the risk of lending if they can make a virtually risk-free 3% or so?

The Federal Reserve has either two ways to go: raise rate or lower them. Raising interest rates gives even more reason to sit on cash and earn more risk-free return. With interest rates near zero, we can't do option #2--lowering them. Maybe we'll end up like Japan, where deposits earn negative interest.

As a consumer economy, we're dependent on lending. Until loans expand, growth can't come except through government spending, which if paid off represents a future transfer of wealth from private control to the public sector, through taxation.

Money gets more expensive in response to scarcity. When more is spent, each dollar buys less. To limit overspending, interest rates need to be higher. That's why the economy is so slow to recover--consumer spending remains down.

To keep a lid on inflation and overspending, money needs a value. An interest rate gives it that. When interest rates are low, there's little incentive to save, so people spend. By increasing interest rates, the opportunity cost for not investing grows. When the opportunity cost of not saving grows, people are less likely to spend.

Savers are rewarded with higher rates but spending has dried up, even with rates near zero. It appears that huge amount of capital in home and stock equity have simply disappeared. And the lack of employment has also minimized the impact of so many billions of dollars flowing into the economy. If the bankers opened their checkbooks, or unemployment were to drop radically, we'd be staring inflation right in the face.

Nationalization might ease the pain, but only momentarily. In time, the banks would become bloated entities, with limited appeal to investors. Look no farther than bankrupt Freddie Mac, which just posted a $5 billion quarterly loss (link). Absent competition, nationalized banks will grow increasingly inefficient, like Amtrak, and require ever more money.

Removing the private bankers won't help long-term, appealing as their demise might sound. Not long after nationalization, Congress would be doling out benefits to various industry groups with the most influence in the capitol. Favorable loans would be extended to politically influential industries.

It's a certainty that Obama's economic policy team--Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers--have determined an acceptable level of unemployment. In business school, the jargon "full employment" is used. Most conservative economist/ free marketeers choose a rate of full employment higher than their more liberal counterparts, so politics plays a role in how economic contractions are defined.

The political goal to gain reelection will affect economic policy, particularly as we approach the elections.

The misery index, a combination of inflation and unemployment, shows just how bad things really are. Whatever Washington might try to spin, the hard economic numbers dictate reality, and it's not pretty.

Sources

Paul Craig Roberts' "Evil Empire."

See the post by Keith Fitz-gerald, "Four Reasons Hyperinflation Hasn't Hit the US...Yet", here.

Antifascist-calling: "Obama Regime: toss NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Lawsuit", here.

Full blast here from Bob Chapman's International Forecaster, "A New System for the Privileged is Not A Remedy for the Economy."

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Emotions, ignorance drive 9/11 wars

Americans' knowledge of international politics is dismal. Ambrose Bierce once said the only good purpose served by war was to teach Americans geography.

Failing to understand international affairs makes Americans vulnerable to the selling of myth, especially one wrapped in the flag. Our leaders, not above manipulating 9/11, used that event as a shock device to instill fear, offering as its sole antidote militarism mixed with patriotism.

Our ignorance makes us prone to the telling of lies by those in positions we trust like ministers and presidents. Blind obedience to government is bound to invite an abuse of power. Our gullibility makes possible the Lie. For that we, the American public, must assume responsibility. We accept what our leaders tell us because we don't know better. Our trust becomes a weapon those we trust use against us.

Part of our gullibility rises from being overworked, part from the exercise of hyper-consumption and -capitalism, which elevate greed into our reason for existing. We work so we have more, not so others have more, though Americans are generous.

In an age of "me," the needs of the nation are easily forgotten. So self-centered we're prone to be that periodic events need to remind us that we have something in common with one another: sinking of the Maine, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, all of which have precipitated wars, which is the perennial method by which Americans come together and by necessity, not choice, learn about the world beyond their borders.

When you have what you want at home, I guess it's easy to get comfortable, and comfortable we've become. Sensing the natural tendency to be indifferent to threats originating outside our borders, Newt Gingrich last year said that we should have reminder attacks: "it's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us."

The suspicious timing behind changes to the color-coded terror threat levels is indicative of how tempted incumbent administrations are to jerk the terror boogeyman. Making matter worse is the willingness of so many to abandon non-partisanship in our foreign policy; before Obama even touched down abroad, his mission has been pilloried many times over by his domestic critics.

