The French have a wonderful expression which is hard to translate into English:fuite en avant. This expression can roughly be translated as “flight forward”, or “headlong rush”, “panic-induced compulsion to further exacerbate a crisis or calamity” or even “unconscious mechanism that causes a person to throw himself/herself into a dreaded danger”. No matter how one translates this expression, it is painfully obvious that this is exactly what took place in yesterday’s elections in the USA: a sickening, disgusting electoral fuite en avant.
Only an thorough analysis of the many decades of immoral and incompetent political rule by both Parties could truly explain what happened yesterday, but even a look at the comparatively recent acceleration into chaos and debacle is already a good indicator of the causes of the current disaster.
Bush (I am talking about “Junior” here) and Obama will enter the history books as the two President who totally and shamefully squandered a truly historical opportunity to achieve otherwise impossible results.
Following the events of 9/11 the entire world united behind the USA in an absolutely unprecedented show of sympathy and support for the USA. This was when the French socialist newspaper “Le Monde” had a headline saying “Nous sommes tous des Americans” (We are all Americans) and one million people demonstrated in the streets of Tehran to express their heartfelt support for the victims of the tragedy in New York. It took the Neocon’s boundless arrogance, imperial hubris, crude illiterate “cow-boy” “diplomacy”, xenophobic nationalism and narcissistic condescension to alienate the entire planet to never heard of before levels of anti-Americanism. Following eight years of such horror, the world naively mistook Obama for a quasi-messiah, the man who would somehow change it all and bring back an old USA (which never really existed, but nevermind that).
Obama (who had campaigned on an explicit promise to double the size of the US special operations forces and to increase of the US Army by 4 divisions!) was even given a Nobel Peace Prize before having actually done anything at all. Yet literally from day one, Obama back-stabbed his voters by betraying almost every promise he had made. The “yes we can!” and “change you can believe in!” brand salesman turned into an ugly and equally evil “Bush the Third” kind of President: a puppet of Wall Street, a puppet of the Israel Lobby, a puppet for the military-industrial complex, a puppet for the billionaires, a puppet for Big Pharma and Big Oil – a puppet for everything which is destroying the USA as a country and makes it hated by the rest of the planet. So one can hardly blame the American public for being “angry with Washington”. But what is sickening is not the public’s anger, but what it chose to do with this anger.
If the Republicans are quite literally the party of open and unapologetic evil, then the so-called “Tea Party” is the militantly lunatic faction of that already quite demented party. I am not referring to all the policy “solutions” which the Tea-Partiers are advocating here, but to the kind of illiterate, ignorant, angry and frightened base instincts which they appeal to. This is Bush’s nationalism, only squared. This is Reagan’s “government is the problem”, only pushed to even more absurd extremes (“Obamacare” is described as “socialism” by people who have absolutely no concept of what the word “socialism” means!). While originally the Tea Party did have some real libertarian roots, it was rapidly co-opted and fully taken under control by the behind-the-scenes “Big Business” (the Koch brothers, Carl Rove, etc.). Just like Hitler used illiterate morons for his SA, so will US Big Business use the “Tea Partiers” as the stormtroopers to further weaken the state and strengthen the corporate control over the USA.
All this really begs the question of how stupid Americans really are, does it not?
The truth is that stupidity does not explain what is going on. Sure, the entire propaganda structure of the US society (from a lobotomizing school system, to 4+ hours of TV exposure each day, to an almost overt cult of ignorance and illiteracy – many did vote for Dubya, remember?) has greatly contributed to the “stupidification” of the American public. But that’s only part of the story. What is no less important is the absolute moral bankruptcy of the US society.
Think about it: this is a society which suffers from what a friend of mine calls an “acute compassion deficit disorder”. This country has the highest per capita ratio of people in prison and male rape is considered an unofficial but widely accepted form of torture for prisoners and most Americans think: screw them! They deserve it. Obey the law and you will not be raped. This country has an immense population of homeless and poor, many of whom hold one or several jobs, and what do most Americans think? Screw them! They are welfare bums! Medical problems are one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcy and homelessness? Screw them! We don’t want “socialist” healthcare in our “free” nation! The world hates the USA? Screw it! We brought these ungrateful bastards freedom and prosperity and they hate us? We will kick their sorry asses! Etc. etc. etc. This is the kind of ideology which permeates the ideological fabric of this ugly society.
Mind you, the very same people who mindlessly parrot all these slogans will also show a lot of sincere generosity and compassion towards their fellow-citizens when they see them. Primarily, this “compassion deficit disorder” is an ideological phenomenon, not an expression of an individual morality. But then, the vast majority of Germans during WWII also retained their individual sense of decency and compassion, its collectively that they acted like vicious beasts.
