The irony that is most gagging
is that America's power elite is destroying the nation's social order by its
concentration of wealth and abuse of power.
The irony of the Deep State's
obsessive focus on "Russian meddling" in the precious bodily fluids
of our hallowed democracy is so overwhelming that it's gagging. The irony is a
noxious confluence of putrid hypocrisy and a comically abject terror at the
prospect that the citizenry may be awakening to the terrible reality that
America has lost its soul as well as its democracy.
The foul stench of hypocrisy arises from the long and sordid history of
America's meddling in the internal politics of virtually every nation on the
planet-- a deeply entrenched policy of meddling
on such a vast scale that the Deep State minions tasked with projecting a
wounded astonishment that some foreign power has the unmitigated gall to
attempt to influence our domestic politics must have difficulty restraining
their amusement.
America's foreign policy is one
of absolute entitlement to influence the domestic affairs and politics of every nation
of interest, which to a truly global empire includes every nation on the planet
to the degree every nation is a market and/or a potential threat to U.S.
interests.
Assassination
of elected leaders--no problem. Funding the emergence of new U.S.-directed
political parties--just another day at the office. Inciting dissent and discord
to destabilize regimes--it's what we do, folks. Funding outright
propaganda--one of our enduring specialties. Privatizing public assets to
reward our cronies and domestic corporations--nothing's more profitable than a
public monopoly transformed into a privately owned monopoly.
(If your
nation hasn't been targeted for intervention and campaigns of hard and soft
power influence, we apologize for the oversight. We'll get to destabilizing
your political order and economy just as soon as the queue of pressing
interventions clears a bit.)
One of our most effective means of meddling is economic. First we press
the targeted foreign government and civilian power centers--universities,
corporations, banks and other institutions--to liberalize the economy and
banking system to allow foreign credit and investment in, under the guise of
encouraging beneficial development.
Then we
flood the economy with cheap, abundant credit, first to buy up natural
resources and the most valuable assets, and secondly to fuel a consumption
binge that feels like Utopia to credit-starved residents and enterprises:
suddenly there's credit to buy almost everything consumers could hope for, and
credit to expand production, tourism, etc.
The
government is encouraged to borrow to fund large-scale infrastructure projects
(which are of course built by foreign firms) and other development projects,
with great big slices of the borrowed billions carved off for politicos,
functionaries and others in line for bribes, fees and offshore accounts of
stolen millions.
This
monumental expansion of debt eventually undermines the nation's currency and
its economy, as the addictive gush of credit quickly moved beyond sensible, productive
projects into speculative ventures with little prospects beyond the initial
profits earned by insiders.
As all
these marginal projects default, the credit spigot is suddenly shut off, and
waves of creditors who thought the good times would last forever go bankrupt.
This destabilization was not an unfortunate side-effect--it was the goal
from the start. With the target nation's currency in a freefall and
enterprises defaulting left and right, U.S. firms flush with U.S. dollars and
banks with nearly unlimited lines of credit in dollars swoop in and offer to
ease the pain by scooping up devalued assets for dollars, or extending credit
denominated in dollars.
Compared to the scale of these
interventions, $100,000 in Facebook adverts is like a pin prick. The indignation and
outrage of America's power structure is a tell:how dare you give us a taste of
our own medicine--only we're entitled to meddle and intervene as we see fit.
The other source of pungent
irony is the failure of America's power structure to maintain the pretense of a
functioning democracy and social contract. The nation we inhabit has strayed
so far from the nation's founding principles and values that it is
unrecognizable. In place of democracy, we have a permanent unelected,
impervious-to-the-people Deep State and a pay-to-play system in which political
power is auctioned off to the highest bidder.
A
mercantile nation that sought to protect sea lanes and trade routes and avoid
foreign entanglements has metastasized into an entitled Imperial Project, a
Project that enriches domestic corporations and veritable armies of national
defense / national security functionaries, think tank and university employees,
philanthro-capitalist toadies, media factotums--a nearly endless profusion of
beneficiaries of Imperial aspirations.
America's power elite isn't just entitled to intervene and meddle at
will globally; it also feels entitled to select America's elected leadership. Elected leaders
are anointed in the media, and the citizenry is expected to march to the
drumbeat.
That the
people failed to follow the directives of their betters was a shock that is
still reverberating, hence the power elite's hysterical need to locate a source
other than the power elite itself that can be publicly blamed and crucified.
Projection is a well-known
psychological coping mechanism. That the loss of the nation's democracy and soul are the
direct consequence of the self-serving power elite's own concentration and
abuse of power--this is unacceptable. And so the responsibility must be pinned
on some external demonic force.
The irony is the American social contract is in tatters due to the
self-enriching extremes of the New Gilded Age: an era of
unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power in which the citizenry has been
reduced to dry tinder awaiting a spark.
Washington
and the technocrats are aghast at reports that the opportunistic efforts of
Russia-based groups to sow discontent ended up generating 300 million
impressions says more about the corruption and abuses of power that have
undermined the social order than it does about the diabolical effectiveness of
amateurish front groups.
If the U.S. wasn't a nation of haves
and have-nots, a nation stripmined by the few at the expense of the many, a nation befuddled by a
grotesquely Orwellian media that goes into full propaganda mode if its
group-think is questioned, a nation that until recently lauded tech giants
whose profits flow exclusively from advertising aimed at users whose engagement
is encouraged by just the sort of
divisive, emotionally disturbing "news and opinion" that the Russian
groups paid for--if the U.S. wasn't a
rotten-to-the-core fake-news, fake-recovery, fake-democracy nation, then the
modest efforts of the Russian interlopers would have been lost in a sea of
legitimacy and authenticity.
The irony that is most gagging is that
America's power elite is destroying the nation's social order by its
concentration of wealth and abuse of power, yet this power elite claims a handful of social
media sites undermined our democracy. How pathetic is that?
The correct question to ask is: what
democracy?
Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian
government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot
box, the nation is a democracy in name only.
My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.
My new book Money and Work Unchained is $9.95 for the Kindle ebook and $20 for the print edition.
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