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Untangling America From The American Empire
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Those calling for an end of the Empire don't seem to realize that the federal state's vast entitlement programs are ultimately funded by the Empire.
The Status Quo would have us believe that America and its Empire are one entity. This is handy for those with Imperial designs but it is false: America could be untangled from its Empire, and many of us believe it is essential that America untangles itself from its Imperial structures and ideologies.
What I call The Imperial Project was cobbled together in the aftermath of World War II, when the Soviet Union and America posed an existential threat to each other's ideologies and systems. It may be hard to believe, but the U.S. did not have a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other espionage/intelligence gathering agency prior to World War II.
America had no spy agency and no Black Operations/Special Forces capabilities. The National Security State as we know it today did not exist.
Though the Deep State has long been an essential feature of the American power structure, the post-war Deep State extended its reach globally in ways that the pre-war Deep State could not.
I have covered the Deep State for many years:
Surplus Repression and the Self-Defeating Deep State (May 26, 2015)
Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity? (March 14, 2014)
The Dollar and the Deep State (February 24, 2014)
Many people naively think all that's needed to end the Imperial Project is close America's overseas military installations and end the endless wars of choice. While the eradication of the neo-conservative Imperial agenda would be a welcome first step, it would only be a first step, as I explained in You Can't Separate Empire, the State, Financialization and Crony Capitalism.
To untangle America from its Imperial Project, we also need to end financialization and crony-state-capitalism, both of which are key features of the Imperial Project. what better way is there to extend influence than exporting inflation and offering limitless credit in U.S. dollars?
What better way to skim the profits from trade than importing materials and goods and exporting fiat currency?
Those calling for an end of the Empire don't seem to realize that the federal state's vast entitlement programs are ultimately funded by the Empire: not directly, but indirectly via its ability to foist trillions of dollars of debt on the world economy.
The believers that hot wars are all there is to the Imperial Project fall silent when their share of the swag might be threatened. Unsurprisingly, we want the financial benefits of Empire but recoil at the entanglements of Empire.
Imperial Rome offers a useful template for what happens when the domestic populace gets dependent on Imperial wealth: the notion of sacrifice for the nation goes out the window and bread and circuses become the sole source of state legitimacy.
Needless to say, collapse follows these developments like night follows day.
For America to come home and untangle itself from the Imperial Project, it will have to do more than not meddle in everyone else's affairs; it will have to learn to live within its means--what it earns from producing goods and services, not what it skims from global financialization.
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Well, barter has been steadily increasing in our part of the world. Most people around here understand that when fraud is the status quo, possession is the law...
Same as it ever was...
The fiat empire needs to go. Its not simply Americas problem its a global sickness.
Any country could roll out a real value coin and it would work as intended. There is a catch. Fiat is used to build huge war machines. By cooking the books and ripping off the society trapped in its grasp. Then using that war machine to destroy the real coin issuing people and their real coin.
The stall and switch to barter are going to be the real trick. Putting producers back in charge and keeping them there.
Gold is barter thats why Kadaffi and his coin were destroyed. Going barter is the best way to put the leash back on the war machine. Honest people will find barter works well. Just like it did when we were children trading marbles and bubble gum.
This fiat crack has made this world into a Bizzaro planet. Its time the grown ups took it back. A right turn into Bartertown is just the thing. Think of it as trade without force.
Let us try what love will do. William Penn.
Social security is not an entitlement.
I love reading those pieces of paper. It helps you understand. Especially the words NOTE and DEBT.
I like reading the ones from the 1920's, that say 'payable in gold coin'
http://coinsite.com/1928-5-federal-reserve-note-payable-in-gold/
k-12 education, 1 percent
Imagine if a parent only spent 1 percent of their time on their child's education.
Time is money...
haha I love that.
Apparently the average k-12 per student is around 120k.
So if 1% is 120k then a family gets to spend 18 times more on defense.
Military buffs- how should a family build the best defense with $2,160,000?
The percentage of the Federal budget spent on education should be equal to the number of times that word is used in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. Therefore: ZERO.
But don't mind me, I'm just a grumpy old constitutionalist.
Me too buddy. If it isn't in there than they can't do it legally.
When Empires are no longer able to feed on others for growth, they will briefly feed on their own to prolong the PTB's paradigm..... before they finally die.
Like Ron Paul says,stop giving away taxpayers money overseas just to enable welfare regimes across the globe.Don't get me going on supporting Saudi Arabia and all the other dictatorships.Don't you think that 40 square miles of polluted-run down industrial wasteland surrounding Detroit is telling you something about America and the NeoCons running Washingtion.
