When Bureaus Drop Their Drawers

It seems that one government agency after another is falling into disgrace after being exposed for incompetence . In some cases, even some “senior management” has been let go, so you know things are getting serious. And we're not talking about agencies no one has ever heard of, or loser agencies like HUD, or agencies populated by homicidal maniacs like BATF. These are serious outfits with a serious, and publicly acknowledged, mission... and while the mission may be unconstitutional in some or all cases, at least it is designed to answer a tangible need, and its failure has tangible consequences. In the last few months, the following have been shown to have feet of clay: The IRS; the VA; the Secret Service; and, most recently, the CDC. And this does not include agencies like the FDA and EPA, which chronically operate under a well-deserved cloud of suspicion.

Now, one thing you will find in nearly all of these cases is politicization – or, let's say, over-politicization, since no government agency can possibly be entirely free of politics, because, after all, it was created by politicians for political reasons, and answers to politicians. I'm referring to the process by which political considerations begin to erode, eat into, and eventually override the original mission, to the point where the agency and its functions turn into a political arm of the party in power. And there is nothing new about this, I hasten to add; the phenomenon was already in full bloom during the New Deal. But in these times, places that should be “above all that” are showing that, far from being above it all, they are mired in it.


And the thing is... well, I guess we're still naïve and childlike when it comes to these things, because there is always great shock and dismay with each new revelation. Perhaps we should be more cynical and world-weary, the way the Europeans are; they expect corruption and self-serving in government, and when it happens it's, ho-hum, pass the vino. But we persist in expecting better – in expecting our leaders to act like... well, like exceptional people rather than the way ordinary slobs would act if you gave them a huge amount of money and power, with little or no accountability and rewards that have nothing to do with performance.  We have not, in other words, fully come to terms with human nature and its inevitable corrupting effects on any sort of collective activity, government being the first and foremost. It's not that politicians are inevitably worse than anyone else (though some seem to be), it's that they are weak, venal, and easily seduced. For them, power is an opportunity for self-advancement and vainglory, and if the public accidentally gets served once in a while, well, that's OK too, but we can't have too much of it, because then they'll only expect more.


The other thing to bear in mind as these stories trickle down from the seats of power is this: What is the nature of bureaucracy, and of bureaucrats? Well, for starters, Job #1 of any government agency is self-preservation, and some of them spend the bulk of their resources on that one thing – just staying in business, keeping their jobs, perks, and pay. There is a “mission” somewhere, of course – you know, the ostensible reason the agency and its program were created – but it is easily obscured by day-to-day survival needs. And why is this? Well, it starts with budgets, and at any given time every government agency is working on a handful of budgets: Executing this year's, finalizing next year's, proposing budgets for 2, 3, 5, 10 years out, and so on. And when it comes to execution, there is such a thing as “budget defense”; if you're not spending this year's money fast enough, someone is going to come along and take it away from you – and take it from me, there are people in the government whose primary function is to keep an eye on the budgets of nearby (in organizational or mission terms) agencies to see who might be ripe for the plucking.  And when they spot an easy mark, they go whining to someone up the line and say "Hey, those guys aren't spending their money, and here we are with all sorts of wonderful programs that are underfunded.  Waaah!"  And it gets results.


Then, on top of budgets, we have personnel issues – authorized positions or “slots” -- and the main goal there is to maintain grade level (which implies salary). And again, as with budget, this is a 24/7/365 job; it never ends. But just maintaining positions isn't enough either – you also have to maintain actual live bodies. But – you might say – aren't these the same thing? No, not in government. You can have authorized slots but no authorization to actually fill them... or, less frequently, you can be authorized to hire people but have no authorized slots to put them in.  And this is usually because the different types of authorization are done by completely different agencies.


Incredible, you say? Grossly inefficient? No argument – but I guarantee that this is how the government works (or doesn't work) on a day-to-day basis. 

And we still haven't gotten around to the actual mission! First we have to talk about hiring – and a government manager can't just go out and hire anyone he or she wants for a given position. Oh no. There are lists... there are people referred to as “stoppers”, i.e. forced out of another agency because of a reduction in force, and they become first in line for your opening, even if they are clearly less qualified than any number of other candidates. Then there is the “point system” where you get points for being a veteran, or for having any of a myriad of handicaps or demographic (i.e. “minority”) characteristics. I used to joke that the ideal job applicant in government would be a lesbian albino Inuit paraplegic – and this is not as exaggerated as you think. A person with those credentials could get a job anywhere in government, with any job description, at any rank, no questions asked – and why? Because the “human resources” office of the agency would get to check off multiple “affirmative action” boxes and look fantastic when the next audit rolled around.


So – if that's the impenetrable jungle called “hiring” in the government, what about “firing”? That's an easy one – there's no such thing. Oh, technically there are policies and procedures when it comes to “termination”, but the requirements are so onerous than managers are typically unwilling to even start. And this, by the way, holds true whether the employee is a union member or not. (I do recall one manager who spent most of his time for an entire year in order to get rid of one incompetent subordinate. Did the mission suffer as a result? Perhaps – but he (the manager) said that, hey, if that's what the system demands, that's what it's gonna get.) What is more typical is that the “dead wood”, “retired in place” types are put in a corner (figuratively, and sometimes literally as well) where they won't get in the way, and allowed to wait out their time undisturbed. The risk in this case is that a given office in an agency may become a kind of rest home or day-care center for these types, with the result that the entire office is sidelined and its mission (assuming it even had one) is transferred over to a group whose members still have a pulse.

And these are, by and large, threats from without; I won't burden you with a discussion of the everyday internal plotting, scheming, undercutting, and backbiting, because I don't think that government is at all unique in this regard.  


OK, so... where were we? Oh yes, the mission. Now, assuming there is any time left after all the above considerations are dealt with, the competent or at least semi-competent remnant has an actual job to do. So what can possibly go wrong at this point? Well... this is where politics rears its ugly head.  Because, as I said, every program in every agency has some sort of political implications, some more obvious than others.  And if you doubt this, just try terminating a program or putting an agency out to pasture -- then you'll find out where the vested interests are, and they are invariably vocal in their protests, and know exactly who to protest to.

But the real trouble starts when someone in Congress, say, develops an "interest" in your program, and decides that they need a briefing, or to make a visit -- and these events often result in some sort of, let's say, "suggestions" as to how to "improve" the program, or how to "restate" the statistics in order to support a political agenda.  And this is usually a gradual, erosive -- or corrosive -- process, and with each cycle through the political checkpoint the agency and its programs become more and more politicized, until what they are accomplishing (if anything) is little more than validating someone's political stance.  And when some snooper starts asking questions, we see the well-practiced process of "damage control" AKA "covering your butt".  Damage control becomes necessary when an agency is, basically, caught with its pants down (usually not literally).  It's sort of like the old saying, "You can't cheat an honest man" -- an agency that is doing its job properly should not have to cover its butt, but one that is politicized will spend an inordinate amount of time doing just that. 

So this is that stage that the agencies mentioned above are at.  They cooperated in their own demise as honest brokers -- in many cases starting years or decades ago -- and now that they're caught and exposed, it's as if all of the misdeeds happened at once, overnight.  But this is not the case; it's the result of a long, drawn-out process.  The deeper one digs, the more clear it becomes that the corruption is chronic and profound -- and the main question at that point is, can this agency be saved?  Or would we be better off just closing it down and starting over?  (This has been seriously proposed with regard to the IRS, for example.)  The problem with that, based on historical evidence, is that you can close an agency down but the people in it will just scuttle off and hide somewhere else, and continue to cause damage.  Plus, that original mission may still be needed, and it will be transplanted over to a new agency or turned over to some other agency, which starts the cycle over again. 

People who say that the main problem is the size of government are ignoring the things that inevitably happen in government, regardless of size -- and these are based on human fallibility and concupiscence.  These things can never be entirely eliminated, but a combination of reducing size and clarifying missions would certainly help -- along with simply closing agencies that no longer have a mission that makes sense, or that have made such a shambles of their mission that it must be declared "mission impossible".  You can't stop the politicization process, but making it possible to not only fire people but actually force them out of the government once and for all would be a major step. 

Then there's the question of term limits.  (Did I mention that I had a dream?) 

The K-12 Killing Fields

“School shooting” -- a term that appears more and more often in the headlines, almost to the point where we're tempted to say “Ho hum, another one, hope it's nowhere around here [quick check of location], things are going to hell, etc. What's for dinner?” Yes, even this – unheard of in any past era – has become almost expected, like some sort of seasonal natural phenomenon. And we get the usual hand-wringing and pointless babbling, all of which reflects an attitude of victimhood and helplessness, and a refusal to delve into the real causes. The only question that is consistently asked is the wrong one, namely: What is wrong with “our society” that “allows such things to happen” by refusing to confiscate everyone's guns? But even that is usually drowned in a sea of “grief counseling”, “healing”, “moving on”, and teddy bears.

Now, I don't mean to sound cynical; after all, tragedy is tragedy, and it happens to individuals, not groups or societies. But to remain on a superficial level and not ask the hard questions is to, basically, give up on finding answers and on really doing anything about the problem.

