No Fighting Chance

"Are the citizens called on to march out to war? They pay soldiers for the purpose, and remain at home. Are they summoned to council? They nominate deputies, and stay at home. And then, in consequence of idleness and money, they have soldiers to enslave their country, and representatives to sell it."

--Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, circa 1762, Chapter 15, "Of Deputies Or Representatives".

1762. Rousseau's book was part of American predator elitism's understanding, cultural shaping, social engineering -- from the beginning. Predator elites have known since Republican Rome that professional armies have helped slime-bag politicians end free societies and maximize wealth. Every freedom reduces predatory wealth and is the enemy.

Consul Marius formed the first Roman professional army about 110 BCE -- taking their allegiance for himself and away from the Senate, People, and Constitution of Rome. The Republic was all downhill from there, hitting the wall at Caesar's murder on the Ides of March, 44 BCE.

American draft gone, we've lost our citizen army. The civilian population has a much smaller fraction of military-trained individuals. Work-places have fewer duty-driven workers with military-based self-disipline, practiced "tone of command" verbal skills, can-do attitudes, and the belief that active military should defend and be loyal to the Constitution -- as their military oath demanded of them -- instead of giving away allegiance to the slime-bag politicians -- as professional soldiers are conditioned to do. And there are fewer who stand fast when given an illegal order, threatening to undo whatever evil they're facing. Professional soldiers are not allowed to distinguish between legal and illegal orders.

We've lost what Rome lost when their professional armies took over. We've lost another clump of principle-driven population who worked to protect ordinary Americans against fascist corporatism and predator elitism. We need to re-think the draft. It was a solid contribution to our national well-being.

Additionally, cashing in on some chunk of their own nation has been a primary road to wealth for slime-bag politicians since pre-modern societies.

In the US, post-WW1, 1919 to 1929, SCOTUS anchored the Republican party's assault on social justice, caging women and children in sweatshops without relief. The three Repub presidential administrations of the 1920s were the Repub anti-social-justice spearhead. "The business of government is business", chirped predator elitist Cal Coolidge.

Global fascist corporatism -- the competition-crushing combination of government and superrich oorporations -- learned from German industrialists, primarily Krupp, how to move money undetected through corporate mazes to feed the rearming of Germany and themselves. Fascist corporatists also began wiring down the safety valves that might allow for change in American politics and the newly birthed and unconstitutional monetary system fronted by the Federal Reserve.

The first generation of predator elites, Hamilton and his gang, had closed off many avenues of possible change with their propaganda and sophistry bible, The Federalist Papers. But the Realpolitic (policy based on power rather than on ideals) of the 1920s Republican party hacks moved far beyond the quaint sophistries of Hamilton, while publically making Hamilton their hero and idol.

Aside from the global depression in the early 1930s, and the subsequent FDR-called time-out from 1933 to 1945, ordinary Americans have had no break from, no fighting chance against, fascist corporatism. And now, with the Bush Usurpation, a blatantly criminal presidency -- in which every act taken under color of law has been null and void from its inception -- the predators seem to have closed off every remaining avenue of possible change, from criminal Congress and criminal SCOTUS, to elections defrauded by computer hacking, to co-opting the Democratic party hierarchy.

Stupidly, the predators keep raising the heat on their no-safety-valve pressure cooker. Illegal and unconstitutional war rages on. Felony violations of citizen and POW rights go unpunished. The Department of Justice obstructs justice for anyone aiding the Criminal Usurpation. There's wholesale rape of the public treasury for the benefit of the superrich. Super-VooDoo economics (after war expenses, we have no money left for all these nuisance entitlements) cuts off monies to needy ordinary Americans.

Whatever the pressure cooker will bear makes great profits and power for the predator elites. But, with a hot fire and no safety volve, the pressure cooker can only blow up. This could get ugly.