Americans even display this blinding ideology to “screw” themselves. Just look at the State of California in which a proposition to legalize marijuana was defeated. California is completely bankrupt, its jails are over-filled many times over, and weed is smoked all over the state. Anybody sane would therefore conclude that 99.99999% of Californians would agree to legalize marijuana, tax it and thereby take away the profits from the drug dealers and place them into a dying state. But no – Californians voted to keep their jails filled with non-violent offenders, to keep the drug trade up and running, to keep their state bankrupt and to have the Federal authorities further raid the providers of medical marijuana (which is legal under state law). How stupid can anybody get?!
You want another example? Florida is a state totally devastated by promoters of urban sprawl, rabid and unplanned growth, and by a massive – and probably irreparable – destruction of Florida’s water supply (no, not for drinking, but for watering golf courses and providing cheap water for industry). And yet, Floridians soundly *defeated* a proposition which was supposed to give them the right to vote on any changes to local comprehensive land use plans (Proposition 4). Yes, Floridians voted *not* to have such rights. How stupid can anybody get?!
One thing is clear: the immense disillusion with Obama has resulted in a devastating backlash into a new era of triumphant Fascism and lunacy. For the rest of the world, this basically means, more of the same, only worse.
At a time when banks are hoarding their assets and credit is dead, the US government will not inject more money into the economy, it will further make cuts into budgets even if that means utterly destroying an already moribund US economy. You can count on the Tea Partiers to push the USA into a full-scale and lasting depression by essentially asphyxiating the US economy. This, in turn, will negatively impact the rest of the world or, at least, that part or the world which still sheepishly follows the “Washington consensus” and its suicidal policies (Europe anybody?!)
US imperial policies will only get worse. When real unemployment is somewhere in the range of 20% or more, and 40-50% for Blacks, you can be sure that the ranks of the military will swell with more angry jarheads ready to take on any “sand nigger” who dares to sit on the oil Americans ‘need’ to drive all their big SUVs. The war on Iran is on, my friends, make no mistake about it.
And if fictional terrorist plots a la “shoe bomber”, “undies bomber”, “Times Square bomber” or the latest Yemeni “Postal bombers” do not do sufficiently terrify the general public, you can expect another false-flag operation a la 9/11 which will usher in yet another era of hysteria, fear and aggression.
Eventually, of course, the USA will collapse under the weight of its own self-defeating hubris and idiocy. But in the meantime, things will get very, very ugly indeed. This is the inevitable consequence of any fuite en avant.
The Saker
Very good analysis, Saker.
“The war on Iran is on, my friends, make no mistake about it.” — You got that right!
@Tony: thanks Tony. As you can tell from the tone of my rant, I am very angry about what is going on. But even more so, I am also really sad. I have lived in the USA for a total of 15 years of my life and I really do love many of its people and I am acutely aware of how much more suffering for the “non-millionaire Americans” all this will result. Besides a small clique of plutocratic parasites, EVERYBODY lost yesterday. God help us all, in the USA and beyond.
Kind regards,
The Saker
As far as the Tea Party is concerned if these results are supposed to demonstrate the enormous clout of this movement, its great popular resonance, and so on, I am singularly unimpressed. They were up against a hugely unpopular Democratic Party, whose control of the executive has disappointed so many, amid a recession that has made everyone terrified. The economy is the number one issue in this election, and the numbers of voters who said they were optimistic about the future for the economy were tiny. If the Tea Party was such a wildly popular ‘movement’, it would not have contributed only a small fraction to the GOP’s small slice of the voting age population. As dangerous as these creeps can be, as a Poujadist movement seeking to mobilise a mass base, it’s a flop. And that’s a key lesson of 2010.
@Robert:The Tea Party might not be numerically powerful, both in terms of supporters and in terms of elected officials, but they are either setting the tone, or at least influencing the debate. The SA where also not a majority of Germans, but a small loud and highly exalted group of morons can be used very effectively by other (Nazis or Plutocrats) to further impose their agenda.
@Robert; Just to follow on to your point, I would be very interested to know the total voter turnout as a percentage of the voting age population. I strongly suspect that this whole election is a “tempest in a teapot” (pun intended) as more and more Americans realize that the whole system is a sham and are tuning out.
As Chris Hedges points out, there can be no effective resistance from within the system. The system has been too thoroughly “ponerized,” and more and more people are realizing this. Any renewal has to be local, informal and outside the system. Of course, the Pathocracy will hunt down and exterminate any local groups which dare to raise their heads (cf. the Federal SWAT team raids of local food co-operatives in Ohio recently)
To understand what is happening today (as well as what happened in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia), I highly recommend the book Political Ponerology by the late Polish psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski. An overview of his work can be found here:
http://www.ponerology.com
The book can be ordered from Red Pill Press (see above website for locations). Do purchase it, if you can.