The most obvious question, which is begged over and over again, is this: Why schools? And, more specifically, why public schools? When's the last time you heard of a shooting at a private, Catholic, or Christian (i.e. Evangelical) school? I can't think of a single instance. Naturally enough, most of the perpetrators are themselves students (in the school in question or one nearby), though there are some exceptions. But ease of access is not enough to explain the statistics – nor is the fact that the public schools have a much larger enrollment than all other types combined. It has to be – it seems to me – something about public schools per se that invite this sort of... let's call it “rage” (and rage, as we all know (or ought to) is most commonly a result of helplessness and frustration). The shootings are typically planned, sometimes far in advance... preparations are impressively complete at times, although an escape plan is seldom included since – also typically – the perpetrator has pretty much planned to be killed in the process – to be, in effect, a martyr to his own ambiguous cause. And they all have reasons, and those reasons typically have to do with bullying, or at least having been a “loner”, albeit usually a fairly intelligent one. “Over-sensitivity” -- on the opposite end of the scale from being a bully, I suppose – is an almost inevitable trait, along with being somewhere on the Asperger's scale.

And yet the victims seem, most of the time, to be chosen at random; they are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In other words, the perpetrator does not seek out the bullies who've been persecuting him, instead blaming the student body as a whole for, I suppose, having an “atmosphere” of bullying and intolerance (the way so many sectors of our society allegedly have an “atmosphere” of racism or sexism, even if there is no tangible evidence). There are, after all, in society at large, bullies and those who aren't bullied but who tacitly go along with bullying, i.e. either approve or don't object. (This is a phenomenon frequently discussed when the topic of Nazi Germany comes up, for example. The “silent majority” -- the great, gray middle – may not commit crimes, but they are silent in the face of crime, preferring to protect their own interests rather than “get involved”.)

But are the schools themselves bullies and persecutors? Don't they exist primarily to teach the “3 R's?” Well, no – not in our time. It's no accident that the video of Pink Floyd's song “Another Brick in the Wall” showed a parade of schoolchildren in grotesque masks filing through a dark factory and then plunging into a giant hopper – all to the tune of “we don't need no thought control”. Preparation for good citizenry is less about tangible subject matter than about attitudes and feelings – and public school teachers identify themselves as “agents of change” (and proud of it).

So perhaps the question should be not only what the public schools do on an ordinary, daily basis, but what they represent or symbolize – especially to people who prefer to “connect the dots” rather than drown their sorrows in sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (or team sports). The school shooters may have diseased minds and twisted thought processes, but they at least get this much right: The public schools represent the Regime... “the man”... the system... and what used to be called the “establishment” before the people who used that term became the establishment. The public schools are rightly seen – and not just by the deranged – as the cutting edge of society's campaign against true freedom, true liberty, and true individuality. They are a key component of the propaganda apparatus, and the first one the average citizen is likely to encounter (unless they overdose on PBS while still toddlers). And for the “normal” among us, they are no threat, because we have already -- by the time we enter that gaping door on the first day of kindergarten – been sufficiently softened up; we have become little authoritarians. We are unlikely to rebel, except for a few pathetic gestures in early adolescence; and, most importantly of all, we are unlikely to ever question the basic premises upon which our system (political, economic, social) is based. The outlier, however, has little if anything to lose by questioning the party line... by wondering whether we all live in the “matrix”. They value their own individuality, flawed as it may be, over group identity; they are unlikely to ever become political animals or “good citizens”. And yes, the system is designed to tolerate (if not encourage) a certain small percentage of outliers; they act as a safety valve, and mostly as an example the Regime can point to and say (to all the others), “Now you don't want to be like that guy, do you? A geek, a loser, a disruptive influence? No, of course not. Now drink your Kool-Aid and be quiet.”

But then a small percentage of these alienated types – the truly wretched souls – get it into their heads that the only way to express their rage against the machine is to kill off some of its other victims, albeit the willing ones. And like terrorism, their act doesn't teach anyone anything (although it should); it just increases the sum total of fear, alienation, and insecurity in the community. And they (the perps) might say, well fine, I'm showing these people how things really are. Maybe on some level that's true, but who will argue that the lesson is worth the price?

Now don't get me wrong; it's still their fault. You can't water down evil by ascribing it to a group, or a race, or “historical grievances”. And frankly, I've never had much regard for the “insanity defense”. Doesn't it implicitly assume that most murders are committed by sane people? And can that possibly be true? I would say it's false by definition. But having said that, there are certainly environmental factors contributing to violent acts; very few are completely random. And what sort of environment have we created in our time? One where the individual feels increasingly helpless and exploited, so tries to assert himself through risk-taking and “extreme” activities, clothes, tattoos, piercings, and other lifestyle choices – anything to show that he still has some small measure of control over his own existence. (And if you want a veritable fashion show of extreme looks, seek no further than the nearest public high school.) What I'm saying is that when you have a society that exerts control over every aspect of life... that attempts to eliminate all sources of danger or hurt feelings... you're going to get a reaction. The human organism is not programmed to accept, and be grateful for, a completely stress-free existence; we crave danger and risk, and when we don't get it in the normal course of things we create it – and by doing so we, and others, may become victims.

Eyeless in Gaza

One of my early memories when it comes to “the news” -- radio news in this case – is that of listening to stories about “fighting in the Gaza Strip”. This would have been at least as far back as when I was in junior high school in the late 1950s. I had only a vague idea of where the Gaza Strip was, and knew very little of the historical background, but it was obvious that that place was nothing but trouble... and here we are, fifty-odd years later, and very little has changed.

Recently, a correspondent of mine called my attention to an excellent interview with an Orthodox Jewish rabbi – a former executive director of the American Jewish Congress and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, no less, who expressed grave doubts as to the morality of Israel's actions in this latest confrontation. A transcript can be found at: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/30/henry_siegman_leading_voice_of_us

and

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/31/us_jewish_leader_henry_siegman_to

Please go to that site and read the interview if you have the time; it is very worthwhile and enlightening. Then, as to my own comments and observations:

To begin with, when one is confronted with an impossible situation -- diplomatically in this case -- one has to go back and dig a bit to figure out how it got that way.  In the case of Israel, it was all based on Zionism, i.e. the notion that the Jews had a "right" to Palestine that superseded all other rights, not only of other claimants but of the people who already lived there.  This was, in turn, bolstered by the myth of "a land without a people" -- and how could this possibly have been true?  Any idiot could have seen through that scam.  And yet they made it stick.  And, as far as they're concerned Palestine was, in fact, a land without a people -- i.e. without any people who really counted.  (This was especially true in light of World War I, which put an end to the Ottoman Empire and made Arabs into second-class world citizens, which they continue to be to this day, at least as far as the U.S. and Europe are concerned. And by extension, Islam is a second-class (at best) religion, which explains a lot of our attitude and propaganda vis-a-vis the Middle East. We claim that we are only fighting “radical Islam” and “terror”, but our military is subjected to an endless stream of “orientation” propaganda that, basically, identifies Islam in general as the enemy.)

Now, this is not to say that the Jews didn't suffer greatly prior to and during World War II.  But the notion that this gave them the right to just move in (anywhere on earth) and take over, and set up a country, does not automatically follow -- although this was certainly the reasoning at the time and continues to be.  (We forget that, historically, Palestine was not the only location proposed by the Zionists for a Jewish homeland, even though it has much more historical salience.)  But on the other hand, what were they supposed to do?  Go back to Europe?  That would have been awkward at best -- although some did.  Move to the U.S.?  Again, many did, but that was apparently not good enough -- especially given all the supposed racist, fascist, anti-Semitic tendencies floating around this country, which American Jews are always quick to point out even though it's minimal, in my opinion. (Poor Joe Biden is just the latest poster child for “latent antisemitism”, but he gets exactly zero sympathy from me because he is an equal-opportunity offender.)

So yes, it was high time for a Jewish homeland, and if you suggest that they owe it all to Hitler, you'll get great indignation, but in some sense it's true.  Would Zionism have ever won if it hadn't been for the Holocaust?  That's an imponderable of history.  But one thing is certain, it would certainly have never won if it hadn't been for the support of England and France -- and, less directly, the U.S.  England was, I suppose, glad to get Palestine off its hands, because it was nothing but trouble (owing, to a great extent, to the efforts of Jewish terrorists).  So they could get a number of tickets punched at the same time by simply turning it over to the Jews, with the cooperation of the U.N. and us, etc.  And again, the people who already lived there didn't count -- and it also didn't count that the new country would be surrounded by hostile Arab/Islamic states.  Now, anyone who expected Israel to be self-sustaining under those conditions was smoking something mighty powerful, and it wasn't a peace pipe.   

So Blunder #1, for the U.S. at least, was not only allowing this to happen, but encouraging it -- and, by implication at least, signing on for eternal life support of Israel no matter what.  So right away, after a decision of that magnitude, the law of cognitive dissonance requires that we never question Israel's strategies, tactics, or motives -- to say nothing of its right to exist.  That is off the table, period!  We've invested too much, in other words -- which is one reason why we keep exerting and straining ourselves to "help" them come up with diplomatic solutions to their Palestinian problem -- even though we know that no one over there wants peace.  What they want is to get rid of the other guys.  So we don't even have the option of walking away and retaining some of our self-respect -- not that bolstering John Kerry's self-respect is very high on my "to do" list anyway.

