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Commentary - November 3, 2004
The Government the US Deserves
by NY Transfer News
No one can say anymore that they despise the US Government but not its
people. Not when at least 50% of its people have apparently voted for Bush
and handed him an enhanced Senate majority. It's time for the world to
give up the comfortable illusion that the government of the United States
somehow does not represent the majority of the US population.
Let's face facts: George W Bush isn't governing entirely alone.
- - The US Congress voted for the Patriot Act almost unanimously in 2001.
- - The US Congress voted to give Bush the authority to "threaten" Iraq
with
force. What did they think he was going to do with that authority? Did
they all have amnesia about the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the fact that
an attack on Iraq had been expected for years, well before 9/11?
- - The pundits and the news media sup****ted Bush's wars on Afghanistan
and
Iraq, without breathing a word of the CIA's history in either country. To
cite just one example, The New York Times -- now on its self-righteous
high horse -- pandered wantonly to the Bush administration, permitting
their Mossad-serving re****ters Chemical Judy Miller and Michael Gordon to
recite the government's whoppers about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
and the fantasies of the CIA-sup****ted Iraqi exiles. The media
credulously transcribed Colin Powell's February, 2003 dog-and-pony show at
the UN, treating his show-and-tell visual aids as serious evidence,
despite the extreme skepticism of the international diplomatic community
and UN weapons experts' testimony, which contradicted all of it.
- - Large numbers of citizens in the United States have voluntarily joined
the military. Economic draft or not, they *chose* to serve the army of the
empire. They have sold themselves for a job, for educational benefits and
in the case of some besotted immigrants, for legal residency and
accelerated US citizen****p.
- - Members of the military continue, for the most part, to show up for
duty
and to serve in Bush's war. Military resistance is minuscule.
- - Members of the US intelligence community, who now profess such shock
and
horror at the way their analytic re****ts were misrepresented, said
*nothing* about it when Bush and Rice delivered outrageous lies about
Iraq's nuclear capability, alleged bioweapons, and the Niger yellowcake
fairytale. The few brave whistleblowers who've spoken out about the 9/11
lies, FBI incompetence and government deception on Iraq are left to twist
in the wind because after all, speaking out means one might lose one's
job, or be criminally investigated or persecuted by the empire. "Courage"
must therefore wait until they retire or find a sinecure in academia or
snag a good book contract.
- - Throughout the population, no matter what their politics, the vast
majority of US citizens continue to pay their taxes.
The Election of 2004
Kerry would be a Band Aid on the open sore, but Bush will destroy the
empire faster. His very meager win, if it turns out to be that, is no
mandate and will keep discontent festering here, especially as he
dismantles all social welfare programs that survived Clinton's
surplus-economy "reforms," destroys what remain of the civil liberties
guaranteed in the US Constitution and drives the US economy into the dirt.
The Democrats deserve to lose for their cynical pursuit of "electability"
and their recoiling from anything approaching genuine political passion.
Kerry's op****tunistic sabre-rattling (in contravention of his real record,
which isn't all that terrible) was reprehensible. But the "democratic"
wing of The One Party with Two Names is haunted by the ghost of George
McGovern, and Winning is Everything.
There is no real opposition to US policies here, and if there were, the
electorate would not vote for it. This is especially true in the case of
the mealy-mouthed Liberals of the MoveOn.org/Nation Magazine variety, who
don't want real change. They don't want to lose their own upper class
perks, to give up their SUVs, to lose their foundation grants from the
likes of George Soros and the Ford Foundation, to stop collecting
dividends on their investment ****tfolios. They want to be comfortable --
materially and morally. "Progressives" smugly substitute Third World
Reality Tourism for the difficult work of real revolutionary activism
needed here at home. They shrink from the radical changes needed. That's
why they work for causes like Anyone But Bush -- anyone, that is, who
won't shake up the status quo. That's why they embraced the "war hero
Kerry," and didn't condemn him for turning his back on the VVAW Kerry, the
one who told the truth in 1971.
The idea that more voter participation would result in more responsible
policies is revealed to be an illusion. More people registered and voted
this year than in decades. The result was simply a larger split
electorate. There is no reason to believe that even if every last paper
ballot is counted, the outcome would be any different. In all probability,
the result would be, to quote John Kerry, "more of the same," in larger
numbers.
Unfortunately, before things change, the people of the US must experience
more poverty, more repression, more unemployment, worse health care,
poorer education, more hunger and a lot more body bags.
The Rogue State and the World
As we said four years ago, things must get a lot worse here before they
get better -- and George W Bush has made things so much worse, so fast,
even we're astonished. In a second term, his ruinous incompetence and
greed can only encourage revolt here in the US -- before he causes too
much more damage to other countries, we hope.