And now we come to Election 2008. Safety-valve for change? Don't be ridiculous. The slime-bag politicians have privatized elections into the Great Sham Diebold Selection. You know, the superrich's 49-51 percent flip of any recorded votes, in any race, in any state. It's billionaire happiness through glitchy-kludge-hackable, vote-counting software that no ordinary American is allowed to review or monitor. The Great Sham Diebold Selection will name our next president, no matter your stupid beliefs in how elections should work. You still can't get "from the ought to the is" (Spinoza's well-turned phrase). And the do-nothing American people haven't done jack-spit to take away the billionaires' Diebold selection machine.

Catching the spirit, here? We've stuck with stupidity, in stupidity, on stupidity. It's like the late 1920s all over again, after a decade of zero social justice and predator fascism's gouge-money-out-of-everything.

The Republicans all around Hoover didn't get the Great Depression. From the stock-market crash of October 1929 to FDR's take-over in March 1933, Repubs refused to change anything, while the murderous hardships spiraled ordinary Americans into their living hell. When FDR labeled his 1932 reform proposals the "New Deal for the forgotten man", the Repubs immediately and passionately accused him of playing the demagogue. After FDR's 57 to 40 percent win, November 1932, Hoover had the remarkable stupidity to invite him to an international conference at which he, FDR, was to renounce about 90 percent of the reforms he'd promised in the run-up to election. Repubs just didn't get it.

Repubs haven't changed. They don't get the coming depression that the subprime mortgage market has kicked off. They don't get how their wealth- and power-grabbing moves for the past seven years have weakened country and resolve. They don't get how their version of "free markets" is so transparently a make-over of their pre-1933 laissez faire failures. They don't get how throwing out the anti-depression controls of the Glass-Steagal Act of 1933, and replacing it with the no-controls of the Gramm-Leach Financial Modernization Act of 1999 put us out over the abyss without a safety net. And they still won't get it as the spin-down from subprime promises to crush even the big banks.

Roughly 5,000 banks were crushed before Election 1932. Glass had bank-saving devices. Gramm does not. The Repubs don't get it. When their private monies can't save their asses in the subprime-begun avalanche, they'll start grabbing public monies.

Temporary power and profits they get. The arrogance of power and the retrenchment of hereditary elites they get. However, they don't get -- as R.H. Tawney so humanly argued -- equality, its base of equal education, and its culture of civilized dignity; needed by everyone, no matter how humble, no matter whether they rise or not.

Repubs just don't get it.

And now, of course, the superrich have bolstered the Repubs with amazing numbers of psychopathic-personality-impaired Vichy Democrats who also don't get it.

The 3-branch fascist despotism pretending to be a US national govt keeps us ignorant of many things. To mention a few, there's (1) the amount in circulation of their unconstitutional and ever-increasing money supply, (2) the ownership by other countries of our staggering national debt (forget the smoke and mirrors of annual deficit), and (3) the wide spectrum of earthquake data at the Yellowstone and Long Valley calderas -- data that could prepare us for the worst.

To mention another few, there's a remarkable lack of truthful data concerning (4) our international military deployments, (5) the unconscionable amount of public money pumped into the back doors of corporate welfare (e.g., the Veterans Health Admin's research divisions and teaching hospitals to benefit the medical, pharmaceutical, and healthcare products industries with gobs of public money while veterans' healthcare stands still and slides backwards, fabricated and distorted metrics to the contrary), and (6) fascist corporatism's surge to the secret and deep planning for the North American Union and its currency conversion to the Amero, obviously designed to financially, socially, and politically rape all three North American nations in one fell swoop.

We do know exactly how much preparation our fascist despotism has created to safeguard our population in the event of a supereruption from either of our western states' supervolcano calderas -- ZERO. True, a supereruption might not happen for another thousand years. But also true, it might happen today. Those things are volcanoes.

FEMA tells us to tune in to an emergency radio station and follow the order to evacuate. Right. Evacuate to where?

'Evacuate' would be all the preparation needed, if we could instantaneously transport to central Europe.