In other words, everything follows from that one bad choice back in the late 40s -- and yet most people will tell you that we didn't have a choice, that a Jewish homeland was going to happen no matter what, because of the Holocaust, which we didn't do enough to prevent (the "guilt card" being played at that point), plus all American Jews were in favor, etc. etc.  Well... logically, once we made that initial choice, it's perfectly true that everything that followed made perfect sense -- right up to and including resurgent radical Islam (AKA "terror") and its war on us, and our war with it.  Because Israel became, overnight, a very large thorn in the side of the Arab/Islamic world (literally, if you look at a map), and they could never "get used to" its existence, and they could never forgive us for aiding and abetting it.  So over time, various segments of the Islamic/Arab world became radicalized to varying extents, the most extreme version to date being ISIS, or whatever they're called at the moment.  (Remember when the most radical terrorist on earth was Arafat?  Those were the days!)  And things went into a cyclic mode, where the Arabs would do something, and Israel would react, and the Arabs would react to that, and so on ad infinitum -- the Gaza situation just being the latest in a long line.  And when it comes to "proportionality" -- well, what does it mean when each side really wants the other wiped off the face of the earth?  In that case, even total war would be "proportional", as it was for Hitler vis-a-vis the Jews.  He didn't just want the bankers, professors, and businessmen out of the way -- he wanted Anne Frank too.  That's total war, fans.  So according to that ancient -- Old Testament, if you will -- attitude, Israel should simply line up a bunch of bulldozers at the border of Gaza and start rumbling toward the sea until there is nothing left.  Well?  Isn't that what everyone really wants?  And the thing is, they could probably get away with it -- at least as far as the U.S. government is concerned, except for one small thing, and that's the small remnant of Jewish morality (Old Testament again -- but a different part) that has served to stay their hand to some extent. The irony is that after all that has happened, they are still concerned about their “image” -- in the U.S., Europe, and the world in general, but maybe most importantly to themselves. Contrast this with the moral stand represented by Rabbi Siegman -- by which I mean a real moral stand, faith-based, not the mythical "moral high ground" occupied by secular Jews (including the Israeli leadership) based on the Holocaust and antisemitism down through the ages.

The basic choice in question is this:  Which is more important, Jewish morality or Jewish tribalism (as represented by Zionism and Israel)?  Now, some might say, but aren't they the same thing? -- and there are certainly countless attempts to "spin" Israel's actions in order to make them appear moral, i.e. not just the actions of a country with enemies trying to survive the only way it knows how.  And yet morality, it seems to me, ought to transcend questions of race, ethnicity, nation -- even of religion itself, if we want to talk about Natural Law.  In other words, "is it not written" that some things are evil, or bad, in all times and in all places, and no matter who does them?  Obviously, this is a minority point of view in these times or moral relativism (which really means amorality), and in most places, but it's one that people of faith tend to agree on.  The supreme irony, of course, is that morality from on high -- i.e. from God -- is something that the Old Testament Jews "discovered", and passed on (perhaps not entirely willingly) to Christians, who passed it on (quite unwillingly) to Moslems.  So the "people of the book" all agree on this -- or at least they did at one time.

Ironically, the current troubles in the Middle East involve believers (the Islamists) waging war on nonbelievers (most Israelis and most of us).  But even this can serve to explain a few things.  For example, why was ISIS able to so easily, and rapidly, take over large swathes of Iraq and Syria?  Because they stole all that American equipment?  But the Iraqi forces had that equipment first.  OK, then -- because they robbed banks?  Right.  They were full of Iraqi money.  No, it's quite simple -- they were fighting for an idea.  A wrong one, or an extreme one, arguably -- but people fighting for an idea will always be more effective, other things being equal (or even if not), than people who are just doing it for money, or because they were forced, or for fun, or to show off, or whatever.  Ideas are a "force multiplier", as the saying goes -- and the more radical the ideas, the more likely they are to succeed in this way.  Recall Mohammed's conquest of the Middle East and North Africa?  How about the Crusaders?  How about the Spanish Conquistadors?  All fighting enormous odds.  How about the American colonialists vs. England?  The Bolsheviks?  The Nazis?  And yes, how about the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong vs. us?  How about the Afghans vs. the Soviets?  These are all cases where the winners should not have won -- should not have even come close to winning -- if manpower and resources were all that mattered.  On the other hand, why do armed forces that should know what they're doing, and should be able to accomplish something, tend to vanish in the face of an enemy attack?  (Think the Iraqi army of the present day.)  They're fighting for all the wrong reasons -- or for no reason at all. They are “summertime soldiers” who cut and run when the going gets tough. They run, hide, and blend in with the populace, while the ISIS types stand up on the highest available hill and wave their black flags.

So if Rabbi Siegman represents traditional, Old Testament-style Jewish morality, he is clearly in the minority not only vis-a-vis Israel but also vis-a-vis American Jews, who have been seduced into tribalism as well as materialism and, if not outright immorality then at least amorality.  And, I hasten to add, there are Jewish voices of dissent on this issue, one of the more prominent being the Neturei Karta organization.  But they are drowned out by not only mainstream Jewish organizations, but by Israel's facilitators in the media, politics, government, etc.  It is encouraging, though, that there are chinks in the armor, and that more and more people both here and overseas -- including Jews -- are starting to question not only Israel's actions in Gaza and elsewhere, but asking even tougher questions.  For example, is the State of Israel one gigantic mistake?  Was it doomed from the start to be an amoral, bullying presence in that part of the world?  Or to put it another way, could Israel survive if it strictly adhered to the same Jewish moral concepts that American rabbis, teachers, and writers are so fond of citing?  And if the answer is no, what then?  Do we get a civil war of words among Jews (assuming we don't have one already)? And what will the consequences be in the long run?  

And, if Israel represents the "best and brightest" of Judaism, but if it turns out to be an amoral establishment, then what does this say about Judaism?  Is Israel's failure Judaism's failure?  To the extent that Jews "cling" to Israel as their last, best hope in the world, this would seem to be an unavoidable consequence.  And yet, asking the world's Jews to distance themselves from Israel based on moral considerations?  Especially when we (the U.S.) won't?  That just seems wilder than any pipe dream.

Rabbi Siegman reflects this dilemma when he says, "When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we're watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis -- and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success." 

But it's not just about Israel and the "moral high ground" -- or any ground at all.  It's also about the U.S.  If our original support for an Israeli state was a blunder (in both practical and moral terms), haven't things just gotten worse in the meantime?  And hasn't what I call "the Israel bill" -- the amount of American wealth that has been squandered on Israel and on the results of that "eternal alliance", including 9/11 and the "war on terror" -- eaten a hole in our economy (amounting to many trillions of dollars) that can never be filled?  Haven't we, in other words, not only placed ourselves on the same questionable moral level as Israel, but also insured our own economic doom because of this relationship?  And some people will say, well, that's what we get for having gotten involved in the first place -- except the people who got us involved are long gone, and we're the ones suffering the consequences.  Others will say, "but it was worth it" -- and into this category I place the Evangelicals.  And sure, if preserving the State of Israel as the key to history is your top (or only) priority, and you're willing to see this country go down the tubes as a result, then OK -- but you should at be honest about it, "man up", and move to Israel, it seems to me. And I don't mean just go over there for a couple of weeks and cruise around on air-conditioned tour buses; I mean take up arms and fight, the way American communists did in the Spanish Civil War.  

Still others will say it's karma -- or something like karma.  It's not just about a single blunder back in the late 1940s, but about an entire history of bad ideas, or good ideas with bad consequences, or just human nature taking over and neutralizing all of our fondly-held ideals.  This is also possible.  At any rate, it has become the case, on many levels, that "as Israel goes, so goes the U.S.", for good or ill.  Our "eternal alliance", while it makes for great speeches, is a two-edged sword, and we are finding ourselves on the cutting side more often than not.

So, in this sense, while Israel is responsible for its actions in Gaza, so are we, because they could not do what they do without our support.  And we can't just dismiss or excuse it with some lame statement like "well, it's only temporary", or "things over there aren't the way they are over here". The Israelis talk about “existential threats” -- why don't we?  Doesn't our own self-preservation count for anything? Our politicians are forever claiming that there is "no daylight" between us and Israel, in any respect -- so OK, that basically means that Israel and the U.S. are, for all intents and purposes, the same country... which means that anything they do, we have also done, and vice versa.  This fact has not escaped the attention of the rising number of skeptics and protesters world-wide (including, as I said, plenty of Jews).  Will their efforts bear any fruit?  It would be great if they did, but you'll excuse me if I have my doubts. It is just possible that, rather than being in a position of making history, we are in the position of being trapped by it. And it's not as if what might come after – after the deluge, as it were – is any better. Russia and China are keeping an eagle eye on the proceedings from their front-row seats, waiting for opportunities to take advantage of the situation; they have their agendas the same as we do. A fundamentalist Islamic Middle East and North Africa – and its extensions into South and Southeast Asia and even Europe – is not likely to be a good neighbor. We and the European colonial powers thought we had long since “tamed” Islam, but now it appears that we just drove the radical elements underground for a while – or, worse, did things that aided and abetted said radical elements, or even, in some cases, created them. And these are people with a world view that we can barely comprehend – absolutist and uncompromising. And yet, the same could be said of some elements on our side. Suddenly it seems that the “reasonable people” are in the minority, caught between two armies of fanatics. Perhaps the “rule of law” and “triumph of reason” were only brief episodes in an otherwise grim and violent historical saga.

