An Escape From Freedom: extended reflections on the development of an American dystopia
June 1st, 2003 at 11:48 pmFourth in a series: Parts One, Two and Three are here, here, and here.
Apparently, The American Sentimentalist has been on the cutting edge of American political thought without even realizing it.
No further proof of this is needed than a recent column in the New York Times Magazine entitled Weimar Whiners by James Traub. In it, Mr. Traub takes pains to dismiss the possibility of Fasci Americana, a generalized right-ward shift in the essential nature of American politics so sharp it runs the risk of taking on more the characteristics of fascism than of democracy – a possibility that this site has addressed on more than one occasion. Mr. Traub does this by relying on the only stalking horse available to those apologists who steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that anything could be wrong with the state of the U.S. body politic: the secret agendas and generalized anti-Americanism of the liberal Left. “(T)he fact that (this idea) has achieved such currency among what the French call the bien pensant (“well-thinking”),” he writes, “is vivid proof that in much of the left, 9/11 and its aftermath have increased the visceral loathing not of terrorism or of Islamist fundamentalism but of President George Bush.”
If it were only so easy.
The idea Traub refers to is the notion (expressed by others) that “the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush administration constitutes an early stage, or at least a precursor, to the kind of fascism Hitler brought to Germany.” He goes on to suggest that any thinking, no matter how “sophisticated”, that imagines a relationship between diminished civil liberties and the kind of fascism that developed in Germany in the 1930s should be taken about as seriously as overeager high-schoolers in the 1960s who called their principal “fascist” for effect. But, regardless of any efforts to trivialize the notion, Traub does end up getting down to the nuts and bolts of the matter, if only inadvertently: the potential danger found in the withering away of democratic institutions and the civic, social and political apathy demonstrated in spades in the current American situation – just like in 1930s Germany.
To do this, however, he focuses on the same fallacious idea that most discussions of the possibility of fascism in American political life focus on: the likelihood or not of the arrival of a Hitlerian figure on American shores. (For his part, Traub suggests that he is only reporting on an analytical trend among some friends and colleagues). As has been discussed in this space before, equating any and all forms of fascism with Hitler is at best lacking understanding and at worse consciously disingenuous – Hitler represented one flowering of fascist reality the same way the United Kingdom represents one specific manifestation of democracy: different in style than the American version, if you will, but not in kind. And so it is with fascism: while the political trend towards fascism in Latin America in the 1970s did not, as a structural component of its exercise of power, single out or slaughter ethnic minorities (at least, not to the same scale or ideological purpose as Hitler did), it would be hard to argue that the governments of Augosto Pinochet of Chile or Juan Peron of Argentina weren’t fascist.
Which means, even from this one set of examples, we see that fascism could potentially arrive on American shores in a different guise but for the same purpose, and without requiring a Hitler-figure as its public face (whether it will is another story, certainly). In fact, to assume fascism needs a Hitler to ‘be’ fascism is to misunderstand completely: totalitarian cults of personality need a Hitler; fascism needs only to extinguish civil liberties, place the needs of state at the center of all society, and require individual acquiescence.
Which brings us to the inadvertent meat of the Times piece, and the validity of thinking that goes along with the analysts Mr. Traub is trying so hard to ridicule: the current danger to be found in an apathetic public and diminished democratic institutions. In fact, Traub’s trump card in the debate over whether the current assault on civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 is worth worrying about is none other than the intrinsic good will and common sense of The American People themselves – a group that so obviously wouldn’t let things get out of control in this country that it’s almost foolish to even think that they might. Let’s look at the 1960s, he says,
Who, exactly, did that humbling? Why, the American People, of course, a group apparently slow to rouse but certain to come down on the side of right and the protection of civil rights once it has awoken from its slumber. “(It’s this dismissal that) makes my blood boil every time I hear the 1933 analogy.” he says in closing. “When will the left learn that this is not simply a nation of dimwitted yahoos?”
And the answer to that question is: at exactly the moment that they stop acting like dimwitted yahoos.