Given the hyper-aggressive nature of the current American Pathocracy, I do not belive that it will collapse peacefully like the old USSR. I think it will end up being blasted out of existence like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Thus I believe it is prudent to stay as far away from future Dresdens, Hiroshimas or Nagasakis as possible. That is what I have done. “Go thou and do likewise.”
I think that it is very unlikely that the USA will be destroyed in a war. No state in their right mind would attack the USA directly and terrorists are unlikely to be able to achieve anything more than 9/11, bad as that was.
The raving right may have apocalyptic fantasies but the plutocrats that own the country don’t want another world war. Raping countries like Iraq yes, anything that would hit them at home no.
War isn’t good for capitalism, apart from the arms companies.
Far more likely is that the US will face a secessionist movement led by the libertarian Right.
http://www.countercurrents.org/hedges260410.htm
Frankly if I lived in a relatively civilised part of the country like New England I would be delighted to see neo Confederate Southernors secede from the Union. The irony is that many of the red states with their anti government frenzy are subsidised by Washington. In terms of fiscal transfers the blue states would be better off without them.
@Robert: I think that it is very unlikely that the USA will be destroyed in a war
Destroyed, no. But badly defeated – sure! For example, I am quite sure that any attack on Iran will result in a military disaster for the USA and that this, in turn, will trigger an economic and political crisis.
There are no real enemies of the USA out there. The USA has two friendly and weak neighbors, and two huge oceans to protect it. There never was a real military threat to the USA. But so what? What will be defeated is not the USA as a country, but the Empire which currently holds 800+ military basis all over the planet while it is running itself into economic bankruptcy.
I disagree that war is not good for capitalism. I think that war is *necessary* for capitalism, at least if by capitalism we mean the kind of imperialist “turbocapitalism” (to us Ed Luttwak’s expression) which the USA has always engaged in.
Where I do very much agree with you is that the North of the USA is more civilized than the South. Not even necessarily “better”, but simply more civilized. New England even more so than the rest of the North. But the key of the problem is, I think, not so much geographic as it is social: this is a class war of the plutocrats against the rest of the American nation. It’s not a group of identifiable politicians which must be given the boot, but an entire class of billionaires which substituted “one man – one vote” with “one dollar – one vote”. The latter is the core reality of the US political system, I think.
Democracy vs Plutocracy. People power vs Money power. That is what it’s all about.
@Michael:I think it will end up being blasted out of existence like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.
I very much doubt that. The only country out there which could do that would be Russia, and they know that they could not prevent a US retaliation in kind. Besides, why would Russia seek to destroy the USA when the USA is already destroying itself?
As I wrote to Robert, I think that a military defeat for the bloated US Empire will not happen on US soil, but outside the USA. Its the economic consequences of that defeat will will “explode” inside the USA.
I do not belive that it will collapse peacefully like the old USSR.
Well, the USSR did not collapse, it was forcibly broken apart by a group of its leaders in order to allow each one of them to remain the boss in his own part of the ex-USSR. And there was a great deal of violence, in particular at the periphery. But I agree with your point. When you write about Federal SWAT team raiding local food co-operatives that is a very good example of what is going on. Violence and policing are the two only growing industries inside the USA with an immense (and utterly useless!) TSA, private prisons, cops at every corner, private security guards even in public libraries, kids arrested and handcuffed by taser and guns toting Sheriffs, concentration camps in the Arizona desert, supermax prisons built all over the place, etc. etc. etc.
The violence in the USA will be internal, directed by a vicious plutocracy which will use ALL the power of the state to crush not only dissent, but even any lack of sheepish conformity.
We are all in for a very very bad time.
And yes, leaving the big cities is a very good idea.
You could have mentioned the ill-conceived monstrosity that is the U.S. Senate. It has largely been responsible for the reactionary and even downright evil trends in U.S. history including maintaing slavery and segregation, rejecting membership of the League of Nations (and guaranteeing Anglo-French security) and the prevention of the welfare state. The mechanisms:
1) The “Eurovision system” for the apportionment of seats, Kansas is thus made equal to California. The undemocratic nature of the thing has only been prevented from bein a system-breaking problem by the fortuitous presence of small liberal northeastern states and sparsely populated landlocked Western states.
