Guest Post: U.S.A. 2012: Is This What We've Become?

Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

U.S.A. 2012: Is This What We've Become?

Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves.

Memorial Day is traditionally a day to speak of sacrifices made in combat. Like much of the rest of life in America, it has largely become artificial, a hurried "celebration" of frenzied Memorial Day marketing that is quickly forgotten the next day.

Instead of participating in this rote (and thus insincere) "thank you for your sacrifice" pantomime, perhaps we should ask what else has been sacrificed in America without our acknowledgement. Perhaps we should look at the sacrifices that need to be made but which are cast aside in our mad rush to secure "what we deserve."

The unvarnished reality is that most Americans have no idea what service members experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they don't want to know. When 4,488 white crosses were erected on a hillside to remind us of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, people didn't like it, labeling it "unpatriotic."

That is not the real reason, of course; what is more patriotic than keeping those who served and sacrificed fresh in our awareness? One reason those 4,000 crosses make us uncomfortable is that they remind us of being conned by our civilian leadership into "wars of choice."

Another is that the reality of war and its long aftermath are not sufficiently "uplifting" for a brittle nation that prefers the distractions of "reality" TV to an acknowledgement of our problems and the sacrifices made and yet to be made.

Longtime readers know that one of my embedded concerns is the disconnect between the civilian populace and the U.S. Armed Forces. This disconnect starts with raw numbers: THANK YOU TO THE 0.45% of the population who served in the Global War on Terror (2001 to present).

Personnel are costly, not just in civilian life but in the Armed Forces, too, and so the Pentagon has "downsized" the Armed Forces to a smaller but more professional force. This reflects not just budgetary realities but the evolution of modern warfare.

But it's not just that fewer serve because fewer are needed; the number of civilians who want to know and want to acknowledge the experience of those who serve is dwindling everywhere, from Congress to the media to the living rooms of the nation.

The Pentagon has reinforced this disconnect by controlling media access and coverage of its wars, and the media has complied to "control costs" and "give the public what it wants." Survey the media "consumers" and you find few want more coverage of the war or its consequences. So the five dominant media corporations offer up more of what people say they want: faked circus-like "entertainment" in which carefully selected competititors vie for the highest "prize" in modern America, a moment in the media spotlight. The appetite for "news" that trumps up trivialities and senseless, sensationalist crimes is equally insatiable.

Propaganda and marketing are the dominant forces in America, along with a willingness to suspend reality to avoid whatever is complex, knotty, difficult or painful.

Is this what we've become, a nation so fearful of the truth that we shun it, avoid it, or paper it over at every turn? It would seem so.

To take but one Memorial-Day example, we now "outsource" war just as we outsource manufacturing, and we ignore the sacrifices of those who replaced enlisted Armed Forces--even when many are ex-service members: Contractor Deaths Exceed Military Ones in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010). At the peak of the Iraq War, 150,000 "contractors" were in-theater so our civilian "leadership" could claim to have reduced the "headcount" of military personnnel serving in Iraq.

As with everything else in America, the artifice was swallowed whole because the truth was too ugly and difficult for us to bear. The sacrifices of our contractors in Iraq have been ignored by everyone: the Pentagon, the politicians and the public. Nobody wants to acknowledge the losses of those we hired to replace "official" soldiers, even though many of those contractors were ex-U.S. Armed Forces service members.

In Welfare State America, exaggerating victimhood and negating family, community and integrity are all heavily rewarded: that's how you get the gamed disability and a host of other entitlements.

Since credentials and grades are trumpeted as the foundation of financial security, then cheating on schoolwork and exaggerating accomplishments have become accepted norms.

Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves.

All of whom claim "I had no other choice."

That is a sickness that cannot be cured with a pill.

The excuses are legion and varied. Everybody else is cheating, too. Look at the crooks at the top. If I told the truth, I wouldn't get the job/mortgage/entitlement/degree etc.

Everyone is to blame except ourselves, of course; we are powerless. Yet we continue to elect politicians who tell us what we want to hear, lies that sooth our insecurities and fears, politicians who have doubled the national debt in a few years and indentured future generations so our precious share of the pie remains untouched.

Living within our means is now either "impossible" or a sin re-branded "austerity." So we borrow staggering sums every year to maintain the artifice that the contraption of lies, leverage and debt is sustainable, because we have become so brittle and diminished that we cannot bear the truth or our responsibility for the fetid trash-heap that is the national psyche.