Though It may mean that we progressives will become a lot less comfortable
personally as civil liberties go down the tubes, this election outcome may
not be the worst result for the planet as a whole. It *may* result in a
more-rapid collapse of the evil empire, saving countless lives around the
globe. (See: "Why Bush May Well Be he Lesser Evil," by Gabriel Kolko,
Sept. 13, 2004
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040913/006225.html)
But only if the international community faces the truth and has the
courage to take the risky steps needed to move things along. The world
community of nations should institute a total boycott of the United States
of America -- politically, culturally and economically.
The United States must continue to be more and more isolated by the
international community. This may be an unpleasant prospect but it is
necessary. The US government must become the pariah it deserves to be.
International investment in and profits from the US must cease. OPEC
countries should immediately refuse to accept US dollars for their oil and
begin trading in any other currency. The United Nations should condemn
this country, and impose international sanctions on the United States. The
UN should withdraw from the territory of the US and relocate its
headquarters elsewhere.
The USA is a rogue criminal state and the world should unite in saying so.
Scary? You bet. No one wants the USA's vengeful missiles pointed at them.
But US aggression against Iraq and Bush's "war on terror" has shown how
vulnerable the US really is, how difficult it will really be for them to
wage war on the entire world with help from only a decrepit ex-empire
(England), one rogue criminal ally (Israel) and a few pathetic client
states (i.e., the Marshall Islands).
Yes, it's frightening and dangerous to confront the bully. We're
especially concerned about Cuba, and the Cuban government obviously
believes it matters whether Kerry or Bush wins. Bush and his handlers are
idiot enough to attempt an invasion, despite the poor state of the US
military and the fact that it would be an expensive, bloody and ultimately
unsuccessful quagmire, but if they need a distraction the Bush regime may
take it. However, the Cubans have much more sup****t internationally --
especially in Latin America -- than they ever have before. Many developing
countries have now seen and experienced the illusions of "democracy and
development" and "free trade" for what they really are -- the plundering
of their resources, from their oil to their water supply, enslaving their
people to safeguard the obscene profits of transnational cor****ations,
keeping their governments under the threat of ever-higher unpayable debt
and depriving them of sovereignty through the IMF, the World Bank and the
WTO.
The world must take the risk of courageously confronting the planet's one
superpower. The peoples of the earth must be willing to recognize and
relinquish the delusional dream that they, too, can someday achieve the
insup****table level of luxury the US has enjoyed for 50 years. They can't
- -- the planet will not sup****t it. The oil supply is running out, and
all
the wars in the world won't change that. Inside the US, the economy must
implode, with all the suffering of "innocent Americans" that may entail.
Now is the time to push the US over the edge. The willfully ignorant and
infantile US population must face the imminent collapse of their own
selfish, blind consumerism. They must be forced to see that their
government is using genocidal military aggression and ecocidal policies to
ensure their creature comforts. The time for perpetual war and limitless
venal corruption in the service of eternal greed has run out.
The Enemy Is Us
In the Sixties, we optimistically thought change might really happen, but
it didn't because the forces of evil learned more from the Sixties than
the forces for decency in the US. A year after the USA's devastating
military defeat in Vietnam, Jimmy Carter walked down Pennsylvania Avenue
and threw open the doors of the "Justice" Department. There seemed to be
hope.
Instead, Americans ridiculed Carter's efforts to reduce the country's
wasteful consumption of energy and his timid attempts to promote "human
rights." They sup****ted CIA and Pentagon programs against the Guatemalan
people, El Salvador's FMLN, the Sandinista revolution; they were
indifferent to the anti-Soviet campaign of sup****t for Islamic
fundamentalism in Afghanistan, and US efforts to prop up the dictator****p
of the Shah of Iran. By November 4, 1979 when the "brave" 52 hostages were
seized in Iran, they were pumped up and applauding when they heard "bomb,
bomb Iran" on the radio. The CIA suppressed the good drugs of the Sixties
and the people gobbled up cocaine, the productivity drug. The underclass
took refuge in crack and abandoned the Black Panther Party. Jerry Rubin
became an entrepreneur, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden took a good-will tour of
Israel, and Abbie Hoffman committed suicide. People "grew up," got jobs,
joined the investor class, went to suburbia and started collecting
possessions that they then wanted to protect at all costs. The revolution
was over.
We said it in the Sixties, but then it was forgotten. It's time to say it
again, and mean it this time. The global situation may finally be dire
enough to make it happen: "Bring the War Home."
Copyright (c) 2004 NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
http://tania.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041101/008451.html
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