2) Winner takes all, State-wide. As a result, the Senate actually represents purely majoritarian rule and disregard for the rights of the minority. Thus, while 13% of the country is made of African-Americans (overwhelmingly Liberal) they have no representation in the Senate at all. The number elected since reconstruction can be counted on 1 hand. Meanwhile, 55% of African-Americans live in the South where their vote essentially does not count as the White majorities constitently elected Republican and conservative Democrat Senators. Imagine what the replacement of just 5 conservative Southerners with black liberal lions would do for the Senate’s balance of power!
3) The filibuster: icing on the cake
@Robert: all very good points, in particular about the Senate being an abomination. Too few people make that comment and, besides you, I only know of George Kenny who often denounces this. BTW – have you had the opportunity to listen to this: http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2010/10/if_past_is_prologue.html
Thanks for the excellent point!
Cheers!
Breaking the Big Taboo: 9/11 & the New American Drug Lords
http://www.madcowprod.com/10182010.htm
Notice Saudi frontman and CIA asset Adnan Khashoggi who has connections to the CIA, MI6 and Israeli intelligence who helped broker sale of PROMISE spyware software to the Mid East.
http://www.users.on.net/~osbornep/
“Khashoggi continues to live a quiet life in the Principality of Monaco, even after a British court ordered him to pay £7 million to a creditor. His services as a facilitator have been a recurring feature throughout US administrations since Nixon; most recently, he met with Richard Perle shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”
Also this:
“Adnan Khashoggi’s sister Samira Khashoggi Fayed married Mohammed Al-Fayed and was the mother of Dodi Fayed.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi
Suspected that Harrods boss Mohammed Al-Fayed was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood (although that is not mentioned in the wiki article) given that Princess Diana’s de-mining charity The Halo Trust was a British intelligence front to train Chechen militants how to lay mines.
Also I have updated my 9/11-Chechen thread with even more evidence which they can be no doubt the original intention was a traditional hijacking
Looks like the smoking gun Soubra in the pre 9/11 Phoenix memo for setting up a Islamic recruitment organisation in Arizona University and pilots in US flight schools was the Arizona branch leader for Al-Muhajiroun a British intelligence linked organisation that recruits fighters at Universities to fight in Chechnya
http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1284248981/last-1288620675/The+real+9-11+cover+up-+Political+hijacking++was+originally+aimed+at+Russia.
Also noticed the prominent connection to Lebanon where both Soubra (Lebanese) and Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed (Lebanese) beoth deported to Lebanon by British and US governments as well as alleged 9/11 pilot Siad Al-Jarrah and his Mossad spy relative.
“It appears that Lebanese flight school student Zacaria Soubra has been seen at a shooting range with Abu Mujahid, a white American Muslim who had fought in the Balkans and the Middle East. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/28/2001; ARIZONA MONTHLY, 11/2004] Abu Mujahid appears to match Aukai Collins, a white American Muslim who had fought in the Balkans and the Middle East (actually Chechnya who has a Chechen wife and became an informant when he entered the US embassy in Azerbaijan), who also goes by the name Abu Mujahid, and is an FBI informant spying on the Muslim community in the area at the time (see 1998). Collins also claims to have been the informant referred to in the Phoenix memo, which again suggests that Collins was the one at the shooting range with Soubra.”
“In 2004, Soubra will be deported to Lebanon after being held for two years. He will deny any connection to Hanjour or terrorism. [ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 5/2/2004] Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the British militant group Al-Muhajiroun, will later admit that Soubra was the leader of Al-Muhajirouns branch in Arizona. [TIME, 5/27/2002]”
@VINEYARDSAKER
There is only one country in history that has attempted to destroy the US twice a long standing ally across the Atlantic and direct connections to Islamic terrorism attacks against the US and another that is the only country to have repeatably attacked the US with the Lavon affair and USS Liberty.
perfect:
“the immense disillusion with Obama has resulted in a devastating backlash into a new era of triumphant Fascism and lunacy. For the rest of the world, this basically means, more of the same, only worse.”
“Following the events of 9/11 the entire world united behind the USA in an absolutely unprecedented show of sympathy and support for the USA. This was when the French socialist newspaper “Le Monde” had a headline saying “Nous sommes tous des Americans” (We are all Americans) and one million people demonstrated in the streets of Tehran to express their heartfelt support for the victims of the tragedy in New York.”
I cannot stress this enough – this was the moment where America could have united the world.
The Middle East could have been affected and changed for the better, but, alas, the Jewish neocons and their paid shills used this moment for Patriot Act and endless war.
I think this country is now in its death throes – the Supreme Court decision to equate money to free speech allows any and all to influence – outright buy – our politicians.
From AIPAC to Iran, from Toyota to Saudi Arabia, all are buying our country now.