One Last Gesture of Defiance

It doesn’t take any great stretch of the imagination to conclude that the Republican Party is “dead meat” on the national level -- i.e. when it comes to the presidency.  And I’m not being pessimistic here; the Republicans richly deserve extinction since their sins are great and many.  Not that the Democrats are any better, but one must admit that the Democrats are still, in some ways, a party of ideas, wrong though they may be.  But the cold facts, as many have pointed out, are that the Democrats have demographics on their side, and the Republicans don’t.  We have evolved into a system where more than half the populace are tax receivers, as opposed to tax payers… and more are being added to their ranks each day.  It’s not just that more are being born -- ironic, since the Democrats are nothing if not the party of “population control”, AKA abortion (free and on-demand).  Thousands of immigrants -- call them “illegal” if you like, even if Obama and the media won’t -- are crossing our borders each day, and they are, at least if one believes Rush Limbaugh, guaranteed Democrat voters (once they all come of age if not before).

So… does this mean that the Republicans are delusional when it comes to the presidency, and they might as well just give up?  Not even have a convention?  No nominee?  Well, in a perfectly rational world this might be an option, but we can’t expect them to just give up and lie down to be trampled by the forces of collectivism.  But their platforms have, of late, been pretty pathetic -- mostly “me too-ism” with the message “We’re almost as compassionate as the Democrats”, or compassionate in a different way, or something.  (And why vote for that when you can vote for the real thing?)  Because it’s all about feelings any more, and even though the Democrats have ideas, their appeal is all on the feeling level -- the politics of envy… of race… of “identity”… of class warfare… of victimhood.  They have a ready-made model for the way things ought to be -- or a number of models, actually, ranging from Scandinavian socialism to Soviet- (or even Maoist-) style collectivism and totalitarianism.  Not that they identify it in so many words (they’ve even quit identifying themselves as “liberals”, and have returned to the nostalgic, good-old-days term “progressives”), but that’s what it amounts to.      

Every domestic political issue of our time boils down to the same thing, basically -- “compassion”, which is the sole property of the Democrats, versus capitalism, “greed”, “hate”… you fill in the other dozen or so buzz words.  And the Democrats have not only a solid demographic base -- growing every day, as I said -- but a united front in the form of politicians, the media, academia, the entertainment industry, the arts… really pretty much everyone except the “heartland”, fly-over folks who are ignored and belittled more now than they were in the glory days of the New Deal (and the slightly less glorious days of the Great Society).  White, middle-class, non-ethnic, male, heterosexual, self-supporting Americans are under siege, not only in the demographic sense but also in the cultural sense; their day is past, and when they are all dead and gone and the rough places have been made plain, well… then we might, if all goes as planned, have a one-party system, not unlike… oh, let’s see… ah yes, the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany, or China, or any number of other examples of good governance -- and we’ve seen what splendid results come out of those types of systems.  Democrats long for the day when the party is the government and the government is the party; it would make things so much simpler… so much more humane… so efficient.   

And it’s all about class as well -- as always.  The dream of collectivists down through the ages has been to eliminate that annoying, pompous, complacent, bourgeois middle class and to replace it with a people’s paradise, overseen by benign and enlightened leaders.  And never mind that there are “populists” on both sides -- think Occupy vs. Tea Party.  The populists of the right are obviously misled and mistaken, and have to be educated out of their Medieval delusions -- by force if necessary (the job, first, of the public schools). 

But -- you might say -- when it comes to immigration, haven’t we always been a “nation of immigrants”?  True enough.  But there’s a difference.  The immigrants of old -- let’s say of the great wave in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries -- came here expecting to work.  And work they did -- harder, in most cases, than the native-born Americans.  They came to get the blessings of a “free country”, but had to earn them as well.  And those “huddled masses” who showed up in the old days were not showered with gift baskets of benefits and entitlements the minute they stepped off the boat.  They had mutual aid societies, brotherhoods, and charitable organizations staffed by people who would have been called social workers if the term had been invented -- but what they got from the government was, to use a Yiddish term, bubkes -- i.e. little or nothing.  So they clawed their way up the social and economic ladder, and many of them succeeded in a spectacular way.  But they could almost all claim to be self-made -- i.e. not merely wards of the state. 

All of this began to change in what is called the Progressive Era, and it reached a fever pitch with the New Deal… but that was still nothing compared to the Great Society, with its full-blown welfare state… and that was still nothing compared to what we have (or are trying to have) today. 

But -- you might say -- aren’t these good things?  Isn’t compassion, even if the term is widely abused by demagogues, an intrinsically good thing -- the best of humanity, in fact?  People helping people, etc.?  Setting aside all Constitutional issues here (just as the Constitution itself has been, basically, set aside and relegated to the dustbin of history known as the National Archives), I propose a single word, or concept:  sustainability.  And no liberal can argue with this, since “sustainability” has been a kind of shibboleth by which one defines the merits of anything involving natural resources.  Oddly enough, however, it’s very seldom applied to economic issues.  No one ever wonders -- at least not out loud -- what happens when everyone becomes a tax receiver and there are no tax payers left.  And this, in turn, is based on the premise that government is the source of all wealth and prosperity… that’s it’s a kind of magic cornucopia that even without input is capable of infinite output.  More sober economists will contend that, in fact, the government doesn’t -- cannot -- produce wealth at all, that’s it’s basically parasitic, and owes its very existence to the dwindling proportion of productive citizens.  Government cannot produce wealth, it can only redistribute it (while keeping a good chunk for itself) -- and human nature being what it is, productivity tends to decline when people discover that they can live almost as well not working as they can by the sweat of their brow.  But this is an insight that has escaped the attention of nearly everyone in government as well as their facilitators in the media, academics, etc.

So the question is, how can the Republicans, especially given their ambivalence and demonstrated impotence on these issues, compete with this notion?  The answer is, they can’t.  The stars of  “talk radio” and Fox News can scream all they want, but they won’t change anyone’s mind on these issues.  Either you subscribe to some sort of economic sustainability concept -- however vague -- or you don’t, and in our time most people don’t. 

How, then, will it all end?  Are we dealing with some basic laws here, not unlike the laws of physics?  Or will benign UFOs swoop down some day soon and shower us all with gold bullion (in which case, gold will be worth no more than tinfoil)?  Where, in other words, is the escape hatch that will save us all from our folly? 

Fortunately (or not), we have many examples from the 20th Century as to how this kind of thinking turned out.  We have the Soviet Union, with its starvation, deprivation, and gulags… and we have Mao’s China, where it was necessary to exterminate hundreds of millions of people just to break even.  Or on the extreme end, we have Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, which committed what I call “auto-genocide”.  And yet, even those benighted societies turned around eventually, with varying degrees of success, and the process continues.  What is left of the hard core -- the true believers?  Arguably, North Korea -- a people’s paradise if ever there was one -- and, to a lesser extent, Cuba.  And what do you know, not a day goes by but what some Democrat doesn’t hold Cuba up as an exemplar.  (They aren’t quite as enthused about North Korea, although I expect that they secretly look upon the Kim dynasty with burning envy.)    

So what’s a good Republican to do?  Muddle along with those ciphers in Congress known as “the Republican leadership” (You know, those guys who were born without a spine, like the never-seen character on “Saturday Night Live”)?  Embrace the Tea Party?  The problem there is that it’s not a real party, and its ideas lack coherence.  It’s “agin” plenty of things, but what is it for?  All I ever hear are vague concepts and memes.  Plus, it has a huge Achilles heel called “foreign policy”, which I won’t belabor at this point. 

A search for honest, unapologetic conservatism might take one back to the Reagan era… or to Goldwater… or to Robert Taft.  And that would be a start.  But those strategies would still run the risk of being contaminated by nationalism (as opposed to patriotism) and empire-madness.  No, what I propose is making a clean break -- going all the way.  Rather than throwing the libertarians bodily out of the convention, welcome them with open arms, sit at their feet, and learn.  By which I mean, learn sound economics, sane foreign policy, sustainable (that word again) domestic policy… and, most of all, regain some self respect.  The libertarian philosophy contains much of what the Republicans have fought for in the past, with varying degrees of success, but without all of the accumulated baggage that has, in effect, doomed the Republicans as a party and as a political force, except on the strictly local, and occasionally state, level.  Best of all, it would yield up a real position… a platform… a philosophy of government.  And yes, it would guarantee a crushing loss in the 2016 election, but better to retire from the scene with some self respect than simply as a confused pack of losers.  And who knows, it might plant some ideas in some people’s heads -- ideas that might be remembered, and even come to fruition, after the deluge is past (although that may take years… decades… even generations).  It would be a way of saying to the Democrats, “This is where we stand.  It’s honorable, it has a historical basis, and it works.  Your program, on the other hand, is deceptive, cruel, unsustainable, evil, tyrannical, designed for your own glory and enrichment, and, ultimately, doomed.  And we want nothing to do with it.”

Now that would be an act of defiance.  It would be “TV worth watching”.  And it will never happen.  The Republicans have brought a curse upon themselves by being pale imitations of the Democrats, and they are suffering the appropriate fate.  They are complicit in their own demise.   
       

Are You Ready For Hillary?