We don't care if the nation spends the lifetime Medicare taxes of ten workers ($30,000 lifetime taxes paid, $300,000-$500,000 spent on each beneficiary) in the last few months or years of each elderly beneficiary's life, because 1) it's profitable for those at the trough and 2) we're powerless to change it.

But that's just another lie, stacked on the immense mountain of lies we have piled up in the past decade: we just want our ten lifetime-taxes paid because "we paid our share."

So never mind that we're borrowing the equivalent of the entire GDP of Germany every two years-- ($3 trillion)--and that's just Federal borrowing. Of course the true extent of Federal borrowing is cloaked and obfuscated with tricks such as "supplemental appropriations," so the "headline number" is just another untruth passed off as fact--just like the unemployment rate and the GDP itself.

Add in private debt and local-government bond issuance (often for projects that were once paid for out of general fund tax revenues) and we're borrowing more like the GDP of Germany and France every two years, with no other future in sight.

The word "sacrifice" has been sacrificed on the altar of expediency. The politicians we elect (those who dare speak the truth of our impoverishment and complicity don't get elected--we abhor and fear the truth) have ground the word "sacrifice" into meaningless with overuse; it now means nothing but yet another clarion-call to swallow lies and artifice to protect our share of the loot.

The government can't be the problem, because the government issues me a nice check every month.

And so we cling to easy falsehoods. If only the 1% paid their fair share, all our problems would be solved.

The 1% should pay their fair share, but that isn't the problem; the top 1% already pay a significant share of income taxes collected; doubling that amount changes nothing about the long-term insolvency of our entitlements and crony-capitalist Empire.

The problem is our consumerist, Central-State dominated society/economy that depends on ever-rising debt and and leverage is unsustainable, and placating ourselves with expedient simplicities that shift the accountability and responsibility from ourselves to someone or something else solves nothing.

This reliance on excuses, denial and expediency is the hallmark of adolescence; in adulthood, these are the hallmarks of failure and pathology.

Is this what we've become, brittle, simulacra "grown-ups" who are incapable of acknowledging the truth of our situation? If we cannot dare acknowledging reality, then how can we solve our problems? If we cannot bear an awareness of our systemic rot and unsustainability, then how can we move past denial and expediency?

If we have lost the ability to live within our means and to acknowledge difficult facts, then we have lost everything: our national integrity, our ability to problem-solve, our vigor and our future.

Comments

[Bartanist]

Ya know, having fairly recently read (re-read) "The Prince", "Rules for Radicals" and "The Communist Manifesto", it is clear to me that Marx was just promoting communism, Saul Alinsky style, to manipulate people to be unhappy with the current system by giving a vision of a something he propagandized as being better for them.

In fact, the reality of communism has been anything but better for the proletariat. They are invariably taken advantage of by those in charge, regardless of the system, and gain nothing. IMO, the proletariat fare much better under anarchy than communism because of the potential for upward mobility. 

[writingsonthewall]

This author (like many others) is confused between 'wealth' and 'monetary wealth'.

As a nation / race - we are extremely wealthy and no austerity is required.

In the game of "Capital Kidnap" - we have lost badly.

The question I have is...if Europe, USA plus the 'usual suspects' all default - WHO THE FUCK ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO LEND TO?

This is a game of chicken - the Chinese won't need to borrow money if the US and Europe are in austerity mode - as they are their best customers and without them the demand for production reduces - no need to borrow to produce anymore...

All we're witnessing is the collapse of the MONETARY SYSTEM - as all FIAT SYSTEMS PREVIOUSLY HAVE FAILED - WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

This 'austerity hysteria' - is from wealthy bond holders who have decided that they didn't understand the gamble they were taking when they lent money - and clearly though the interest paid was not to reflect risk of default - but as a 'kind gesture' out of the goodness of the lenders heart!

You can cut as far and as hard as you like - you will NEVER cut enough to let the true production levels catch up with the monetary measure.

We have NOT lost the baility to live within our means - this author is WRONG We can and do live within our means (Production) as not doing this would provide mass shortages in the western world. We cna produce what we consume - what we cannot do is produce what THE FINANCE SYSTEM CONSUMES.

Still - why do I bother trying to explain this to ideological idiots who don't listen. They are tooo busy paying homage to the same financial system which has corrupted life - throwing all manner of human sacrifice in order to protect a 'historically failed' system.

