(author's note: This essay was originally published at P! as a three-part series between late March and mid-April of 2007. Minor edits have been made for formatting. The original text is verbatim. Some links may now be invalid.)


A Dangerous Nation.

For several years in these pages, in the initial iteration of P!, and in its predecessor ddjangoWIrE, I've concentrated on just a few fundamental themes. Within these themes, I've drawn even fewer nearly ontological conclusions concerning this nation, its people, and its likely future.

This has not been easy work. In spite of raging against the policies and actions of a government run by obvious war criminals and fascist multi-national corporations intent on destroying our nation and others in the name of "open borders", "democracy", and "free trade" by means of total, endless war, it is abundantly clear that radical voices in favor of fundamental paradigm change are still a woeful minority, distinctly disconnected and marginalized. In short, it's pretty damn lonely out here. The best it seems we've been able to do is get some Democrats elected (to carry on the same program as Republicans) and encourage Kucinich and maybe Nader to run again.

Thus, the conclusions I've drawn are very simple:

• The United States of America is rumbling blindly and headlong on a closed course which is likely, in a relatively short time, to end not only in its own ruin, but also in the destruction of the very foundation of modern western civilization. I am no longer sure that this is a bad thing - the survival of our planet and the majority of its inhabitants, human and otherwise, may depend on it.
• Any possibility that we might be saved by the political and economic emergence of a counter-force, such as China or India, is doomed by the fact that those countries are depending on the same growth models that are the foundation of our own demise. We can hope for no better than disastrous political, economic, and, ultimately, military confrontation from this process.
• There is a glimmer of hope found in the revolutionary movements and governments in Central and South America. But it will be offset by our deadly adventurism, fueled by oil-greed and insane cultural/religious conflict in the East and in western Asia.
• The citizens of this country, even those who espouse what is named and proclaimed as "progressive" or "radical leftist" politics, are essentially clueless - not just in figuring out how to change things, but in just what the hell needs to change.
• Finally, Americans of all political and cultural proclivities are locked in a "deer in the headlights" catatonia that relentlessly resists unification and preparation for a bleak future

The "prefect storm convergence" I spoke of above has several ingredients:

1. An overwhelming realization that the liberal assumptions and clinical narcissism so ubiquitous in our cultural and social foundations afflict even the most studied and articulate radical leftists.
2. The conviction that our political system is not so much "broken" as simply, finally obsolete. That system, emerging from the Enlightenment roar of the eighteenth century has evolved into a phase of post-liberal and post capitalist malaise that cannot further evolve without violence. Liberalism and capitalism have had their day. The price for the improvements in technology from which (some) humans have derived wealth and comfort and power is now self-evident in environmental collapse, fascist ascendancy, and a planet engulfed in war and genocide. In short, the problem cannot, of course, be its own solution. Violence certainly must be abhored; but even with widespread violent revolution, the outcome would not be so much apocalyptic as just one, bloody, stinking mess of a future existence.
3. The appearance in these pages just now of three outstanding interviews (Jason Miller's conversations with Joel Hirschhorn and Mike Palecek, and mine with Dan Smith) at the same time I've been reading Robert Kagan's "Dangerous Nation".
4. My depressing frustration and disappointment in the almost non-existent response I've gotten during the past three months to (a) my attempt to generate discussion and action toward unifying the myriad leftist third parties into a movement; (b) my attempt to recruit an African-American editor to join us at P!; (c) my entreaties to my own readership to not just read, but to respond actively to the issues.

If it sounds like I'm whining, so be it. There may be good reason. If you want good news, I encourage you to watch Fox, rather than read P! The reality is that we are in deep, deep kim-chee and the way out requires unrelenting, honest, critical self-analysis from the individual, through the community, to the national and international level.

We began with a creed that the individual and his rights are the highest ideal. Freedom from the tyranny of autocratic kings and empires was a glowing, driving sun. That revolutionary foundation carried over to a suspicion of government. Although we had some sense of community and cooperation as essential to the survival of a unified Republic and protection against incursion both domestic and foreign, this sense was weak and obscure due to the opportunity based in individual initiative and self-reliance. We were immediately, necessarily a Nation of One, "a Beacon on a Hill."

First, let me bring up "Dangerous Nation", Robert Kagan's seminal history of American liberalism, capitalism, and militarism from the late seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. I will not quote Kagan's book here, because I'm determined that you should read it. If you have formed a political stance without reading Zinn's history and Kagan's, you are sadly undereducated as to what this country has always been and done.

