Empire - Capital Has A New Face In America
Today is the 4th of July. The country is in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression of the 1930’s. Nobody near where I live is shooting off fireworks. Normally there are fireworks blasting off in the neighborhood for days around here before the 4th. This year almost none. It is as if people are simply not feeling like there is anything to celebrate.
Oh the President is pumping out his message that prosperity is right around the corner and I guess someone somewhere is feeling the effects of his stimulus package, but here in California, the state is broke, the city has over 10% unemployment and I am feeling lucky just to have a job even if I am making less than I did 3 years ago.
There is a police helicopter circling the neighborhood. I see more squad cars on the streets now than ever before, I guess if I owned something that would make me feel better. Crime is down. I think criminals are depressed too.
The country is facing some pretty great choices and I guess it is better to have a smart man in the office rather than a buffoon. but there is no way getting around it, we are not in a happy days are here again period. We are in the shelter from the storm period. All I can hope is that human solidarity wins out over tribalism. When things get tight people tend to pull back into the family units they feel most comfortable with. Let us hope there is enough idealism to envision a brighter tomorrow and enough realism to get us there with the least amount of human misery.
Obama is asking us to swallow the pill of green house emission caps. That is good for the world. The problem is how to spread the cost equitably. It is industry and the leaders who in their short sighted vision have led us into this mess. By encouraging consumerism, pushing the environmental cost down the road and not dealing with the consequences, they left us with an environmental bill that has come due. There is a feeling that the party is now finally over.
The plan for Cap and Trade is simply to put into effect a world wide system for dumping the trash more efficiently in the third world. It has to look fair to get the Chinese and Indians to go along. They will be included in the plan. I just wonder what poor sucker nations in Africa and South America and Central Asia will be stuck with the worlds crap, that will be the trade, we will bribe them into taking our crap, or force them to become the oxygen tank for the rest of the world so we can all breathe. Air is to become a commodity just like water. Capitalism is going to love going Green. It means more money for the rich and more impoverishment for the rest of us.
Healthcare is finally being brought to the attention of the nation as a major issue because the cost of saving the lives of rich people has gotten so expensive that it is becoming impossible for the poor to pay for it any more. So the government wants to spread the cost to everyone and the rich are afraid that they will be stuck with the same level of care as the average person. When they speak of rationing, it is nothing new for poor and working people, we have are health care rationed all the time. We pay for the rich people to get top care all the time. The rich are afraid the government will make them get the same care as the rest of us. That is what they mean when they talk about socialism. Obama doesn’t really want to make health care the same for all Americans, he simply wants to come up with a plan that will make it a little more cost effective by cost effective, he means cost effective for the ruling class to have workers that don’t break down so easily. This is not about socialism, it is about making us the people subsidize the rich in a new more efficient manner.
Republicans would still like to convince us that we can still have our cake and eat it too. They will try to play the old game of making the rest of the world pay for Americans to play, as if it is our god given right to enjoy a lifestyle that is profligate and wasteful.
There are fundamentalist preachers who tell us it is our right to enjoy prosperity. Oh sure give a little tithe to the church and they will give a couple of starving Africans a couple of pieces bread and sell them used American clothing at a profit and that is supposed to make everything ok. That is part of the Religious right and Republican alliance message. We will bomb the daylights out of anyone who dares oppose us and then send in the church to feed and proselytize about Jesus to the survivors. You want to eat, then pray. That is how the game works. Good cop, bad cop.
Now Obama is taking the game to a new level of sophistication. He is playing the good cop as opposed to the previous governments bad cop. It is the same game, just stepped up to a more sophisticated level. Confuse them with an ethnic seeming ruler. One of the masses, one who just happens to be a Harvard Graduate and former professor of Law. Is he likely to be a salt of the earth type? Hardly, but he has the right skin color and perhaps he can convince the average third world-er that perhaps this is a new America. This is a kinder gentler America that is only going to bomb the hell out of the truly deserving bad guys. So if you get hit by a drone with a bomb in the middle of the night while sleeping after a day of herding sheep or raising corn, you can bet your blown up ass that this president agonised over it before giving the go ahead. Not like that son of a bitch before who laughed when he gave the thumbs down.
Same empire, same bombs, same targets, same troops, just a different face at the control switch. The machine of the Empire still works just as well. Only with a new paint job. Compassionate killers run the show now.
Happy Independence Day America.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Achmed Rumor must have taken smart pill.
July 6th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Gee thanks noble commentator. I have just finished giving the Dems under Obama the benefit of the doubt. Their grace period is over in my book.