Paul Craig Roberts
If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.
How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware [or indifferent to] of everything that is happening at home and abroad?
The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their propriety programed electronic voting machines. For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).
Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive House Republicans not capitalize on it. It would be easy for a Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.
Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen, or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the US Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod over.
If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate both US statutory and international law, ignore the separation of powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?
Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate US citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the US Constitution or in US statutory law. This gestapo police state claim exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of all issues, because they support it.
Why didn’t the Democrat convention raise the issue that the Republicans took us to wars based on 9/11 assertions without ever conducting an investigation of 9/11? No qualified high-rise architect, structural engineer, physicist, chemist, or national security expert believes a word of the US government’s 9/11 story. Neither do the first responders who were on the scene and witnessed and experienced the event.
Many experts keep their opinions to themselves, because otherwise the federal grants to their universities are over and done with or their architectural and engineering businesses are boycotted by patriotic former clients.
Regardless of these risks, there are 1,700 architects and engineers who have sent a petition to Congress that they do not believe one word of the official explanation and who demand a real investigation.
Why did not either party raise the question of how can the US economy recover when corporations have offshored millions of US middle class jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs. For at least a decade, the US economy has been able to create only lowly paid domestic non-tradable (not exportable) service jobs, such as waitresses, bartenders, and hospital orderlies.
Both parties talk total nonsense about jobs. The Republicans say they can create jobs by not taxing the rich. The Democrats say they can create jobs by financing jobs programs. The Republicans say that the Democrats’ jobs programs simply take money from business investments and give it to those who patronize bars and the drug trade. The Democrats say that the low taxes of the Republicans just subsidize yachts, exotic cars, private aircraft, and $800,000 wrist watches for the one percent, most of which is produced abroad.
Neither political party will admit that when US corporations offshore their production for US markets, Americans are removed from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume. Offshoring is defended by both moronic political parties as “free trade.” In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was US GDP to China, India, and the other countries to which US corporations locate their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP of the countries who make the American goods sold to Americans goes up. The idiot free market economists call the de-industrializing of America “free trade.”
As an intelligent economist–an oxymoron– would know, destroying consumer incomes by moving their jobs to other countries, leaves consumers without incomes to purchase the imported offshored goods.
Neither American political party recognizes this disconnect. Neither party can afford to recognize it, as both parties are dependent on corporate campaign financing, and offshoring boosts executive bonuses and share prices. A political party that opposes offshoring of US jobs simply does not get financed.
So, the great “superpower,” the “indispensable nation,” the world hegemon, is going into an election, and no one knows what are the stakes.
Why did not either political party ask: if Washington has demonized Iran, why did the 120 countries that comprise the non-aligned movement convene in Iran last week?
Is Washington’s propaganda failing? Can Washington no longer convince the world that the countries that Washington wants to destroy are evil and must be destroyed?
If Washington’s propaganda is failing, the world rule of the hegemonic power will not succeed. As world rule is Washington’s goal in keeping with the neoconservative ideology, then Washington is failing and is not the superpower it pretends to be.
Most credible foreign policy experts, none of which either political party has, believe that Washington has thrown away US “soft power” by its obvious lies and unjustified military attacks on seven Muslim countries, its encirclement of Russia with missile bases, and its encirclement of China with air, naval, and troop bases.
In other words, Washington’s moral force no longer exists. All that exists is financial and military force, and both will fail as they are insufficient.
Neither party asked why the US is at wars with Muslims for Israel. Why should Americans be losing lives and limbs for Israel while going broke and running up enormous war debts for our children and grandchildren? The answer from both parties is to blame the country’s bankruptcy on what Washington does for its own economically disenfranchised citizens. America’s financial problems are all the fault of Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, housing subsidies, Pell grants–any and every thing that gives a leg up to the non-one percent.
In short, the attitude of both parties is: if you are not the one percent, you are disposable.
Both Obamacare and the alternative Republican voucher program dispose of ill Americans who confront potentially terminal diseases. The American people and the ill no longer count; only the budget counts. Letting the elderly die sooner is cheaper. We can therefore afford more wars for hegemony and more tax cuts for the one percent.
Have any peoples in human history ever been less represented by their government and political parties than Americans?
The US government represents Israel and the one to ten percent. Everyone else is disposable. Regardless of the political party whose lever is pulled in November, every American who votes will be voting for Israel and for their own demise.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Improbably, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
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Wow! Terrific talking points for when I need to explain to people why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing anything good for the average person.
Both Democrats and Republicans are actually Reactionaries – in case you don’t remember from history – and as Texas decided this was something students didn’t need to know more than 10 years ago – many are no longer taught this – Reactionaries were the strongest political power in France in the months leading up to the French Revolution. Their position was essentially -We are rich and powerful – that means god favors us. The proof is that we are rich ad powerful – therefore we can do no wrong. They believed god – nature – or what ever would stop… Read more »
Totally well said! A lucid way of summing up the current condition.
Kudos to friend Bennett.