These well-known words, which Shakespeare placed in the mouth of the fatally wounded Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, reflect the feelings of a great many Americans when they view the state our country is currently in. Our Democrats and Republicans, like the Capulets and Montagues of medieval Italy, can’t stand the sight of each other and although the battles are currently still fought with words, rather than swords, the outcome is equally deleterious to the health of our country.

                In the September installment (Follow the Money) I mentioned that our Republic suffers from multi-system failure. Although the condition is as yet not fatal, it is indeed serious. Unless sweeping reforms at various levels of government were to take place, we might well see a descent first into chaos and subsequently autocracy. Plato was the first to enunciate this cycle from autocracy to oligarchy, to democracy and back to autocracy. The reason why he was correct lies in human nature which has been immune to change over recorded history. Unbridled democracy, where excessive individual freedom trumps the common good has to lead to the Hobbesian fight of all against all. When society can under these circumstances no longer function, a Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Lenin will arrive on the scene. Although Caesar and Napoleon have now been hallowed by history this was not the case during their lifetime as can readily be ascertained by reading Cicero on the one hand and British publications from the era of the Napoleonic wars on the other. This literature is important because only contemporaries can see the flaws of the “great man” and the viewpoints of opponents need to be taken into account.

          As far as America is concerned it has so far been able to avoid Europe’s fate, but the country is still young. Before discussing the sad state our country is in at present, it is important to review how we got to where we are. Looking at the America as I have personally experienced it, I believe that its high water mark was the morning of November 22 1963. With the assassination of President Kennedy in the early afternoon of that day the country underwent a fundamental change. Lyndon Johnson meant well but was unduly influenced by a host of “advisors” who had their pet agendas which led us into the Vietnam debacle. It was America’s first defeat (after the Korean stalemate) and has rankled America’s self-esteem ever since. As an example one might mention that the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were hailed as having overcome the Vietnam syndrome.

               The rest of the sixties were dominated by the Civil Rights movement including its ugly side of burning cities, more political assassinations (Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X), beginning opposition to the Vietnam War, and above all what one may call hippiedom. This consisted not only of the widespread use of psychoactive drugs but the overall stance of “if it feels good it is good.” Women were promised “you can have it all,” namely a happy family life as well as success in business, and “the pill” provided them with previously unknown sexual freedom. Everybody was “liberated” and draft cards were burned.

          The election of Richard Nixon, a conservative with Quaker roots, was supposed to have been the antidote. The young stopped marching when the draft was abolished and the people at large began to forget about the war. In order to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union, which by the way was of equal concern to Chou en Lai of China, he responded positively to the latter’s peace overtures and “Nixon in China” even became an opera. But Nixon overreached on the domestic side and Mark Felt, vigorously aided by reporters Woodward and Bernstein, became his nemesis as discussed in the September installment. Both of his successors Ford and Carter were decent people but the toxins of the sixties, which had infected the public, had remained and continued to affect society albeit in a more gradual manner.

          The seventies also accelerated the identification of America’s foreign policy goals with those of the state of Israel, which had begun in 1967 during the Six-Day War. The official American media never told us that Israeli armed forces deliberately tried to sink the USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai shore. As mentioned in Abuse of Secrecy (August 8, 2008), 34 US sailors were killed, 171 wounded but President Johnson deliberately hushed up the event. This particular war, the aftereffects of which still bedevil us in the current Israeli-Palestinian stand-off, led to a marked rise in self-esteem of the American Jewish population. But the subsequent Yom Kippur war in 1973, which was initially nearly lost by Israel, was the catalyzer for a sense of renewed Jewish victimhood and vulnerability. This in turn gave rise to raising the disasters which had befallen the Jewish people during WWII to new prominence with Eli Wiesel becoming the spokesperson of the newly named Holocaust. A national Holocaust Museum was erected on Washington’s mall and although it was financed originally through private sources its upkeep is now funded by us, the taxpayers. The requested budget for the fiscal year 2012 (the total 2011 budget is still being discussed in Congress) is for $52,694,000, which represents an increase of $3,572,000 over that for FY 2010 (http://www.ushmm.org/notices/budget/2012.pdf). How many of us know these numbers in our cash strapped times? For comparison purposes I might point out that the FY 2011 budget for the Medical School of the University of Utah is $32,164,000. The Holocaust now serves as the means to effectively stifle any opposition to Israel’s policies to the extent that as one of our current Republican presidential hopefuls declared, “An attack upon Israel is an attack upon America.”

