Jeff wrote:
We won't make western democracies out of either of our Bananastans. We won't eliminate corruption. We won't stem opium production. If we effect regime change we'll just be swapping out puppets. It's too late to keep them from becoming failed states because they already are.
The only problem with this statement is that it doesn't go far enough. He wrote:"...either of our Bananastans" and "It's too late to keep them from becoming failed states because they already are."
The truth of the matter is that we actually must deal with three failed states.
And the U.S. is the third one.
It's just so big that no one wants to come out and say so.
I have been writing on the web since 2003 about this failed state. Most often I use the phrase "rotted through and through" and I will stick to that idea here. Nothing is working here. Nothing. Not the mail, not the corporations, not the government, not the media, not the educational system, not the financial system, not the health system.
Nothing.
I also call it "the Verizonization of America" because I first realized it clearly while standing in a crowded Verizon store on Central Avenue in Yonkers, NY (a mostly working class suburban city outside of New York) somewhere around the year 2000 with my then-13 year old son. Nothing whatsoever was working. The crowd control was non-existent; the parking lot was in total chaos; the help had no idea about the products and services that they were supposed to be selling; the customers were stupid, angry and abusive both to each other and to the staff...a disaster in the making. I left after 10 minutes and just barely beat the arrival of the equally abusive Yonkers cops as they poured in to quell the mini-consumer riot that was brewing. My son and I sat across the road in our car and watched. It was deep.
It is now much deeper.
I could just as easily call it the McDonaldsization or the Micrososftization or the Citibankization or the Mass Mediaization of America.
We done got too big.
Too fucking big.
It's not power that corrupts, it is size. Over-complexity.
What we have here now is a failed state. Perhaps the largest, most powerful failed state in the history of the world. Certainly the most dangerously armed example of the species ever to exist.
The Tyrannosaurus Rexization of America.
And you know what happened to those bad boys, don't you?
They got taken down by "circumstances beyond their control."
And when they went down, who ate them?
Relatively weak, furry little critters.
Like these fools.
Yup.
Bet on it.
As above, so below, if we do not get our shit together and get it together soon.
Walt Kelley was right. We have met the enemy, and it is us.
The big enemy.
The big big, BIG failed state.
The United States of Enronization.
The Madoffness of it all.
Many people are now predicting the fall of the United States. The big breakup. Back in the U.S.S.R. redux.
Look at this map.
Look, please, and not in any sort of partisan way.
As could be plainly seen during the end of the Bush era and right on through the 2008 election, the Limbaughs have a solid 30+% of this country in terms of population. Then there is the so-called "swing vote" and the solid 20%-30% that is Democratic. Capture about 1/2 of the swing vote and you win. It's that simple. Obama did it, the old man didn't. BUT...besides getting over 45% of the total vote, the Reds also won in what looks to be about 80% in terms of land.
UH oh!!!
My guess is that they also have well over 60% or 70% of the military.
Oh SHIT!!!
Check it out. The red nation is mostly rural and thus very hard to control while the blue nation is mostly urban and thus siege worthy at the very least.
Modern seige. YOU know...turn off the power, stop the food supply, blockade the egress routes and sit back and watch 'em self-destruct?
Yup. Like that.
My guess is that NYC would go down in under a week. LA even quicker. (They're not so used to scuffling, them left coast softies.) Others would follow.
Where's yer Blue State then motherfuckers?
"Ohhhh...THAT couldn't happen!!!" say the bourgeois leftiness softies.
Wise the fuck up. Of course it could. Why do you think the Romans tried to keep various generals and their legions out in the sticks after the wars were won?
OR lost.
Barack Obama likes to compare himself and his position to Lincoln's. Let us all pray that he doesn't get that for which he apparently longs. I suspect that the result wpuld be radically different this time around.
Jeff, let me ask you this question. What percentage of the personnel that comprise the U.S. military...and I am talking here about personal ties, not oaths of service, duty or any other subjective ideas...what percentage of that personnel is intimately connected by blood and history to the red portions of the above map and what percentage is connected to the blue areas?
Hmmmm....
Maybe we're actually better off with the military engaged in unwinnable wars in the Absurdistans for a while longer, eh? Rather than winnable ones at home?
That's what I am smelling, anyway.
I hope that I am wrong, but the stench is growing unbearable to me.
Admittedly, I've got a keen sense of smell, but there it is.
Let us pray that it is just a passing odor.
Some skunk or stinking possum lumbering by downwind.
Let us pray.
Or be preyed upon.
Watch.
We are all Watchmen, now. Watching the tides of history and hoping that there are no tsunamis in the immediate offing.
Watch.
And like I said...let us pray.
Later...
AG
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