[Peace-discuss] "American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide the Naked Theft of Trillions", William Astore, April 2010

[Stuart Levy]

This two-year-old (4/2010) article by William Astore, which has appeared 
under different titles but I prefer this one:

"American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide the Naked 
Theft of Trillions"

is the article I mentioned at yesterday's Occupy meeting, and have been 
plugging at the Farmer's Market recently. This is a fine framing for the 
Occupy movement to use I think. Appreciate his point of view, seeing 
these political labels as "riveting distractions".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-j-astore/american-kleptocracy-how_b_547708.html

Some excerpts:

[...] [W]hen 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 (and, I admit it, I’m hardly innocent when it comes to such 
“what if” scenarios).

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. ...

... 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.

...

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, we’ve produced not two model 
democracies, but two emerging kleptocracies, fueled respectively by oil 
and opium? ...