[Peace-discuss] Flier for Main Event 5/1/10

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Seems to me pretty weak for Workers' May Day, but I suppose there isn't time to 
rewrite it - and maybe it will catch the attention of some.  --CGE]


	We're Living in a Kleptocracy
	Fears of Socialism and Fascism Are a Distraction
	from the Naked Theft of Trillions
	The headlines tell the story - repetitively.
	Everyone, it seems, is on the take.
	But are we too distracted to try and stop it?
	--William Astore, April 20, 2010

Kleptocracy - now, there’s a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and 
exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. 
  It’s a word, in fact, that’s usually applied to flawed or failed governments 
in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia.  Such governments are 
typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies 
with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or 
squeezed from their country’s natural resources.  It’s not a word you’re likely 
to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by 
disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent 
principles and processes.

In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the 
typical epithets used are “socialism” or “fascism.”  When my conservative 
friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about “ObamaCare” 
and the like.  These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the 
private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government.  When my progressive 
friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient 
fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, 
power-hungry government...

What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we 
took a closer look at where we are - at the power-brokers who run or influence 
our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it?  These are, 
after all, the “winners” in our American world in terms of the power they wield 
and the wealth they acquire.  And shouldn’t we be looking as well at those 
Americans who are losing - their jobs, their money, their homes, their 
healthcare, their access to a better way of life - and asking why?

If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of “losers” and 
the far shinier, spiffier world of “winners,” we’d have to admit that it wasn’t 
signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly 
self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now.  We’d notice our 
public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial 
institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of 
money to, the representatives of “the people.”  We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy 
on a scale to dazzle.  We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act 
being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you’re 
an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins  - in other words, riveting 
distractions.  Conservatives and tea-partiers fear invasive government 
regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers - 
even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private 
interests.  Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps 
of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential 
government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a 
perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.

Yet, if this is socialism, why are private health insurers the government’s 
go-to guys for healthcare coverage?  If this is fascism, why haven’t the secret 
police rounded up tea-partiers and progressive critics as well and sent them to 
the lager or the gulag?

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of political 
radicalism.  We have no substantial socialist or workers’ party.  (Unless you’re 
deluded, please don’t count the corporate-friendly “Democrat” party here.)  We 
have no substantial fascist party.  (Unless you’re deluded, please don’t count 
the cartoonish “tea-partiers” here; these predominantly white, graying, and 
fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will be 
coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business - just as was true in the days 
of Calvin Coolidge.  But it’s not the fair-minded “free enterprise” system 
touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for American history textbooks; 
rather, it’s a rigged system of crony capitalism that increasingly ends in what, 
if we were looking at some other country, we would recognize as an unabashed 
kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions of 
dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which, Houdini-like, 
simply disappeared.  Think of the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just whose pockets are 
full, thanks to them.

If you want to know the true state of our government and where it’s heading, 
follow the money (if you can) and remain vigilant: our kleptocratic Houdinis are 
hard at work, seeking to make yet more money vanish from your pockets - and 
reappear in theirs.

 From Each According to His Gullibility - To Each According to His Greed

Never has the old adage my father used to repeat to me - “the rich get richer 
and the poor poorer” - seemed fresher or truer.  If you want confirmation of 
just where we are today, for instance, consider this passage from a recent piece 
by Tony Judt:

  "In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of 
earners.  Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and 
benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker.  Today 
the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. 
  Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder’s family in 2005 was estimated at 
about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. 
population: 120 million people."

Wealth concentration is only one aspect of our increasingly kleptocratic system. 
  War profiteering by corporations (however well disguised as heartfelt support 
for our heroic warfighters) is another.  Meanwhile, retired senior military 
officers typically line up to cash in on the kleptocratic equivalent of welfare, 
peddling their “expertise” in return for impressive corporate and Pentagon 
payouts that supplement their six-figure pensions.  Even that putative champion 
of the Carhartt-wearing common folk, Sarah Palin, pocketed a cool $12 million 
last year without putting the slightest dent in her populist bona fides.

Based on such stories, now legion, perhaps we should rewrite George Orwell’s 
famous tagline from Animal Farm as: All animals are equal, but a few are so much 
more equal than others.

And who are those “more equal” citizens?  Certainly, major corporations, which 
now enjoy a kind of political citizenship and the largesse of a federal 
government eager to rescue them from their financial mistakes, especially when 
they’re judged “too big to fail.”  In raiding the U.S. Treasury, big banks and 
investment firms, shamelessly ready to jack up executive pay and bonuses even 
after accepting billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, arguably outgun 
militarized multinationals in the conquest of the public realm and the 
extraction of our wealth for their benefit.

Such kleptocratic outfits are, of course, abetted by thousands of lobbyists and 
by politicians who thrive off corporate campaign contributions.  Indeed, many of 
our more prominent public servants have proved expert at spinning through the 
revolving door into the private sector.  Even ex-politicians who prefer to be 
seen as sympathetic to the little guy like former House Majority Leader Dick 
Gephardt eagerly cash in.

I’m Shocked, Shocked, to Find Profiteering Going on Here

An old Roman maxim enjoins us to “let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” 
  Within our kleptocracy, the prevailing attitude is an insouciant “We’ll get 
ours, though the heavens fall.”  This mindset marks the decline of our polity. 
A spirit of shared sacrifice, dismissed as hopelessly naïve, has been replaced 
by a form of tribalized privatization in which insiders find ways to profit no 
matter what.

Is it any surprise then that, in seeking to export our form of government to 
Iraq and Afghanistan (if that's in fact what we were doing), we’ve produced not 
two model democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled respectively by 
oil and opium?

When we confront corruption in Iraq or Afghanistan, are we not like the police 
chief in the classic movie Casablanca who is shocked, shocked to find gambling 
going on at Rick’s Café, even as he accepts his winnings?

Why then do we bother to feign shock when Iraqi and Afghan elites, a tiny 
minority, seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the majority?

Shouldn’t we be flattered?  Imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of 
flattery.  Isn’t it?

[William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), now teaches at the 
Pennsylvania College of Technology. His books and articles focus primarily on 
military history and include Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism (Potomac 
Press, 2005). He may be reached at wastore at pct.edu.]

You can join a local peace group that is working to end the war in Afghanistan. 
  In Champaign-Urbana, one local peace group is AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism 
Effort <www.anti-war.net>, members and friends of which produced this leaflet 
for our monthly demonstration on May 1, 2010, in downtown Champaign, at the 
corner of Main and Neil Streets.  We meet every Sunday 5-6:30pm in the Wahlfeldt 
Room in the basement of the old post office in Urbana.  Visitors and new members 
are welcome.

AWARE is also happy to provide speakers and/or discussion leaders on the Mideast 
war and related issues.  Write <cge at shout.net>.  AWARE is composed of people 
opposed to the war, but it is not affiliated with any other group or political 
party.

AWARE presents AWARE on the Air each Tuesday 10-11pm on Urbana Public 
Television, cable channel 6.  Each week we bring you comments by members and 
friends of AWARE about the war and the opposition to it, locally and nationally, 
by Americans who oppose our government's betrayal of our democratic principles.

END THE U. S. WAR AGAINST THE MIDDLE EAST
BRING ALL UNITED STATES TROOPS HOME
STOP PAYING FOR WAR FROM PALESTINE TO PAKISTAN

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