Well, I'm not. Never have been, never will be. And yet there she is, rising out of the murky depths of the sea (or of the Democratic Party, whichever is murkier) like Godzilla, making a bee-line for Tokyo – or, in this case, Washington. And no one can stop her (although Obama did, back in 2008). And, after all, what are the alternatives? Joe Biden? Please. Nancy Pelosi? No matter how deep you dig among the Democrats, you find nothing but unindicted felons, sociopaths, con artists, moral pygmies, and would-be mini-Stalins. And considering that the presidency has become a largely ceremonial office, maybe it doesn't make much difference. After all, Bill Clinton's presidency gave us more juicy scandals and laughs than any in recent history; who's to say Hillary's won't be just as amusing?

And yet there are differences. All Bill Clinton ever wanted, from the cradle, was to be president – but once in office, he ran out of ideas. Oh sure, he pursued the usual menu of liberal, totalitarian, nanny-state legislation and regulation, and was responsible for a few desultory mini-wars, but basically his administration was relatively benign since it was all about him and nothing else. Even “Clinton Care”, which was defeated thanks to a full-court press by the Republicans, was more aptly named “Hillary Care”, since she was spearheading the campaign. So he was not really an “idea person”, whereas Hillary is. She is, in other words, a true believer, though perhaps not as fanatical as the likes of John McCain (or – shudder – Sarah Palin). She has an agenda which she will pursue no matter who tries to get in the way, and I imagine that since Obama Care is “the law of the land” she will use it as a jumping-off point for further tyrannies.

Another difference is that the first Clinton administration was rightly called “a vacation from history”, and it was, in a way, kind of like a college spring break, with all the behaviors we have come to expect from such free-for-alls. But 9/11 changed all this, and we embarked on a War on Islam (to call it by its proper name, and the name by which I expect it to be called by future historians) which continues to this day and shows no signs of ending in our lifetimes or those of anyone else. America needs enemies in order to maintain its self image as savior of the world, and it was only a matter of time before communism (a bonafide enemy, in my opinion) was replaced by something just as big, bad, and scary. And what better enemy than Islam, AKA “terrorism”, which is everywhere and nowhere... where there is no agreement as to how it is to be fought, let alone what the criteria might be for victory. Communism, on the other hand, was everywhere in some senses, but it did have a solid geographical base, namely the Soviet Union, with China as a kind of secondary base. And Islam has a geographical base as well, but “terrorism” is truly everywhere and is thus an ideal perpetual enemy conducive to perpetual war – which seems to be the goal at this stage of the devolution of the American Empire. It's a goal, but really more of a process, since the goal is either undefined or defined in a nonsensical way, like “eliminate terrorism”, which is sort of like saying “eliminate bad weather”. Once we define an enemy that can't be defeated, and can only be barely defined, we are assured of endless conflict... and endless conflict is a tool of empire-building but it can also be a death sentence for empires. No empire in its right mind (so to speak) down through history has declared its mission to be the extermination of an idea that can arise in any place at any time. Communism came close with its war on “capitalism” and “imperialism”, but since it had its own version of imperialism it was compromised from the start, and “capitalism” is a much fuzzier concept than Marx or his followers would have liked to admit. Depending on which propaganda organ one read or listened to, “capitalism” could range from the stereotyped cigar-smoking, top hat-wearing industrialist down to some farmer who was slightly smarter than his neighbors and managed to have two cows when his neighbor had only one. (This was sufficient grounds for persecution and extermination, as we saw in the case of the Russian kulaks.)

So yes, Hillary is, unlike Bill, a theorist. Politics was a game for him, but for her it's deadly serious.  She has an idea, a model, for the way things ought to be, and intends to pursue it with a vengeance. Obama has stolen one of her favorite ideas and made it work – sort of. At least he managed to make it into law (which he has no problem breaking from time to time, but hey, it was his idea so he has a right – right?). And yet, we also know (because the evidence is overwhelming) that Obama is no more than a figurehead – a face in a suit. He's a tool of Wall Street, of the armaments makers, of the international banking/financial cartel, and of Israel – and the neocons, who had a field day under Bush II, remain extremely influential in foreign policy (with the Evangelicals acting as a cheering section, even though they are despised by the Democrats). So... are these really the shoes that Hillary wants to fill? Because there are no other shoes out there, folks. The Republicans would like to fill those shoes in their own way, but the outcome would not be that much different. What I'm saying is that Hillary, once in office, will feel the full weight of all of these entities, which are much more than mere “interest groups”. These are the people who are in charge, and who have been for a couple of generations at least, and there is no way they're going to give up any of that power and influence. They'll have about as much respect for “the first woman president” as they have for “the first black president”, whom they treat like an errand boy.

So what does Hillary do, once she gets “the talk”? (You know, it's that “briefing” or “orientation meeting” that every president gets his/her first day in office, even before the inaugural festivities get under way.) Rebel? Appeal directly to the people? (Lots of luck with that.) Or, does she do what they all do, which is to resign herself to being a figurehead... to getting great apparent power but little real power... to riding high and lording it over the peasantry, while knowing that she will have to answer, for every action, to higher powers. Will, she, in other words, be as much of a willing tool as Bush II and Obama, or will she strain against the traces? And if the latter, what will the Regime's response be? All I'm saying is that they may be in for a surprise. So far, she has shown herself to be a good and loyal soldier and political operative – an “agent of change” extraordinaire, while at the same being conservative in the sense of never questioning the basic premises of liberalism, no matter how many failures and catastrophes result. But -- she hasn't been president yet. There is something about that office, with all of its perks and grandeur... living in that whited sepulcher called The White House... that tends to unbalance the mind. We've seen it before, most notably with FDR, Nixon, Bill Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. When you're crowned king (or queen) before millions of people and treated like some Oriental potentate, you start to believe it – and it's that belief that, as much as anything else, contributes to your downfall. You find that, far from being the most powerful person on the planet, you become the most pathetic of men (or women), answerable to unnamed and unseen powers while all the time pretending to be answerable to “the people”. You become no more than a glorified slave. And one could say, well, Hillary “ought to know”, by now, that that's the way things are – after all, wasn't she “co-president” for 8 years? And yet, denial is a powerful factor in people in general, and in politicians in particular. She probably thinks Bill sold out – which he did in some respects, because, as I've said, he is not an idea person. He's much more concerned about his image – about being liked – whereas she doesn't give a rat's derrière whether she's liked or not; in fact, I think she prefers hostility. It's more familiar, more comforting, and it removes any barriers that might exist to treating people like the maggots she's convinced they are.

So the real question is not whether we're ready for Hillary. The question is whether Hillary is ready for the grim realities of occupying “the highest office in the land” when that land is a fading empire ruled by people who care not a whit about the idea, or ideals – however unfulfilled -- of America. She may turn out to be one of those rulers, who knows? But it's more likely that, like nearly all politicians, she will wind up being one of the ruled. Someone once said that anything the public is allowed to vote on can't be that important – and the presidency is no exception. When democracy devolves from a political system to a intricate matrix of delusion, we can fully expect to wind up with candidates, and presidents, like Hillary.

As the Dog Returneth to His Vomit...

Well, we're back in Iraq, and I, for one, couldn't be more relieved. I mean, the suspense was unbearable! Anybody with a grain of sense could have seen that even if we withdrew “all combat forces”, but left a square-mile embassy with thousands of employees, something was going to have to give sooner or later. (Actually, I'm not convinced we ever really left. Uniformed troops, maybe – but let's not forget the CIA and their mercenary army.) At any rate, now we send “military personnel” (not “combat troops”, mind) back to Iraq to protect all those American citizens, as well as “American interests” (whatever those might be), and to, as usual, act as “advisers and trainers” for the Iraqi army, which is... well, let's just say it's an army that we defeated and scattered to the four winds after the invasion, and then reconstructed in some way hoping that they would do some of the heavy lifting (AKA dying) when we started getting pushback from “terrorists”... i.e. people who were unhappy with our invasion and occupation and decided to do something about it. The newly re-formed Iraqi army was, of course, composed of the unemployed (thanks to our destroying Iraq's infrastructure) who were desperate for some source of income with which to keep themselves and their families fed, clothed, and sheltered. Problem is, people fighting for an idea have a tremendous advantage over people merely fighting for material gain – especially when the idea people are willing to use suicide tactics. So far from neutralizing Iraq as a source of Islamic aggression, we instead created a hotbed – a hatchery of sorts – for a new wave of Islamic fundamentalism and aggression. Well, it worked in Afghanistan, why not in Iraq?

Just kidding, of course. One more dollar tossed into that craphole is one dollar too many – to say nothing of American lives. And am I saying that American lives are worth more than Iraqi lives? Maybe, on some universal cosmic level, no – but in terms of foreign policy we have to operate on that basis, the same way Israel operates on the premise that Israeli lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives. This is, sadly, the way nations always operate in war time, and this mindset is, in a way, key to victory, just as it has always been in all wars down through history. Let's recall the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both premised on the notion that American lives were worth much more than Japanese (including civilian) ones. Sad, but true; this is how wars have always been fought, and in some sense it's the only way they can be fought – unless, of course, victory is not the goal, and when you look at our escapades in Southwest Asia you start to feel like maybe that's the case.

