Collapse in Motion

For some reason there exists a belief that economic collapses are sudden events. Because the collapse isn’t happening all at once, those who see what is happening must be wrong. This is true even in the rather fast collapse that started in 2008 with the housing collapse.

People generally think that the Great Depression of 1929, which started officially in, happened all at once with the stock market crash of 1929. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the crash was not the cause of the Great Depression, but was instead the trigger.

The same is true of the Great Depression of 2008 in that it was not caused by but was instead triggered by the collapse of the housing market. The second Great Depression actually started in late 2007, but the effects weren’t noticed until the housing market was no longer able to disguise the symptoms in the rest of the economy.

Collapses take time. This is true even of rapid collapses like in 1929 and 2008; it takes time for the many failed institutions to wind through and finish - longer if the government attempts intervention to rescue failed institutions.

Political collapses take even longer. The reason people do not believe that the current United States imperium is not in decline is because the decline has been going on for several decades. If the several years of an economic decline are too long for the average observer, then the several decades of political decline are beyond notice for the average observer.

Like an economic collapse, political collapses aren’t single events but often have a single event trigger. The collapse of the Roman Empire didn’t occur when barbarians invaded, but was made real when barbarians invaded. Until the invasion, Rome looked as might as ever, but was a hollow shell.

This decline, economic and political, will not be visible to someone who hasn’t studied history. Because it is not apparent on the surface it is something that won’t be believed, especially since so many people have an emotional investment in the current greatness of the United States. Reality doesn’t care of people don’t believe in the collapse.

Precision Murder

That President Obama has been just as much a hawk as President Bush, if not more so, has been for the last three years a major source of embarrassment to liberals and some progressives. He seemed like the most peaceful of the leading candidates, but to be fair that was in comparison to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Then shortly after he was elected, on the expectation of what he was going to do instead of anything he had actually done, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

And he went on to expand the number of countries that had United States military involvement to include Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, as well as keeping up the military activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He did keep his promise to withdraw from Iraq, but only after signaling that he intended to break that promise and keep the troops there indefinitely and thereby forcing the Iraqi government to force a withdrawal. Plus he continued the saber rattling against Iran.

So how is a liberal or progressive to cope with this embarrassment? Apparently the effort is to say that Obama's use of precision weapons somehow makes his interventions morally superior. The argument is that Bush carpet bombed from B-52s while Obama is very precise and surgical with his use of drone warfare.

Of course this overlooks how Obama is precise and surgical when he bombs emergency response teams from his previous bombing runs, and how Obama is precise and surgical when he bombs funeral processions that result from his previous bombing runs.

Because Obama's murder of innocent civilians is allegedly so much less indiscriminate than Bush's murder of innocent civilians, it is considered crude and unenlightened to say that the murder of innocent civilians by Obama is morally equivalent to the murder of innocent civilians by Bush.

There is one problem with that analysis: innocent civilians are still being killed either way. If a person murders an innocent, it doesn't matter if he used a chain saw or a scalpel, and it doesn't matter if he carefully selected the innocent rather than picking one at random. It also doesn’t matter if he killed two or ten. The person is still a murderer. Obama is still morally equivalent to Bush, and both are war criminals.

Libya

In the past ten years many people have learned a very hard lesson about military entanglements in the Middle East. An increasing number of people want to end the wars there, and for a variety of reasons. Some are opposed to the financial cost, some are swayed by Just War theory, some because the two major wars (as well as the minor ones) have had too great a cost in human life, some because the war was never actually declared, and some for a combination of reasons. Some people who were initially in favor of invading Afghanistan and Iraq have even turned against those wars.

On the other hand, since January 19, 2009, some who had taken an opposition position on the war turned out to be in favor, provided that the right people were in charge.

For the political leadership of the United States, nothing has been learned in the 10 years that the United States has been in an undeclared war against various countries that just happen to be key countries in the oil and gas industry. They still believe that a simple invasion to support some side will quickly achieve favorable results.

Of course there are some differences from the earlier wars of a decade ago. Obama, unlike Bush, is careful to get as many approvals from as many different international bodies as he can, in order to give proper window dressing to yet another intervention in another country that just happens to be an oil producing country. But like Bush, Obama failed to get the one approval mandated by the constitution.

True, Libya produces far less than Saudi Arabia or Iraq, as defenders of this conflict will point out, but as all economists know all activity takes place on the margin and any change in Libya’s output impacts prices throughout the entire oil market.

At this point, in proper Democratic Party militarism form, the initial intervention will be in the form of No-Fly zones, air patrols. It was the same pattern for Clinton in both Iraq and in the former Yugoslavia. Eventually ground troops were sent in to both, with Clinton sending troops in to Bosnia and Bush sending troops in to Iraq.

