I give thanx for a link embedded in a generously brief post by my own personal rabbi of marx-sizzle-ism, the cranberry muffin king among list-masters, Lou Proyectile. 'Cause here is the ultimo locus-loco of the "Uncle's Borg cubes sap our humanity" riff. Title: "The Limited Minds of the American Elite":
1) Project and prospect:
"We could easily dismantle the empire -- carefully, safely, with deliberation -- over the next ten years. It is a reasonable, moderate, serious option. It would not require violent revolution or vast social upheaval...Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about."
Vision of the chance to make America anew:
"Dismantling of America's global military empire -- and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance.
This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced [but] those who have feasted so gluttonously for so long on blood money would not be quite as rich as they are now."
2) The jinxers:
"Such a society is precisely what our elites cannot -- or, to be more accurate, will not -- imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire -- a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance... our elites.. can no longer fathom life without the exercise -- and worship -- of unrestricted power that empire entails. They will not accept -- or even contemplate -- any alternative to it."
3) The challenge:
"Empire -- the imposition of dominion by violence and threat of violence, and the financial and moral corruption this breeds, the malevolent example it sets at every level of society -- is the canker in the body politic. Until it is dealt with, there will be no healing, no hope, no change -- just more degradation and disaster all down the line."
No doubt it would be a great thing if Uncle took the Chalmers Johnson opt-out route. But there is no discussion of how the rest of the globe might reconfigure itself after Uncle walks away from his empire role -- apparently in ten annual steps.
Say we accept this Gedanken Swedenizing of Norte America for a moment. Uncle Sven's neat new inward-looking gig would not spell an end to global empiring, would it?
Peripheral national liberators would still find their task unchanged -- they would in the end succeeed only by playing off the contradictions between the successor "great powers".
Now to the pious reform of the metropole named America itself. Goo-goo strugglers, prepare yourself: we can at best only impede the borg machines. We cannot choose to dismantle the borgs by means of majority rule. It's against the laws of Clio.
If it looks to some of us hopeful sorts like it might happen anyway, bet on this: Clio will soon enough show us otherwise through her faithful agents, our guardian class. They are a global sort now, unlike their great- great- grandfathers. They are not narrow nationalists and the love of global "influence" -- let alone the joys of a psychic "merge" or "projection" -- has nothing fundemental to do with it.
Their global perspective is an operational necessity; their corporate imperial state a global sine qua non. To them, the loss of the borgs would mean a loss of unimpeded corporate empire, a loss of freedom to span the globe in search of higher returns.
In the end, obviously, this means a loss of wealth, and what's more, given their Faustian spirits, a loss of the potential for even greater wealth. They will see to it we don't vote this away, and if necessary, kill lots of us in the process. That is one civil war the bad guys would win under today's conditions.
The end of Uncle's primo earthwide status would directly and seriously dwarficate our the wealth prospects of our home-grown hegemons, our very own guardian class. One has only to look at Spain and Britain to see that.
Besides, the cost to us residents here, us weebles along for the imperial ride, is prolly minimal, looked at systemically after all the adjustments are taken into account. The cost of maintaining the borg cubes is shared throughout the world market's interconnected parts of the globe. And these world markets were and are Uncle-rigged affairs from Day One, created modified and maintained to yield advantages that way way more than pay back Mr Hegemon for his blitz machines.
Final big point: the domestic welfare of substantial hunks of the the primo nation's toiling oppressed and exploited masses can be lifted up, goo-goo style, as part of an opportunistic package deal, like the one struck in the early 50's between the soon to be moiged CIO and the corporate industrial sector; or in the 70's between law-abiding Southern black communities and new-South whitey.
Where are we now in the reform/reaction cycle? The Reagan revival has lead by means oblique to its opposite, praise Clio. Now whether this means we're headed into maybe something big like a New Deal II, or just a very old oft-told and retold story called "muddling through"...
We'll just have to go out there into the thick of it, and see what we can make of the opportunity -- eh, strugglebugs?
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