I will, however, summarize Kagan's main themes.

Toward the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the notion of liberalism began to emerge and take hold. As an inevitable outcome of the Age of Enlightenment, liberalism posited that each individual had rights that in essence were surpressed by tyrannical monarchies. Tyranny held that the purpose and duty of its subjects were to support the goals of the crown. Christianity, especially Catholicism, supported, even promoted this idea for centuries.

Although there were rumblings of liberal ascendancy throughout Europe at the time, it was The American Revolution, The Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution that best articulated and codified the liberal ideal. Across Europe, popular uprisings began to take their lead from what was happening in the New World. It was a powerful idea, this notion that individuals were actually worth something.

But with this power came a conceit: many of the leading American liberal revolutionaries envisioned the American revolution as not only a beacon, but as an absolute necessity for the rest of the world. It is easy to see where the roots of the neoliberal push to "export democracy" began. With the rise of the liberal ideal and the attachment of the democratic system of government to it, in the American (and by extension over time, European) view, all other political, and even cultural, systems were to be overrun and assimilated.

Americans had a distinct advantage. The rise of capitalism was concurrent and fully compatible with liberal thinking. Capitalism is based in and enabled by property ownership. This imperative drove the population hungrily west and south in search of freedom from restrictive government, space, raw materials, and land, land, land.

Having wrested property rights from the crown, available property was seemingly unlimited. At the same time, the population was exploding. Many in the new Republic felt a need to protect it from outside threat by occupying adjacent lands, especially to the south and west. So the push was on.

The critical factor in the American liberal revolution was its total integration with capitalism. We began as a nation if farmers and merchants. We needed markets to survive. The philosophical and democratic ideals would be a non-starter without them. Although feudalism was on its way out and western settlers could flourish with subsistence farming, trapping, professionalism (practicing law, education, medicine, etc.), the rich land owners in the east produced a significant surplus and needed somewhere to sell it. The onslaught of industrialism and manufacturing applied increasing pressure to this situation. It would be awhile before the Nation itself could absorb its own products. Unfortunately, markets often didn't open magically as the need for them arose. Reluctantly, the young country found itself in conflict with other nations who were competing for the same markets.

Early attempts to sympathize with and accommodate the indigenous population of Turtle Island quickly fell to an insidious feature of the liberal/capitalist/Christian philosophical matrix: to leave land "undeveloped" was simply unacceptable. The neoEuropean mind simply could not grasp the concept of living with the earth, rather than conquering it and molding it. Since most native Americans were hunter/gatherers, they found conversion to an agricultural way of life very difficult. Genocide was inevitable.

There was much discussion in the early Republic over what extent the country should become involved in "foreign entanglements." Indeed, we have cycled through many periods of "isolationism" and "interventionism." Mainly due to the need to expand commerce and defend American commercial interests, as well as to respond to foreign threats, the cycles of isolationism tended to be short-lived. We emerged quickly as a global power and were destined to expand and constantly change international alliances.

Kagan's "Dangerous Nation" covers America's history from just before the nation's birth to the end of the 19th century. By that time, the integration and solidification of the liberal/capitalist ideal insured that the United States would become a political, economic, and military force without precedence in the world.

Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow" picks up where Kagan leaves off. At the dawn of the 20th century and the emergence of the multinational corporation, military intervention was about to become very acceptable as a means to grow the American ideal.

What had begun as a celebration of the rights and potential of the individual human in two hundred years grew into an imperative to change the whole world in America's image. As individual incentive was overtaken by the multinational corporation as the primary way the individual could exercise his right to wealth, we had indeed become, intentionally or not, one very dangerous nation.



We Wage War Because We Can't Not.

Think about this please . . . do you know how deeply embedded you, your family, your friends, and your workplace are in the in the miasma of the American war machine? Most Americans are thoroughly enmeshed, but pretty ignorant about it. It's not something that we talk or think about very much; it's pretty depressing.

Certainly, most of us are aware of the percentage of our taxes which support the ubiquitous war machine - the Pentagon buying and selling arms is just one obvious example. But look up what percentage of the national debt, trade deficit, and even the gross national product are related. There are so many corporations devoted to war that it makes your mind spin: Lockheed, URS, Bechtel, SAIC, Halliburton, KBR, Martin-Marietta . . .I shouldn't even start the list.

