When Bush Goes, What Then?

[leveymg]

We have the power to overthrow Bush-Cheney. Just tap into that national mean streak that gave us the Limbaughs and O'Reillys. As someone over at DKos put it so very well earlier this morning: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/6/92233/93718#114

"I think the trick is to find a scapegoat that everyone can hate. The one thing Americans enjoy even more than brutality is kicking the high and mighty when they've fallen back down the ladder. (Think back to how much fun everyone had hating Martha Stewart.) Deep down inside, every red-blooded American wants to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al groveling in front of the cameras and begging, the more pathetically the better, for clemency."

When Bush took office, Americans had just came off of a decade during which we seemingly did most things fairly competently. We had won the Cold War, handily crushed Iraq's army (to the applause of much of the world), Americans enjoyed historic low energy costs and inflation, had unparalleled affluence, a huge budget surplus . . . and within a couple years it ALL went bad. Since 2001, we seemingly can't do anything right -- under Bush-Cheney, we watched lower Manhattan burn, couldn't defeat the Iraqi resistance, deal effectively with natural and man-made disasters, create jobs, or even manage to vote out the Administration who had reigned over this dramatic decline in fortune. Now, they want to sell our ports -- a perfectly fitting end to the era.

The GOP got into power by mastering the politics of insecurity. After eating our lunch for five years, their time in power is drawing to a close. We know it, and they sense the end is near. They are cornered, all shot up, and don't much care about their reputation. To maximize their remaining gains, the Republicans have imposed a loot and burn strategy to mark their exit. It's a sort of IMF/World Bank development model turned on its head. Control over economic policy and investment decisions are being moved offshore. Everything in the budget not connected to the military or homeland security is being carved to the bone. Unless you're in the top tax brackets, you're on your own. This property will be sold, down to the nails in the floor and the locks on the door.

It's a time of sacrifice. People adapt as best they can to simultaneously pay for imports and pay off debts. As the Dubai Ports controversy clearly shows, America is being auctioned off in petro-dollars at the same time American jobs -- including management and professional positions -- are transferred to the other side of the world. We've been down this road before in the 1970s and 1980s -- we didn't like it then, when it mainly impacted blue-collar workers, and its likely to be worse now when the middle-class can no longer borrow against their home equity. Pop. Broke.

It is only a matter of time until the Dollar is devalued, and imported goods grow enormously more expensive. Too bad we have lost the ability to produce sufficient goods to meet domestic demand, and will have to pay dearly for things we have grown to take for granted, like heating our homes and gas and parts for our imported cars.

My best guess is that toward the end of the 1990s, global financial elites foresaw that the waves of rippling market crashes that were then sweeping around the world were going to converge on the central assets and debt markets in New York. Knowing the bubble was going to burst, global corporations threw huge amounts of money into building the Republican Party, in the belief that the GOP would better guard the interests of globalized wealth and property long enough for multinational corporations, banks and investment trusts to sell off assets and transfer operations to emerging markets. That was a smart investment -- boy, were they were right to bank on the basic venality of the Republicans.

What may or may not have been well understood was that the GOP had become the host of previously marginalized elites pursuing an agenda of imperial overreach, an agenda that in many ways was hostile to the maintenance of status quo policies that had been in place guiding American foreign policy for half a century.

Even before the declaration of the "War on Terrorism" commenced after 9/11, the Saudi and Gulf states had become convinced that the new U.S. Administration would no longer be pursuing the status quo -- a balancing act that had previously attempted to reign in the ambitions of Israel in exchange for Saudi mediation that had stabilized the region and assured the flow of oil. Washington let it be known that the U.S. would take by force what it might lose through diplomacy and capital flight. In an unprecedented repatriation, the Arab oilmen have bailed-out of US bond and equity markets, taking much of their money with them, most of which has gone to fund the rapidly-growing Asia or into safe-harbour in Euro-denominated markets.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration put the squeeze on the Chinese to buy up federal debt that was being abandoned by others. In exchange for continued access to the U.S. markets, China was forced into what they view as an extortionate relationship they expect will end in a massive loss akin to that suffered by the Japanese in 1985 after James Baker twisted the arms of Japanese central bankers to agree to the Plaza Accords, resulting overnight in a 50% devaluation of dollar denominated notes versus the Yen.

What all this arm-twisting and threats have bought has been behind-the-scenes mechanizations to reign in the world's last rogue superpower. The steady old Washington hands that had understood the need for balance and consensus with allies were squeezed out in a neocon purge. The Democratic Party, with its squabbling factions that had once placed a brake on blind imperial adventures, were ignored and some bought off.

The foreign policy apparatus of the Bush-Cheney Administration is dominated by a cadre of ideologues hell-bent on an agenda of using U.S. forces to overthrow regimes deemed hostile to Israel. The single-minded pursuit of this goal has led to military disaster, enormous debts, a sell-off America's prime assets, paralysis of the country's governmental functions, the stripping of constitutional liberties, the hobbling and humilation of the military, a loss of "soft power" and diplomatic influence around the world, and a concerted attempt to turn what remains of the American Republic into a constantly-monitored police state complete with secret torture chambers and hooded prisoners that disappear without names. If there is a war with Iran, as the White House now threatens, no one doubts that will happen in America on a much wider scale.

The neocon cadre of Likud enthusiasts in Washington think-tanks and lobbying groups -- PNAC, AEI, AIPAC -- who in the late 1990s formulated the policy goals that guided policy, must shoulder the blame for the failure of their agenda. But, I would suggest that they should not go to the political stocks alone.

Behind the culture of corruption in Washington is the money tree on which all the disasters of the Bush-Cheney years have been nourished. The tree --the interlocked network of oil sheikhs, Swiss bankers, Chinese manufacturers, and the corrupt American lobbyists and politicians (the Abramoffs, Norquists, Bushes, DeLays, Hasterts, and Cunninghams) -- must be cut down. It should be cut up and trucked off, along with all who have knowingly filled and fed at the trough of illegal foreign campaign contributions, multinational corporate lobbying, defense contracting and influence peddling. Investigate, indict, and imprison this criminal leadership, seize the assets of the corporations that bankrolled them into power, and America may gain a second chance. Continue as we have, and we will soon join the Soviet Union as just another failed empire.

Bring your pitchfork and a burning torch. We have monsters and market-makers to track down.

[Democrats_win]

1. Yes, the "money tree" should not escape this time as it did in Watergate.

Six years later they were screwing Americans again with the broken ideology of raygun.

[electropop]

2. Excellent!

What a cogent rant.