Let’s be clear: American fascism, if it comes, is not likely to come on the form of a charismatic leader pulling the political wool over the eyes of right-thinking Americans – for that, the common sense of most American citizens will do just fine in beating it back. But it is likely to come on the form of denigrated civil liberties in the face of governmental and corporate absolutism, coupled with expanded militarism, a structured class system, and an alienated, psychologically disenfranchised citizenry, among other characteristics. The day is hardly likely to come, then, when American jackboots parade down Main Street, but certainly could arrive when that all government policy is centered on “national security” issues as defined by a narrow set of corporate self-interests and ideological perceptions about foreign policy, complete without any true recourse by the citizenry.
In fact, it could be argued, such a day is already close at hand. Today’s decision by the Federal Communications Commission to award the public airwaves to corporate interests despite overwhelming public opposition is but one example in a sea of them in which corporate power completely eliminated the wishes of the American public. Revelations that those responsible for drafting the $350/$800 billion tax cut that was recently signed into law lied to the American people concerning exactly who would see tax relief and who wouldn’t represents a government more out of touch with its constituents or unwilling to speak truth to them than anyone should find acceptable. The idea that nearly everything surrounding the investigation into the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is being formally suppressed, or that the war in Iraq was carried out on the basis of secret information that nevertheless is widely suspected to be a hoax does not, under any circumstances, represent healthy democracy or a steadfast defense of civil liberties, if those liberties are defined by anything other than the theoretical right to remain unmolested while you shop. Nor do any of the hundreds and thousands of examples of the ways in which traditional American ideals of the public interest are being trampled every day in the worlds of health care, crime, job security, personal privacy, foreign policy, media control, the rights of protest, the use of technology, class divisions, sexual politics, access to educational opportunity, corporate power and all the rest.
And that is where the American strain of dimwitted yahooism comes in, and the worries of those who can imagine fascism wrapped in the Stars and Bars instead of swastikas might be validated. As discussed earlier, fascism requires one primary state of affairs before the political reality can develop: weakened civic and societal institutions. In this country, perhaps more so than others because of the absolute faith we place in the belief that our system is right and just, civic and societal institutions are weakened every time one of them fails to perform like it should and few or no voices are raised in protest among a largely satisfied and politically-apathetic public. Such as, say, the silence that greets coal-fired power plants that are allowed to continue to pollute beyond federally-mandated levels simply because they claim their rights to make a profit. Or the callousness that surrounds a round-up of suspects by the Justice Department that doesn’t bother protecting basic human rights. Or the complete lack of interest as the United States government raids the Treasury by raising the federal debt ceiling without telling anyone to help pay for a tax cut that most Americans don’t want. Or any of the other daily examples of the intersection of politics and corporate power where corporate power wins. Or resources are diverted to military uses while Americans go homeless or hungry, or pregnant mothers are denied medical care because of mean-spirited political ideology, or the promise of America is shuttered to the millions of our fellow citizens because they find themselves poor in a society of the rich.
And few or no voices are raised in protest. Meanwhile, fully two-thirds of the voting public fails to muster the sufficient energy to go to the polls most any election, while even less can name a single member of the president’s cabinet, their Senator or Representative, or anyone outside of the head of their state government. Let alone Supreme Court justices, which cases are on the dock, what the make up of the federal judiciary is and how they vote, or who exactly it is that is supposed to protect their retirement portfolios by making sure corporations or stock brokers don’t cheat their investors. Or anyone else who holds the levers of power in the country they profess to love.
Perhaps if we are required to find a parallel to 1933 Germany, as some, like Mr. Traub, insist we must in order to determine whether America is in danger of fascism in any way, we can turn to the work of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and his 1996 book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. In reviewing the book, Patrick Quinn notes Goldhagen’s thesis “has the temerity to suggest in this remarkable book that the Germans killed the Jews because the Germans wanted to,” and that:
The point here is not the potentiality of Americans to develop a program of ethnic extermination, but of a willingness to turn their back on moral and political absolutes that transcend individual self-interests for the greater good and the true defense of Liberty with a capital ‘L’. The real potentiality for American fascism to form – in any style – resides at the heart of this American political apathy, and the lack of concern the average citizen displays over the very real places in which institutions designed to protect the public interest break down or the consequences of such failures. Why the body politic couldn’t care less about such items as going to war on false pretenses is the subject of another discussion, if such reasonings can be contained to a single discussion. But every single piece of political liberty, it has been noted, that is lost is rarely regained, and the incremental destruction of American democratic institutions – along with the simultaneous loss of understanding as to their importance – bodes not well for the vigorous defense of liberty down the road.
