WHY HASN'T BUSH BEEN IMPEACHED YET?
Because the elites want him in power, and because American politics is not democratic enough to prevent him from dominating it.
America was never all that thoroughly democratic anyway, at least not at the highest-levels of election hucksterism. The fraud-marked elections of 2000 and 2004 were not an anomaly -- JFK's triumph over Nixon in 1960 was decidedly rigged, and there was plenty of phony-baloney to go around with the election of 1876 (if you want to go back that far). And when things get too hot in the popular realm, the behind-the-scenes actors pull out their guns and start assassinating, as they did with the two Kennedys and King in the '60s.
Bush is not "in the dock" because the elites want him in power. Or, rather, a broad cross-section of the semi-elite wants him in power. Super-elites such as George Soros and Warren Buffett, who would probably rather see a Democrat (or at least a moderate Republican such as Bush Sr.) in power, have acquiesced in this arrangement. In 21st-century American politics, the two parties agree -- it is better for elite purposes to maintain the facade of governmental legitimacy than to disturb the hegemony of US-steered capital over the global economy. And US steering of the global economy has been reduced to a series of knee-jerk moves to maintain US domination, esp. the dominant role of the US dollar as the universal global currency.
Putting Bush in power was one of those knee-jerk moves, and it was desired so desperately by the elites that both Gore and Kerry were made in Bush's image, and then both Gore's and Kerry's victories were snatched away by extra-curricular means because nothing less than the full Bush treatment would satisfy the cravings of capital for a dominant father-figure. Think, for instance, of how cravenly the news media have taken to covering Bush's rear end amidst his many gaffes and missteps, and contrast it with the generally-true insinuation made by the Right in America that most journalists are liberals. Have you all put two and two together on that reality yet? The liberals are working for the conservatives.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have become mere puppets of capital in this regard. In light of this rigid consensus, "mainstream politics" maintains the fictions of "liberal" and "conservative" as brand-names with differences about as meaningful as that between Coke and Pepsi. Any meaningful opposition to "mainstream politics, " therefore, quit the Democratic Party back in 2000 and stayed away in 2004. (The Republicans, of course, are "mainstream politics" itself, having stamped their copyright trademark upon the very idea of rebellion.) The fact that nobody with any mass-media fame actually did resist the Gore/ Kerry temptations only means that nobody who's famous offered any real resistance to Bush or to his policies. America has become more politically conformist than it was in any previous era of its history, despite or perhaps because of all of its impotent complaining. This is partly because of the consolidation of American capital, today more rigorously monopolistic than ever; but also because of the failure of the political system to allow for an alternative to capital's knee-jerk dominion.
Since capitalism is inherently contradictory, it bears explaining that there are two countervailing movements afloat within the rigid domination of US capital. The main circulatory flow of capital's realization, as the marxists here well know, is in the flow of money. Now, in the international economy, money goes from the first to the third world and back again. There are two big movements of this flow. One big movement is the US deficit-spending trend, at a national debt of $8.1 trillion dollars and increasing. The other is the purchase of US dollars by Chinese banks, which keeps the dollar afloat. The former movement, crucial as it is to the stimulation of an increasingly sluggish global economy amidst a growing crisis of overproduction, is likely to win out. This will create rampant dollar-inflation 'round the world. It will result in economic disaster: read Paul Krugman's article to understand more. This is the spark for the real coming global revolution, and America's impotent, whiny clinging to capitalist ideologies is likely to land it on the wrong side of the outcome.