Stil - what does this fucktard author know anyhow - if this result wasn't obvious from the massive expansion of 'borrowing future production' (AKA - derivatives) - then they will NEVER understand and will continue to bang the drum of idiocy.

If I had a rocket ship I'd fuck off and leave all you turds to it - what a shame I'm stuck on this planet surrounded by morons.

[malek]

 WHO THE FUCK ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO LEND TO?

That's actually a very good question, but not in the direction WOTW meant it:

Why the fuck does one need to lend to someone, at all or in sheer unlimited amounts?

And the original author has it right:
Living within one's means also includes not borrowing, therefore not feeding the beast.

[Bartanist]

It is a quandary laden with inconsistencies.

We are suppossed to love and support our military. And for the most part, excluding the obvious psychopathic actions that are inevitably revealed through unofficial media sources, the people in the military are people just like us. Some are deluded into believing that they are serving something worthwhile by killing (depriving the live of men, women, sons, daughters, grandmothers, grandfathers and children) who are fictionalized "bad-guys".

Others, due to the intentional deindustrialization and switch from value adding labor to the greed driven labor arbitrage by our industrial leaders, had nowhere else to turn when trying to support themselves and their families.

Others are seemingly made of some material that is predisposed to the discounting of human life other than their own, domination fantasies and the mindless implementation of dogma.... because they seemingly have been led to believe that all human beings are of an evil nature (maybe because they are) and that is what people do... they kill and try to dominate.

And just as Wall Street is built on what seems to be a pile of lies, deceit and fraud built on overcapacity and the fundamentally flawed paradigms of infinite growth and borrowing short-term at variable rates of interest while lending long-term at fixed rates of interest, has morphed into what appears to be its inevitable destiny (when the people motivated to by flawed paradigms and overcapacity have the power, through money, to regulate and dictate not only their own circumstances, but those of everyone else), the military-industrial complex has morphed into its own self-serving version of Wall Street, built on similar flawed paradigms. And what are those paradigms? Those paradigms are: that war will always be necessary for the maintenance of the government in power, that people who disagree with the government need and deserve to be killed, that war product technology growth through, revenue and profit is sustainable and infinite (in contrast to all historical learnings)... that the people who are trained to be killers for government should be honored or compensated beyond that of the people who promote peace and equal protection under the law.

And just as with Wall Street, there are the people who take advantage of the system ... or who don't fit into normal society. There are the "so called" leaders, who try to sustain their unneeded system, and promote it as "indispensible". There are the profiteers, who care nothing about what they destroy, only what they take for themselves. There are the broken people who enjoy killing others or don't value the life of others in the way they value their own (possibly deluding themselves into the good guy/bad guy fantasy promoted by a self-serving government, industry, military and media). There are those who look to be higher class slaves by taking high paying mercenary jobs, $150,000 to $180,000/yr, with Blackwater/Xe (or whatever their name is today). I have little sympathy for dead mercenaries and condemn the system that created them.

Over the weekend I spent some time at a family reunion with a special forces major that is about to retire. He loves the army, but believes it is time to move on. He is eligible for his full pension, hopes he can get one more through the government before he ultimately retires to follow his dream. I cannot fault him for loving the army. I cannot fault him for wanting to retire. I cannot fault him for wanting a better and more secure life for his familty and I cannot fault him for having a mundane dream life. He is after all human... regardless of what he did in the performance of his job over the last 20 years.

Unlike CHS, I don't blame people for being deluded. I blame those who have scientifically taken advantage of known human weaknesses to promote their own self-serving interests. An uncoordinated 99% really do not have any chance against a coordinated 1%, when the 1% controls far superior weaponry and can divide and conquer at will. Unde the current set of corrupt rules and dealings, someone from the 99% cannot rise to a political position of power in this country without prostituting themselves themselves to the 1%. That is not a victim talking. This is the mathematics of marketing. History has always shown that it is more often that grease rises to the top than the cream, simply because the grease is willing to lie, cheat, murder and defraud... whereas the cream will not.

[Waterfallsparkles]

Just think about all of the Money our Country would have for it's People if we were not Policing the Entire World with our Military Sons and Daughters for the Elite and their World wide Corporations.

[orangegeek]

Yes, beyond our means and no longer able to spend.

Another supporting argument to primary wave 3 down in the markets.  2007 was bad.   2012 will be much worse.

http://bullandbearmash.com/index/sp-500/weekly/