The shock and awe many Americans feel at the cavalcade of dangers that have come down the pike since 9/11 is not, as Mr. Traub says they are, simply “wish-fulfillment” among “those of Bush’s critics who loathe him as an over privileged lout and corporate cats’ paw.” Nor is it, it can be argued, simply the lashings out of opposition Democrats wounded at their party’s sudden marginalization on the political landscape, but instead the vigorous and necessary hyper-defense of traditional American ideals during a time of what can only be described as “national crisis”. Which, it could be argued, would be exactly what everyone from the Founding Fathers on down would have prescribed as prudent and necessary in times like these. If a few doomsayers have to raise the cry of fascism to point out the dangers we currently face, well, then, so be it.
For my part, I’ll be satisfied simply being on the vanguard of alarmist discussion on this subject, as Mr. Traub fully suggests that I am – and hope to not end up being more prescient than I wanted to be.
I have to say it: Anderson for President. And his First Lady will perform quite a clean-up job herself! Seriously, I have never in all my years felt so mute. On a mountaintop so isolated that echoes of my disdain rarely ever make it back. Why is it so hard to make the connection? Did everyone get a Dixieful of Kool-Aid except us? Let’s look at why people resort to terrorism – because conventional means fail to work and avenues are closed down.
Now, I’m not sayin’. I’m just sayin’. People can remain apathetic to the leaking boat until the water agitates their privates. But when it does, they’ll thrash about looking for lifeboats, or if they have to, goddammit, they will be forced to SWIM. Again, just sayin’. I have faith that people will start asking the right questions come election time. No one told me I had to cash in my Liberty chips for Security Bux. There was a passing mention, I believe… But it wasn’t posed in the form of a question. George, don’t charge me fare to ride in the car that we paid for. We (rather, they) only asked you to take the wheel for 4 years. Just drive where we tell you. Let us give the directions. That car is of us, by us and for us.
The zombified apathy of America is one of the most tragic love stories being written. The sadness comes not by the hero killing himself as his last means to preserve his soul and escape the tyranny of loneliness, but in his slaying of his beloved to protect her from the atrophy that is Dying Love. Gotta read between the lines there, but hopefully you get my drift. Was it Roberta Flack who sang “Killing Me Softly”? Was that song about the conflicted pain of being American? I see now that bringing democracy to the world is really just bringing captialism to the people we want to work for us cheaper than the folks we’ve got here. Just ask Zimbabwe or anyone without anything we would want.
Kudos, Sentimentalizer – Another article I’ll e-forward into the void of The Right and The Unthinkers, never to be heard from again. Fly, sweet, roasted bird of Paradox. Fear not – No one out there will want to eat you.
In parting – I offer this to all who pass this way… “U’s A Patriot? ACT!!!”
Hi Mark,
I have all the respect in the world for your intelligence and writing ability. However, the “alarmist” attitude can become a bit heavy-handed.
A few questions:
If the CIA/FBI tells all that they knew prior to 9/11 and what was not properly recognized, do they not, in essence, tell the terrorists how we track them and what we may not yet know or understand?
What if Iraq actually does have weapons of mass destruction? What if we are simply waiting to put our hands on it, not a mere photograph from sputnik? Is that possible, or is it simply more entertaining to slam our government?
What if we can’t have things both ways? If you want to feel safe when flying, how do we ensure that you are safe? How do we do that without increasing security in a significant manner? I think the people of this country consider such security measures to be much more an inconvenience than the violation of civil liberties that you seem to equate it to be. Is it me, did I read you wrong?
Bottom line, while it is necessary to question, it is also necessary to question reasonably. I get the feeling that there is nothing that Bush can do that will not be blindly questioned by you…only to calmly and reasonably assess his actions at a later time.
Just sayin’.
Neal:
I’m not sure if I’ll get to all of our points before I have to take a break, but if I don’t, I’ll finish up at a later date.
