[Peace-discuss] Common opinions - basis for a new politics?

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Published on Friday, January 1, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
	The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade
	by Robert Freeman

The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the 
last decade.  The wired-in society.  The growth of organic food.  The new 
frugality.  This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture: 
  pacification.  It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are 
looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.

The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really 
mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, 
and the relation of the people to their state and society.

Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of 
their government and the corporations that own it.  But you'll hear nary a word 
about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.

So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the 
ones that really matter.

[1] The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election.  This isn't even 
a historical controversy anymore.  Al Gore won the national popular vote by 
570,000.  And we now know he would have won the Florida vote as well if the vote 
counting had not been stopped by the Supreme Court.  This was literally a right 
wing judicial coup d' etat, so it's understandable that it's never mentioned in 
the "right" kind of circles.

[2] Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened.  Three years before Bush 
took office, the neo-cons' Project For a New American Century called for a "new 
Pearl Harbor" to galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle East oil.  And 
even before the event itself, Bush-as-president was warned dozens of times of 
the imminent attack, the most notorious being the August 6, 2001 Presidential 
Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S".  Amazingly 
nothing was done to prevent the attack.  But even less is it advertised that 
Bush knew.

[3] Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there.  Saddam Hussein wasn't 
pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction.  He wasn't involved in 9/11. He wasn't 
engaged with Al Qaeda.  As with the 2000 election hijacking, we know all these 
things.  And we know they were false at the time they were proffered.  Yet, 
there we are, with no intent to leave, our very presence spitting in the face of 
International Law and the international community we so unctuously pretend to 
respect.

[4] The Global War on Terror.  Or more specifically, the ease with which the 
"GWOT" has replaced the Cold War as the justification for the ever-increasing 
militarization of society.  What happened to the post-Cold War "Peace Dividend"? 
  The U.S continues to spend more on the military than all the rest of the world 
combined.  It continues to maintain over 700 military bases around the world. 
And it continues to manufacture excuses for foreign interventions whenever 
weapons makers and military logistics companies need more profits — which is 
forever.

[5] The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%.  John Kennedy's 
social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats.  But over the last decade 
2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners.  Meanwhile 
the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in wealth as a result of 
the housing collapse.  The banking bailout and the health care "reform" debate 
showed as never before the extent to which corporations have captured government 
and use it to redirect national wealth to themselves and their owners.

[6] The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy.  The top 1% of wealth holders 
own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own absolutely 
nothing.  Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of national debt, an 
effective indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters 
for the rest of their lives.  This is the working definition of feudalism, where 
the rich own everything and everybody else has nothing but their proffered labor 
and their obligations to their masters.  The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the 
Bourbons would be jealous.

[7] The surrender of civil liberties.  Despite the Fourth Amendment supposedly 
protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, the government can now 
read your email and listen to your phone calls without any probable cause.  The 
Obama administration has gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas 
Corpus, suspended during the Bush administration.  We are much less free, much 
less protected from brutalization by our own government than we were just ten 
years ago.

[8] The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity.  The "free market" 
has long been an ideological dodge used to resist real government regulation of 
the economy.  Still, the ideal was supposed to deliver prosperity in a stable, 
sustainable matter.  Now we have the greatest global economic collapse since the 
Great Depression, with the government transferring $11 trillion to the banks to 
cover their sociopathically greedy bets that went bust.  All in the name of 
deregulation, with future regulation vigorously resisted.  Is this a deranged 
country or what?

[9] The collapse of the media.  We once imagined it would guard the hen house. 
Yet that was an anomaly, a freak event around Vietnam and Watergate when it 
slipped its leash.  Since then, sixty independent media outlets have 
consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the 
perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the 
truth tellers.  In every story mentioned above, the mainstream media have worked 
to ensure that the people didn't know the truth about the forfeiture of their 
government, their wealth, their security, and their rights.

[10] The meaninglessness of elections.  This is the most embittering revelation 
of all.  Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater 
in '64, Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he 
had the opportunity to confront power — in financial bailouts, financial 
regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global 
warming, national surveillance — Obama has sided with the rich and powerful 
against the interests of the American people.  He has probably engendered more 
cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard 
Nixon.  It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of 
people again for a real takeback of government.  And he's not even one year into 
it.

History paints decades with broad brushes-the Roaring Twenties, The Depression, 
World War II. Historians will look back on the Naughts as the time when 
Americans Lost Their Country.  It was the decade when all the institutions that 
they believed would protect them — the media, the courts, Congress, the market, 
a messianic new president — in fact betrayed them. It will forever more be a 
different country.

But not just yet.  Did I tell you about the big move to locally-grown produce?

[Robert Freeman writes on history, economics, and education. Email to: 
robertfreeman10 at yahoo.com.]

Comment

SeriousCitizen January 2nd, 2010 9:33 am:

This essay has a dramatic US-centric perspective. This essay essentially says 
that we Americans have been too lazy or too stupid to control our own 
institutions, and therefore we feel "betrayed" and are victims. The top ten 
stories of the decade should include things like:

1) We Americans killed one million Iraqis for no real reason and made four 
million into refugees.

2) We Americans bombed and invaded Afghanistan because we refused to accept the 
Taliban government's offers to extradite Osama bin Laden.

3) We Americans refused to curb our carbon consumption in accord with the world 
community's agreement in the Kyoto Accord, and now millions of poor people in 
other parts of the planet will starve or will find their communities going 
underwater.

4) We Americans made junk mortgage bonds, gave them AAA+ ratings, and sold them 
all over the world.

5) We Americans gave Israel the money and illegal weapons (like white phosphorus 
and tungsten bombs) to wage war against an impoverished and trapped population 
in Gaza, most of whom are children under age 15.

6) We Americans violated the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners 
because we had scared ourselves with our own propaganda.

7) We Americans allowed our own cities to be attacked on Sept. 11 ... in order 
to scare ourselves into waging war on the world and destroying our own freedoms. 
This kind of list can go on and on. If we Americans do not somehow control our 
own institutions and make them be lawful, honest, and just, then we hurt and 
kill millions of people. We are not the victims of our institutions' failings, 
we are the cause of our institutions' failings.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0