A Bitter Pill

I was talking to a very smart guy recently about where we are now.  He was of the opinion that the American Empire was a natural consequence of America taking up the global mantle from Britain after the First World War and we had no choice but to let the federal government grow into the monster it has become to prevent any other emerging power like China from overtaking us in any of the various arenas that we compete in; military power, technological prominence and financial and monetary control.  And I sort of see what he means.

But I also know that what America has become is only a good thing for a miniscule fraction of Americans and I can’t imagine how most people wouldn’t be horrified to see the world become the reductionist inhuman dystopia that the people in charge more and more openly espouse.  To see the grandchildren of the men who fought World War II programmed by their teachers to think that their duty was to die childless while living in a cubicle sized enclosure while eating dried crickets and watching their phones, is a sickening spectacle.  This is just the replay of the Roman Republic collapsing into an empire where the patricians buy up all the land using the spoils created by the plebian legions and then flooding Italy with slaves from these same wars to bankrupt the last of the small farmers and turn them into paupers that could only become soldiers to survive.

You know, I don’t think I care if the dollar loses its reserve currency status and all the masters of the universe have to give way to Beijing.  In fact, maybe I would prefer it.  If all the American and European billionaires were suddenly impoverished and became just plain old millionaires and suddenly none of us could afford the newest smart-phone made in China or whatever the latest status symbol was, I don’t think I’d be sad at all.  If all the guys working for the big investment banks, hedge funds and pharma companies suddenly had to lose one or two zeros from the end of their paychecks, I think it would make me smile.  I really wish someone like Donald Trump really would raise enormous tariffs against the foreign manufactured products that all those American companies sell to us.  Hell, I’d even buy lousy American cars if they would benefit Americans working in those lousy plants.

And to be honest, I’m not even mad at the Chinese workers or the Mexican workers or even the Vietnamese workers who presently make all the stuff we have to buy.  I’m mad at the American globalists who set up this zero-sum game that basically sucks up all the middle-class prosperity that was built up in this country over the course of hundreds of years and transfers it to an oligarchy that figured out how to monetize that middle-class right out of existence.

Even the commissars in the old Soviet Union didn’t want to eliminate the Russian people.  They still wanted them to survive and have children.  But our modern overlords have a new model where their human serfs are replaced to as great an extent as is technologically possible with computers, robots and drones.  Only a small cadre of actual humans will be needed and even this residue will be reduced from iteration to iteration of the plan.

Populism is now the name of what we must espouse.  Expansion of the middle class should be the goal of any politician that wants our loyalty.  And busting up monopolies now sounds like a wonderful idea.  And the first company I would bust up into a thousand pieces is Google.  The second would be Amazon.  And after taking on the Silicon Valley billionaires I would want to see the FBI shut down permanently.  And the CIA would be put under a very tight control and if they interfered with American citizens the perpetrator should be punishable up to the death penalty.

Now all of this is just pipe-dreaming.  We are about to find out if we are now permanently out-voted by the new serfs that the overlords imported.  If so, the only thing we can do is look for some local infestation of populism that some renegade leader cobbles together and rush to it and hope for the best.  Or just wait for the World War III that the neo-cons are pushing for and hope your location on the targeting grid gets missed by enough to allow survival.  Then in the post-apocalyptic nightmare that will ensue we might eke out an existence that might at least be free.  Ending bitter rant.

Update:

War Pig commented:

Teddy Roosevelt was shot on the campaign trail. He got elected then became the Trust Buster. When the Arabs kidnapped an American widow and her children, he basically invaded the nation and got them back. He built the Panama Canal and used the Great White Fleet as gunboat diplomacy. He was Trump before Trump. I agree, we should give the internet lords the Ma Bell treatment. Increase competition and keep costs down. You and I can remember when Bell ruled communication. We remember usurious long distance tariffs on calls. We also remember the initial wobbles as the baby Bells got their footing, but eventually came into their strides and began exploring new technologies. Competition is everything. It is what drives humans to excel, to innovate. We need more of it, to include taking away unconstitutional powers the feds have siezed and let private industry show how most government agencies are inefficient and rampant with graft and political favoritism.