Ready and willing to accept the moniker of “alarmist”, my thoughts are these:
1. I (and many others) are not asking for the CIA and/or the FBI to tell me the details of how they may have missed intelligence. I am only asking that they tell me whether they a) did miss intelligence or screw up, b) whether or not that missed intelligence allowed a security breach to have been created, and c) whether or not it is going to be effectively fixed or not. One of the things we did learn (through the media, and not from the government itself) is that there were significant turf wars amongst the CIA and FBI in the years leading up to 2001 – in fact, it was one of the justifications used to create the Homeland Security Administration. Have those turf wars been fixed? Is ideology in some way (any kind of ideology – liberal or anything else) keeping intelligence agents from doing their jobs? What about the idea being presented now that intelligence about WMD was manipulated by the adminsitration – can I get a clear accounting about that? At $30 billion a year in spending on intelligence, I would like to know that the minimum my tax dollars buys is Robert Mueller and George Tenet to come on TV and say “You know what? We blew it. We’ll work harder.” I think as a citizen I am entitled to that from my government, and don’t think any terrorist is going to be able to outwit a security guard at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania any easier if that happens.
2. Whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or not doesn’t matter to me – what matters to me is that he had weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the United States. That would mean only one of two things: either a nuclear program (which the adminsitration worked very deftly insuggesting he had withou claiming it outright) or biological agents far enough weaponized to have given them to a terrorist. At this point, we know he doesn’t have a nuclear program, because there’s no way he could have had one and it not have been found by now (okay, unless he built an underground city/reactor/launching pad) that we haven’t discovered yet, and that he doesn’t seem to have represented a greater threat than the other countries in the world who have biological weapons programs. No matter what the administration says, finding some sarin nerve gas hidden in a bunker somewhere that allowed Hussein to threaten Iran or Kuwait is not a justification for committing America troops. If we find weapons of mass destruction sufficient enough to threaten Chicago by November, 2004, I’ll vote for George Bush, happily.
That’s all for now – more later. Thanks for your excellent points.
Mark
Virtually any time someone brings up Nazis to make a point, the words “Godwin’s Law” can’t be far behind. But how are we to learn from history if certain portions of it are off limits for discussion?
And the comparison is only valid when you can prove it is? For me, the lesson of the Nazis is that a small group of authoritarian Fascists took over a democracy in a wave of nationalist patriotism in an extraordinarily short time.
I tend to think of writers like Hannah Arendt who portrayed the “banal” evil of Eichmann to be as dangerous as any strutting madman with the power of sanctioned authority in his hands. A Hitler without Eichmanns would have just been another ‘nutjob’. From this point of view, the question is not whether Bush looks like Hitler but whether we in the US look like proto-Nazis.
But what I want to know, ‘Is Dubya Damien Thorn?’
thanks for writing this series. i’m still digesting and will likely reread it, forward it, and mention it over the next week.
Love the blog. I wanna write like you! Some thoughts though. My feeling was that Saddam probably had wmd, but so what? Don’t we(USA)? The important thing would be, have them or not, were they a threat to the United States? To me, it seemed clearly not. Whatever we think of the Hussein family’s view of the value of human life, Iraq has as much right to defend itself from foreign invasion as does, say, the United States. Saddam had nothing to gain by threatening the U.S. Also, it was clear he had no common interests with Al Qaeda. He had been invaded – or had his atomic facility destroyed – by Israel – some years ago, and having a deterrent from a repeat performance is quite within the norm of modern international ethics – established in the main by the U.S.A. Now it seems that by saying he had no wmd, Saddam was banking on it being taken for a lie. Why endanger your regime by possessing weapons that could be used against you when all you needed for the deterrent effect was to be thought to have them? He outsmarted himself by thinking Bush and co. would figure it out by using American intelligence services to discover that he really had no wmd. I still believe the war was about oil and religion more than anything else.
About terrorism. I ended terrorism in my own life and personal world before it began. I choose not to be afraid. No war against terrorism is required. A person or a people can simply refrain from feeding terrorism the one thing it can’t function without: fear!
The other thing, of course, to stop the threat of future 9/11’s is to cease and desist the behaviors that, to the unelevated human mind, demand retaliation in the name of justice.
Back to my desire to write like you. On thinking a tiny bit more about it, perhaps it’s not necessary. If I could, there’d be no need for you. Keep it up!
Tobey
Seek the best and everything else will take care of itself.
