Re: Empire [message #98764 is a reply to message #98754] |
Fri, 11 July 2025 10:24   |
Rusty
Messages: 1400 Registered: May 2018 Location: Kansas City Missouri
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Illuminati (3rd Degree) |
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Maybe it may just be me on this tiny forum that senses that our country is causing the lion's share of dissension and chronic conflict in this world? Are Americans so isolated and complacent and gullible from what is happening that it would take conflict to reach our shores before we take notice?
Well that seems to be a general view though to how Americans view the world. We only have two rather well behaved countries bordering our sovereign space and two big oceans isolating us. Compare that over time to Europe, Russia and Asia. South America and Africa. Then there's the complacency of being a consumer society with all means of choices and temptation through advertising and the lure of immediate gratification through credit. We've been the center of the universe for a good century or more.
But at this juncture now the public is beset with issues of economic degradation. What's causing that? All the public gets informed with is that there's outside forces that are contributing to this issue. Like "China" and "BRICS". And our problems with debt have been brought on by personal choices that insinuates lack of personal discipline.
So our leadership claims that to deal with these issues we must invest in more commitment in a military deterrent to counter those outside forces. And at home we must cut out the wasteful entitlements that our society expects to make ends meet with the cost of living driven so high. Somehow it's the public's fault by being so lax in being consumer oriented and credit undisciplined. All while being bombarded with enticement ads and easy credit to fulfill their wishes. Never mind that it's our trade debt that is the true danger of default. All debt made in a sovereign nation can be forgiven, wiped out. It's foreign debt that gets tricky. And the faith in our dollar is shrinking internationally. Our banking too, which can collapse from overextension from chronic speculating. Everything can snowball into a deep recession and or depression.
How many might consider that our societal problems and our foreign policy have a similar root in how our economic philosophy is centered around a government which decided decades back to de-industrialize and ship manufacturing abroad to those backward 3rd world countries, "like China". And conversely and purposefully subjugate the government itself out of economic policy making. The market will take care of things. And big banking and Wall Street will call the shots by planning the economy.
You won't find much talk of how this system operates. And why do we keep using it as if there is virtually no other way to do things. Any other way is taboo especially if the word socialism is mentioned. We don't want to wind up like China, a communist country with no personal freedoms and slave labor. Isn't that the crap we're fed? Along with the crap about needing a bigger, deadlier, more expensive than ever military to counter all the threats in the world we imagine or make up.
Meanwhile our country has been virtually and constantly at war or planning for war or instigating war or using proxy military's for war since the 2nd half of the 20th century. All in a narrow minded concept of maintaining a world advantage and dominance that favors our wealthy elite. I'd say something is definitely wrong with that logic. But we deflect that notion with, well there's other countries doing that too. Who? What other country other than ours has been involved in so many international conflicts and regime changes by subversive revolutions? By realizing there is a pattern in all of this should give a clue that the ring leader is the United States of America.
We are not so powerful or omnipotent anymore but don't act it. While we were luxuriating so high with the privileges of high finance making a few people in our society wealthier than Egyptian gods. Other countries were wising up to our game that we play. They've banded together to counter our dishonesty in contrast to international laws and ways. And our leaders and wealthy oligarchy want to throw a wrench in their works.
And who does all this charade serve? Has it made our peoples livelihood more secure? Are we bulging at the seams with a happy, healthy and prosperous public? Maybe the top 10%. But It is definitely serving the interests of the few who call the shots in our economy. Our oil oligarchs, our banking and military complex oligarchs and a host of other influential wealthy elite that feel the world is their oyster that better not be tampered with. Or we'll sic our bad-assed military on you or some proxy military we can supply after all the sanctioning, regime change and financial skullduggery doesn't soften a country up enough to satisfy compliance with our way of keeping our status on top.
It's a matter of time that this charade will eventually bankrupt our society. But our politicians and definitely our wealthy elites want to keep on till that eventuality takes place. They don't care. Extreme wealth warps their minds and they believe they are in their position because they are almost ordained to be. They've "earned it" like the famous old Smith Barney commercial.
If that sounds like class warfare on them. Forget that. It's been the opposite forever. Wealth manipulating politics is as old as them thar hills. It permeates human history. And trying to cancel their hold on the electorate is one of the hardest endeavors a society can achieve. But it's necessary if we want to really claim we are a democracy. As it is, it's not. We are closer to the feudalism of old that the notion of capitalism would replace.
The BRICS countries that have formed with its roots in the 1950's Non Aligned Movement at the Bandung conference have the economic power now that the fragile Asian-African countries then didn't have. But the aim is the same. Hedging against the American led colonialist and imperialist countries that exploited that part of the world. And still feel compelled to maintain that hegemony.
The tables have turned on the great American power brokering. But we still have influence through our means of subversive subterfuge using bribes, threats and proxy warmongering to try and keep our hold on this power we have no rights to hold. Thus those outside forces are real and they are pitted against our notions of control. But they are interested in sharing the riches of the world by cooperation, respect of sovereign territory and the ethical international adherence to the laws that were originally the bylaws of the United Nations. That we routinely ignore and break with our rules based order. Our rules, our advantage.
Our country at this point in time, is on the wrong side of history. What say thee?
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Re: Empire [message #98777 is a reply to message #98768] |
Thu, 17 July 2025 11:21  |
Rusty
Messages: 1400 Registered: May 2018 Location: Kansas City Missouri
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Illuminati (3rd Degree) |
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All in all its just, (not) another BRICS in the wall. While the BRICS coalition has come a long way from its formation initially. It has a long way to go still in its ability to out maneuver western, (US) hegemony. Set up long ago after WWII. Using the IMF and World Bank to implement economic rent on the world not in the sphere of influence that the US imposed on that our European and Asian counterparts Australia, New Zealand and Japan vassals kneel to without question.
China and Russia are the two principle cornerstones of BRICS that our empire managers want to somehow break apart to keep our free lunch program going for our oligarchy. China is the main nut to crack out of its impressive rise of economic influence with manufacturing and industrial dominance. The globalization that the US once promoted zealously has come back to hinder our financialized method of creating monopoly rent for our elites benefit. Now free trade is a scourge to them. So extreme protectionist tariffs are being used by our administration as a means to try and pay tribute to our financialized hold on trade.
The key for the BRICS countries to wrestle freedom once and for all is to align their economies similarly like China has by doing a hybrid socialist capitalist economy that is very similar to how our own and Europe did at the onset of industrialization. The classical economists of old figured out that the free rent of the once feudal class was the impediment towards a competitive industrial economy in the world trade. Monopolization has always been a prime feature of capitalism. To corner the market. And then set the price of what the market will allow. Which invariably sets inflation to rise due to capitalist free rentier's imposing higher rents.
This is exactly what is going on inside our own economy as is. And the world market is the pearl in the oyster that our oligarchy wishes to perpetuate. The BRICS coalition is the impediment to that.
Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff discuss that state of what this pivotal point in history is at. It explains so much of what our current chaos in the world is all about. Chaos that our country alone, with a little help of our vassals on our leash are doing.
https://michael-hudson.com/2025/07/brics-vs-the-rentier-economy/
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