I've written endlessly in the pages that the peace process must be first a personal commitment based in personal behavior. You can't be a peacenik if you contribute to the war machine. Sorry, you just can't, anymore than you can call yourself an environmentalist and drive an SUV. For a few friends of mine who've done the process of examining their lives, jobs, and investments, the revelation was devastating.

I won't be real detailed, but here are just a few questions: What stocks do you own? Unfortunately, some of the highest performers are part of the octopus of inter-related companies that profit from war (Senator Diane Feinstein's husband, for example, bought heavily into URS Corp., one of the largest military contractors in the world, not long after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The stock went nuts and he's rolling in blood money. Think his wife is going to vote against war? Fuggedaboudit! (She just resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations Committee due to conflict of interest - big deal. Nice of her. She didn't tell her husband to divest, however. (I was going to use an expletive adjective here, but I'm trying clean up my language. It rhymes with "itch".)

Other questions: Where are your mutual funds invested? Where is the food that you eat grown? How much are you paying for gas, motor oil, heating oil, and electricity every day? Where does the wood come from that built your house and furniture? Here's the ultimate question: how much are you paying for our military and military contractors to "protect American (read "multinational corporation) interests abroad? It's a butt-load. You might not want to go there if you're the queasy type - have someone who already knows the stuff break it to you over a nice pint of domestic mini-brewery ale. Then lie down with a cold-compress and a couple of Valium. OK, here we go with some more history . . .

Part 1 of this series of essays described the evolution of the American military from pre-Revolutionary times through the end of the 19^th century. Before the Revolution (how come we're so afraid of that word these days?), New World settlers all lived under the reign of a European crown (not just Americans, but Spanish and French and others), paying tribute and taxes and a big chunk of their product back to their colonial rulers to finance the whims and wars of the monarch. They chafed under colonial law, taxation, and repression. It was their blood, sweat, and tears, but little came back (except Red Coats and governors who answered to the King. Feudalism crossed the ocean along with those who ached for freedom to make their own destinies.
Although they had some autonomy, religious freedom, for example, that autonomy and self-determination was limited.

Revolution and growth was inevitable. All that land! All those resources! So we battled West and South. Washington's farewell address included a warning against "foreign entanglements", but those were inevitable, too. Within a few years, we were at war again with Britain. We challenged France and Spain. We sent ships to the Mediterranean and invaded Tripoli to protect guess what . . . American commercial interests. We decimated the indigenous population in our own country's ravenous expansion. As Kagan points out, Americans could not understand why Indians could live on the land, but not own or develop it. They tried to teach them ownership, but in soon just cleared them off relocation and wars.

In short, we were a "Dangerous Nation" from the beginning, as Robert Kagan's book catalogues. Robert Kinzer has recently published "Overthrow", which picks up where Kagan leaves off.

In the one first hundred years after the Revolution, we engaged Europeans and Indians in several wars and supported the quest for democracy there, but we had yet to begin "regime change" in other lands. That changed in 1893.

In Hawaii, as already in many other countries, American corporations began to look for business opportunities and raw materials beyond our boundaries. In Hawaii, we even installed several American businessmen within the government. When resistance rose, Hawaiians involved in those businesses and American troops overthrew the government and effectively took control of the islands, ensuring that corporations were left to colonize the country. This was the first action in a two hundred year history of overt and covert interference, often violently, in the affairs of foreign countries which wouldn't cooperate with our economic expansion. It has not been a matter of political policies such as trying to "export democracy." It has been every time a matter of installing governments sympathetic to corporations which exploited the resources and populations of foreign lands.

Kinzer documents thirteen covert military interventions and describes many other such actions conducted overtly by funding dictatorships or "revolutionary groups" which supported our aims. We have been ruthless . . . Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, Chile, Iran, Iraq . . . the list is nearly endless and several times involved assassinations; Salvador Allende in Chile, Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam.

We have rarely failed, but there have been unsuccessful attempts. John Kennedy's Bay of Pigs screw up in Cuba in an attempt to remove Fidel Castro is a famous example. In many cases, we were able to place rulers, usually dictators, in power who suppressed any popular resistance; they were, of course, puppet governments, supporting "American interests". These "interests" were corporate, now driven by multinational financial alliances.