Tobey brings up a great point that much of the world seems to be missing. Fear is always the key to control. Maybe it’s the reason for Bush’s hard-line terrorism concerns. Being heir to his father’s fortunes earned in the service of Carlyle (everyone read the Iron Triangle right NOW), war and terror are a sure bet in a world where there are no sure bets, they say. Whenever anyone wants to talk about the real problems, Bush keeps addressing the symptoms. “Dr. W., I have a nasty open sore. I think I imbibed in a little too much global corporatism over the weekend and things got out of hand. And now it hurts when I go like this >.”
Don’t you think it would be better for us to vaccinate against further infection by addressing the policies that brought us here, rather than amputate or nip or tuck? Sorry, file that under “D” for “Duh.” What will finally be left of us when we think all the warts and lesions have been snipped away? If terrorism falls in the global forest, does that mean Ann Coulter stops making a sound?
Tobey:
Thanks for the kind thoughts about the blog. Congratulations on developing a clear-headed approach to the dangers of terrorism and the need for fear. I no longer care, actually, about the potential for Hussein to have had WMD – what I think is interesting here, however, is they way that the rationale has slid away from the potential for a threat to America (a possible but certainly unprecedented reason to initiate armed conflict) to the fait accompli that will be assigned should a stash of chemical weapons barrels be discovered in a back room somewhere. You point in this regard is correct: if possession of chemical or biological weapons (switched in the public’s mind by this administration with pure “WMDs” i.e. nuclear weapons) was all it took to justify a war, than there are a no doubt a hell of a lot of other countries that we would need to invade. Otherwise, the WMD theory is a ruse, plain and simply. Somebody, after all, needed to be invaded, and somebody else (the rest of the world) needed to be frightened in the wake of 9//11.
Todd: Unfortunately, Ann Coulter is unlikely to stop making sounds. She is exactly the kind of things conservatives in this country believe constitutes the “political freedom” worth invading countries for (the other stated rationale for Iraq).
M.
You have been branded as Unpatriotic and Unamerican by the Secret Society of The-Blacklist Brigade.
<Sarcasm>
It’s certainly encouraging to see that “TBL” has the courage to leave behind a real email address. Real patriotism should not go unmasked in these dark days. And I love your use of the hyphen there–a real contribution to a distinctive American prose.
</Sarcasm>
I’ll throw my complements into the ring. Well written, Mark.
Here is my take. The international community baulked at backing the invaision because the administration failed to see the obvious ecconomic benefits for a few major European contries in the continued existance of a Suddam run Iraq. So we had to step up the pressure and cooked the books on the WMD issue.
Iraq is basicly a monumental slight of hand. The heat was getting pretty high on the corporations and the administration (Is there a difference?) to rein in the CEOs. Look! Over there! WMD!
I would like bring the discussion back to the cival rights issues. But not mine. Mine are still in tact (for the time being). It is the middle eastern young man in the car next to me who is a little short on rights these days. He can be profiled in the intrest of ‘national security’ and locked up with out recourse. The folks that shrug and say ‘that is the price of freedom’ are OK with that because they don’t have to buck up. They don’t fit the profile. How many folks that fit the profile are willing to take that attitude? My guess is not a majority.
This attitude is the lazy mans Nitol. I am safe because anyone who looks like Saddam is under suspision. And W keeps telling me that we’ll get the ‘evil doers’. The majority of Americans are OK with that. I’m not.
The ingrediants, constricted civil rights, racial profiling, good ol’ american apathy, have always been there for fascisim to take hold quietly.
A managed fascisim has always existed through out Americas history. Some group that gets to take the blame for the ills of the time period. Their rights get curtailed so the majority can rest easy, go about their business say ’see it’s not my fault’. But these days the balance is way off. After all anyone can be a terroist. they don’t wear uniforms and soon the government will have to start casting a wider net to allow the corporations to feel safe. And we’ll be scratching our heads at how it got this far.
And if it gets any farther off, how easy for the situation to produce the next Hitler. After all hitler was not born to be who he became. He was just an opportunist without a consence. Like any of those we hear about in positions of power and just had to get that mush more money and power because they can’t resist the opportunity.
