John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PHILIP GIRALDI

 

“A Tale of Two Foreign Policies: The Train-Wreck Abroad Is Bipartisan”

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Response to a comment saying, “I’ll get you a real third party. We only have one anyway. The property party with two right wings. If our people can return their faith to the source of everything good in our lives, then the notion of the two artificially combating parties will disappear. It’s time to send them both home. And end the show in Washington”

Sorry, but that is dreaming in technicolor.

The fact is the US is pretty much a plutocracy now, and the two parties are heavily supported by that plutocracy.

You cannot even sit down at the card table without a huge stake.

It’s what we call in economics, a barrier to entry.

The many quasi-monopolies and duopolies we see in our economy work the same way, as with gigantic advertising budgets a newcomer cannot hope to match.

A few facts on America’s plutocracy.

The Supreme Court decision that “money is free speech.”

Hillary Clinton burned through 1.2 billion dollars in just one campaign for one person.

Mike Bloomberg spent about $900 million on his recent brief effort for the nomination.

In practical terms, there are no limits on political spending and donating.

And there are no real limits on the work of lobbies for private and special interests.

It has become a standing joke that America has “the best Congress money can buy.”

America’s Frankenstein military/security apparatus is not about defense, at all. It is about the maintenance of global empire. It burns through a trillion dollars a year, and it exists to serve America’s plutocracy and its establishment.

The American tax structure has become terribly bent. It is helping to generate huge disparities, the so-called “one percent”, and support plutocracy.

The main difference between the two parties is the Democrats talk about various domestic social measures.

In all other respects, the parties are identical – in support for the Pentagon/security establishment, support for global empire, and support for almost continuous wars and coups, and both depend on plutocracy for a flow of funds. Voters get no choice at all in such matters.

And the irony for the Democrats is that so long as America burns through a trillion dollars a year for supporting empire – money it doesn’t even have, all borrowed – none of the large social programs can possibly happen.

And who do you think ends up paying for all the interest on all that immense borrowing? It sure ain’t the plutocrats that its expenditure served.

America’s political system is pretty much a rigged game. There’s no serious chance of changing it either, although a catastrophe like we’re now headed into could do that. But they are already talking in Washington of suspending habeas corpus and about which Pentagon general might step in.

Tulsi Gabbard wasn’t even allowed to compete because she questions the wars.

Bernie Sanders has been cheated a second time. He really isn’t a socialist, he’s an FDR progressive. But his being cheated twice by elaborate measures is the perfect example of how risk-averse America’s establishment is.

It ain’t a pretty picture, and the reality always gives me a little chuckle when I read of American officials telling others abroad how they should do things.

By the way, that vast expenditure on empire also gets in the way of improving America’s infrastructure – from schools to bridges.

The genuine way to compete with China is not Trump’s noise and threats and tariffs, it is old-fashioned getting down to work and improving your competitiveness, but America’s establishment isn’t the least interested in doing that. It feels entitled to be number one in everything, and so it just demands it. It’s what Putin accurately describes as “a sense of entitlement.”

In the end, it will get America nowhere, except into trouble. The American Dream was the simple result of having been the last industrial power standing after WWII and having invested heavily for the war.

But those conditions and that era are gone, for good. Others have invested and worked hard, and they do many things better than America does.

After all, do we not see throughout our lives the rise and fall of great firms, of great families? It is no different with empire.

America has been declining in relative terms in the world economy for decades. It is just the way things work. You cannot bully your way back, either, like the big bully in the White House thinks you can.

Pursuing that course is almost certainly going lead to war, and I can’t imagine that any sane person wants that, but to call some leaders in Washington sane is seriously stretching truth.