So yes, wars are not about internationalism, one-worldism, “kumbaya”, or anything else. On the most basic level, they're about killing (or at least disarming and neutralizing) people who aren't like us so that people who are like us (or who are us) can continue to enjoy their lifestyle. (I always wonder if we would ever have dropped an atomic bomb on Berlin, for example, even if the European war hadn't come to an end by that time. I think the answer is no, simply because the Germans, as mesmerized as they were by der Adolf, were still, basically, a lot like us, whereas the Japanese were “little yellow devils” who deserved no quarter, and no mercy. And yes, I'm talking about racism, which has a perfectly natural, if atavistic, role to play in war.)

So yeah, we're going back into Iraq because we have “interests” there. And because there are Americans in harm's way. But who put them in harm's way? And who on earth allowed anyone in this country to develop “interests” in Iraq that had to be defended? It's all a scam, basically – you send people into a war zone (or a place that's about to be), then declare them in danger, and send in troops to protect them, and then send in more troops to protect those troops, and before you know it we're right back where we started. It's a scam... but it works! It worked in Vietnam, it worked in Panama, and it's working in Iraq. It works everywhere it's tried; it's fool-proof. It is, in fact, one of the primary building blocks of empire. We don't just arbitrarily invade another country – we first establish “interests”... strategic necessities... we declare that country, and/or its leadership, to be a grave threat to humanity and especially to the survival of “the American way of life”. Or, when it comes to Southwest Asia, to Israel, which basically amounts to the same thing. Then you throw a few other ingredients into the pot, like “weapons of mass destruction”, “human rights violations”, “fascism” (a perennial favorite), “theocracy” (bad, bad), and you have all the evidence you need to mount a full-scale attack.

But if that's the basic, tried-and-true strategy, where does Obama stand? Well, first, he's just following orders. But imagine his frustration. He ran for president with an idea -- “hope and change” -- which, for him, meant turning the U.S. into a people's republic, or at least a socialist Utopia. In other words, it was all about domestic policy. Somewhere along the line, not unlike Bill Clinton, he forgot (or never learned) that there is also this thing called foreign policy – and it's messy, chaotic, thankless, and, in our time, not based on much more than the agonized writhing of a dying empire.

He didn't ask for this; he didn't want it. But it was dumped into his lap, along with marching orders from the usual suspects – Wall Street, the international banking/financial cartel, the neocons (yes, still very influential, even in an administration they pretend to despise), the Evangelicals (ditto), Israel, the countless racial, ethnic, and victim-group lobbies, and, I'm sure, any number of others. So he races around like Lucille Ball in one of her classic sitcoms, trying to do everything at once and please everybody, and gets very little thanks and a lot of criticism, and... well, what's a community organizer from Chicago supposed to do? So he, basically, checks out. He doesn't know anything, he didn't know anything, and it was all (still, after 5 ½ years) someone else's fault.

Now, don't get me wrong – this is not an expression of sympathy. He wanted this job, and he got it, and now he's paying the price. And I guess this could be said of all presidents, although a few manage to come out on top in spite of it all. But in the array of what I'll call “victim presidents”, Obama certainly is in the top rank, along with other sorry specimens like Carter and Bush II. What distinguishes victim presidents is that they start out behind the power curve, never catch up, and only manage to make things worse. And one could say, well, they were only victims of history – but there were still plenty of opportunities to do better, and the fact that they all failed shows a certain... what? Level of hubris? Plain stupidity? Spite? More like all three, and more. The other distinguishing trait is that they never show any insight. They are absolutely blind to not only their own failings and the impact it has on the country, but they continue to defend their record, and their “legacy”, where someone with more insight (or at least shame) would retire to the farthest reaches of the country and never raise their voice in public again. (At least Bush II deserves a bit of credit for shutting the hell up most of the time, unlike his former cronies.)

But having said that, it's nonetheless true that the cards are stacked against The Anointed One. He's faced, on a daily basis, with a myriad of intractable problems – dilemmas that simply can't be solved by any mortal, because they are the products of years – decades – centuries, even – of folly and delusion. It's no wonder he runs off and plays golf on a regular basis; I would too. He is, as I've said, a face in a suit, basically... not his own man... and yet he must feel the sting of this situation now and then. At least in Chicago he had a willing audience and could talk himself into thinking he was accomplishing something; now it's just one debacle after another, with no end in sight. So he's turning gray... getting more glum by the day... and whatever happened to that dazzling “hope and change” smile? He looks, acts, and talks like a defeated man – and he is, basically, no matter how many pathetic “victories” he manages to eke out through executive orders. Now it seems he's buying a house in California. Why not Chicago? Doesn't he want to return to his roots, a home town hero? Don't ask...

Here's the point. When you're the leader, or even the figurehead, of a nation that is on the way up in the world, you never have a bad day. You go from victory to victory, and even failures can be, somehow, recast as “strategic” victories. And you get credit – most of it undeserved, but nonetheless sufficient to have your name cut into countless blocks of stone around the Mall in Washington, and, with any luck, to have your likeness rendered in stone, or on coins or (worthless) paper money. You become, in short, part of the American Pantheon. On the other hand, when you're the leader, or figurehead, of a dying empire, you never have a good day. Even events which might have been considered victories in better times turn out to be fatally flawed... all the idols have feet of clay... and rust and corruption are everywhere. And again, it's not necessarily to your discredit (Obama isn't entirely wrong in continuing to blame everything on Bush) but try telling the populace that – or the media, or (dread!) the historians. They will ignore what small, pathetic victories and achievements you might have managed to pull out of the mire, and you'll be known forever after as “the president who...” (did something really bad, or allowed something really bad to happen).

And yet, such is the typical politician's genius for denial and delusion that most of them never come to terms with their true record. Oh, maybe on some surface level they wish things had gone better, but to gaze out over the bottomless chasm of failure... this is too much to ask. So Carter, for example, remains delusional in thinking he has something to offer, even though his administration was an exercise in farce and folly... Bush II continues to live in a fantasy world... and Obama? It's only a question of what grotesque form his delusions take as he fades into obscurity (or, worse yet, doesn't).

Of course, he does have 2 ½ more years. He could repent. He could wander over to the National Archives and take a good, hard look at the Constitution. He could grant Congress the respect it doesn't deserve but nonetheless ought to have. He could quit being a thug. But what are the chances?

Citizen Scaife

The countless obituaries, tributes, and encomiums that have appeared following the recent demise of Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and all-around philanthropist, typically call attention to his support of the Republican Party and his conservative political views, although Scaife apparently considered himself more of a libertarian than a conservative in the usual sense. But at the same time, he is presented as having been a firm advocate of what is called a “strong defense” and a “vigorous” or “muscular” foreign policy – what some of us would call empire building. Now, the question that no one seems to want to deal with – mainly because no one even considers it an issue – is in what way neocon-style foreign policy is, or can be made, compatible with libertarianism. Libertarianism is, of course, a general concept and reflects a certain view of government, and thus, one would think, of both domestic and foreign policy. In other words, it has a theoretical base, and is not just a passing fad or an expression of mindless selfishness (as it is typically accused of being by the liberals and the mainstream media). So the question of compatibility has to be expressed in terms of ideas and concepts, and not just specific policies (or, obviously, specific political parties, government programs, and politicians).

Libertarianism, to cut to the chase, is the idea that we would all be better off if we left each other the hell alone, and if government left us alone. So the libertarian concept of government is minimalistic, but not anarchistic, that being an entirely different position, although (as usual) often confused, by the usual suspects, with libertarianism. (And I guess if you're committed to totalitarianism, even of the “soft” variety, libertarianism and anarchy are going to look about the same.) And although America in its early days may not have been explicitly founded on libertarian principles, the practical consequences of the ideas it was founded on produced a society which libertarians can only dream of in our time. And it's not that there weren't plenty of bumps in the road, but I would be willing to claim that America was, for all intents and purposes, a libertarian society up to the Progressive Era, when all of a sudden it was deemed desirable for the government to redistribute income and wealth – I.e. to take money out of Person A's pocket (or keep it from ever getting there) and put it into Person B's pocket. This was, if one studies the matter, always a fear among political thinkers even from the founding, and was considered a potential weak spot or Achilles heel in the American system – a fear which has been more than borne out in our time.

Progressivism, as originally conceived, was the notion that government had to fill in where voluntary charity had failed. And it wasn't as if charity did not exist in the old days; it did, and much of it was based on religious ideas and sponsored by religious bodies. But there were gaps, and yes, people did “fall through the cracks” on a regular basis. So, for good or ill, we embarked on an extra-Constitutional program which continues to this day – first providing a “safety net” to keep people from becoming homeless, or from starving, or from being poisoned by other people. And yet this was apparently not enough, because the time came when we needed the New Deal... and then the Fair Deal... and then the Great Society... and Equal Opportunity... and Affirmative Action... and “hate crime” laws... and now Obamacare. And the struggle is far from over. It has gotten to the point now, as in Russia under the Bolsheviks, where if your neighbor has one more goat than you have, he's immediately branded a capitalist, landlord, exploiter, racist, homophobe, sexist, what have you. So the collectivist, totalitarian ideal is alive and well, even though it had comparatively modest beginnings over 100 years ago.

