Big Debt, Ignorance and Empire

The new risk of a double dip recession and government debt approaching 100% of annual GDP are consequences of long term interventionism, both domestically and internationally. Generations of government knows best paternalism has succumbed to accumulated debt and over-obligation. Welcome to the death throes of an empire.

Beginning with the industrial revolution government began to acknowledge the corporate construct as the economic vehicle of choice to match manufacturing to labor. All government had to do was enforce laws to regulate the architecture of U.S. commerce and the corporations would function as benevolent monarchies - serving the interests of themselves, their employees and the government that allows them to function so well. This is still the Pablum the U.S. sells to foreign countries and to domestic voters. Possibly there existed such an ideal and delicate balance for two consecutive quarters in the 1920's. Corporate self-interest quickly off loaded obligations onto the government and subverted regulations, thereby feigning support for a democratic populace while functioning as independent, and not benevolent, monarchies.

World war two kinked this trend domestically, but in a perverse twist, brought the degenerate trend international. The idea of a populace subservient to an industry or monolithic corporations was not foreign to broken and frustrated survivors of world war. However, the charade that neither they nor their government were serfs to the industrialists was quite novel. The U.S. sold this inverted relationship between industry and government as the means by which they were able to join and win WWII.

"Just be like us. Our industriousness begets economic self-determination." Please ignore the fact that war is a grotesquely leveraged government jobs program and all subsequent employment depends on the government as a customer or a benefactor, in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, land grants, tax waivers, government backed insurance ... [more small print disclaimer bull shit]

Why not follow the lead of the captain that won the game for the team? Rebuild industry and establish economic self-determinism; all under the paternalistic U.S. military industry. Military cooperation worked well and functions as a paradigm for corporate cooperation, which requires U.S. military protection - just for security (wink, wink). Again, please neglect that an ideal government and financial model would stand on its own merits and not require military garrison to impress upon a previously sovereign nation.

All future transactions from this point on are under varying degrees of duress for the victim country. The long, undignified and overt shadow of global garrisoning by the U.S. has become tacit over three generations and intervening Korean and Vietnamese conflicts. By the Reagan/Bush I era the cost of doing business with the U.S. entailed a one-sided military agreement that required garrisoning by the U.S. This intervention is always accompanied by financial infiltration by economic hit men for the big multinationals (military contractors, natural resource exploiters, financial subjugators etc.), that is to say that this is a tacit occupation by its military/industrial symbiont. From the former sovereign's perspective the most insidious global racketeers have mugged them for the privilege of membership in the global archipelago of foreign U.S. - hideous oxymoron - military installations.

There are well over 500 such installations (737 in 2007). This does not consider supposedly domestic federal agencies that imitate this infiltration paradigm, while operating under their own agreement. E.g. the DEA operates 80 offices in 62 countries under the guise of public safety; although prosecutor and prison industry job security are the only observable "public safety" effects. Of course this is the point - create an imagined problem, infiltrate militarily to correct it (under some specious appeal to safety or security of the populace), open the money taps to the corporations that engineered the false problem and onerous solution, repeat globally. The victim country beefs up their cops,their military, and their prisons and becomes a serf nation in the image of the U.S. – supplicant to the corporate construct of the exploiters and subjugators mentioned above.

The predator corporations employ political/social engineering, and often private military divisions to maintain their operations under the new established order. This should seem familiar to U.S. citizens; it is the raison d'etre of the CIA!
The Vietnam era brought too much transparency to this method of creeping empire. Instead of a re-evaluation and adjustment of insidious behavior, the corporate gangsters simply twisted a side effect of the Vietnam insurrection - global distribution of primo Asian heroin by the U.S. military - as the new problem requiring yet more permanent garrisoning by U.S. agencies. This follows the Roman decline whereby; assassination of the Imperial Caesar brought only more imperialism in the form of the three emperor triumvirate, rather than a return to representative government.

Three plus generations of this accelerating imperialism is finally paying off with self-destruction. After putting so many thumbs in so many eyes for 50+ years - and considering everything a necessary success - a group of Middle Easterners called Al-queda made their dissent known. Yet again, like the refusal to abandon international imperial behavior upon international disenfranchisement for the Vietnam debacle, the U.S. chose to speed up collapse with an increase in imperialism toward the Middle East. Intervention and occupation that inspired suicide hijackers has been nothing more than a government funded jobs program for profiteer contractors . The result has been financial collapse and a high contrast exclamation point to mark the “flame out” of the greatest democracy known to have existed.

Every solution, and resulting problem, implemented by the U.S. government is the repercussion of intervention that aggravates, instead of counteracts, the perceived problems. This applies domestically and internationally. There is a bullshit political propaganda aphorism often utilized to promote the continuing U.S. imperialism abroad, via the military/corporate construct, and corporate/extreme wealth class domestically that states: "a rising tide floats all boats." This can be recast to address interventionism: "Inverse correction aggravates all problems."

The U.S. budget (domestic economics) is a perfect representation. Every effort to counteract economic cycles with government spending accelerates the rebound, and is not throttled back upon recovery. Thus, there is increased waste of subsidies to corporations, excessive garrisoning of the planet (which acts as security for the corporations molesting the resources of the occupied countries), foregone collection of fees and taxes, and assumption of pension defaults and all general social welfare etc.

Upon the next - and unnecessarily larger – down stroke, comes more poisonous government/military support of corporations; the debilitating assumption of corporate defaults is undertaken and self-destruction is assured. This is the equivalent of taking unneeded steroids as a teenager, and then consuming increasing amounts until near lethal doses will not sustain life in middle age. The U.S. has gone from middle aged to death by this paradigm, in fifty years.

The kicker is that the parasite - the corporate construct - now thrives on its own. It flies high from the broken springboard of U.S. imperialism, in every established and emerging economy in the world. Perversely these countries are less the victim than the U.S. They assume no un-remunerated material nor financial supporting role for the predatory corporations. Most are, in fact, savvy enough to collect due fees and taxes that the U.S. inexplicably waives domestically. Thus the corporate construct sits on deck as the next imperial power whilst the U.S. recedes into ignominy.

© Jason Pecci 2011