The wasteland surrounding the Detroit area has less to do with NeoCons in Washington than it does the liberals/progressives that ran Detroit (into the ground, I might add) and DC for decades.
Well no hold on just a minute, The Neo-cons got right on board with the whole meme of Global trade, removing import tariffs and a load of other policies that encouraged manufacturing offshoring all why demonizing anyone that spoke out as a "isolationist" or "protectionist". Both sides had their roll at destroying.
...and what % of that dollar goes to servicing the national debt?
I believe that would be the "Net Interest" of 6%
6%, unless rates normalize to say 5% and then it will be more on the order of 25-30%...
America is already a third world country. Incomes have been falling for over 15 years now.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/10/29/us-on-road-to-third-world-pau...
Rome wasn't fixed, it slowly died from within, then collapsed as the barbarians stormed the gates.
The New Rome can't be fixed either. No amount of thought or politics can save it. The hive mind is bent on delusion, narcissism, and fantastical thinking.
As with a person, you can't intervene or help with rational thought or reasoning; you just have to wait and hope that the collision with reality isn't fatal.
Yet Rome still exists today.
J Jason
Uhh... that's a joke-right?
The closest thing I can come up with is the Catholic Church. Huge amount of land ownership and money in that Organization.
And the multi-cultural inhabitants of Rome view the ruins of the Roman Empire every day.
Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble...ancient footsteps are everywhere....
Yes, ebworthen, that was what I thought too, after reading the article above.
Metaphorically speaking, the fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems have become like totally metastasizing cancer. There are no treatments that would not also kill the patient. There is only palliative care, or to keep on kicking the can ...
I would not go as far as to assert that there is a "hive mind," however, there is no doubt that everyone, for generation after generation, has adapted to living inside of a political economy based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks. The degree of mismatch, or the degree to which the existing systems have become UNBALANCED, are now at ratios of more than 100 to 1.
The globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, originally made and maintained by the international banksters, with their control over the USA government and other NATO countries being the most crucial components to those systems of electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, have enabled the extent of the "delusion, narcissism and fantastical thinking" to become amplified many orders of magnitude, to astronomical sizes.
It initially sounds sensible to assert that:
However, Zero Hedge articles like those with respect to the ratios of physical gold to paper and/or electronic gold becoming such that there is now more than 100 times as much of those kinds of fake gold, as actual gold, pretty well applies throughout ever other area one examines. Meanwhile, the deeper problems are due to the banksters' "money" being made out of nothing being used to "pay" for strip-mining the natural resources of the planet, which indicates that any future attempts of America "to learn to live within its means" is always running into the prospects of diminishing returns. The banksters' debt slavery systems not only drove runaway social polarization to become debt insanities, more importantly, at the same time that was all based upon being able to strip-mine natural resources, in ways whereby the realities regarding doing that were able to be deliberately ignored, because that was all being done INSIDE fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems.
I would like to believe that, E-V-E-N-T-U-A-L-L-Y, new dynamic equilibria could evolve to become better balanced. However, the existing systems have ALREADY become so extremely unbalanced, to ratios of more than 1 to 100, physical to virtual! Basically, Americans were living as if there were 10, then 100, headed towards 1,000 planet Earths. After people become accustomed to living as if there were endless natural resources to continue to strip-mine, while able to justify and rationalize that through social successfulness based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS (regardless of the ways that those frauds still continue to be false, no matter how much they are enforced), the CORRECTIONS required "to learn to live within its means" are WAY TOO BIG!
While it appears theoretically possible that human beings and civilization could diminish the degree to which those are actually controlled through sociopolitical systems based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, such changes are in every practical way politically impossible at the present time. Those problems are far more profound that most people recognize, because of the degree to which they take for granted the history of the exponential growth of the ability to strip-mine the natural resources of the planet, while that was being "paid" for by the exponential development of "money" made out of nothing as debts.
The sequences of short to medium term social successfulness based upon being able to ENFORCE FRAUDS has driven almost everyone to develop attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards the principle of the conservation of energy, as well as to deliberately misunderstand the concept of entropy in the most absurdly backward ways possible. Since the entire political economy has become based upon the excessive successfulness of ENFORCING FRAUDS, and has been doing so, more and more, for thousands of years, generation after generation, the resulting levels of "delusion, narcissism and fantastical thinking" have ALREADY been amplified many orders of magnitude, to astronomical sizes.