But that's all about ideas. How about implementation? The great and mighty hammer that the Progressives came up with was the graduated income tax, which is, sadly, still with us. But it was supplemented by a mountain of other laws and regulations, and an army of bureaucrats and enforcers on all levels. All in the name of charity and compassion, mind you – and you can decide whether money extracted at gunpoint has anything to do with charity or compassion; my answer is that it doesn't. But even here there is a point to be made. The premise is that human beings, including Americans, lack sufficient charity and compassion to care about, or care for, the “underprivileged” among us, and this is why government has to step in and bridge the gap – although I have yet to perceive any trace of charity or compassion in government. It is a thing, not a person, after all – despite propaganda like “The Grapes of Wrath”.

Oh, but government is just an instrument – a means to a just end – you'll say. OK then, maybe the charity and compassion lie with those in charge of the government – with politicians and bureaucrats. Tilt! Oh, but maybe they, even given their manifold faults, are only acting on behalf of a charitable and compassionate electorate. But if that's so, why doesn't said electorate exercise charity and compassion in a direct manner, rather than hiring others to make and enforce laws that, once again, are designed to achieve the desired result at the point of a gun? Well, it's because, in the aggregate, people are more likely to want be on the receiving end rather than the giving end – to be takers or tax receivers rather than givers and tax payers. Even on an individual basis, my bet is that most people would prefer to give a little and get a lot – which means that the individual's place in the social order has degenerated to that of a gambler in a casino, betting that his input will be more than compensated by the casino's output. And yet casinos continue to make money, and government continues to become larger, more intrusive, and more oppressive, and its operatives become more prosperous and more numerous. Thus we see the effects of a great fallacy.

And this is just fallen human nature at work. So maybe the Progressives had a point. Maybe society really is a social compact, and if we want to be members in good standing we have to be willing to make sacrifices. The problem is that, eventually, the number of people on the take exceeds the number on the give – as is happening in our time. So the government, which is supposed to right all wrongs and make all the crooked paths straight, winds up with a cash-flow problem, and we have a national debt that can never be paid off, and so on. A related issue is that our definition of “poverty” -- i.e. what constitutes being needy – has degenerated to the point where our “poor” have a higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world – and yet there are still demands for more. More social justice, more reparations, more affirmative action, more preferences, etc. etc. And these demands can never be satisfied; this is the point. We could adopt a system of radical collectivism like China under Mao or Cambodia under Pol Pot, and it still wouldn't help. The best one could hope for would be equal misery for all... and yet that is precisely what many of our liberal, AKA “progressive”, politicians seem to be aiming for. (And please note, those systems still include a wealthy power elite, but that's OK since they're the people with all the great humanistic, Utopian ideas so they deserve to get to the head of the line.)

While Mr. Scaife might have agreed with some of the above – maybe even for the right reasons – the idea that this necessitated supporting the Republican Party can be termed delusional at best. The Republicans have had nothing to do with libertarianism since... oh, I would say the days of Robert Taft, although the Goldwater campaign provided some faint echoes, as did the Reagan administration. But the state of things in our time is best reflected in the fact that the libertarians got bodily ejected from the 2012 Republican convention. The Republicans find the libertarians annoying... disturbing... and downright terrifying, and I suspect it's largely because the libertarians make the Republicans feel guilty – that they have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

So here you have the first contradiction -- but that's only on the domestic side. The main point is how one reconciles libertarianism, even the kind that is willing to appear under the Republican banner, with neocon-style, empire-building foreign policy. Some possibilities:

1. Libertarianism for us, to hell with everyone else.  Another way of putting it is this:  Is "libertarian foreign policy" a contradiction in terms?  This position may be economically arguable, but it's politically (not to mention diplomatically) suspect and morally bankrupt. One could call it cynical. And yet it's not that uncommon a point of view. Is it because we believe that only Americans are fit for, and deserving of, liberty and that all others are invincibly ignorant and doomed to exist in hopeless squalor and perpetual night? Well... when one has a look at things that are going on in Africa and parts of the Islamic world, it would be tempting to come to that conclusion. But surely we haven't given up on at least setting an example... or have we? Can we be at once optimistic about our own future and despairing about the rest of the world? Or to put it another way, are we willing to leave them alone out of charity, or because we've given up on them?
   
   
   The practical consequences of this position are, basically, isolation combined with a strong defense – by which I mean real defense... defense of our borders, and nothing more. At least this would have the conceptual advantage of eliminating the bogus concept of “terrorism” -- there would only be us and them, and if they hate us we don't especially care why (vs. the obsessing that followed the events of 9/11). Job One of defense is to keep them from killing us and taking our stuff; we don't care about their motives. This would at least be a clean and uncluttered position. But it was not Mr. Scaife's.
   
   
2. Libertarianism for us, and spread the blessings abroad. This is close to being the core of the stated neocon position, as represented by the Republican Party, “talk radio”, and – yes – the “Tea Party”. Liberty is good for us, and it would be good for the rest of the world as well, if only they could be convinced. And it's not enough for us to just set an example, we have to jam it down their throats by, first, invading, then taking over their governments, installing our stooges as “leaders”, and hitting them with (after the drones have done their thing) a barrage of propaganda, social workers, etc. Call it “tough love” on an international scale. This was standard operating procedure in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan... and the question is not how well it works, because it doesn't. The question is, was this actually our intent? And my position is that it wasn't, no matter how many purple thumbs come filing out of polling stations in the middle of the desert. We insist on some trappings of democracy in order to validate our actions to the international community (on those rare occasions when we care what they think), but the real agenda is otherwise. It's about conquest for its own sake, number one... and economics, and neutralizing threats to Israel, and... well, that's about it, actually. It's about making some people very rich, increasing the power and scope of government (domestically, note), and producing “war presidents” (and every boy born in a log cabin wants to be one of those, right?). It's not even about gaining military victories; just ask anyone in the military (OK, ask the honest ones who haven't been brainwashed). Wars in our time are notoriously victory-proof, and intentionally so, I might add. No one ever got rich from a “cakewalk”; what produces fortunes is a long, drawn-out conflict with no end, no exit criteria, no nothing – preferably not even a “war”, because people still have this funny, old-fashioned idea that wars ought to result in victory – in winners and losers. 
    
   So was this Mr. Scaife's position – i.e. the naïve, as opposed to cynical, version? Very possibly. But the inherent contradiction there is that to fight perpetual wars – for any reason – you have to have big government. No... massive government, with oppressive taxes, ever-vigilant intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and a dictatorial regime. Empire building abroad and liberty at home? Doesn't work, can't work, never has, never will. This is the greatest misunderstanding on the part of so many self-styled conservatives and, I suspect, some libertarians as well. Libertarianism is compatible with defense; it requires it, in fact. But it is totally incompatible with empire-building and perpetual war. This is not true, of course, for mainstream conservatism and/or neoconservatism... and maybe Mr. Scaife was just confused about his terminology. 
   
   
3. Libertarianism for us and gentle persuasion for everyone else. This is the least likely alternative, yet the only one with any moral validity. The “shining city on the hill” has lost a lot of its glimmer since the founding, and we are now in the position of being seen as just another bullying empire throwing its weight around. We had ideas once; now all we have are drones. Were those ideas valid? (And if so, why are they now discarded?) Or was it all just a grand illusion? Democracy, as flawed as it is (or as we've made it), is certainly not the worst system ever devised... nor is the Constitution the worst founding document ever written. The mistake we've made as a society is in assuming that ideas were enough – that we could just coast along, decade after decade, propelled by some sort of magical holy writ that would render us not only morally superior but, in some sense, invincible for perpetuity. But it seems that ideas can only survive as long as the kind of society that gave rise to those ideas survives. Otherwise they will wither in the glare of human greed, folly, and downright evil, as happened in the case of Rome and seems to be happening here as well. If ideas are the soil and society the plant, and liberty the fruit, how long will the plant survive once pulled up by the roots, and how much more fruit will the plant produce after the fruit it did produce is consumed (or rots)? 
   
   
   Another way of saying this is to ask, do we still have anything to offer the world (assuming we did at one time)... other than (as the Vietnam protesters used to say) “bombs, bullets, and bullshit”? Maybe not! But I'm not totally convinced, and I don't think that libertarianism is a political dead letter, even in our time... but it may take many more catastrophes before people come to see its value. And if that day ever comes, could the Constitution be, once again, established as the basis for a political system – with changes, as needed, to eliminate the inherent contradictions? And could we not then, in a spirit of true humanism (vs. the kind opposed to religion and thus to true morality) and, yes, charity and compassion, at the very least show other societies a better way? And I'm not talking about political systems here – not about “democracy” or purple thumbs, or parliaments, or anything else. Any society will be benign and of benefit to its members if the leaders are thoughtful and moral (think “natural law” at the very least), and any society, regardless of structural details, will become oppressive and evil if its leaders are drunk on power and concerned only with their own glory. This seems like a simple enough lesson... but we can't teach it by force, and we can't teach it unless we are willing to set an example, which in the present day we apparently are not. 
   
   
   And another aspect of this renewal, should it ever come, would be as follows: Stop thinking of other societies and systems as, somehow, “undeveloped”, primitive, or retarded, just because they don't care to do things our way. And especially, don't constantly present religion (of any sort) as a barrier to “progress” (as we invariably do in foreign relations, and as we are now busy doing here). “What profiteth a man if he gain the world but lose his soul?” If even this simple question were made fundamental to our government and laws – and our foreign policy – a new day might truly dawn.