Bias and partisanship have marred virtually every policy we now have, especially our foreign policy. Whereas it was considered unpatriotic to question the Bush administration's motives after 9/11, every decision Obama makes is now plagued by internal bickering. Where criticism suits their purposes, the domestic political opposition is willing to undermine the President's overseas agenda.

Whatever I may think about the policies our President endorses, I do understand the need to keep my complaints within the family. Of course anyone who watches America knows we're a melting pots of different opinions--that aspect of our character may in fact make our society stronger and more open to debate, rather than weaker, though some abroad might perceive tolerance that way.

Perhaps we're not so tolerant of each other any more. We've dumbed down politically and know less, and trust our leaders to tell us the truth. Worse, we take differences of political opinion personally, and let them divide us.

Unfortunately all too often Americans are afraid to make their viewpoints know. Rather than discuss our different opinions, we tend to confuse intensity and passion with violence and shy away, or get more aggressive. We can't resolve our differences or work through them. Instead we get into an us vs. them mentality, a problem made especially bad when we need to decide what is best for us all in an international context, in matters like wars and foreign policy. We need to agree to disagree, then keep the debate in the family while we give full support to the President as he goes abroad, even if we don't agree.

Consuming media or being consumed by it

In our media-centric society, celebrities speak for millions who lack the courage and confidence to make their voices heard. We consume news without really digesting it. News has become a matter of convenience, a choice of entertainment options on the media platter. Real news is so much more, knowing the truth a matter of necessity in an age of deceit.

Americans are more likely to believe what they read in the mass media than many other societies. Even the Russians during the communist period were less likely than we are to believe what their government told them. I guess people who've been routinely lied to by their governments grow skeptical in proportion to the gap between what they're told and what they see. During Vietnam this was the Credibility Gap, where reports from the US military about body counts and progress were easily disproved out in the battlefield.

Not all change in the infowars is negative. The Internet, and the prevalence of video recording devices, have made disseminating lies made by governments that much harder. In 1999, for instance, during the infamous WTO riots in Seattle, while authorities claimed no rubber bullets were being used, video was being uploaded in real-time to the Web showing spent rubber bullets lying in a street just outside.

Here's a little quib I found in a MIT report on the Seattle protests:
"Indymedia provided elaborate coverage of the WTO protests.  They did this by disseminating thousands of activists’ videos, photos, recorded interviews and print stories...

"We relied on Indymedia reports and videos as one source among many for our data. While some critics viewed Indymedia as reflecting the point of view of protestors, the conventional media sources reflect the perspective of the dominant order. Indymedia’s critique of mainstream media builds on the ideas of Chomsky (1989) and Habermas (1975) who claim that corporate media’s “truth” corresponds with the interests of corporate sponsors, and that a privatized media cannot serve as a free press.  Without a free press, there is truly no genuine public sphere."

Some of you may have looked to Indymedia.org for footage of the recent protests at the G-20 in Pittsburgh, which involved for the first time use of a Long Range Acoustic Device, more commonly known as a noise gun. See the annotated video here; this site, called G-Infinity, is a production of Indymedia's Pittsburgh site.

Like the Seattle protests, an information war was occurring beyond the reach of cameras. Photographers and videographers are targetted during these protests, as stemming the flow of real-time information is a major goal for the authorities.

Perhaps you saw coverage of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in 2008 (blogged it here.) During that event, people who dared film the events were pepper sprayed and subjected to police harassment. In the more recent Pittsburgh event, many University of Pittsburgh students were caught up in mass arrests. These police actions are designed to funnel protestors and bystanders alike into cordons from which they can't escape. Then, when told to disperse, they're choked by chemical agents for "failing to comply."

Most of Middle America probably doesn't care. They don't attend protests, and are quite content to be docile, at least until their jobs or health are threatened. I guess I'm particularly focused on demonstrations simply because I know the mass media won't cover the stories. The conglomerates don't want to reveal anything that might expose the myth that our wars are vital to our security.

While mainstream media did show miniscule clips of the events in Pittsburgh, becoming aware of what was really happening is only possible through alternative media. Unlike all the marketing-laced banter that fills our mainstreams and attention, the real stories like Pittsburgh aren't delivered to the viewer. You have to work to find them on the Web.

No corporation has a vested interest pinning their name to such coverage--potential advertizers might bolt. Improving the quality of coverage doesn't do much to boost sales. American viewerships are based on celebrity worship, not grim realities. So real stories are relegated to limited viewership on some obscure websites like mine.

