Pax Americana and The Failure of ‘Lesser Evilism’
Pax Americana
Capitalism is Taking Humanity on the Road to Ecocide
Republicrat: Painting by Anthony Freda
Just before the 2000 Presidential Election, in September 2000, George Bush’s think tank, The Project for the New American Century, put into writing a document titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Forces and Resources For a New Century.
In that document they called for war upon Iraq, a US military presence in the middle east, and the construction of military bases throughout Asia and the world to enforce, what they termed, as a ‘strategic goal’, the preservation Pax Americana — the ‘new world order’ that was proclaimed after the first Gulf War.
There has been no objection or opposition, from the Democratic Party, to this ‘strategic goal’ for this century, even though the document stated, two years prior to 9/11:
A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
When the September 11, 2002 implosion of the World Trade Center occurred, both the Democrats and the Republicans were united in taking the advantage of the ‘catastrophic and catalyzing event’ to begin to implement the first stage of Pax American-the war upon Iraq and to make the middle east a zone of ‘democratic peace’ — a safe area for exploitation and control, by the United States, or as the document stated:
Today its task is to secure and expand the “zones of democratic peace;” to deter the rise of a new great power competitor; defend key regions of Europe, East Asia and the Middle East; and to preserve American preeminence through the coming transformation of war made possible by new technologies.
In its founding principles, the Project for the New American Century proposed preventive strikes:
Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership of the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us, to embrace the cause of American leadership. (My Emphasis)
One thing about written documents — there is no deniability, but not once in the past eight years has the major media reported these facts, nor has the Democratic Party opposed the program proposed in REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, with the strategic goal of preserving Pax Americana — ‘America Überalles’.
In fact the Democratic Party, at every step, has voted for the implementation of this program.
By the actions of their political parties and their mass media, the program of the capitalist ruling class of the United States, under the guise of the never ending ‘war on terror’, is to develop a Pax Americana for their corporate rule of the world. Or as Gore Vidal characterizes as ‘the perpetual war for perpetual peace’. Also, under the guise of the war on terror, the Bill of Rights has been attacked and eroded to the point that every President, from now on, can implement martial law on the slightest instance on the pretense of undefined terrorism. United States Capitalism, at this stage has no other choice; it must either fight to become the dominant force in the world, or become a dominated force due to the unending ending capitalist competition – the drive for profits in a finite world, with declining markets.
In the process, the United States has become the world’s leading debtor nation, due to the costs of military spending, for war and the ‘preservation of Pax America’. The United States is beginning to implode like the Roman Empire, when it tried to impose a Pax Romana upon Europe.
The current domestic polices of the United States reflect this foreign policy. The US ruling class can no longer afford the New Deal that they considered as the lesser evil in order to control the rise of the CIO and revolution during the 30s. For more information, see my essay, The Fall of the Trade Union Movement.
Racism is on the rise, as the United States, can no longer afford the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, that they considered as the lesser evil in order to gain control the Civil Rights Movement’s organizations of the 60s. For more information, see my essay, The Rise and Fall of the Civil Right Movement.
The infrastructure of the United States is going into disrepair, as the current laissez faire capitalism, unfettered by past regulations, gallops about in its quest for record profits, ignoring infrastructure’s expenses such as the transportation system, the decline in public education, and the hard won social gains of the working class and the Black population, with the blessings of our ‘leaders’.
As part of this process, racism is also on the increase, for it is necessary requirement for the justification of the subjugation and genocide of the world’s populations, and to continue the simultaneous attacks upon the working class and the ethnic populations of the United States.
Although total profits are increasing, the system is also beginning to implode in the same manner as the Roman Empire that was based upon economic system of slavery. See the Vancouver Sun’s article, Civilization’s golden era is teetering on collapse.
One can always judge a society by how it handles a catastrophe. A good example is New Orleans after the man-made disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The United States as a society failed the test — it proved to be incapable to aid the poor, who were displaced, and immediately begin the gentrification of New Orleans See my essay, The Ethnic Cleansing of New Orleans 2008 A Requiem.
The combined factors of capitalist greed (class exploitation) racism, and social indifference all came to the fore as the rich preyed upon the poor in New Orleans.
The irony of this whole episode, is that the government which could not shell out the money necessary to bail out the poor and the dispossessed of New Orleans, could spend over 65 Billion Dollars. and still counting, to bail the financial institutions and the rich during the current housing crisis and the consequent mortgage crisis. To add insult to injury, these same financial will ‘earn’ a tax free profit from the the interest on the increase of the Federal debt, on the spending by the government to bail them out! Still yet, they are and will tax us to pay this increased interest! A clear example of the Republican-Democratic Party controlled government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich — not of the people, by the people and for the people.
And yet, ‘progressives’ and their spokespeople on Air America, still advocate that there is a lesser evil capitalist option. My mother, who is of Dutch heritage, use to quote a Dutch proverb, that translated to say “even a jackass doesn’t stub its toe on the same stone twice.” Yet the ‘progressives’ of all movements keep stubbing their toes, making those, that follow them less than jackasses!
The Often-Failed Policy of Supporting the Lesser Evil
Today, once again, the ‘progressives’ are presenting the same political farce of ‘supporting the lesser evil’. This policy that was first used by the liberals, the Social Democratic Party, and the Communist Party, in Germany, to support Prussian General Von Hindenburg as the ‘lesser evil to Hitler’, who, when he got elected, appointed the ‘greater evil’ Hitler as his Chancellor.
In this country, it was used over and over again, as the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, in the labor movement supported Roosevelt during World War II. A good example of the idiocy of such a solution was when the Jim Crow Dixiecrat or Republicrat, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), ran as the lesser evil to Barry Goldwater, who threatened to go to war in Vietnam in 1964.
But as soon as he took office ,after he was elected, guess what the ‘lesser evil’, LBJ did? He set up the Gulf of Tonkin incident (a ‘catalyzing event’) as a pretense for the invasion and escalation of the war on Vietnam in 1965! In today’s political world, lesser evil ‘peace candidate’ Obama, prior to the election, has already pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan by adding at least 10,000 troops!
Ever since Democratic President Kennedy’s tax reforms in the 60s and every tax reform since then, led to a shift in taxation from the rich to the poor, regardless of who is in the White House. (Taxation policy always exposes which class is running the show.)
The whole process of the eroding of human rights, civil rights, and workers rights began in earnest after the inflation crisis brought about by the expenditures for the Vietnam War and the consequent wage/price freeze imposed by Richard Nixon, with the approval of the Democratic Party controlled Congress. From that point on the bipartisan legislation kept whittling at our hard gained rights and when Reagan broke the PATCO strike, without any real opposition from the trade union bureaucracy, the rulers to be in this country saw they had no organized opposition to their domestic polices, either from the labor movement, the civil rights movement, or the women’s movement.
They saw a chance to increase their profits and move further ahead with the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and to increase the process of reversing the past gains of the social movements, along with an ongoing and continuous cut of social services to increase profits and increase social services for the rich.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reinstitution of capitalism in the Soviet Block, the United States felt free to begin the process to dominate the entire world economically, politically and socially.
In 1991 they started the first war on Iraq to establish, as Bush the first, said a ‘new world order’. They retreated a bit to reevaluate the world situation and, at the same time, to more firmly establish capitalism in the former Soviet Block and to extend NATO. This process culminated in the US invasion of the former Yugoslavia. Thus setting the stage for a ‘catastrophic event’ like 9/11 to continue the implementation of the Iraq War, the establishment of a military bases throughout the middle east and the world, to preserve Pax Americana.
Concurrently, the United States government took steps to further strengthen the executive branch of government and further erode the Bill of Rights, so that they could prevent the establishment of resistance to their master plans both at home and abroad.
During the Clinton and Bush Presidencies, ever year there has been new legislation to further implement these policies.
As Gore Vidal’s stated in his book, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, about the transition from President Clinton to Bush the second:
“[The damage caused by the September 11 plane bombings is] nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties – the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 combined with the recent requests to Congress for additional special powers to wiretap without judicial order; to deport lawful permanent residents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without due process.”
Vidal also speaks of “an undeclared war under the Clinton presidency which coincided with severe restrictions of our human rights supposedly protected by the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the constitution”.
“The Bush administration”, Vidal noted, “though eerily inept in all but its principal task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes, has casually torn up most of the treaties to which civilized nations subscribe – like the Kyoto Accords or the nuclear missile agreement with Russia. The Bushites go about their relentless plundering of the Treasury and now, thanks to Osama, Social Security (a supposedly untouchable trust fund), which, like Lucky Strike Green, has gone to a war currently costing us $3 billion a month. They have also allowed the FBI and CIA either to run amok or not budge at all, rather like the Wizard of Oz doing his odd pretend-magic tricks while hoping not to be found out. Meanwhile, G.W. booms, ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists’. That’s known as asking for it.”
During the whole period of the 90s and into this century, Ben H. Bagdikian, in the preface to the sixth edition of The Media Monopoly, explained how the whole process, begun by Kennedy, of the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich greatly increased. He stated:
“As the United States enters the twenty-first century, power over the American mass media is flowing to the top with such devouring speed that it exceeds even the accelerated consolidations of the last twenty years. For the first time in U.S. history, the country’s most widespread news, commentary, and daily entertainment are controlled by six firms that are among the world’s largest corporations, two of them foreign.