          President Carter was and is a decent man who tried to do the right thing under difficult circumstances. But the Arab oil embargo of 1973-1974, in response to our preventing Israel’s defeat in the Yom Kippur war, combined with the budget deficits accumulated from the Vietnam War, had created economic misery. Prices rose so did interest rates on purchases needed for daily living while wages stagnated. The Tehran hostage rescue failed and the media gave us a daily count of how many days the embassy hostages were already in captivity.

July 3, 1979 was another key day in America’s foreign policy and we have to thank President Carter’s foreign security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski for it. Contrary to published opinion of the time, our involvement in Afghanistan did not start in response to the Soviet invasion of that country on December 24, 1979 but six months earlier with Carter’s directive to the CIA for secret aide to the opponents of the then existing Kabul regime which was friendly to the Soviet Union. As Brezinski explained to a reporter from Nouvel Observateur (Paris) in 1998, he had told Carter that this directive would lead to Soviet military intervention which in turn would drastically weaken the USSR. When asked by the reporter, “you don’t regret anything today?” He replied,

“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghanistan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” When the reporter then asked, if he regretted having supported Islamic fundamentalists, the answer was, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War” (Chalmers Johnson Blowback and also Michel Chossudovsky. America’s War on Terrorism).

Let us pause here for a moment to consider the momentous consequences of that logic from which we have been unable to extricate ourselves. “Some stirred up Moslems” have  presented us about three years later with 9/11, which in turn led us, as successors of the Russians, into Afghanistan where we still remain after more than 10 years and have no prospect of doing any better than they or the British before them. Although our country is not likely to disintegrate into component parts as the Soviet Union did, the war against these “stirred up Moslems” in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped bring us to the sorry state our economy is in. The lesson ought to be that whenever you make a Faustian bargain you have lost your freedom of choice and the devil wins in the long run!

           With Carter’s high negatives, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was no surprise. He was literally the man on the horse who would restore America to its immediate post WWII glory. His plan to rescue the country from its doldrums was denounced by his early rival for the nomination and subsequent Vice President George H. W. Bush, or in short Bush 41, as voodoo economics, but this epithet has been quietly dropped by Reagan’s still evolving hagiography. The slogan was that “a rising tide lifts all boats” i.e. massive tax cuts would free the latent ingenuity of the American people and the economy would thereby rebound. This was combined with patriotic fervor to destroy the “evil empire” in all its potential outposts as well as terrorists such as Libya’s Gadhafi whose compound had to be bombed in retaliation for an attack on a Berlin discotheque where two US service personnel had been killed and more than 70 wounded. One might remember now that killing of US sailors while performing their duty on the Liberty had previously elicited no response from our leadership. It seems that it is not the killing of US personnel which matters but who is doing it. But the problem was that lower tax revenues didn’t keep the government solvent and the deficit kept soaring. Although Republicans were in charge they couldn’t care less at that time, and borrowing oneself out of debt was the order of the day.

          Again let us pause. Ronald Reagan is currently the hero and role model for most of our Republican presidential aspirants and they tout “Reaganomics” as the cure for our current economic woes. That the 1980’s improvement was due to fiscal irresponsibility they have as yet not admitted and inasmuch as the deficit has by now skyrocketed they intend to cut services to those people who need them most while keeping the massive defense spending largely intact.

              Bush 41 saw the realization of Brzezinski’s goal and with the emergence of America as the sole superpower there was a brief moment where the country could have been steered into calmer waters for the benefit of the whole world. It was not to be. A second term which would have provided that opportunity was denied to him by the combined forces of Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The former drew needed Republican votes into his unsuccessful effort, while the latter was able to overcome the questions in regard to his sexual appetite with James Carville’s successful campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Clinton’s campaign advisors also had him constantly repeat the mantra that Bush couldn’t be trusted because he had promised during his run for the presidency, “Read my lips. No new taxes,” but had raised some during his term in office.