While physical science made prodigious progress, based on series of profound paradigm shifts, in order to better understand how energy systems operated, that allowed the industrial revolutions to take advantage of that better understanding, nothing like that was allowed to happen within political science, since the political economy had become more and more based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, which more and more adamantly refused to admit and address those FACTS.
While it is theoretically possible that human beings and civilization could better understand themselves as manifestations of general energy systems, that continues to be quite politically impossible, due to the degree that doing that would require profound paradigm shifts in perception, that would pretty well totally reverse all of the bogus presumptions that people currently use to think about "economics." Since the existing "economics" is based upon money being measurement backed by murder, because the debt controls are backed by the death controls, as the most abstract form of all private property being claims backed by coercions, the American Imperial Project was about attempts to control the world's natural resources, through controlling the social symbols, the bookkeeping systems, regarding those resources. At the present time, it is NOT possible to reconcile human "economics" with environmental ecologies, because the human systems are based upon the maximum possible deliberate ignorance, and deliberately misunderstand themselves in the most absurdly backward ways possible.
The currently existing bookkeeping systems are almost totally based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS, which have driven the ratios of relatively objective realities, versus the fantastical virtual accounting, to become UNBALANCED, and those established systems are automatically continuing to get even more UNBALANCED every day ... The situation, after those ENFORCED FRAUDS become weapons of mass destruction backing up electronic, automated, frauds, as runaway symbolic robberies, HAS BECOME MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE WORSE THAN THAT WAS FOR ROME, OR FOR ANY OTHER PHASE OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATION.
In that context, the series of articles from Hugh-Smith are typical of the ways that Zero Hedge content provides correct, but still superficial, analysis of the problems, which then leads to recommending superficial "solutions" to those problems. Of course, at the present time, it looks like a technologically based civilization will destroy itself, due to its runaway criminal insanities, due to everything becoming based upon the excessively successful applications of the principles and methods of organized crime to "control" that civilization, (in ways that such a runaway scientific dictatorship shoots oxymoronic events over the dark side of the moon.) MEANWHILE, as long as such a technological civilization still exists, then the only realistic resolutions of its real problems must theoretically be based upon series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which apply through political science to the combined money/murder systems.
The American Imperial Project, or the international banksters' dominate systems, as the Anglo-American (Zionist) Empire, became based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS. The social successfulness of that, growing at an exponential rate for Centuries, has resulted in the consequences that I have outlined above: nothing exists but the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies, and therefore, nothing else could actually exist in the future but different dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies.
At the present time, the degree to which governments ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks have driven the development of those forms of symbolic robberies to manifest increasingly extreme social polarization. Moreover, and more importantly, the social successfulness of those systems based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS have driven almost everyone to deliberately ignore, and/or deliberately misunderstand, the FACTS about what they are actually doing. Intense paradoxes are accumulating their consequences, because human beings and civilization are better and better understanding natural energy systems, through the development of thermodynamics and information theory, etc., HOWEVER, when it comes to human systems, everything has become a Wonderland Matrix Bizarro World, due to the basic FACTS ABOUT ENFORCING FRAUDS not being admitted and addressed. Not only does almost everyone misunderstand almost everything in the most absurdly backward ways possible, but also, that means that almost all of the bogus "solutions" that are publicly promoted for problems have also become as absurdly backwards as possible.
Integrated sets of consistent contradictions have developed due to natural selection pressures driving artificial selection systems to become based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds. Since our political economy is actually based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled banks, pretty well everything that everyone thinks about "economics" has become quite absurdly backwards, due to people becoming proportionately successful by adapting to live inside of those systems based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS. There are growing Grand Canyon Chasms, getting wider and wider, between progress in physical science and technology, without any of that being integrated and surpassed by progress in political science, due to the profound paradigm shifts that it would take in order to comprehend how and why there now exists the American Imperial Project, as the most obvious symbol of the overall globalized systems of ENFORCING FRAUDS, whereby the threats from the destructive force of weapons of mass destruction back up automatically increasing electronic frauds.
Progress in physics has radically revolutionized the ways we should think about time and space, and therefore, the ways that we should think about entropy. However, the dominate philosophy of science was forced to compromise with the biggest bullies' bullshit world views, and therefore, the concept of entropy in thermodynamics and information theory had its meaning inverted by inserting arbitrary minus signs into those entropy equations. Those philosophical ERRORS then run rampant throughout the ways that people think about "economic" activities. Generally, I REPEAT, most people have been able to focus their attention upon "production," in ways which have been able to operate through fundamentally fraudulent accounting systems, that enabled attitudes of deliberate ignorance towards the principle of the preservation of energy, while deliberately misunderstanding the concept of entropy in the most absurdly backward ways possible.
Inside of that context, in my opinion, it is IMPOSSIBLE to "untangle America from the American Empire." While it might appear to be possible to go backwards, in those ways, actually doing that would precipitate the crises which are due to the ratios of the virtual world versus the physical world already exceeding 100 to 1, which makes "to learn to live within its means" so extremely difficult as to appear to be impossible, other than by "the collision with reality," that one may irrationally hope "isn't fatal," but most probably will be.
On the other hand, my view of what the resolutions of the problems with technological based civilization should become are based upon series of intellectual scientific revolutions, that most of all manifest as profound paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceive and operate the death control systems that back up the debt control systems. That approach arises from more fully facing the FACTS about the existing systems being based upon ENFORCING FRAUDS.
Guys like Hugh-Smith, as well as most of the rest of the content published on Zero Hedge, are far superior to the more mainstream media bullshit, which pretty well continues to deliberately ignore the ways that our political economy is actually based upon governments ENFORCING FRAUDS by privately controlled corporations. However, guys like Hugh-Smith are relatively typical of the kinds of alternative view points, that continue to take the same basic bullshit frames of reference for granted, and therefore, continue to promote bogus "solutions" that are absurdly backwards, and so, tend to recommend going backwards, in ways which are NOT possible, other than if and when the established systems cause their own series of psychotic breakdowns, collapses to chaos, driving severe social storms to blow through.
But nevertheless, IF technologically based civilization is able to survive, it will only be able to do so by going through series of profound paradigm shifts in its philosophy of science, which must be applied through its political science, to its combined money/murder systems. Ideally, enough people would have to more fully understand HOW AND WHY ENFORCING FRAUDS BECOME THE DOMINATE ESTABLISHED SOCIOPOLITICAL SYSTEMS. Of course, at the present time, that appears to be politically impossible, since all of those sociopolitical systems, which are ALREADY BASED ON ENFORCING FRAUDS, are being operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who want to continue to be as deliberately ignorant as possible, by continuing to misunderstand everything they are actually doing in the most absurdly backward ways possible. The basic dilemmas that human beings and civilization face are how to operate the human murder systems, after the development of weapons of mass destruction, which is especially significant because of the ways that the more and more precarious MAD Mutual Assured Destruction systems are backing up the MAD Money As Debt systems.
The excessive successfulness based on ENFORCING FRAUDS has become runaway criminal insanities. However, the realistic solutions for those real problems are NOT to go backwards, (based upon still using the same old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, as the bullshit basis for bogus "solutions.") The only ways to have better resolutions of our problems require going forwards towards the development of better death control systems. Nothing less is sufficient. However, developing better death control systems demands that those be based upon profound paradigm shifts, because those have to integrate and surpass the paradigm shifts already achieved in physical science, which enabled the development of the technologies that manifest as weapons of mass destruction.
The American Empire is the single most significant component of the globalized systems of electronic frauds backed by atomic bombs. That has become way too intensely paradoxical to enable America to be untangled from that Empire. On the contrary, the only good way forward requires that the kind of thinking that made it possible to develop electronics and atomic energy be applied to political science, which requires profound paradigm shifts, not merely more puzzle solving within the old paradigms. However, tragically, at the present time, proposing that is in a head-on collision with the social situation that "you can't intervene or help with rational thought or reasoning" as long as the actually existing politics continues to be mostly dominated by various old-fashioned religions and ideologies. That is why I basically AGREED with your comment, ebworthen, EXCEPT I think that the problems that America faces are many orders of magnitude worse than those Rome faced!
Hey thanks for that, well said. Agree, and now we have nukes (M.A.D.). Ooops.
Indeed, like yours was, ebworthen, often some comments are more worthwhile to read than the original articles!
If we want to make the US "better"....the first place to start is to create USEFUL jobs that pay a living wage.
No one wants to pay a high hourly wage for work that can be done by anyone and that does not contribute back in some way to the general economic good......and this is where the conversation most often gets stuck (arguing about minimum wage and which jobs qualify). We can start by no longer sending all the truly useful jobs offshore....and changing the "consumer mindset" that the only way an economy can prosper is to make more-and-more crap to sell to people who don't need it.
