The Fortnightly Rant for September 9, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 25, posted on Monday, September 26, 2011.
Let us begin by stating the all-too-obvious: the tenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 is just two days away. Whatever our wishes might be, newspapers, magazines, and television all are determined to recreate that day for us. Anyone wanting to opt out should have retreated to a cave or remote island at least a week ago.
Oh, dear — does our lack of enthusiasm show already?
It is altogether fitting and proper to mourn those who were lost and honor those who responded. We just wish the national media understood the difference between doing that and validating and reinforcing a long series of catastrophic responses.
Bloody Price Tag
More than twice as many Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed in New York on 9/11 — who among us would say that we are better off than we were ten years ago? Worse yet, the 9/11 deaths are used to justify the future deaths of others. The wars we have fought since 9/11 have been no more useful than the flares that burn excess gas over oil fields. Despite their huge financial cost — a significant part of the national debt — these wars have gained us nothing. Like land mines that blow up when you lift your foot, Afghanistan and Iraq are both likely to explode as soon as we are gone.
America was forced to institute an all-volunteer Army after Vietnam, because that misbegotten war had effectively ruined the draft as a policy tool. Now the all-volunteer force that was created after Vietnam is threatened with ruin itself, thanks to endlessly repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The only thing that has saved it so far is the lack of jobs at home.
We have, of course, gained something from all this sacrifice: a generation of veterans whose proper care threatens to be ruinously expensive. Fortunately for the budget, functionaries in the Veterans Administration — unlike those in the Defense Department — will probably show some fiscal restraint.
If they do not, Congress will impose restraint on them. After all, when it comes to funding the VA, the route to fiscal prudence is not hard to find, but is a well trodden path: skimp on treatment and compensation, and, by so doing, transfer all that red ink from the financial ledger to the moral one. In other words, let those who must pay be those who have paid already.
Promise Them Anything
This expense is being justified by a principle that we suspect cannot be found in the Federalist Papers: citizens shall have the right to be protected from even the most remote of hazards, even at the cost of all their other rights.*
When the planes hit the towers, those in positions of power chose not to lead the nation by calling upon our courage but to herd us where they wanted us to go using fear as their goad.
Crisis = Opportunity
This rotten decade has never been about making the nation secure by fighting evil empires in a global war against terror. That premise is absurd — you cannot kill a concept.
This decade has been about people in power, having failed to prevent a catastrophe, using its chaotic aftermath as an opportunity to grab more power.
The war on terror, predictably, has failed to meet its stated goal. The power grab, on the other hand, has been a brilliant success.
Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism provides a copy of the blueprint as originally conceived by disciples of Milton Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics. It’s available to any peons who can still scrape up $16.
After a catastrophe, either natural or engineered, a set of sudden and severe changes is to be imposed upon a dazed population. There are three essential goals. Achieve them, and the rest is mere detail: deregulate the private sector, privatize government functions, and slash social spending. This will usher in what Chicago-style economists see as a sort of secular New Jerusalem — a pure, free, unregulated market where the government does next to nothing, and everything else is a commodity provided by a profit-making private enterprise.
Who Cares What You Think?
Most ordinary citizens, still reeling from the consequences already wrought by deregulation, would recoil in horror at the thought of taking it any farther.
Fortunately for those who are running the show, no one cares what ordinary citizens think. This has been definitively proven by Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens in a 2005 article titled “Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness:”
“[W]hen Americans with different income levels differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans. [This] vast discrepancy … stands in stark contrast to the ideal of political equality that Americans hold dear … representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society.”
Self-Defense
Some of America’s fed-up masses plan on taking it to the street — Wall Street. On September 17th — in theory — “20,000 people [will] flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices and we will not leave until that demand has been met.” Exactly what that demand will be is still under discussion; visit occupywallst.org to participate in the discussion. Similar actions are planned for financial districts in Paris, London, Italy, and Spain.
Also, on October 6th, “if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan” — a sure bet if ever there was one — an occupation is planned for Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. “to demand that America’s resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation.” Further information can be found at October2011.org.
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* Among those who might refute this philosophy would be Marine First Sargeant Dan Daly who urged his men forward towards the Germans at Belleau Wood by shouting, “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?” Already the recipient of two Medals of Honor, he was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions that day. Daly, who stood about five foot six, was forty-four at the time.