          The Reagan-Bush years had an additional impact because they saw the rise of corporations for the sake of corporations regardless of the detriment to their employees. Companies were bought on borrowed money and merged with others while ruining some of them in the process. Employees lost their livelihood and the CEO’s bailed out with “golden parachutes.” The 1987 film “Wall Street” was emblematic and rings especially true in 2011.

          The Clinton 90’s continued to be the “era of greed” and decay of the social mores which had held the country together for over 200 years. Although the country was largely at peace, Madeleine Albright who had been on Clinton’s National Security team and became Foreign Secretary in 1997, was made of sterner stuff. At one point in 1993 she told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, in regard to Bosnia “What are you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can’t use it?” as recounted in her memoir (Read my Pins). Powell, who had seen war and knew what it led to, nearly became apoplectic. Eventually she did get her wish. It resulted in the establishment of an independent Kosovo, which by some is regarded as a “Narco State” (Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State by Tom Burghardt, February 29, 2008 in globalresearch.ca). This is not irrelevant for today’s events because the unilateral decision to declare independence from Serbia has been questioned on legal grounds, but was agreed to by the UN. It can serve as a precedent for the Palestinians seeking recognition as an independent state at present.

                The foreign policy objectives were, of course, declared to serve either “humanitarian” purposes or to fight terrorism. One may question, however, to what extent the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of bridges across the Danube improved the lives of civilians living there. Especially, since the ostensible goal the removal of a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, was not achieved until about a decade later. An ulterior motive such as the establishment of a brand new US military base, in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, has been swept under the rug and hardly anybody knows anything about it. For that information I encourage the reader to “google” the name of the camp and you will be amazed what you find.

Whoever thought that the demise of the Soviet Union would at last bring some modicum of peace to the world was, of couse, sorely mistaken. The Cold War seamlessly morphed into the “War on Terrorism,” which received a massive boost under Bush 43. Prior to the 2000 election he had promised a “Compassionate Conservatism,” which some of us interpreted that he would pursue a course where private enterprise thrives, but is sufficiently regulated to avoid the excesses of speculation and greed. Well, that did not work out either. His presidency became the greatest disaster in regard to foreign as well as domestic policies the country has seen. This is, of course, well known to most of us, but it shows that the general public by and large knows too little about the character and knowledge base of the person we elect to the presidency.

At this point a mea culpa is in place because I also believed that the son of a competent previous president and sitting governor of a large state would have the experience level which is required for the highest office in the country. I was aware that George W was deficient in regard to foreign policy but thought that competent advisors from the Reagan and Bush 41 era would prevent him from making serious mistakes. This assumption was based on having been ignorant about the fact that these advisors: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice had been hijacked by the Neocons where the “con” stands not only as an abbreviation for conservative but also convict. Since I have discussed this aspect in a number of previous essays on this site, which can be found by downloading the entire issues and then looking for the word “neocon,” nothing further needs to be said to this point at this time.

This brings us to the Obama presidency and 2011. Unfortunately, just as Bush 43, he has not been able to keep the promise upon which he was elected. This was in part due to similar reasons, with the most important one: lack of experience. As mentioned above I thought in former years that a lack of experience in certain areas of government could be made up by having competent advisors, but this was a false hope. Advisors have an agenda and unless the president has a sufficient background of information from personal experience he/she will be unable to sift fact from fancy. This is bad enough on the corporate level but disastrous when it happens to the CEO of the country.

In the beginning of this essay I mentioned that our country suffers from multisystem disease which now affects all levels of government. The framers of the Constitution had tried to avoid this fate. They had followed the advice of Montesquieu and created a system of checks and balances. An independent Judiciary was to watch over an independent Legislature which in turn curbed the power of the Executive. To Juvenal’s question Quis custodiet ipse custodias – Who oversees the guardians? the answer was: a Free Press. None of this is true at present because all four levels have been corrupted by the power of money and fear.

