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september 2002



The Degradation of Democracy
by Frank Scott


The anniversary of 911 nears, and there will be heartfelt  memorials
commemorating the dreadful day, but productions  suitable to terrorism
theme parks may be more common. Far deadlier than that one day
performance, which will fast be forgotten, is the longer range
performance potential of an intellectually disabled  regime, presiding
over a structurally disabled system.

The assault on American democracy that followed the bloody terrorist
attack  has been  matched by an assault on global humanity. A  rush to
repression  imprisoned many innocent Americans ,threatening every
citizen’s future, and it has been accompanied  by the  equally
thoughtless murdering of innocent foreigners.  Beginning with
Afghanistan and close to a greater slaughter in iraq, our pea-brained
government warheads  approach  insanity, with few mainstream voices in
opposition, and without any critical discussion of national policy.

Objection to US  behavior has been strong internationally , online and
in activist  circles, but the “homeland” mainstream  has featured
uncritical repetition of preposterous propaganda about threats from
Iraq.  The public can be forgiven for swallowing  the disinformation  it
has been fed, hardly having been offered a  healthy information diet.
But it must ultimately show  more sense than its leaders , or we will
all suffer the consequences of our rogue nation’s increasingly arrogant
and murderous behavior.

The American government is run by a regime of materially rich  and
intellectually poor fanatics.  Some, like the president, made millions
simply by being born, or being placed on corporate boards run by
marketplace swindlers who made them rich . And many of these dim-wit
serial killers are breathlessly awaiting, along with their half-wit
allies in Israel, something called  “the rapture”. That’s not a porn
film, but a scriptural ,hallucinatory fantasy,  a promised orgasmic
epiphany featuring a savior-messiah from heaven  returning to earth,
vanquishing satanic evil - once communism, now Islam - from  the “holy
land”, and rewarding his gentry with prime real estate, in UFO land.
This biblical pipe dream serves to rationalize a mad policy that
endangers the entire world, and not just monomaniacs in the USA and
Israel.

The American cabal  gained power  by losing a  popular vote, and winning
an unpopular decision. They were enabled to do so by the  ineptitude of
an alleged opposition party. But the communist party of the USSR had a
lesser hold over that nation  than the capitalist party of the USA
exercises here. Its official opposition wing  acts in  craven cowardice
at a time of desperate national need. These defilers of democracy watch
polls and focus groups, hoping to gain the courage to finally speak up,
when Bush’s numbers go down. Meanwhile, we move closer to  further
savaging  Iraq and further endangering Americans all over the world,
with only some conservatives speaking critically, and with the real
problems of our system remaining  unquestioned.

The present economic bust is the result of an artificial boom which was
about credit and nothing more. As the nation’s savings rate tanked, its
collective debt skyrocketed and the inequality gap between the rich and
the rest of us became greater than ever . The most affluent made so much
that they could afford paper losses in the tens of millions and still
remain wealthy. Their obscene riches are not derived from production of
material goods, but from faith-based, immaterial financial profits,
which nevertheless cause personal, social and ecological material
degradation .

Consumers take on ever more  debt , and Wall Street witch doctors  hail
that  as a sign of  confidence,  rather than a sign that the consumer,
as the nation,  is dangerously over extended . Personal and corporate
bankruptcies are  at record levels , but the capitalist party  moves to
make it  more difficult for private citizens to erase their debts. This,
while  additional financial burdens are put on their backs, through
colossal corporate bankruptcies, which are more permissible than ever .

The  American economic structure rests on a foundation of debt and is
kept standing by a constant infusion of new credit, which is created by
religious belief that has nothing to do with material production. If the
flow of credit  ever stops, or begins to be understood, the whole
structure could collapse. How are we  dealing with this? By finding
terrorists under every bed , and using military spending to create
production  that isn’t simply financial paper castles, but wastes
resources with more murderous haste. We’re alienating the world with
our  arrogant  foreign policy, and treating our own citizens like
children , when they stay distracted, and like traitors , when they pay
attention.

The minority president’s “axis of evil”  does exist, but not in a
foreign country. It isn’t international terrorism, whatever that is
supposed to mean. The evil that threatens American workers  by stealing
their jobs,their pensions and their future, is the evil that threatens
the globe with  exploitation,  injustice and  pollution . It  treats
certain people as less than human, in places like  Palestine, the
developing  world, and in centers of poverty here at home . It markets
politicians  as though they were  automobiles , uses mass media as a
weapon of mass distraction, and  creates  debt, poverty and conflict for
a majority of the planet’s inhabitants. And this, to  benefit a  tiny
minority  which gains wealth far beyond its  capacity to use, let alone
its ability to  create.

This axis of evil’s attack on democracy didn’t begin  on 911, but the
pace of assault has  increased since that  day. The source of
democracy’s degradation is the political economics  of capitalism . The
intellectually anorexic Bush, his religious fanatic cohorts, and their
disgracefully inept opposition have declared war on an invisible,
external enemy. But our enemy is visible, internal, capitalism. Don’t
expect to hear  much about that in the outpouring of 911  commemorations
offered by mass media. But citizens need to  understand that evil  and
act on it, by seeking, creating and voting for alternatives, before
terminal damage is inflicted on democracy, and the planet.

Copyright (c) 2002 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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frank scott
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