Wow I must say i was moved. It’s nice to know the entire world hasn’t lost their minds. However what to do next… Do you really believe the american public isn’t just niave. I think that may be a little idealistic. For the most part whe you are refering to the masses you talking about a lower general IQ. And the media I dont expect them to save us like the sixties.. in fact i think we should take a closer look at how the media may have perpetuated this war for ratings. To what extent did they manipulate the American public. And we are living in a world o might make right and unfair players when do we fight fire with fire to preserve our values
On June 19, 1865 a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform the people of that state that slaves were free.
On Thursday June 19, 2003 there was a celebration by the black people in Clinton OK. Eleven people were arrested for “inciting a riot”. The town of Clinton has done a job of secluding the black community also called “the flats”. What I mean is by blocking off entrances to this area. On this night Andre Rawls, a local patrolman, who has been to the black community causing problems many times before and who is also black knowing what this day means to the black people. He Went down to the flats and got out of his vehicle and had a confrontation with one of the arrested individuals. Andre Rawls called for back up, then everyone moved to a different location after asked by the police. After the other police officers both from Clinton, OK and Weatherford, OK and the Highway Patrol showed up, they began circling the area to which the people had relocated. There were several people standing in their front yards when some officers approached and arrested them. All together there were 11 people arrested on various charges and in 5 different locations. Several of the 11 were just trying to cope with their family members and get them to cooperate with the police and ended up getting arrested also.
One in which was arrested was a 48 year old black woman, Lola Faye Adams. She came out on her pourch and was seeing what all the comotion was about. The police officer told her that if she did not go into the house that she would be arrested. When she asked why? Two police officer threw her onto the ground and one put his knees in her neck and the other handcuffed her while pushing her face into the ground. Lola is known in the flats as a Christian woman. She has been accused of backsliding form fellow church members. She is also my day care provider and second mother. Her two sons were also arrested from her front yard.
There were several people present for this “Juneteenth” celebration and had video cameras. Although the local police department has one of the videos, there are two others which we think should be reviewed.
These arrested individuals have court tomorrow 9-09-03 and they are being asked to take a plea bargin. No one in our community is taking this seriously because the whole town in racist in my opinion. We feel that the local police department and the town of Clinton is just trying to whatever they can to get the majority of blacks out of this area. I, being Caucasian, have been confronted, interrogated, and harassed by the local system for various reasons, such as: having black friends, black partners, being seen in the black community (“the flats”), and also accused of buying and using drugs, but when searched, they found NOTHING of all the times being pulled over. We also feel the the black community and the Caucasians that associate with the black community are being treated unfairly and are shown much prejudice from the “system.” We are pretty much begging for an investigation of what they call “serving and protecting the people.” There are several other incidents that haven’t been accounted for, but we are asking for a response and help to stop this harassment.
Crystal Star, Vanessa Keller, Lisa Reece
(580)-323-3410
1611 Avant Clinton, OK 73601
Lola Adams
(580)323-1729
Current U.S. foreign policy and the descent of America into fascism is being largely influenced by the impending GLOBAL PEAK OF OIL PRODUCTION. During the following permanent downhill slope, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to extract as much oil each year as was extracted the year before. That is the nature of an oil field, and of the industry in aggregate all over the planet. There are a lot of misconceptions about oil and vested interests to suppress knowledge of this phenomenon. Colin Campbell does a good job of explaining those factors in “The Heart of the Matter” on hubbertpeak.com (October 2003).
Be very skeptical of economist Michael Lynch’s attempts to debunk this. He is very skilled at providing convincing, but invalid or immaterial arguments against the fact that global oil production will “peak” soon. It is only human nature to pin all hopes on the slightest bit of good news, and dismiss an entire mountain of evidence based on the slightest error.
We invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam for control of Iraqi oil, and nothing else (not “took military action against”, but “invaded”, like a good old fascist empire). As a matter of fact, the Bush administration worked very hard to CONCOCT a non-oil justification for the invasion, and their justifications changed significantly throughout the months leading up to the invasion. Even Paul Wolfowitz said, “The only issue we could agree on was weapons of mass destruction,” in this context. Our invasion of Iraq was largely “justified” by a British intelligence dossier that was plagiarized from a graduate student’s paper that described the Iraq of 1991, not that of 2003. Also, Kim Il-song – head of state of North Korea – has repeatedly FLAT OUT TOLD the U.S. that he has nukes, and has used them to blackmail the U.S. into relieving their famine. North Korea also has a much more powerful military than Iraq had pre-invasion. Now, our military is probably stretched a bit thin to fight North Korea. This is a flagrant example of how mainstream media do not connect the dots.
