Category: American Empire

Two-Faced Washington : Lowering America’s War Ceiling? Imperial Psychosis on Display

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com / August 2, 2011

By now, it seems as if everybody and his brother has joined the debt-ceiling imbroglio in Washington, perhaps the strangest homespun drama of our time. It’s as if Washington’s leading political players, aided and abetted by the media’s love of the horserace, had eaten LSD-laced brownies, then gone on stage before an audience of millions to enact a psychotic spectacle of American decline.

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

By Bruce E. Levine / AlterNet / July 31, 2011 |

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.

Last night, President Obama agreed to a deal with top Republicans that is widely seen as a big victory for the Tea Party.

It has trillions in spending cuts that will hurt poor and middle-class families and no taxes on the rich. It also lines up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits for future cuts.

Nancy Pelosi said “none of us may be able to support it” — but many Democrats are making up their minds in the next few hours.

Can you call your Representative, Susan Davis, right now? Tell her to vote NO on this bad deal — Click here for her number and a script.

by John Nichols / The Nation / August 1, 2011

WASHINGTON – “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time,” said Harry Truman.

If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.

Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

By Paul Krugman / New York Times / July 26, 2011

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right.

The Manchurian Candidate, the idea of a mole, a plant on the inside using a powerful position (the Presidency) to destroy the nation. Consider, in 2001 the GOP was handed a balanced budget producing a mild surplus. The GOP took that balanced budget and turned it upside down; then using lies, started aggressive wars they knew would cost hundreds of billions but they cut taxes and kicked the cost down the road. Now the bills are due and they refuse to pay. It’s like they threw a big banquet, invited everyone to go shopping and are now ducking out on paying their bills.

There is a growing movement in America that equates godliness with hatred of our government — in fact, hatred of our country.

By Frank Schaeffer / AlterNet

The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead.

By Jane Fonda

I grew up during World War II. My childhood was influenced by the roles my father played in his movies. Whether Abraham Lincoln or Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath, his characters communicated certain values which I try to carry with me to this day. I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn’t have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him. I grew up with a deep belief that wherever our troops fought, they were on the side of the angels.

Theodore Roszak, who three weeks after the Woodstock Festival in 1969 not only published a pivotal book about a young generation’s drug-fueled revolt against authority but also gave it a name — “counterculture” — died on July 5 at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 77.

His wife, Betty, in confirming the death, said he had been treated for liver cancer and other illnesses.

Dr. Roszak’s book “The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society” had gone to press months before the music festival was held in August that year, displaying the exuberance and excesses of a generation rebelling against war and seeking new ways to be and think. But in serendipitously timely fashion, the book provided what many regarded as a profound analysis of the youth movement, finding its roots in a sterile Western culture that had prompted young people to seek spiritual meaning in LSD, exotic religions and even comic books.

By Katrina vanden Heuvel / The Nation Magazine / July 20, 2011

With too much fanfare , the contours of a “grand bargain” on the budget have emerged with a proposal offered by the Senate’s Gang of Six. It’s a deal that looks a helluva lot more like a Raw Deal than a New Deal or a Fair Deal.

By Carolyn Kellogg / The LA Times / July 18, 2011

Jane Fonda writes that a planned Saturday appearance on QVC was canceled by the shopping network after viewers complained, citing Fonda’s political statements during the Vietnam War. Fonda was scheduled to promote her aging-with-spirit book “Prime Time: Making the Most of Your Life,” due out Aug. 9.

GRIM number of the week: 14,087,000.

Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work.

Word came Friday from the Labor Department that, despite all the optimistic talk of an economic recovery, unemployment is going up, not down. The jobless rate rose to 9.2 percent in June.

What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?

The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up.

But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem.