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News :: Miscellaneous |
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TWO FRONT WAR; TWO-FRONT CAPITALISM |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
(No verified email address) |
21 Sep 2001
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AMERICANS NOW have two men to fear deeply: Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush. |
One is an Islamic fundamentalist, the other a Christian fundamentalist. One has declared a holy war against the West; the other declared a crusade against Islamic terrorism. Both purport to speak on behalf of God, Bush even attempted to usurp the Lord's role in bringing "infinite justice." One blows up innocent victims in New York City; the other continues the death of innocent Iraqis through sanctions. Both use cynical agitprop to bolster their position. Both are driven by certitude, arrogance and a rush to violence cruelly indifferent to the damage it causes the non-culpable.
But only one of these men says he speaks for us. Therefore, whatever responsibility (and it is not slight) that we have for the provenance and acts of bin Laden (or whoever attacked us) we have far more for those of Bush. Hiding under the covers of national unity will not exculpate us.
A reporter asked Gene McCarthy the other day whether the country was unified. No, he said, it was homogenized. This homogenization has been in no part the work of about the most servile and sycophantic press corps this country has ever seen, right down to playing hymns behind news clips of presidential sound bites. We don't have news shows on TV any more, but rather infomercials on behalf of global catastrophe.
Part of the lie of these journalists is that there is no dissent. Of course, there is dissent. Thousands of people are already marching. Religious leaders are calling for restraint. Pro-democratic organizations - dismissed by the media as "activists" for standing up for our laws and ideals - are demanding that our Constitution not be trashed. And almost every non-official person with whom we speak has the intonation, if not the words, of doubt and worry.
Then there is Bush's severest critic: the stock market. As this is written the Dow is down 14% from the day before the attack, half of that occurring after the initial shock had worn off. The market responded to Bush's Revised State of the Union Address by declining sharply. Some unity. In fact, if the Dow keeps dropping at this rate, it will disappear entirely in less than 60 trading days.
The truth of the matter is that things are not as we are being told. The truth is that America has suffered one of the biggest defeats of its post-World War II empire and the biggest in its long-term campaign to suppress the Muslim world. Furthermore, neither Bush nor his parade of allies, for all their talk, really know what to do about it.
And so people are voting with their sell orders. War is meant to help industry. But this war will savage whole segments of capitalism - including the insurance and travel firms. It is too early to be sure of how this has all happened quite like this. But consider the following as a possible part of the story.
In recent times, capitalism has increasingly become a form of socialism for the corporate classes. Strip away the rhetoric and you find that the captains of industry are really just welfare fathers, whether they be urban downtown business interests, lawyers sucking at the teats of legislation, or defense contractors. This struggle within corporate America for government subsidy and policy support can quietly assume the nature of fratricide. For example, the insurance companies defeated the medical profession over health care; the prison industry overwhelmed subsidized housing as a way of dealing with the poor. And so forth.
Now we are in the midst of another iteration in which the interests of the defense industry are in striking conflict with those of their capitalist brethren who, after all, need a peaceful globe for profitable globalization.
Just as the so-called war against drugs was, in fact, a government subsidy program for certain legal and illegal economic interests with the collateral damage of violence, wrecked lives, and depressed neighborhoods, so a ten year so-called war against terrorism would amount to a major giveaway to one portion of American capitalism at huge cost to much of the rest.
Corporate leaders, trained to think in clichés like national unity, are slow off the mark to discover that it is their own ox that is being gored by this scheme. A "war against terrorism," rather than a peace with those whose abuse by the west has sown such violence, will serve only a few at the expense of the many. And like the war on drugs it will need cannon fodder. But instead of being sent to prison for taking pot, young men will now be sent to battle to die so others can make profits. And for the bulk of America, vengeance will prove to be very bad business. |
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