Beyond the thirteen well known direct interventions, covert actions in what seem like countless acts of interference have been ubiquitous. Our current war against Iraq is the current example.

Overt actions are justified by our government with lies to the American people. Many other interventions by the CIA and other agencies have been secret. In short, we've been pretty nasty.

My point in the title of this piece is that US growth and expansion has been and will continue to be so entwined with our history and current economic well-being, that we are unable to reject war. For example, we are dependent on oil. We cannot survive without it. Most of that oil is produced and exported here. Our entire lifestyle and economy would simply collapse. If the United States is to remain the most powerful country in the world, if we cannot change our culture, we will be forced to continue our greedy ways. Surely, however, we will fail. Blowback is certain.

It is devastating that, in truth, regardless of public political posturing, both the Democratic and Republican parties will not change or end our need to control the resources of the planet. We are on a collision course with other nations which are expanding and "modernizing", China, India, South and Central American countries, and, of course the Middle East and Africa.

We wage war, because we can't not.



Of Rights and Responsibilities.

Several years ago, in the pages of my first blog, ddjangoWIrE, I wrote an essay with the same title. When Blogger "accidentally" deleted my account, relegated ddjangoWIrE to a stripped archive, and "lost" some of my posts, the piece converted to disconnected bits in cyberspace and the essay was gone.

I'm really not going to use that disappearance as the primary excuse to post another brief essay on the same subject. Given the state of our nation, our democracy, and the inattention, malaise, and downright selfishness of its people, there are quite enough reasons to revisit this territory.

The main body of our Constitution, as you hopefully know, did not include a Bill of Rights. It was added as a series of amendments. The first draft of the document concerned itself only with the workings of the government, the methods by which the ruling class would make laws, assure that there was a balance of power, restrain the executive from instituting and exercising tyranny, and judging whether laws were conformed to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and were administered fairly and completely. It also dealt with the dynamic of states' rights as opposed to federal rights.

Fresh from a successful revolution against the still feudal monarchy of British rule, the finally independent American colonies were most concerned with the establishment and protection of the Republic. The fairly new concepts of liberalism and democracy were an afterthought, save the creation of a very limited "representative" legislature.

The rulers, mostly well-educated and wealthy land owners were in fact terrified of giving "the masses" much power and preferred that power remain in the hands of the aristocracy. Fortuitously, however, that same fear drove the "founding fathers" to delineate certain limited rights and freedoms for individuals, primarily to avoid a new internal uprising of the people against the government. After all, the Declaration of Independence, the document that justified revolution against British tyranny, celebrated the liberal concept that "all men are created equal".

In some infamous ways, of course, the Bill of Rights was incomplete: African immigrants, most all of them slaves, were deemed fractions of men. Women were not equal to men. To a great extent, at least in practice, these deficiencies remain to this day.

Individual rights and freedoms are, of course, essential to the well-being of humans. Truthfully, Western democracies have the best track record in establishing and enforcing these as law. here is the US Bill of Rights enumerated:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Several times in our history, however, though never more than today, the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, has been raped and turned on its head. I will not go into the details, since much has already been written on the subject (not that it's done much good).

Now comes the question . . . how and why have our rights and freedoms been violated, disregarded, and perhaps lost to us completely? Because we simply have not taken the responsibility to protect them. We haven't paid attention. Use it or lose it. Simple as that.

I can't help but wish that a second ten amendments to the Constitution had been composed and ratified - The Bill of Responsibilities. Googling around, I found just such a thing, "An American Bill of Responsibilities" by Judith H. Rose. Here it is, in full:

Fifteen years after the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution of the United States, the amendments known as the Bill of Rights were ratified. These inspired men believed in a balance between citizen responsibilities and citizen rights. They knew that an emphasis only on rights would inevitably lead to self-interest and anarchy. They also knew that without this balance our nation could not endure. It is time to restore that balance. If they could counsel us today, the Founding Fathers might suggest the following Bill of Responsibilities:

1. You have the responsibility to be a loyal citizen of the United States of America and to expect the same of every other citizen or immigrant to this great land. You have the responsibility to honor the flag and everything she stands for, and to pledge your allegiance to your country.

2. Accepting citizenship means that you are, first and foremost, an American, not a hyphenated American or an expatriate of another country who is here solely for economic advantage. While you do not need to agree with every law that is passed, you do have the obligation to obey the law and work through peaceful means to achieve change. Further, for as long as you are living in this great country that continues to guarantee more freedom to its citizens than any other, you have the obligation to be grateful for the blessing of living in such a land. In America you have the freedom to leave at any time, should you be dissatisfied. No permission is needed.