Why? US deficit spending is justified through the war on Iraq, & by extention through the war on the rest of the world. Why did the elites want a war on Iraq? The elites wanted the invasion of Iraq since Gulf War I because it had been an implicit rationale of Clinton's Iraq policy for all eight years of Clinton's regime. Clinton had been hoping to overthrow Iraq's government by working through the exiled frauds who claimed the power to assassinate Saddam back in the '90s. Said frauds, of course, had no such power as they claimed. Saddam, meanwhile, was threatening to make his valuable oil reserves Euro-convertible, which would have meant a big challenge to global dollar-hegemony. The Saudi monarchy wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia really badly, and the US couldn't afford to offend that big a chunk of global capital for very long and get away with it. And Saddam's oil, now in the control of US corporations, was supposed to function as a hedge against America's loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. So there were a bunch of what appeared to capital to be very good reasons for the invasion of Iraq, all coming together in an invasion back in 2003. So let's summarize: American capital, now more internally united than ever, wants 1) Bush victories, 2) resurgent US militarism (the better to control the global economy at a moment when it appears to be spinning away), and 3) US occupation of Iraq's oilfields. Any questions?
Remember those liberals who work for the conservatives? Their toadying to the dictates of capital becomes more self-evident with each passing day. Witness, for instance, leading Nation Institute liberal Marc Cooper's recent editorial on Iraq:
We don’t atone for the sins of the Bush administration by abandoning the Iraqi people and pretending that the “resistance” that would come to power is anything but fascist.
So we know what we can’t and shouldn’t do. We can’t stay the course and maintain a status quo that slips every moment closer to a bloodbath. But we can’t simply walk away from the conflagration we have started, hoping it will just burn itself out.
Abandoning the Iraqi people? How about just giving them back their oil, and depriving them of an excuse to support the "fascists" (i.e. resistance cells) they currently support because no one else in Iraq has the cojones to stand up to US occupation? If Cooper were in power, would he condescend to that? I doubt it.
What I hope this explains to you all is the meaninglessness of attacking Bush in this era of conformist politics without offering an alternative. The alternative I've consistently proposed here centers around three points: 1) a wind-down and eventual abolition of this cruel game of Who Gets What that the capitalists play with the world, 2) the institution of a regime of sharing to replace the exploitation of labor that makes capitalism look more and more like a race-to-the-death for the sake of "the economy, " and 3) building the foundations of a global, ecologically sustainable society.
Because the elites want him in power, and because American politics is not democratic enough to prevent him from dominating it.
America was never all that thoroughly democratic anyway, at least not at the highest-levels of election hucksterism. The fraud-marked elections of 2000 and 2004 were not an anomaly -- JFK's triumph over Nixon in 1960 was decidedly rigged, and there was plenty of phony-baloney to go around with the election of 1876 (if you want to go back that far). And when things get too hot in the popular realm, the behind-the-scenes actors pull out their guns and start assassinating, as they did with the two Kennedys and King in the '60s.
Bush is not "in the dock" because the elites want him in power. Or, rather, a broad cross-section of the semi-elite wants him in power. Super-elites such as George Soros and Warren Buffett, who would probably rather see a Democrat (or at least a moderate Republican such as Bush Sr.) in power, have acquiesced in this arrangement. In 21st-century American politics, the two parties agree -- it is better for elite purposes to maintain the facade of governmental legitimacy than to disturb the hegemony of US-steered capital over the global economy. And US steering of the global economy has been reduced to a series of knee-jerk moves to maintain US domination, esp. the dominant role of the US dollar as the universal global currency.
Putting Bush in power was one of those knee-jerk moves, and it was desired so desperately by the elites that both Gore and Kerry were made in Bush's image, and then both Gore's and Kerry's victories were snatched away by extra-curricular means because nothing less than the full Bush treatment would satisfy the cravings of capital for a dominant father-figure. Think, for instance, of how cravenly the news media have taken to covering Bush's rear end amidst his many gaffes and missteps, and contrast it with the generally-true insinuation made by the Right in America that most journalists are liberals. Have you all put two and two together on that reality yet? The liberals are working for the conservatives.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have become mere puppets of capital in this regard. In light of this rigid consensus, "mainstream politics" maintains the fictions of "liberal" and "conservative" as brand-names with differences about as meaningful as that between Coke and Pepsi. Any meaningful opposition to "mainstream politics, " therefore, quit the Democratic Party back in 2000 and stayed away in 2004. (The Republicans, of course, are "mainstream politics" itself, having stamped their copyright trademark upon the very idea of rebellion.) The fact that nobody with any mass-media fame actually did resist the Gore/ Kerry temptations only means that nobody who's famous offered any real resistance to Bush or to his policies. America has become more politically conformist than it was in any previous era of its history, despite or perhaps because of all of its impotent complaining. This is partly because of the consolidation of American capital, today more rigorously monopolistic than ever; but also because of the failure of the political system to allow for an alternative to capital's knee-jerk dominion.