Why would we invade Iraq for its oil? Because global oil production is peaking, set to decline forever afterward (no later than 2010), and Iraq has the second largest proved reserves of oil on the planet, second only to Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s oil industry has not produced at anywhere near capacity for over 10 years due to UN sanctions and destruction of its oilfields. As of this posting, Saudi Arabia (the biggest supplier for the U.S.) has almost zero spare capacity for oil production. Every region except for the Middle East and the former Soviet Union has already passed its peak. The North Sea passed its peak in 1999. The U.S. passed its peak of oil production in 1970, giving subsequent vulnerability to the oil shocks. There is much less useful oil in the Caspian Sea than previously thought because most of it is tainted with sulfur. Exxon, BP-Amoco, and other majors have already pulled out of the Caspian Sea.
I am not suggesting that the invasion was justified even by peak oil. Oil companies in Russia and western Europe had their sights set on Iraq many months before the invasion, and if Bush was not so… well, “Bush-like”, the U.S. and other industrialized countries might have began talks to cooperate during the downhill phase of the age of oil. BUT, the Bush-et-al neocons decided on a short-term, self-serving solution: overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq to ramp up production, in order to sustain their own lavish lifestyles. Before the invasion, it was widely predicted that this would only make the peak higher and sooner, and the decline steeper.
Alternative energy sources – including hydrogen – cannot soften the impacts of the downward slope of oil production more than a tiny bit. Hydrogen is only an energy “carrier”, not a primary energy source, meaning that fossil fuels must be used to produce it in any useful amount. It is also produced (separated from nature) at a net energy loss, meaning that it wastes energy that could be used more wisely. Other energy sources such as solar, ethanol, and biomass are grossly inadequate as replacements for various reasons.
When there is an ever-shrinking base of available energy for transportation and other industrial activities(PARTICULARLY MODERN AGRICULTURE, EVENTUALLY), there is far-reaching potential for social crises. Many say that this is the background for the federal government allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen – as a pretext to clamp down on civil liberties, to suppress chaos when fossil fuel energy becomes scarce. The U.S. – with our population, relatively long driving distances, and love affairs with SUVs – will be the hardest hit by the increasing scarcity of oil.
Not only will oil gradually become scarcer, but North America is also leaping off the natural gas “cliff”. This is because the nature of a gas well is to plateau throughout most of its life and then stop on a dime. Since 1994, the natural gas industry has had to run faster and faster (drill more wells) just to keep production flat, and in the last couple years total natural gas production has dropped by 3% to 6%, which is actually pretty rapid. The fact that natural gas is also being used to generate electricity worsens this situation. Attempting to maintain natural gas supplies by drilling for coal-bed methane is now destroying ranchers’ properties.
Why am I rambling so much about energy problems facing us? Because I, and many others, are convinced that this – in addition to some human-nature tendency of governments to seek total control – is the underpinning for the current trampling of civil liberties, which would be very easy to carry out after a traumatic unifying event such as 9/11. Industrial civilization runs mostly on fossil fuels, and there is no replacement for them in quantity or quality. Nuclear fusion is always just beyond our grasp, as it has been for the past 40 years.
If you have a few dozen other questions about energy, a good place to start researching the current energy situation is hubbertpeak.com, and the list of “Other websites: Growing Awareness” down the left side of that page. I also particularly recommend the ASPO Newsletters (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) at peakoil.net.
G.W. Bush did say at the beginning of his term that “we face a major energy crisis.” He just forgot to mention how far-reaching its implications were, and instead relaxed regulations for his energy industry cronies and derided conservation as a “personal virtue.”
BTW…Guess what the 4th 9/11 target was – the Capitol Building, not the White House. Go to Yahoo, then search the News there for ‘capitol fourth goal’ and see for yourself. If that had succeeded, maybe Bush could have “temporarily” suspended the Constitution and seized dictatorial control. That, if nothing else, IS a chilling parallel to Hitler’s Reichstag fire.
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