2015: Grounds for Optimism
By Dmitry Orlov
January 07, 2015 "ICH"
- This may seem like an odd line of
reasoning to pursue given what everyone else
seems to be saying. Some are thinking that
2015 will be a repeat of 2014 with a few
incremental changes (always a safe bet, but
makes for boring reading) while others are
warning of the potential for a nuclear
confrontation between the US and Russia
(always a possibility, on par with an
asteroid strike or a supernova in our
galactic vicinity). But this is all more of
the same. The interesting question to ask
is, How has the ground shifted in 2014, if
indeed it has?
To my mind, the really interesting
development of 2014 is that the world as a
whole (with a few minor exceptions) has
become quite lucid on the topic of what the
United States, as a global empire, is and
stands for. It is now very commonly and
completely understood that:
1. The United States is an evil empire,
attempting not so much to rule the world as
to disrupt it to its short-term advantage.
2. The United States is failing, as an
empire and as a country, and no amount of
fraud, mayhem, torture and murder is going
to save it.
3. The United States is still quite powerful
and can cause massive damage on its way
down. This damage must be contained, while
plans are drawn up for an international
arrangement that will arise upon its demise.
Looking back on 2013 and before, such
sentiments were already being expressed, but
on the fringes and quietly. The difference
is that in 2014 they became commonplace
knowledge, and their expressions thundered
from presidential podiums. What's more,
there just isn't that much of a
counterargument being voiced. I don't hear a
single voice out there arguing that the US
is a benevolent force that is on the
up-and-up, would never hurt a fly and is the
permanent center of the universe. Yes, some
people can still think that, but it's hard
to see value in such “thought.”
There are still a few holdouts: the UK,
Canada and Australia especially. But even
there the true picture is being distorted
because of their Murdockified national
media. Judging from what I hear from the
people there, they are almost uniformly
nauseated by the subservient pro-US antics
of their national leaders. As for the EU,
the image of political uniformity presented
by Brussels is largely a fiction. In the
core countries of Western Europe, business
leaders are almost uniformly in favor of
close cooperation with Russia and against
sanctions. Along the fringe, entire
countries appear to be on the verge of
switching sides. Hungary—never a friend of
Russia—now seems more pro-Russian than ever.
Bulgaria, which has had a love/hate attitude
toward Russia for centuries now, seems to be
edging back closer to love. Even the Poles
are scratching their heads and wondering if
close cooperation with the US is in their
national interest.
Another major shift I have observed is that
a significant percentage of the thinking
people in the US no longer trusts their
national media. There is a certain pattern
to the kinds of messages that can go viral
and spread wildly via tweets and social
media. Fringe messages must, by definition,
stay on the fringe. And yet last year
something snapped: a few times I ran a story
in an attempt to plug a gaping hole in the
US mass media's coverage of events in the
Ukraine, and the response was overwhelming,
with hundreds of thousands of new readers
showing up. What's more, a lot of them have
kept coming back for more. I take this to
mean that what I have to say, while by no
means mainstream, is no longer on the
fringe, and that bloggers have an
increasingly important role in helping plug
the giant holes in national media coverage.
Of course, the national media still has an
important role to play. For instance, I have
no idea how big Kim Kardashian's derrière
is—but I hear it's big in the media. Can it
sing? And so if you are looking for
authoritative information on that important
subject, then American national media is
your friend. But for most non-ass-related
things, it seems to me that the Americans
who run the nation's political and media
circuses broke a fundamental rule, which
they apparently forgot, because it was first
expressed by an American by the name of Abe
Lincoln: “You can fool all the people some
of the time, and some of the people all the
time, but you cannot fool all the people all
the time.” In case somebody out there in the
media realm is tired of playing it safe and
printing stuff that's only fit for wiping
your Kardashian with, here are a some points
for you to try to refute:
1. Economic inequality has to
increase continuously, until the whole thing
crashes, because that is the only way to
continue propping the financial bubble while
the real, physical, productive economy is
actually shrinking. The rich can't possibly
spend all of their money in the real
economy. Instead, the poor things have to
content themselves with investing in various
luxury items, which they can't use all the
same time, and so most of them sit and
slowly decay. Or they put their money into
paper wealth of various kinds—and that, of
course, is very good for the financial
bubble. In any event, if you have a
financial bubble you need to prop up no
matter what, in the face of serious physical
limitations on land, energy, fresh water,
high-grade ores and other essential
industrial feedstocks, then your best bet is
to do the reverse-Robin-Hood thing and go
rob the poor and give to the rich.
2. Worldwide chaos must be driven up
because that's the only way the US military
can justify its existence. It is a very
expensive military, but not a particularly
effective one. (Just the new F-35 fighter
cost over a trillion to develop—and yet it
is a complete dud of a project and may never
even go into production.) But in spite of
this lavish spending the US military is
incapable of scoring a decisive victory in
just about any conflict, against any
adversary, no matter how weak and
impoverished, and their end result is always
some sort of ongoing low-grade conflict that
can flare up again at any time.
Nevertheless, it can still threaten the weak
and the poor, and use these threats to its
financial advantage. But the only way to
make these threats effective is to destroy
some country on a semi-regular basis: “Nice
country you got there! We'd hate to see it
go the way of Libya.” A military
confrontation with any of the real military
powers—Russia, China, India, even Iran—is,
of course, entirely out of the question,
because a single humiliating military defeat
for the US (which is inevitable given its
track record against smaller, weaker
adversaries) would be sufficient to
undermine the entire program of US
militarism.
3. As another American (Dwight Eisenhower)
once put it: “If you can't solve a problem,
enlarge it.” But it stands to reason that
you do have to solve a problem once in a
while; you can't just go on enlarging every
problem you see ad infinitum. Now, what
problems has the US solved lately? Anything
good happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,
Syria or Ukraine? No, worse than ever. How
about financial reform in the wake of the
narrowly averted collapse in 2008? No, and
there is another big one coming up in the
form of the fracas in the fracking patch due
to low oil prices. Anything good to report
on health care reform? No, it's more
ridiculously bloated and expensive than
ever. Student debt repayable now? No, not by
a long shot. How about an effort to reduce
carbon emissions, to postpone (no longer to
avoid!) the eastern seaboard, where half of
everything is, going underwater? No, not a
glimmer of hope. Problems with runaway
public debt or unfunded government
liabilities solved? No, there have been no
efforts in that direction at all. Is the
country still on course for national
bankruptcy and collapse? All systems check,
go with throttle up!
Now, your mileage may vary, but I have
discovered that a surprising number of
people around the world (though not
especially in the US) is now very much clued
into these things. And that is something
that makes me feel optimistic about 2015.
Dmitry
Orlov is a Russian-American engineer and a
writer on subjects related to "potential
economic, ecological and political decline
and collapse in the United States,"
something he has called “permanent crisis”.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com
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