Inside the 600-mile kill radius of a minimal supereruption, about 20 million unprepared Americans could be dead in the first few days. A thousand miles away, ash fall -- tiny shards of volcanic glass, electrically conductive and very heavy when wet -- could be at the six-foot depth in a few more days, fatally burying more tens of millions of Americans. The follow-on volcanic winter could be five to ten years long, shutting off sunlight to the surface, transporting radiation and more mundane toxins around the world, and killing off most everything that can't get underground -- song birds, rhubarb, kelp, and more Americans included.

New Zealanders know that it only takes about 3-4 inches of wet, super-heavy volcanic ash to collapse residential roofs and structures. In fact, if we could have the preparedness discussion, New Zealand experience with volcanoes would be invaluable.

But we've by God got the American economy cranking out heavily-doctored reports of growth, progress, and max profits to keep the market's confidence up. We take damn good care of the billionaires so they'll be comfortable in their off-shore bunkers and offshore corporate production facilities. Every penny held by ordinary Americans actually belongs to the global billionaire cult, and the middleman commoner is mighty damned inconvienent.

In the meantime, the fascist despotism hides caldera earthquake data from us so that we cannot even have a discussion of the nearness of the inevitable, unstoppable supereruptions. Discussion and development of a prioritized list of preparedness objectives? Oh, hell no. They've got their hearts and shoe fashions set on Katrina-New-Orleans times millions.

Of course, we do know how close we are to having a national health care system to rival every other industrialized nation on the planet. We're about a million miles away, wasting our human resources and precious human life to insufficient healthcare. Hillary Clinton's compulsory healthcare INSURANCE might give her a win in the Great Sham Diebold Selection of 2008 -- it's a horrendous piece of corporate welfare that will out-do the AARP's and Repubs' Medicare Part D racket -- and it won't ruffle one feather of the American Medical Industry's death grip on the American society and economy.

Still, Hillary's scam cannot rise to the level of the responsible and comprehensive national healthcare systems recently done in Germnay and Taiwan.

We'd have to shut down the Great Sham Diebold Selection, but -- as we had in 1932 in FDR -- we do have one social justice champion in the field of candidates for 2008. Ralph Nader has been a social justice champion for ordinary Americans all his life. He's now that most precious of American inventions, the genuine candidate. Every other candidate is little more than a cookie-cutter copy of Usurper George Nazi Bush. Not a one of them gives a hang about the rule of law, the Constitution, or the hallowed principles of the Declaration Of Independence. Every damned one of them wants little else than to be above the law with little Georgie.

As things stand, can Ralph Nader be elected? Oh, hell no. If he were elected, could he reform anything in the massively corrupt environment of Congress, the Courts, and the out-of-control, lawless, and extremely powerful executive agencies? Oh, hell no.

If you think he might have a chance by reshaping the executive agencies against the corporations who now own them, you just haven't read and understood the footnotes in James Bamford's 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace. Those footnotes should be put into a separate volume and titled, How Jimmy Carter's Presidency Was Lost.

We can't get back to 1932 or the self-correcting mechanisms that saved us then. Ordinary Americans don't have a fighting chance. Well -- not as long as they stay inside the corruption box.

Want a fighting chance? Tens of millions of you will have to get outside the system's corruption box. You'll have to take Ralph Nader with you -- and I'm not sure he's willing. You'll have to ban political parties and make top-to-bottom, non-partisan government fit into direct democracy's citizen lawmaking. It's an All-American legacy packed into the early 20th Century's Reform Era -- with the added fillip of Nebraska's 1935 non-partisan legislature.

It can be done. We have the technology.

Nahhh. The do-nothing American people don't get it. They just don't get it.

No fighting chance. Grin real big for the bosses. Shrivel up and die.

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Last Revised Thu 15 May 2008, about 7:40pm CDT

© 2008 by Stephen Neitzke
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