This.^
Orwell was
Yeah....but, but, but.... ya gots ta have cheap Chinese crap ta buy stuff with yer Snap Card.
Sending jobs offshore, through bribing American politicians, under the pretext of "free" trade is treason. Period. Full stop.
Someone was writing the other day that America would grind to a halt if China cut off shipments. Even if you were to assume that was correct- doesn't that say something about the leadership of this country, when we finance and coddle a Trojan Horse- a foe, not a "trade" partner.
K
If the lyin' and stealin' by financial sociopaths from ordinary folks could be stopped, it would have an immediate benefit to recovery. That's why I say the Ten Commandments were scrambled. The first three should be: 1)don't lie, 2)don't steal, and 3)don't murder. If we can't get the first three, the other seven don't really matter.
Thanks for your human perspective. I'm certain that the actual author of those Ten Commandments had a much different perspective. Do you think if Bill and Hill were writing their version, that they would include any of those three you mention? And I truly suspect that Zero would have as his number 1, "you shall have no other messiah before me".
The Clinton Commandments:
1. Everything is for sale, at a price
2. Don't leave evidence. No evidence, then it never happened
3. When caught, put on a shit-eating grin, and obfuscate.
The Three Comandments it is then.
For America to come home and untangle itself from the Imperial Project, it will have to do more than not meddle in everyone else's affairs; it will have to learn to live within its means--what it earns from producing goods and services, not what it skims from global financialization And set the example by putting to death all of those leader(s) in the Republic that got us to this place!...
Fixed it!!!
Ending the Federal Reserve will, in one step, begin fixing 1000 errors in US economy, society and politics. Real money, out of the control of government, will change everything.
Call me when the rest of the world decides it doesn't need the U.S. to by a net of $500 billion worth of their stuff on a yearly basis.
ajk
So long as the rest of the world is prepared to accept FRN's the game will continue. I, for one, think this country ought to be spending money on itself, its people, and its own infastructure.
There should be a price to pay to have access to the U.S. market.
European colonization of the Western Hemisphere has been an Imperial Project since October 12, 1492. What the fuck is genocide, slavery, and massive land theft, if it isn't Imperial? The United States built its power and wealth by exploiting stolen labor on stolen land, and once we pacified the continent, we hopped in boats and got to work exploiting the rest of the world. The Post World War II security state is a natural continuation of American history.
If the "massive" entitlement programs are funded by exporting dollars, then how is it possible that other nations have better-funded & better-managed public services without exporting currency? The world isn't exactly awash in South Korean won or Danish krone.
If he wants to end the American empire, I'm all for it, but his analysis is abject nonsense.
All empires end badly or else they wouldn't end. Blaming or cheering for one or the other side is like blaming or cheering for the bears or salmon
>> it will have to learn to live within its means
That mostly means that pharmaceutical and health care prices and policies will have to match other countries. Not the hugely bigger sums of money that both providers and recipients handle at the moment. And hugely expensive treatments for those who will die within a couple of years anyway will have to be reduced to palliative care.
The empire and its fiat money are coming down anyway. Much better to do it in a controlled manner (like the British Empire) than have it collapse in a bloody mess (like the French and Dutch Empires).
Lots of monopolies have gone so far as to only function thru force.
The system is too big. It is too complex and it will not go quietly into the night. No reform bill, no agenda, no politician is going to change anything. The only thing that will unravel this nightmare is a supply chain collapse.
Individuals may take actions that may help insulate themselves from the more immediate effects of this ongoing devolution, but no national plan will evolve to mitigate the crisis. There are too many agendas and divergent views. There is too much misinformation. Too many are talking their book. The end result is that there is no consensus. Without consensus we will continue to sit on the train track arguing as to whether we should step to the left or step to the right up until the moment we are hit by and oncoming freight train.
After the impact we will begin to pick up the pieces.
Barter would only destroy the free shit armies supply chain. Without hurting the honest peoples much if at all. So long as each of us produce more than we consume.
America is the people and their spirit. We are currently being occupied by imperial forces that must be expelled.
Change the word America to Earth and you are spot on.
This dude's postings are getting weaker and weaker . . .
Think his hands are not tied? Ask the ticker guy about it.
Washington cutting the Gordian Knot?
I look at that dollar bill showing where all the stolen money is spent and ask myself. What part of that do I want? The answer is NONE. Shut it all down. ALL of it.