Class and warfare

The Slactivist has a useful suggestion for resisting the current transfer of money from the poor and the middle class to the rich--strip down credit card ads on campus. The credit card companies want nothing more than to have the students paying off a lifetime's worth of debt by the time they graduate and it's sick. I know people who are in their mid-30s still trying to catch up with charges they rang up before they turned 21. That's all this bankruptcy bill is about, making sure that nothing even slows down the process of transferring the wealth of the nation from the hands of the many to the hands of the few and getting us on track to being feudal as soon as possible.

Avedon Carol wonders what the Bushies think they're going to live on once they have finished pillaging our nation's assets. I have been wondering the same thing myself for a long time now--exactly how do Bush and his cronies picture their goals for this country? I mean, even though I'm thinking they want what is essentially a feudal society with them as the landed gentry, they are foolish to think that's going to happen if Americans aren't producing anything we can pay up in entitlements. Of course, the entitlements won't be a direct payment, but through a system of supressed wages, cronyism, and usury, the end result will be the same if they manage to get everything they want. But the lack of actual production inside our borders seems to be problematic for that theory.

Yesterday I was standing in line at 7-11 and sort of idly looking at the green "Support Our Troops" wristbands and I noticed that the box they were in said, "Until they come home." Meaning, I guess, wear the band until the troops return. And it made me sad to think about all the people who have purchased one of these bands and earnestly wear them until certain loved ones return from Iraq. To wear such a thing is to have faith that the troops will be coming home soon, that there is an end in sight and that the Shrub has good intentions with his war and will see to it that there is an end. But odds are the plan on the BushCo table is that once they can take enough troops out of Iraq, they will just invade another country, most likely Iran. The troops, in other words, aren't coming home.

Then it hit me--it isn't quite the feudal societies of Europe that are the aimed-for ideal, but the Roman Empire. Little fucker probably thinks he's Caesar. They don't plan to live on the assets of Americans but on the assets of other countries. A country that produces nothing still produces bodies, however, and that's probably what BushCo is thinking will be the key to getting at the assets of other countries. Take away our actual production and turn us into a military machine.....

Granted, it was a crazy thought but now that it has its claws in me, I see evidence of the plan everywhere. For instance, the sudden surge of leglislative attempts to strip women of their reproductive rights--most people tend to think it's a sop to the religious right, but viewed from another angle, it could be the first baby steps towards redefining women as bodies to produce more soliders, an attitude that's common to completely militarized societies. (Nazis, Spartans, you name it.) The almost insane push to strip Americans of their ability to stabilize their personal fortunes? Well, if you're poor, you can always join the military, now can't you?

I realize on a certain level, I'm not saying anything new--the neocon obsession with military power is the primary characteristic. Still, I can honestly say that I never thought that there might be an overall plan to turn us into a more militaristic society than we ever could have imagined. But now that I think about it, yeah, I think that there's a belief that this could be the century of the American Empire and the neocon plan for the next generation is to turn them into cannon fodder.