Since capitalism is inherently contradictory, it bears explaining that there are two countervailing movements afloat within the rigid domination of US capital. The main circulatory flow of capital's realization, as the marxists here well know, is in the flow of money. Now, in the international economy, money goes from the first to the third world and back again. There are two big movements of this flow. One big movement is the US deficit-spending trend, at a national debt of $8.1 trillion dollars and increasing. The other is the purchase of US dollars by Chinese banks, which keeps the dollar afloat. The former movement, crucial as it is to the stimulation of an increasingly sluggish global economy amidst a growing crisis of overproduction, is likely to win out. This will create rampant dollar-inflation 'round the world. It will result in economic disaster: read Paul Krugman's article to understand more. This is the spark for the real coming global revolution, and America's impotent, whiny clinging to capitalist ideologies is likely to land it on the wrong side of the outcome.
Why? US deficit spending is justified through the war on Iraq, & by extention through the war on the rest of the world. Why did the elites want a war on Iraq? The elites wanted the invasion of Iraq since Gulf War I because it had been an implicit rationale of Clinton's Iraq policy for all eight years of Clinton's regime. Clinton had been hoping to overthrow Iraq's government by working through the exiled frauds who claimed the power to assassinate Saddam back in the '90s. Said frauds, of course, had no such power as they claimed. Saddam, meanwhile, was threatening to make his valuable oil reserves Euro-convertible, which would have meant a big challenge to global dollar-hegemony. The Saudi monarchy wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia really badly, and the US couldn't afford to offend that big a chunk of global capital for very long and get away with it. And Saddam's oil, now in the control of US corporations, was supposed to function as a hedge against America's loss of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. So there were a bunch of what appeared to capital to be very good reasons for the invasion of Iraq, all coming together in an invasion back in 2003. So let's summarize: American capital, now more internally united than ever, wants 1) Bush victories, 2) resurgent US militarism (the better to control the global economy at a moment when it appears to be spinning away), and 3) US occupation of Iraq's oilfields. Any questions?
Remember those liberals who work for the conservatives? Their toadying to the dictates of capital becomes more self-evident with each passing day. Witness, for instance, leading Nation Institute liberal Marc Cooper's recent editorial on Iraq:
We don’t atone for the sins of the Bush administration by abandoning the Iraqi people and pretending that the “resistance” that would come to power is anything but fascist.
So we know what we can’t and shouldn’t do. We can’t stay the course and maintain a status quo that slips every moment closer to a bloodbath. But we can’t simply walk away from the conflagration we have started, hoping it will just burn itself out.
Abandoning the Iraqi people? How about just giving them back their oil, and depriving them of an excuse to support the "fascists" (i.e. resistance cells) they currently support because no one else in Iraq has the cojones to stand up to US occupation? If Cooper were in power, would he condescend to that? I doubt it.
What I hope this explains to you all is the meaninglessness of attacking Bush in this era of conformist politics without offering an alternative. The alternative I've consistently proposed here centers around three points: 1) a wind-down and eventual abolition of this cruel game of Who Gets What that the capitalists play with the world, 2) the institution of a regime of sharing to replace the exploitation of labor that makes capitalism look more and more like a race-to-the-death for the sake of "the economy, " and 3) building the foundations of a global, ecologically sustainable society.
posted by Samuel at 3:13 PM
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