If Americans don't make an effort to get informed, chances are they won't understand what's really happening to their society and world. As busy as they are, many are hard-pressed to make a healthy meal, much less scour the Web for some story that may not affect them personally. Same with our endless wars of occupation in southwestern Asia--unless you've got a love one in harm's way, you don't have to care; flip the channel and let someone else worry about it.

Some Americans are almost militant in their observance of ignorance; anti-intellectualism is rife. They'd prefer to live in a bubble insulated from ugly realities--I guess we all would. Discovering the Bug Lie entails leaving your comfort zone, and reconciling patriotism and duty with fact and necessity.

Somehow to make our democracy work, we need informed Americans. That commitment simply isn't there, largely because Americans are too busy working to see the big picture. Failing their responsibilities, Americans put their trust in their leaders whose populist rhetoric comforts them. The remedy for Americans too busy to care, or become informed, has been Barack Obama.

Obama the savior

The President just won the Nobel Peace Prize for diplomacy, a curious achievement considering the scale of wars he oversees as the nominal commander of our military forces. (I say nominal because the Pentagon seems to have differing views on escalation in Afghanistan. In London, General McChrystal spoke out on the need for escalation. The White House has been backpedaling since then, and internal policy discussions have supposedly been going on for weeks.)

The young turned out in droves for Obama, soaking up his spiel that he would bring change. Obama's candidacy was often expressed as a sign that American politics had moved beyond race; a black candidate could be accepted. Even bringing up the subject of Obama's race was considered racist by many of his supporters. Now in office, many of his supporters are eager to reach for the ubiquitous "race card" when the President is criticized.

Part of the Obama mistake has emerged from the idea that the President is and should be at the center of our politics. Maybe the President should be less involved in the day-to-day issues in our society. Perhaps Americans no longer see much benefit in getting disconnected, but rather value hyperconnectivity 24/7, 365 days a year. Look no farther than endless cell calls, about things that really aren't worth the time, about media-generated hype meant to sell some product or point of view. We're surrounded by it-can we escape it?

Now we wouldn't want our President to be out-of-touch, but sometimes that can help the human brain sort things out, a sort of mental vacation that allows time for the brain to catch up with the speed and sheer volume of information we receive.

Obama may be too in touch. He's intelligent enough, for sure, but no man can possibly be our guide, or substitute for our lack of time and meditative capacity. Americans are on the whole a shallow people, whose collective psyche is more built around the illusion on our TVs than any sense of shared values.

The real question as our society matures is if we can elevate individuality beyond the needs of the group. We know Americans embrace all the pleasures that come with being free, but can they handle the heavy responsibilities required to preserve a higher standard of living?

There's this notion of sacrifice. Obama even brought the word up, referencing the "sacrifice" made by terror victims on 9/11. The quote made on the anniversary of 9/11 did raise eyebrows, and references to it on the Web have since been stricken. It's like he never said it at all, jettisoned to the Memory Hole courtesy broken links and the infamous Http:404 Not Found error, the end-all for any story in cyberspace if it hasn't been archived.

Making sacrifices is different from being a sacrifice. Sure, we all understand the need for heroes--another loaded term--to give up their lives and freedom for us Americans, so we can have a better world. But when it comes time to make a sacrifice, most Americans think about giving up eating out, or some other mundane inconvenience.

The idea that people are routinely sacrificed is actually Mayan. Obviously the 9/11 victims weren't consenting, so in this respect they've been mislabeled as heroes and patriots.

The idea of their passing for something better than consoles the living, who must bear some sense of survivor guilt. If the 9/11 victims gave their lives for nothing, then I guess the terrorists "win."

I guess the idea of an all-seeing Supreme Leader comforts us in times of trouble. As I've written here over the years, Bush set the dangerous precedent as "The Decider" and emperor upon whose judgment we were led to believe we could depend. The Washington establishment went along, deluded by the false patriotism and militarism spawned by the reaction to 9/11. Rather than thinking about 9/11 objectively, we were encouraged to believe that it was bin Laden and the Arabs. We blamed the Taliban in Afghanistan exclusively, despite evidence that the Saudi government was involved in helping the hijackers.

The government had foreknowledge of the pending attacks, judging from Atta coming up on the Army's radar through Able Danger and the title of Bush's August 2001 briefing "bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.." Yet Americans don't see what they don't want to see. If studying the attacks means entertaining that notion that the government was lying, then a good proportion of Americans would simply not believe in the possibility of 9/11 truth being anything other than what the government tells them.

