Gordon Prather wrote the following concerning the seeming apathy of Americans to out-of-control military spending and destructive policies:
Maybe it doesn’t really matter to them why we invaded Iraq. Or why we’re going to gut the nuke proliferation prevention regime in order to establish a “strategic partnership” with India. Or why we’re building a zillion-dollar untested antiballistic missile defense system in Alaska to defend against non-existent North Korean nuke-tipped ballistic missiles. Or even why we’re going to attack Iran later this year or next.
Maybe what matters most to all of them are good jobs for Americans.
And as Karen Kwiatkowski remarked to Brian Lamb in her absolutely stunning interview on C-SPAN’s Q&A about the making of the documentary “Why We Fight,” the only good jobs we have left in this country, that we haven’t already exported, are those in the so-called “defense” and aerospace industries.
Maybe.
In my opinion, the colonialist mindset that Juan Santos examines in A Nation of Colonists … and Race Laws: The Politics of Immigration, is another reason:
You hear it everywhere. Even from Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the vicious anti-migrant legislation that has polarized the US.
“We are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws,” he says.
And like almost everyone else, he’s got it wrong.
The original Europeans in what is now the US were not immigrants, but colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants – it is a white colonial settler state, like South Africa under Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia and Israel.
And like those states the US has always operated on a sometimes hidden, sometimes overt system of Apartheid.
Like those places, the US is a nation of colonists and race laws.
Overt, unapologetic racism and apocalyptic millenarianism are ties that bind enthusiastic permanent war supporters. But even “tolerant” Caucasians fear becoming the minority in the United States just as Zionists fear becoming a minority in Israel. The prospect of being treated as they’ve treated others is frightening. Neoliberal weapons of globalisation, and the GWOT is one, have been acceptable because willingness to amend the inequities extends only insofar as the fixes neither disturb existing nor undermine the future of personal comfort zones. Losing the engine and the privileges reaped from operating it concerns them deeply so a war for oil will be tolerated so long as the benefits outweigh the consequences. Osama bin Laden appreciated this about Americans. As Scott Ritter noted recently, support for exiting Iraq rose as the prospects for “winning” fell, not due some moral epiphany.
But even more importantly, I think, Americans are denied alternatives by the state.
Condoleezza Rice pinned her entire argument for sharing nuclear technology with India to the premise that oil is a weapon that must not fall into the wrong hands. At what point did it become politically correct to admit the fight’s about oil? [ Senate hearing on U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement – 5 April 2006 ] She’s taken aback, in fact, by the way the politics of energy is “warping” diplomacy around the world.
What could be more warped than censoring dissenting opinion from an alleged educational session on whether the U.S. should assist India in the proliferation of unregulated nuclear weapons? Sen. Dick Lugar opened the hearing by praising India’s prosperous economy. Only when viewpoints like those of Arundhati Roy or Vandana Shiva are included will such sessions rise to the level of educational.
And what should a state be called that uses food and medicine as a weapon? Warped doesn’t quite cut it.
Wageless – Workshare Dreaming
Protesters are increasingly being asked to leave their native flags at home and wave only U.S. flags at immigration demos. I empathise with illegals who’ve been coerced into this country for lousy wages and no benefits but this is a bit like watching a victim propose to their abuser hoping the beatings will stop after the marriage ceremony.
I suspect that after this election year divisive politicking is out of the way the only offer on the table within reach for most will be citizenship in exchange for military service.
And it’s especially ironic whilst immigrants are fighting to get into this country people I never would have pegged for such an opinion are telling me they’d leave it in a heartbeat if circumstances permitted.
I spent 36 hours this weekend operating a machine for a decent company by today’s lowly standards that will use the profits from my labour to automate me into a new adventure. The ugliest comments of some workmates about the immigration issue led me to daydream about an elusive wageless-workshare system and principles that in my mind a just society would never compromise. 1.) No one goes hungry. 2.) The sick are mended and the terminal tended. 3.) Respect the earth.
Intentional Communities, based upon ideals, like The Farm.
Oil would be history along with garbage consumer-driven societies produce, in other words, no artificially-coloured food stuffs or competing food chains selling them. Workshare of essentials would mean no one would toil away at the same task 60-80 hours a week until the day they die or their employer has no use for them. Instead, the same job would be shared by many so that tasks like educating one’s self or one’s children, tending the sick, or participating in a community event, are finally achievable. So long to brain-draining public schools and nursing home warehouses.
But although each community would be relatively self-sustaining in a short period of time as far as basic essentials go thanks to new technology – if an initial capital investment could be found – technology is also my folly’s ultimate damnation when it comes to eliminating money.
1.) No one goes hungry.
The size of the collective should never exceed the ability of its members to workshare the tasks of raising life’s essentials or the economics of maintaining the technology necessary to do so. Engines necessary for production would be converted to run on some type of biodiesel. Additional farming structures, such as greenhouses and a flour mill, would be solar powered as well. Interaction with industrialised communities for products that mechanics can’t scavenge or repair might be arranged by trading energy for goods.
Energy production is a vital component and its core would be one like the Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, Vermont, a dairy cattle enterprise that produces electricity by burning waste methane gas. Communities built near an existing industrialised one could trade energy for goods it can’t produce or need to build new communities. Acreage could be made available for wind power structures as well and used as another asset for bartering.
A biorefinery would also be an asset for bartering:
A biorefinery would work like a petrochemical refinery, producing transportation fuel and high-value chemicals, but would use plant matter as the raw material instead of petroleum. The plant matter could be any number of things, including corn, wheat, barley, switchgrass, crop residues or waste wood.
2.) The sick are mended and the terminal tended. 3.) Respect the earth.
These are inextricably entwined as a health system requires hospitals and the technology necessary to run one. So the folly hinges on an ability to maintain factories to manufacture these products and the materials that would be essential to their production. There’s also the matter of safely disposing of the waste generated by hospitals and factories. The same goes for computers and the satellites to establish a connection. This would require a huge investment of capital and/or contracts with the industrialised world – That would never happen.
And I was so looking forward to building my house.
There’s no sound economic reason that capitalists aren’t building communities around these technologies in places devastated by natural and man made disasters like Louisiana and Mississippi instead of setting-up mobile homes. What Katrina didn’t get the next hurricane will? The state might have utilised existing structures that societies can’t live without such as hospitals and factories and converted them to operate on and manufacture the latest technologies. The surrounding area could then be mown down and agricultural communities set-up to be as self-sufficient as the technology and the masters of industry permit.
But control trumps efficiency and that leash gets shorter all the time.
Do Americans really want to control the world? I don’t think so. The ones that do aren’t willing to spill their blood making it happen and the rest recognise it’s a losing proposition. If there were viable alternatives to this oppressive state there’d be broken tethers galore which is why the state will kill, maim and incarcerate to ensure there are none.