Let us start with the media. The ones which stream into our living rooms have been, to use the Nazi phrase, “gleichgeschaltet,” which might be rendered as “enforced uniformity.” Although they seemingly present different points of view they have to adhere to certain unspoken guidelines. There exists a censorship which is exerted not so much by government, as in authoritarian states, but a tacit understanding of the limits which are tolerated by the editor. These limits exist regardless of whether one deals with the print media or TV. The truth of this statement can readily be verified by consulting the Internet on controversial issues, such as the ones discussed here, and by reading the newspapers from countries other than ours. This is essential if one wants to obtain a reasonably accurate view of the forces governing our world. It is especially wholesome to read the views of those who are regarded as enemies because they can serve as teaching material. We don’t learn from people who agree with our point of view but only from those who disagree. But labeling them with some pejorative based on the political correctness of the time and country one lives in only perpetuates the cycles of fear and hate.

The Judiciary has likewise lost its independence by having fallen victim to party politics. Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and have to be confirmed by the Senate. As such, the President will only nominate those candidates who reflect the views of the political party he owes his own position to, while the senators of the two parties will probe the candidate for views which might disqualify him/her based on their own prejudices. The candidates have, of course, seen through this and learned to hide their personal views on such sensitive issues like abortion, and nowadays give bland answers. But a given party needs to fill only five of the nine seats with candidates who reflect its point of view. This leads to the current situation where a five against four vote frequently becomes the law of the land. It can even give us a president as was the case with Bush 43. Although all judges swear to uphold the Constitution, this document is constantly interpreted and re-interpreted to suit the whims of the individual judges. While minority reports can be rendered they have no force behind them.

I have already mentioned the election of Bush 43 by one vote of the Supreme Court which nullified the separation of the three powers, but another egregious 5-4 ruling also needs to be mentioned. In 2010 the Court used the 1^st amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees free speech, to rule “that government may not ban political contributions by corporations in candidate elections.” This ruling gutted all previous attempts by Congress to rid the election process of undue influence by big donors with the result that the money spent during the current election cycle is likely to reach $1 billion or more. Is this how we should spend money at this time? Furthermore, are labor unions also to be regarded as corporations? In addition, the individual member of a union or stockholder of a corporation may not agree with the choice of candidate the corporate powers chose to support. So how can the average citizen’s voice be heard in the most important aspect of the democratic process: a free and fair election?

The legislative power of Congress has also been corrupted. Inasmuch as it nowadays takes a great deal of money to be elected, the candidate will be duty bound to pay the piper thereafter. If he/she fails to do so re-election becomes out of the question. But re-election is the goal before the candidate even first sets foot into the Senate, House or White House. One term is regarded as failure and all the effort which should go into governing is diverted to chasing after money for re-election. To this one must add the 24 hour news cycle which focuses on the next election as soon as the new member of government has been sworn into office. Off-year elections are now geared towards the prevention of either party gaining a filibuster-proof majority. This renders Congress ineffective and results in its current dismal approval rating of 9%. But unless the election process is thoroughly revamped, which may actually require another Amendment to the Constitution, no improvement can be expected.

The President, as chief executive, is supposed to simply ensure that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed and nothing happens under his aegis which violates the Constitution. Well, this has also become fantasy. The most important aspect, namely to engage in acts of war, is now single handedly decided by the president, and Congress simply gets notified of the fact. Furthermore, presidents have discovered the power of the pen by issuing “signing statements,” which have the force of law. For instance when Bush 43 signed the Bill which prohibits torture, he added exemptions which rendered the intent of the law ineffective. In addition, executive orders can be issued which are to remain secret, such as the above mentioned one by Jimmy Carter in 1979. President Obama has also discovered the joys of wielding the executive pen. He joined the NATO effort to remove Gadhafi in Libya without congressional approval and his aides remarked that it was not taking sides in a civil war but merely a “kinetic military action.” He has also ramped up the drone war and engages in remote-control assassinations of people regarded as terrorists. Most recently he told Congress that he has dispatched one hundred military advisors to Uganda to help quell a rebellion. That the president of that country has engaged in the same atrocities as the rebel chief, and that the area where the rebels operate is also a newly discovered source of oil, one learns not from our free press but only the Internet.

It is obvious that the government as well as our two political parties, which serve as its base, have failed to address the real needs of the people whom they are supposed to represent. There is, therefore ample reason why people are thoroughly disgusted with the current state of affairs and a global climate change, not only in the meteorological but also the political sense, is under way. This aspect and additional reasons which feed the protests that have now reached our shores will be discussed in the next installment.