3. You have the responsibility to speak up when the criminal or legislative actions of any persons threaten the welfare of your family or your nation. It is not someone else's responsibility to blow the whistle; it is yours. "They" should not do something about the problems. You are "they." It takes courage and time to stand up against evil and destructive forces, but if you do not do it, who will?

4. You have the responsibility to consider the welfare of ALL the citizens of the United States of America, even if it requires some personal sacrifice. The nation cannot survive the promulgation of narrow self-interest, be it of the individual, the community, or the state. As long as you judge every law or solution to a problem solely by how it affects you or your surroundings, rather than the country as a whole, there will be no real answers, nor can America remain great.

5. You have the responsibility to support yourself and your own immediate and extended family. Being self-sustaining, providing for your own family, and helping your neighbor to the extent possible are requisite for a healthy economy and society. No society can flourish when a sizable number of its citizens expect to do nothing while accepting a government dole. Reliance on government entities inevitably destroys individual self-respect and the economic well-being of both citizen and state. If you take care of yourself and family, and the community picks up the slack, this nation will have one-third more funds for worthwhile projects and both you and this nation, will become strong and resilient.

6. You have the responsibility to make a difference in the lives of your family, your community, and your nation. As a good citizen you are here to make a contribution to this country. America has always been in the forefront in medical advances, scientific research, humanitarianism, and other areas. You have the responsibility to continue this tradition through hard work and good use of your time. You have the responsibility to bypass excuses of race, economic standing, and victimization of any kind because, no matter which excuse you choose, someone has successfully overcome it.

7. You have the responsibility to be educated and informed. A public education is not enough. Finding truth is a challenging lifetime task that you must pursue diligently. You have the responsibilty to seek truth from many sources. You must question what you read in any publication or listen to in any media report and be willing to consider all sides of any question. You must realize that such a quest for truth will take a tremendous effort to seek it out. The truth is not revealed unless actively sought.

8. You have the responsibility to use wisdom in selecting those who will lead you. You must learn to seek men of good character, not those with only charisma or a handsome face. You must become a connoisseur of character rather than a pawn of a salient slogan. You must remember that character is never outdated. A man or woman with no self-control should never be trusted with the welfare of our great country. You must never tolerate leaders who are untruthful, deceitful, or seek to exercise power rather than give service.

9. You have the responsibility to value and defend human life. Quality of life considerations, age, or handicaps do not in any way lessen the value of life itself. Any life taken by mankind before its time cheapens the life of every other American. You also have the responsibility to educate those who would degrade human life by considering it, at best, equal to or even lower than animal life.

10. You have the responsibility to honor your freedom of worship and to defend that right for every citizen in this country. We, your Founding Fathers valued religion highly and depended entirely upon God for the inspiration and help needed to form this union. We expect no less of you.

I take issue with some of these items, the stuff about the flag, for instance, but all in all, it's a great start. My favorite is item 4, "You have the responsibility to consider the welfare of ALL the citizens of the United States of America, even if it requires some personal sacrifice. The nation cannot survive the promulgation of narrow self-interest, be it of the individual, the community, or the state . . ." Narrow self-interest, simply, is irresponsible.

Irresponsibility is the core reason that not only have we lost many of our rights and freedoms, but also that as a nation and even as a planet we are in grave danger. We have concentrated so much on what we want (avoiding the question of what we need), that we have ignored our individual and group responsibility to each other and the whole world.

It is often said that our government is of, by, and for the people. Somehow, while we were looking narcissistically at our own greedy navels, we have become a people of, by, and for a fascist government. We hire representatives, many of them liars and criminals, based on beauty contests and reports of millions of dollars of campaign contributions, to make our laws. We really know little of what policies they stand for, what their track records consist of, and who truly owns them. Then, shocked when they betray us, we do little more than ineffectively whine until the next election.

