Reply #5: Nothing does in a political order like a sound military defeat

[teryang]

And that is what the current group is looking at. Defeat abroad will engender political change at home. This is not to say that things won't get worse before they get better. They probably will get a lot worse. The military defeat will be presaged or accompanied by economic crisis. This defeat may be beyond the horizon of just an Iraqi conflict but the Iraq occupation is a milestone on this path.

While I agree with the general thrust of this author's opinion, his use of the future tense is somewhat overdone. We are already governed by a fascist/corporatist order with all the trappings.

Also, his general theorectical foundation, such as the relative immutability of the human condition is defective. We are incredibly adaptive. Cynicism regarding human nature is the fundamental underpining of the fascist worldview. The role of "zoology" is dubious. This is not to deny that there are certain cycles in human affairs and that study of the past does indeed reveal certain relationships. There is an obvious reluctance by Americans to admit that we already have fascist rule.

Obscurantism seeks to reduce human psychology to its lowest common denominator by the spreading of lies and the denial of information. As the advocates of total power seek to impose their will by manipulating the masses, they still must to a certain extent appease them. Hence, the stock market bubble followed by the housing bubble, these are the bones thrown to the masses. Mortages are in essence a feudal bond.

What is the next device? Colonialism and belligerence revived to appease a society devoid of social mobility. As the masses descend into poverty and enslavement, the outside threat is raised to lower the standard of success to mere survival and avoidance of coercion. The young and ambitious might think that perhaps the fortunes of war will enhance their future with declining prospects at home. The war creates a warrior caste that can be relied upon as a means of coercion. Those among non-uniformed services and private military contractors perhaps more politically reliable than uniformed personnel.

There is a theory that revolution only occurs when expectations are raised rather than lowered. This is the danger of propaganda about the American way of life, and the world's only superpower, and the greatest or wealthiest nation on earth. The latter propaganda may provide the foundation for their undoing, even unconnected as it is with constitutional principles, because it involves creating material expectations that aren't being met but to the contrary are being confounded.

In their greed, as the elites export Americas capital and jobs and finance virtually all efforts with unrestrained debt, they leave the polity behind, literally in a shambles, unable to adapt to a changing world. They are radically accelerating our society's decline and frustrating expectations that they themselves have raised. A police state immune from outside influence exerted by rivals might be able to frustrate dissent. But we are not immune from outside influence. There are other centers of power on the planet. The asian mainland powers are coalescing against us. The fascist party assumes without evidence that the balance of power is on their side. If they were confident of this, they would not have embarked on their path. It is the insecurity in their future which drives them, like Hitler, to further extremes.

When the distribution of resources can no longer be maintained due to corruption, inequity and injustice, the failure of warfare will no longer justify the imposition of tyranny by a criminal regime. The warfare itself is a distributive process where a non competetive aristocracy of failing, corrupt, corporate elites resort to outright seizure of resources. The seed of their doom is sown in the prosecution of politically expedient and morally unjustified warfare. Whereas, a military leader wishes to conserve resources, a fascist leader wastes them in heedless adventures.

As the former Nuremberg prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz, has stated concerning the Iraqi experience, we are ruled by war criminals and fascists. He ought to know.