NATO Blinks

One of my favorite pastimes when it comes to the “news” is reading between the lines. Any story – especially when it comes to foreign affairs – has a top layer, i.e. the story they are hoping the gullible public will take away and not ask any embarrassing questions. But they can't totally suppress the full significance of the story; in other words, if they just killed it outright it would leak out anyway (thanks to the Internet, “talk radio”, etc.) and thus arouse suspicions. So they present a harmless and non-threatening bit of pap, hoping that will satisfy – and they're right, by and large. It's the old familiar news cycle – you announce a “crisis” but before people start to panic you proceed to announce that everything is under control, more or less – that our betters in Washington, or wherever, are discussing the matter, and are working hard, and that there's no need for alarm. “Concern”, yes – alarm no, and panic, certainly not... just enough uncertainty to cause us to run, once again, and hide behind the flowing, copious skirts of the government.

One thing we tend to forget is that “freedom of the press” also includes the freedom to edit and manipulate, and process actual events through a conceptual sieve so that only the stuff the Regime deems “fit to print” is openly revealed. It's a much more subtle process than outright censorship – and to give credit where credit is due, the “public” has become a bit more sophisticated over time, and not quite so willing as it was in the old days (say, the 1950s) to take what the media put out as the whole truth and nothing but. This is what makes the game fun – you read (or hear, or see) what they want you to read, but if you dig down a layer or two you're much more likely to figure out what is really going on. This is especially true if we're willing to question the assumptions that always lie behind any news story – which is to say, the unstated premises that we are expected to accept without question, and without even knowing that we're accepting them.

Of course, each of us has to choose his level of focus, and hard-core “conspiracy theorists” assume that there is no truth whatsoever in anything the media (or their political masters) have to say – that it's all propaganda, in other words. And they may be right! We may all be living within the Matrix, and may all be totally deceived at all times. The top few layers of any story may be entirely lies and fabrications, and the truth may be in the trembling hands of a few lonely fanatics. (I think this is actually the case, for example, when it comes to JFK, and 9-11, and pretty much anything that happened during the Clinton administration.) The problem for the media is that, beyond a certain point, the party line defies all credibility, so they feel they have to provide a watered-down version that might accidentally contain some nuggets of truth, as a kind of anchor to reality. Otherwise, it starts to sound like total fiction and is perceived as such by an uncomfortably large minority – as, once again, happened with 9-11, but also with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. When government actions have “scam” and “hoax” written all over them, it's hard for even the most sincere-looking and -sounding news anchor to make them seem well-intended. It's a delicate balance – way more delicate than the one the Soviet media had to maintain, where dissenting voices were pretty much blacked out. The illusion of a “free press” depends on a meticulous sampling process, where a few things that we know (or believe) to be the case are mixed in, in order to lend credibility to the whole.

And so it is with the latest news out of NATO. You remember NATO, right? Also known as “the U.S. and a bunch of other guys”. This otherwise-boring organization was supposedly the bulwark between the West (read: freedom, democracy, prosperity, etc.) and the Evil Empire (read: slavery, dictatorship, poverty, etc.) -- and when the Evil Empire collapsed of its own weight... well, NATO should have voluntarily disbanded, right? But of course that's not how things work, because international bureaucracies, just like domestic ones, acquire a life of their own, and like the most aggressive parasite or tumor exert every effort to expand without limit and insure their survival – and one of the most favored means of doing so is what is called “mission creep”. NATO quickly acquired a new mission, which was to absorb as many as possible of the Soviet subject states – the Warsaw Pact first, and then the former Soviet republics... right up to the gates of Moscow, if possible. Thus, we had the “color revolutions”, and there were so many that we started running out of colors. (I understand that the next one in line was going to be plaid.) The premise, of course, was that, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia was going to be left a rusted hulk, dead in the water and totally helpless. Never mind all this talk of “hegemony” and “spheres of influence” -- we won, dammit, and to the victor go the spoils, etc.

Well, this was to, as usual, underestimate the stamina and rootedness of the Russians, and of their post-Soviet administration, all of whom were trained under the Soviet system. Please remember that the Soviet Republic did not undergo a revolution – of any color. They simply saw the handwriting on the wall, decided to cut their losses, and voluntarily retreated back into homeland mode. They did not give up on the idea of spheres of influence, and they certainly didn't write off all of the ethnic Russians spread far and wide (as a matter of policy) throughout the former empire. The dream was to get them back one way or another, the same way that Hitler's dream was to unite all Germans, no matter how dispersed, into a mighty empire.

Thus, the background – in the broadest terms – for much that has happened since, in 20-plus years. Russia did not disappear, and it would have been foolish to expect it to. But they became, let's say, a bit more realistic than they might have been at the height of the Soviet era, when it came to questions of their military strength, economic power, political influence, etc. They became more subtle... more nuanced... less ham-handed. We, on the other hand, were determined to finish the job, and with nostrils flaring proceeded to bring the former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics into our own sphere of influence – primarily through economic incentives. And the source of those incentives was, of course, the European Union, which had already turned Western Europe into a kind of gray, murky stew run by bureaucrats in Brussels – an empire in its own right, where old-fashioned notions of religion, ethnicity, tradition, and economic (including fiscal and monetary) independence were unwelcome. And most of Europe bowed its collective head and shuffled into the deracinating machine, which pleased the nerds in Brussels immensely. Even the various economic meltdowns of the less-disciplined countries (the “PIIGS”) were welcome, since that rendered them debtors and second-class citizens who had no choice but to submit to Germany.

And thus a new German – oops, I mean European – empire was born. Finally, Europeans were brought to heel and protected from their own follies. And we in the U.S. were all for it. But then a funny thing started to emerge – the reality that, even though we had at one time rescued Western Europe from Hitler and turned Eastern Europe over to Stalin, the Europeans were now running the show. The international financial cartel and the banks were either headquartered in Europe or taking orders from Europe – and that included our own hallowed Wall Street as well as our government. So rather than being the most ripped dude on Muscle Beach, we found ourselves more in the role of a slightly retarded servant, with the shots being called in Brussels, Zürich, and other power enclaves in the Old Country.

Are they smart, or are we stupid? I think it's a bit of both. For all of its follies of the past, Europe is, nonetheless, the seat of economic, political, and social wisdom (by current standards) – compared to which we are still acting like newbies – naive, impulsive, prey to delusion and folly. They know they can pull our chain any time they want to – and they do, with great relish but also with the subtlety and elegance which we lack. Think of it in historical terms. In the long run, the small and smart always wind up dominating the big and stupid; this is the way of the world. It's downright Darwinian in its significance and its implications. And in our time, when information (in the broadest sense) is more important than ever, the people who are masters at manipulating information will inevitably dominate – and the people who prefer to use their fists will inevitably become servants.

But as I already tried to imply, as smart as the E.U./NATO types are, they might have gotten a bit too excited when it comes to bringing all of Europe up to the Urals under their spell. And what they are running into with Russia is all of the old bogeymen – those atavistic, terrible habits that were supposed to have long since wound up on the ash heap of history – namely race, ethnicity, religion, language, and tradition. Call it by any number of parallels – rootless cosmopolitanism vs. loyalty to place... sterility vs. vigor... anemia vs. full-bloodedness... and so on. Russia is a blast from the past, and it's parked right on the eastern end of a Europe that was supposed to be run by faceless bureaucrats and be perfectly happy about it.

Now where do we (the U.S.) come in? As I said, the tables have been turned, in a very subtle way when no one was looking. We were in charge of NATO... we were the saviors of Western Europe... and the E.U. was supposed to follow our orders, um, “suggestions” when it came to any major issues of politics or economics or social policy. But all of a sudden it seems more like we're taking orders from them. And one consequence of all of this is the (to us) jaded, cynical, decadent European way of doing things has crept into outfits like NATO. To put it in a nutshell, Sarah Palin was ready to go to war with Russia over Georgia (in order to “keep America free” -- how that was supposed to work is anybody's guess)... and now NATO has announced that they are no longer interested in “expansion”, at least until further notice. Which means... what? No more color (or plaid) revolutions? Hands off Georgia. And they're hesitating about the Balkans as well. So it looks as if the “sphere of influence” idea is alive and well... and let's admit, the term has no meaning if there's only one sphere.

I'd like to think this wasn't just about Putin scowling at them from his office high atop the Kremlin. I'd like to think it was the realization that the E.U. has become unwieldy as it is, and that the pushback from some of its less cooperative members has confirmed that impression. And I'd also like to think that the E.U. has been less enthusiastic than we are when it comes to applying the spoils system to Eastern Europe. Does this mean they're more realistic than we are? Let's just say that provoking a major conflict is a lot easier when you're an ocean away from said major conflict. European wars have a funny way of happening in Europe – which is why we prefer them to, say, a war on our own soil. We're perfectly happy being provocateurs, cheerleaders, and arms merchants when citizens of other countries are getting killed or otherwise inconvenienced... and so we tend to get indignant when they start having second thoughts. Plus, as I've said, they are, in many ways, much more in charge now than we are. So they will, more and more often, leave us sputtering and fuming over here while they get on with the daily tasks of keeping themselves in one piece... or in many pieces, but with (relative) peace.