Not only haven't we been able to impeach The Doubleduh-Chainy Gang, we haven't even gotten Speaker Pelosi to consider it. Somehow, these thieves we've hired don't represent us, even when we're in the majority. I guess we're just more interested in celebrity antics and the newest bling. After all, holding our government's feet to the fire is hard work. A lot of us don't even vote; a lot less do things like express our views to our elected reps, even while they're clearly doing the bidding of lobbyists and their corporate handlers. Frankly, we should be more ashamed of ourselves than we are of, for example, the Bush regime. I mean, what the hell do you expect? A snake is a snake, even if he smiles and tells you he's a koala bear and cares about you.

Democracy only works if there is constant participation. Voting every couple of years just don't feed that bulldog. This is, after all, supposed to be a participatory democracy, one in which the people determine the outcome -laws, regulations written based on those laws, conformity with and enforcement of those laws. If we don't stay on top of things, as we can readily see, stuff gets out of hand . . . way out of hand.

I'm nearly sixty, and I've watched the notion of participatory democracy disintegrate over the past half century. My father told me that the last time people were really interested in government was during the FDR years . . . the Great Depression and World War II. We didn't win the latter, but we said we did, and aglow in the light of victory, having slain the dragon, we set about being "the greatest country in the world." We started to make things, build things, export things, but most important, buy things, lots of things. Rather than defeating fascism, we assimilated it. Then we turned to face "the Communist menace." Corporations which made a killing supporting the war machine grew monstrous and new ones were born in their image; the specter of communism, especially the notion of public, rather than private, ownership of the means of production was terrifying. If it had not been for the atrocities perpetrated by a psychotic Stalin, it would have been clearer that the "Cold War" was not so much a conflict between freedom and totalitarianism as between capitalism and communism.

Government was at first still important to a people convinced that the Soviet Union would take us over at the first clear opportunity. It was government that underlay our society, had taken care of us during financial disaster and war. Government was a part of us . . . until we started to dismantle most of it, with the exception of the military.

The first president I remember was Ike. He warned us about the military-industrial complex. Most folks didn't even know what he was talking about. Those who did just seemed to ignore it.

John Kennedy was narrowly elected for two reasons: he won the beauty contest and his daddy was rich and powerful enough to buy him the presidency. Although he's an American hero in the country's eyes, perhaps his statement during his inauguration, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", needs to be revisited. Was he saying, "forget about government continuing to support you and start supporting your government?" It seems to me that it's a two-way street, a mutual relationship, in which we're involved in our government while our government is involved with us. We are the government, theoretically anyway.

LBJ tried to keep the government/society synergy alive in his "Great Society" dream - but Vietnam squashed that one. End of story, pretty much. Nixon was a true conservative - although he tried to reign in what he saw as wasteful and poorly managed programs, he never really tried to totally destroy the social "safety net."

Unbelievably, Ronald Reagan seems to be remembered as an even greater hero than JFK. He rode a national tax revolt into office and raised the basic concept of liberalism to new heights. "Get government off our backs," he cried. But what he really wanted was to get us off the government's back. His friend Margaret Thatcher hit the nail on the head when she claimed that there was no society, only individuals and families. The Reagan-Thatcher years, for both their philosophy and their policies, were probably the most destructive in the Western world's history.

At the same time that the sanctity of the individual was celebrated, corporations were taking full advantage of their legal status as individuals. Those were the individuals that Margaret and Ronnie were talking about. It was off their backs that government should be taken.

It is frightening and unconscionable, the degree to which we have distanced ourselves from our own government. It is, perhaps, the most terrible instance of self-destruction and self-betrayal in world history. Representative democracy has been abandoned. We have allowed corporations, those blind pseudo-human entities of greed and illusion, to supplant us as self-governors. We've been bought off, clear and simple, by celebrity and sizzle, by manufactured "needs", by false gods with two contrary masks. This is not a comic tragedy - nothin's funny here.

It might not be so bad if we were "only hurting ourselves." The truth is that we are most powerful, but also most corrupt. We are most responsible for the looting and destruction of the planet's resources; for the export of the mad monster of capitalism in the name of "democracy"; for the support of ravenous dictatorships enslaving their own people in the cause of corporate profit; for the creation of "weapons of mass destruction"; for the instigation of mass murder under the guise of "regime change".

As a nation, we are responsible for the health and welfare of everyone and everything on this rock we call Earth. But as individual residents of the United States of America, we seem each to be a nation of one.

Categories: rights, freedoms, Bill+of+Rights, responsibilities, Bill+of+Responsibilities, individuals, liberalism, corporations, corporate+fascism, democracy, representative+democracy, participatory+democracy, narcissism