“Even with the dramatic entry of the Internet and the cyber world with their uncounted hundreds of new firms, the controlling handful of American and foreign corporations now exceed in their size and communications power anything the world has seen before. Their intricate global interlocks create the force of an international cartel.
“There are pernicious consequences. While excessive bigness itself is cause for economic anxieties, the worst problems are political and social. The country’s largest media giants have achieved alarming success in writing the media laws and regulations in favor of their own corporations and against the interests of the general public. Their concentrated power permits them to become a larger factor than ever before in socializing each generation with entertainment models of behavior and personal values.
“The impact on the national political agenda has been devastating…. During these crucial years, the American economy was undergoing an astonishing phenomenon that the mainstream news left largely unreported or actually glamorized in its infrequent references: the largest transfer of the national wealth in American history from a majority of the population to a small percentage of the country’s wealthiest families.”
While in the United States and Worldwide, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the capitalist economy is collapsing within itself. These is no longer any room for lesser evil capitalism.
Politically, on of the problems the US ruling class has is the complete political incompetence of the ex-reprobate George Bush and his inability to articulate a sentence, in order to effectively sell the US quest for Pax Americana; has exposed the real motives of the United States for the world to see.
With George Bush, as their leader and spokesman, the United States capitalist has earned the hatred of the world, as he personified the arrogance of this country making a profit at the expense of the environment, by denying the scientific facts of global warming and environmental destruction — not even pretending to be doing something about the problem.
At the present juncture, the US ruling class is betting their money on Obama as their ‘change’ candidate.
As John Pilger wrote in From Kennedy To Obama; Liberalism’s Last Fling:
What is Obama’s attraction to big business? Precisely the same as Robert Kennedy’s. By offering a ‘new’, young and apparently progressive face of the Democratic Party — with the bonus of being a member of the black elite — he can blunt and divert real opposition. That was Colin Powell’s role as Bush’s secretary of state. An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept a Democratic administration for all its faults. If that happens, domestic resistance to rapacious America will fall silent.” And US imperialism will have a seemingly honest and glib president, to more effectively carry out the ‘war on terrorism’ (Pax Americana). Obama, in his July 15, 2008 speech, A New Strategy for a New World, claims that he can more effectively carry out the ‘war on terrorism’ than Bush or McCain and confirms his support to the program put forward by the Project for the New American Century.
Unlike the collapse of the Roman Empire, which put European society into the Dark Ages, the collapse of capitalism, will mean the destruction of humanity through the destruction of the environment through warfare and capitalist production or nuclear annihilation.
In order to regain what has been lost and win equality rights for all, we must stop supporting those who are oppressing us — the US capitalist class and their Democratic and Republican political parties. And go back to what made all movements powerful – opposing all capitalist parties and relying upon ourselves to build our own economic and independent political power.
That means organizing in our own interests as the working class majority and the oppressed national minorities to unite the protectors of humanity’s habitat, anti-war fighters, all those oppose to the injustices of capitalism to stop the unending ‘war on terrorism ‘.
In the present world, the rights of the capitalists to make a profit are in direct conflict with our basic rights. In this sense, the capitalist system has become a threat to humanity.
November 2008
Lessor Evil Results For 2009
On Page 602, A testament of hope: the essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther: King states the course that he was planning to take in the fight for economic equality:
The Emergence of social initiatives by a revitalized labor movement would be taking place a Negros are placing economic issues on the highest agenda. The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed, and welfare recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic relationships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform. . . .
He continues on Page 631:
There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum — and livable — income for every American family. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peaces will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a true brotherhood. . . .
Such a coalition, as King envisioned it thirty-three years ago, is needed today. In order to survive.
Jefferson’s words, in the Declaration of Independence, that human rights are unalienable, mean that these rights can never be superseded. At all points of conflict the rights of humanity to survive must supersede the right of the few to make a profit. The right to a safe environment, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are unalienable human rights!
Since environmental illness and destruction, poverty, war, and famine are a global concern, it requires all of humanity to act collectively, in our overall interests for our survival as a species, to correct the problem and to remove the obstacle of capitalism. It requires a society where humanity has social, economic, and political control over the entire environment, economically, politically, and socially.
Such a society, a socialist society, is needed to ensure that all decisions affecting our lives are under the democratic control of humankind so that the production of goods will be done for the needs and survival of humanity instead of the production and the destruction of humanity by capitalism’s quest for profits.
With common ownership of the means of production, and common control and protection of all property and wealth, science and society will be in harmony with the ecosystem and humanity’s future.
With these goals we can begin to build a more effective environmental movement, labor movement, and all social and anti-war movements. As we continue to organize against capitalism and its destructive course, we can and will transform the world.
Martin Luther King stated these same goals in his speech to his staff at Frogmore, S.C. November 14, 1966. In that speech, he stated:
You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums …. we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong …. with capitalism. . . . There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.