Print this post.The mask of legitimacy is slowly crumbling, as the current world paradigm, based on lies, selfishness and short-term thinking continues to spawn crisis after crisis and war after infernal war…
BY PETER PAVIMENTOV [print_link]
It is interesting that some of the banking community abroad are running scared of the people’s moral opinion on the bank rescue by public funds and its resulting recovery of the speculative sector whereby enormous bonuses are once again being paid. Even the Governor of the Bank of England, not a minor office holder, counsels a breaking up of those banks too large to fail. And the American president makes again misleading compensatory noises about the salaries of the officers in those institutions who apparently did not pay the government back.
This unease is also slowly penetrating to the Wall Streeters, who as usual remain fully blind to public opinion. But one must expect here the normal psycho-terrorism to be applied, scaring those whose life existence is threatened and already diminished by the drain of the economic strength of this country. What do the financial rapists care how many businesses go out of existence, or how much government reduces social support for those who worked hard most of their lives for these benefits? War and a strenuous effort to keep the creaking colossus of capitalism going, informs the leading lights of extortion whether in lower Manhattan or in Washington, D.C.
Never has the misalignment of the economy been so starkly evident as today, much more so than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the masses of the poor were less informed and less educated than now. That is the threat with which the present power holders must cope and all their propaganda in the pre-bought media will not save them, because the carefully constructed edifice of received opinion is now dangerously leaning over.
America has ever been the country of personal anarchism, where individual assertion was part of the national character, where a basic cynicism underlies reluctant acceptance of imposed rules and where one may hope this contrariness may save this nation and the world. Though nationhood is a misnomer as well as an outdated notion, despite its lingering on more people become aware that there is little difference in humanity whether one is born in Topeka, Kansas or in Isfahan, Iran, but artificial borders between countries remain in place as ordained by the military and economic overlords.
However the realization that propagandized thinking is a thing of the past penetrates more and more Western minds which can only be to the benefit of those submitted to Western aggression. Colonialism in whatever form is over and the sooner this will be clear to the oppressor classes, the easier and quicker their fate will be, because rebellion is in the air. It is a process that unlike previous eruptions of class societies will move slower like tectonic plates shifting in our earth, a slowness which could be unfortunate for the health of our planet, but come it will. The suspension of belief is a process that cannot be forced but must be allowed to grow by itself, even though it can reach spontaneous combustion at a certain point. Like the nefarious warlords in the Pentagon, who for their reason to exist like nothing better than to create international tension, the many profiteers and others who push their own idealistic conservative programs in this corrupt government, are appearing to be more and more redundant.
This is because there are sure signs that voters have become aware that the two factions of the same power cabal play footsie with each other and that the one faction called misleadingly the Democrats is in fact the one possibly most deleterious to the public’s economic welfare. No rational government has laws that politicize the judiciary nor should such excesses be tolerated like a Supreme Court of judges appointing a president. Therefore as this government has proven to be inimical to the people’s interests, it needs to be removed, not by votes as it is clear that voting is a spurious exercise, but by popular mobilization. How this will be effected is unpredictable, but it is a historical imperative. One cannot unfortunately predict or even steer popular movements with certitude, and each has its own impetus and character. The breaking up of Federal power is very much needed at this late stage and a breaking up of the United States into smaller units desirable because smaller units allow for more egalitarianism and input from the people. States by themselves never declare war, nor can they exert undue economic pressure. How then true democracy and equality can be reached is left to common consent in each state after this suffocating and all pervasive structure of capitalism is abandoned with its extortionate first commandment to compete, a slave ring around everyone’s neck causing antagonism and alienation unworthy of the human soul.
Should humanity finally see the light despite the dense fog of propaganda, rewarding some and abandoning most in our social world will be a thing of the past and when everyone is allowed input in how societal rules are constructed and applied, the ills of capitalism will be gone. Transforming the Res Publica into a form of tribalism is truly the most rational goal at present, even if perceived by a mere handful. After this difficult stage is completed we may at last deal with the problems such a transformation will undoubtedly bring with it. No human social organization is ever ideal, expecting that would be a step backwards, but maybe now the swell of discontent is rising, the breaking up of institutional injustice could be a near event for this country as well as a salvation for all those it now attacks and tortures unrelentingly.