If Obama holds true to the pattern of other pro-war Democrats, ground troops are only a matter of time. Then the US will be embroiled in yet another war of occupation. In ten years the people have learned, but the political class that claims to represent them haven’t.

Wikileaks and Telling Forbidden Truths

"I like the pretty lies" - Myca, The Crow

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell, My Few Wise Words of Wisdom

In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged there is a scene early in the book when Dagny Taggart is trying to get the Rio Norte line built against the combined challenges of her looter opponents. To circumvent the difficulties she creates her own company, the John Galt line. The point of that scene is the immense pretense she had to go through to get the looters to leave her alone. Jim Taggart, near the end of the scene said "nobody must know it." Dagny responds with "everyone will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it openly, everybody will be satisfied."

In the United States, on so many issues, there are many things which everybody knows but few admit. When people repeat lies that they know are lies, because the lies are what they are supposed to repeat, then speaking the truth is indeed a radical act and condemned as such. And one of the issues it is true of is the military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When someone, in a discussion of the wars, talks of civilian casualties as a criticism of the wars the response is to pooh-pooh it as unsupported, or as being anti-American, or as conspiracy theory. Everyone knew that there were massive civilian casualties, but as long as nobody admitted it then it was considered acceptable to ignore it.

Wikileaks broke the convention by not only saying it, but by giving solid support to what everyone already knew.

Because it is still unpopular to discuss the issues raised by the content of the leaked documents and leaked videos, most people prefer to discuss just how dangerous Wikileaks is to national security and whether or not the owner should be considered a traitor or a terrorist.

The documents are valuable, and not because they reveal anything new. To some extent it could be said that they reveal a depth that was previously unknown, but that isn't new information as much as it is an expanse of information.

Many who support the military activity insist that only government sources or American media sources are to be trusted for information about the wars. That is where the true value of Wikileaks comes in because the video from Iraq and the documents about Afghanistan are from government sources, the most trusted source of war supporters. It is no longer possible to dismiss the information as anti-American propaganda.

That's why supporters of the war don't want to discuss the content of the leaks at all. But it is too late, Wikileaks already "admitted it openly."

The empire cripples itself

Recently there was a story in the Army Times about how youths in the United States are generally unfit for military service. Too many potential recruits are either insufficiently educated, physically unfit, or have criminal records.

It is quite interesting because these youths are the products of government run taxpayer funded schools. Theoretically the government would want a population that is fit enough for military service, and as such would ensure the government run schools would provide a population that is smart enough, fit enough, and motivated enough to serve in the military.

This is one of the fundamental flaws of empire. On the one hand empire needs a population that is fit, intelligent, and motivated, so that these people can serve in ways necessary to administer the empire over other people. On the other hand, due to the repressive nature of empires back home, the empire needs a population that is under-informed, docile, and apathetic. It is very difficult to achieve both of those goals at the same time.

It is true that there is a way out of the dilemma, and that is to have a very militaristic educational system that emphasizes obedience above all else while educating in the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. But that is not what happened in the United States. With the emphasis being on not educating the public, the result is a public that is functionally illiterate. Michael Jackson’s funeral has more public interest than Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill.

It’s clear that the emphasis isn’t on education, even though nobody in the education system (other than John Taylor Gatto) will ever admit to such. It is clear because you hear complaints about “teaching to the test” and complaints about people entering the work force unqualified. Many college have a basic skills department to remedy the lack in even reading and arithmetic among entering students. If there really was a desire among the leadership in this country to produce an educated public, it could be accomplished, so therefore one must logically conclude that desire is not there.

Small wonder that among those who do seek employ in the government, too many of them are more than willing to abuse their position instead of think about the responsibilities of their position. More and more it is becoming apparent that while prosecutors have the necessary specialized knowledge of law to perform their job they have no knowledge about the philosophy of the laws they enforce and never stop to consider the ethics of their actions. More and more it is becoming apparent that too many police are no longer different from the criminals they are supposed to stop and are instead merely criminals with official permission to act. Just as the education system fails to provide soldiers, it fails to provide police.

Among the fields that require extensive thought, many of the engineering and medical students in this country are students who grew up in foreign countries and are now studying in the United States. Engineers and doctors study the humanities, but very few in politics have studied even the rudiments of science.

An empire will fail either because the public will not tolerate the domestic abuses needed to maintain an empire abroad, or because the public is too apathetic or unfit to maintain the empire abroad. It is clear which of these two paths has been chosen by the United States government.