People weren't the only thing sacrificed in the attacks. Facts, scientific truth, and reason itself were sacrificed in the hate-filled rage that consumed the public reaction. We really haven't had our wits since the attack. We're running a financial deficit largely because of wars that were rationalized by the attacks. It's worth remember that Osama Bin Laden, not wanted by the FBI for the attacks, sought to destroy America economically and they've done a good job of it, assisted of course by our own thirst for vengeance in an unfilled, endless quest for emotional release.

Our leaders urged action. Emotions, particularly fear, became marketing tools. It was easier to sanctify violence against the alleged perpetrator than it was to investigate.

A rational explanation for fires raging for months below the ruined tower, without oxygen, suggesting nano-thermite, was suppressed. Never mind that the Taliban offered bin Laden after 9/11, or that the CIA shut down the bin Laden unit. Disregard WTC 7's free-fall speed, anything else that might not jibe with the idea the culprits were unassisted and the attacks planned in Afghanistan, a justification still used today to continue the occupation there. This disregards what we know: Atta's cell planned the attacks in Hamburg, Germany and they were trained not in some cave in Afghanistan but in Florida.

Ignore also the huge natural resources that lie under Afghanistan, or the fact Karzai and RIce were on Unocal's board, and actively pursued a pipeline deal through the country. None of the facts mattered. Instead revenge took the place of reason, and base instincts ruled the day--and still do, despite the pleas of some of the 9/11 victims' survivors like Amber Amundson. Instead of forgiving, we've chosen to stretch our initial reaction into an open-ended occupation.

Failing to find al Qaeda--not a surprise if they didn't coordinate 9/11--we opted to go after those that reputedly gave them safe harbor, the Taliban. Denied their rights in a system of military tribunals designed to produce convictions, few Gitmo "enemy combatants" have been successfully prosecuted--the majority have been released. The lack of successful prosecutions suggests not only a lack of evidence--derived from coerced testimony or not--but also al Qaeda's limited size, raising doubts as to their ability to pull off 9/11 independent of any outside help.

Trying to justify continued incarceration regardless of guilt or innocence, Congress has passed a law that would keep Gitmo inmates out of the US, where they could make public all the egregious acts committed against them in America's gulag system. Instead, batches are quietly sent home, or to nations where they won't be tortured (it turns out many were enemies of their home regimes and given over to us for that reason, not any involvement in al Qaeda, "the toilet" in Arabic.)

The failure to grasp the truth that our government knew--that 9/11 was allowed to happen--has produced unconditional acceptance of whatever our government tells us, in the name of our security. It's as if Americans are like children who believe what their parents tell them. In that Alice in Wonderland existence we may find some temporary relief, wrapped in a bubble of presumed safety, but the grasp of an ever-growing State will eventually feel like that of a wraith, seizing more power and taking more of what we have through taxes and inflation. As long as we're dependent on the State, we'll never really find a way out of our current predicament, which depends more on interdependence and coexistence than trying to impose our will overseas or increase State power.

It's no wonder that we now find ourselves stuck in ground wars in Asia, a folly military scientists told us to avoid after the experience of Vietnam. Obama debates, and the generals preen on, demanding more boots, which we knows aren't boots at all, but souls. How many more must we sacrifice before Americans realize they've been misled by the government, given a false pretext? 3000 of us have been sacrificed, but do we do all this to honor them, or to placate our burning desire for vengeance? How many more Afghans and Pakistanis and Iraqis have to die?

Ghandi said an eye for eye would leave the world blind. Martin Luther King lamented the cycle of violence, recognizing the futility of trying to end hate by creating more hate. As many peoples have discovered firsthand throughout the previous wars, violence doesn't solve anything. Yes, anger might be temporarily mollified, but at what cost? We will likely be forced to react to yet another terror strike in the future, one likely generated by our forceful occupation. And contrary to what our government tells us, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. There are plenty of so-called Taliban who have nothing against the American people but simply want us to leave. What if we were occupied by a foreign power--wouldn't you resist, too?

In leaving them alone, we might be left alone. In asking for forgiveness and going home, we'll be performing an act construed as weakness by some (who hate us anyway), but an act of strength by others, those we need to win over.

Accepting the need to change is a harder exercise than continuing to do what's wrong. Until we Americans can come to grips with the truth, that 9/11 no longer justifies what we're doing over there, and that we need to launch a full investigation to find the real culprits, this travesty of justice will go on, and our country will suffer economically and depreciate morally.

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