BushCo's Vision

Here are the big themes I saw come out of the week and where I think they're leading us. Despite the energy and courage of the people who protested and sacrificed their freedom in attempts to make us aware of the dangers we are facing, I came out of the last four days resigned to a bleak future.

Domestic Economy:

The centerpiece of BushCo's speech last night was the reform of Social Security, the tax code, tort law and job training - job training? He calls it the "Ownership Society" and it's not a new idea, which we were promised. He's been beating this horse his entire first term. He rolled out all the stale ideas that have gone nowhere: personal savings accounts to replace Social Security, personal health savings accounts to replace insurance and flex time to replace the forty hour work week.

Fred at the Slacktivist has three fantastic posts up addressing the master plan behind this Ownership Society. This one on the necessary debt that all that ownership requires. This one on what a scam the health savings accounts are. And this one this one that explains the open secret that a big part of the Republican agenda is to shift more of the tax burden from investment income and corporate profits to wage income. It is all part of the Norquista plan to Starve the Beast and render the government incapable of fulfillng it's part of the social contract that has been maintained, but always under attack, for three generations. The bottom line is to weaken the workforce economically and emotionally, thereby making management very happy donors.

Treatment of the Protesters: There is no excuse for the way the protesters were treated this week. The city knew since the day after the convention site was announced that there would be massive and many demonstrations. They admitted in the week before the start of the convention that they expected to arrest 1500 people a day. They actual number fell far short of that and still detainees were denied due process.

I've been reading about the arrests of innocent bystanders as well as innocent protesters all week. There are accounts of "netting" people who were merely trying to make their way past a protest site, exposing detainees to hazardous chemicals, detaining people longer than the lawful 24 hours, refusing detainees medical treatment as well as other equally serious charges. The police so botched nearly every arrest that it became clear quickly that prosecution was not the intent, but instead to scare citizens out of their exercising their rights. People were detained unlawfully in order to keep them off the street during BushCo's party. Every one of these violations of our rights is an example of a burgeoning police state that is clearly prepared to snap into action in no time and which considers this kind of unlawful treatment effective policy. It's a sleeping giant that we only see when we hear about a case of police brutality. It's a giant we never see when we ignore the plight of people in prisons and jails all over this country. It's invisible as long as we can convince ourselves that it's hurting people who deserve to be hurt. It wasn't easy to do that this week and it's a national shame that we can ever do it at all. The bottom line is a strong police state controlling a citizenry with greatly limited rights.

Foreign Policy of Endless Imperial Conquest and Perpetual Debt: War sucks money out of the government and puts it into corporate coffers. It keeps the government in debt and the population distracted and easy to control as any dissent is labelled "un-American." BushCo has done nothing so well as he has plunged us into an endless war. The objective is not to liberate anyone, but to create markets for multinational corporations. If you combine that intent with our financial dependency on China and Japan, which makes for such a precarious relationship that it threatens to set off a global depression, you get a world situation that allows for erosion of the American economy (not the corps that operate in it, but the economy of the state) and the further empowerment of multinational corporations to act as states, benefitting from the military intervention of the USA not only by being given contracts to support that increasingly privatized military but also by being able to take over the markets of the countries that are vanquished.

eVoting: The path we're on leads to 100% eVoting before the end of the decade. There are clear signs that the goal of the powers that be is to privatize and digitize our elections, making them unauditable but appearing to be completely secure and, above all, user-friendly. Once that happens - or even once enough of the population is voting via insecure and unauditable machines, we are all essentially disenfranchised and we will have lost our one effective and non-violent method of protest.

Media: The corporate media is unable to to speak anything but the corporate line to the public.

Connecting the Dots: I see the effective end of states, including our own, and the unfettered rise of global corporate power. Jobs will continue to leave the USA as we hear about the global playing field leveling, which really means the dragging down of all economies to the greatest debt and lowest worker and environmental standards possible. The US, thanks to the complete dissolution of the social safety net, is turned into a kind of company store where citizens are in perpetual debt and never paid enough to get out of it. The endless war ensures a docile and frightened population, but should anyone muster the courage and energy to step up to voice dissent, they are squashed effectively by the media and the police, who are allegedly protecting the rest of the population from the protests, which, we are told can turn violent at any second if they aren't stopped pre-emptively. Voting is still something to do, but it has lost all meaning and efficacy since the system is unverifiable and run by corporations interested in maintaining the status quo and protected by libraries of laws that keep their business practices secret.

Prove me wrong, kids! Prove me wrong!

Comments

[Chepooka]

If only I could prove you wrong eRobin. Unfortunately, I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head here.

I have expressed concern for many of the issues you have so eloquently summarized in this essay to my conservative friends for the greater part of the last year, and the reponse I get is, "you're paranoid."

Well, we may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean they're not out to get us.

What amazes me is that all of this is tolerable to 50% of the American public. This is not the America I know. Where is the outrage? Not all republicans are neo-cons and evangelicals - what's the dealio?

I think all of this flies under their radar because they have an irrational obsession with fear. But where are the true leaders, like FDR, to say, "All you have to fear, is fear itself!"

Instead, Bush & Co. see it as an opportunity to take advantage and ask the public write them a blank check that will change the course of our country for years to come. We are in far greater danger by keeping Bush in office than any terrorist threat we face in my opinion. The people who connect the dots are the only thing that stands in his way.

Well done.

[shari]

Agree with Chepooka. Well said. You articulate the vision behind the coded Dubya threat in his speech last night: "Nothing will hold us back!". Gave me the creeps.