Vidal is fascinating reading. A couple of examples..
Going back to Teddy Roosevelt, he describes the beginnings of the plan for an empire worked out by 'The Four Horseman'(Teddy Roosevelt, Brooks Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Mahan).
'The most difficult problem of modern times is unquestionably how to protect property under popular governments.' The Four Horseman fretted a lot about this. They need not have. We have never had a popular government in the sense that they feared, nor are we in any danger now. Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system," he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to bought and sold, the bread and circuses.' But none of this was for public consumption. Publicly, the Four Horsement and their outriders spoke of the American mission to bring all the world freedom and peace -- through slavery and war, if necessary. Privately, their constant fear was that the weak masses might combine one day against the strong few, their natural leaders, and take away their money.'Also, his breakdown of the 1986 federal budget..He makes the case that Social Security should be treated separately, as it is an 'independent, slightly profitable income-transferring trust fund'. Then he says:
"In 1986, the gross revenue of the government was $794 billion. Of that, $294 billion were social Security contributions. That leaves $500 billion. Of the $500 billion, $286 billion go to defense; $12 billion for foreign arms to our client states; $8 billion to $9 billion to energy, which means, largely, nuclear weapons; $27 billion for veterans benefits, and finally, $142 billion for interest on loans that were spent over the past forty years, to keep the National Security State at war, hot or cold. So of 1986's $500 billion in revenue, $475 billion was spent on National Security business. Other federal spending, incidentally, came to $177 billion in 1986, which was about the size of the deficit, since only $358 billion was collected in taxes.'While I'm the first one to complain about Kerry's willingness to go along with the hawks -- I want a 'peace candidate' -- I realize that in the eyes of the elites, the primary function of a president may very well be the administration of the war budget. The idea that the military-industrial-'capital class' would allow that job to be taken on by a peace-lover is unthinkable, isn't it?
Where and when do we educate the American public on their empire? What groups are most effective at doing this? Gore Vidal recommends free videotapes, distributed to the masses. After Kerry gets in office, I wish that MoveOn.org could morph itself into an education tool about empire, so that the masses can begin to understand.
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