PETER PAVIMENTOV is a senior columnist with The Greanville Post.
4 comments
I would like to add that a division into the individual states of America presents major problems too, but less so than supporting a federal government today (like the banks, it is not too large to let fail). The concepts of ‘leaders’ and ‘hierarchy’ are easier to dissolve in smaller settings, where the power of the individual can and will be asserted. Behemoth nations seem to devolve ultimately into dictatorships of a one-man rule or of a cabal of bureaucrat administrators. That seems easier to avoid from a practical standpoint in smaller units and like with the wayward huge banks, smaller will be better.
Another dire phenomenon observable in a declining capitalist hegemony is when the outwards directed aggression of a war-like empire becomes frustrated like at present because of other powers rising to challenge its influence, that the Leviathan will direct its aggression inwards onto its own population. It is the policy of ‘bundling the forces’ (fasces) to guard against inroads into its power territory and thus truly the first sign of decline and weakness, because restricting aggressively the freedoms of its population will slowly tighten the hold beyond endurance. Till now the intense propaganda of national pride and cultural superiority has taken care of any public unease about the rapaciousness of the power holders, but it becomes a diminishing tactic when diffuse public refusals would become rebellious. The entrenched elites are treading a fine line and they know it, while their hoplites (hirelings) will take the brunt of the burden of oppressive measures. It has been the catalyst of societal change when these foot soldiers were ‘turned’, i.e. became part and parcel of a popular revolt. That is where the Achilles heel always has been of authority, from the Roman Ceasars to the Russian Czars and the military and police forces remain loyal only when their rewards stay optimal and the downside of their actions negligible, but that too will gradually change in a diminishing national economy.
The “swell of discontent” is definitely rising but it is being directed inward in the form of suicide and drug/alcohol, etc. etc. addictions and outward in the form of child, female, and animal abuse, and group prejudice — like in Weimer. People, at least in this country, have not got the intelligence/education/will power to do anything meaningful re their lot. We are the perfect fodder of demagogues and the aristocracy of money. Without a free press, there is not a chance in hades that people, say they wished to know, have access to what is really happening. But I wish I could believe as you do.
Discontent rising and lacking a decent leader is always a dangerous thing. We are now probably the most dangerous nation on earth, to ourselves and others, caught in a dense web of lies and manufactured ignorance. Poor America!
I do have faith in people but one simply has to start somewhere and while I veer between syndicalism and primitivism in my anarchist feelings, those are day dreams one can indulge in to ‘keep the faith’…but practically the task is imperative for people to have dignity and bread. It is obvious to many by now that this system does not work, even though the individual alienation from the effects of capitalism causes also an overwhelming desire for structure and security in people and though it will be very hard to do, the fear of public self assertion must be overcome. Security is of course important in the old hierarchy of the family, but it has deteriorated in an over-consumption as a straightjacket from which most people do not know how to escape. And till the public is ready to rebel (no guerilla tactics or any violence will compel them), there is little one can do except offering alternatives in the hope that those who suffer may hear. The central government is becoming more and more oppressive and it will react strongly against its dissolution, but there are techniques to avoid the consequences. One might compare indeed the present political arena to a domestic violence situation, whereby the victim is paralyzed by economic need as well as a traditional desire to keep circumstances viable. But the psychological damage is enormous and a complete refusal is truly the only hope for healing. My proposal for a division of the states in America has been discussed and often discarded by radicals for many reasons, but it is easier to deal within smaller units than oppose an overwhelming force like this Federal government. The comparison to Weimar seems apt, until one realizes that the Weimar Republic had a very feeble government, which is not the case here. This is pure Kafka, where up is down and right is left with an untouchable authority and with deliberately misleading signals, also evident in foreign policy and this confusion is planned like the red clouds of fire from the Wizard of Oz (by the way an excellent revolutionary movie). Once the fumes clear it is obvious that we are dealing with a cabal of wizened old men, thus fear not.