How America Was Lost: A Chronicle of Our Decline

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

 -George Orwell

I just picked up a copy of the new book by Paul Craig Roberts “How America Was Lost” and must say that it is an impressive chronicle of the decline of what was once at least theoretically a free country into a sucking black hole of fascism, corruption and the moral abrogation that has made it all possible. Dr. Roberts, a former assistant Treasury Secretary in the Reagan administration, associate Editor at the pre-Murdoch Wall Street Journal and a prolific columnist calls it as he sees it and it is not a pretty sight. In “How America Was Lost” a wide ranging selection of his columns spanning the years from 2008-2013, the author spares the criminal Washington establishment nothing in crusading against the moral rot of the warfare and police state that erupted out of the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center to wage a bitter war of attrition against the US Constitution as well as traditional American values.

 I have long been a fan of Dr. Roberts having first read his work when as a principled conservative he dared to utter the heresy that the Bush administration and the larger Republican party were something of an abomination with much in common with traditional foreign totalitarian regimes. He as others who dared to blaspheme the gospel of the neoconservative Project For the New American Century were run out of the GOP as the ideological purity purge raged.  Those were dark days, prior to the advent of the modern internet and social networking as they exist today as the last refuge for those who dare to seek the truth and to question the agenda and actions of the criminals in high places, primarily Washington.

EXCERPTS

Will Americans wake up in time? I wish I could answer, “yes,” but I regret that Americans are an insouciant people. They are unaware. Americans are more concerned with sports events, sales, and which celebrities are sleeping together than they are with their liberty. Washington can create a police state, because there are insufficient citizens with the intelligence, education, and awareness to stop Washington.

(from Obama’s Expanding Kill List)

US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”

US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.

If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.

(from The Collapse of Western Morality)

Republicans and conservative Americans are still fighting Big Government in its welfare state form. Apparently, they have never heard of the militarized police state form of Big Government, or, if they have, they are comfortable with it and have no objection.

Republicans, including those in the House and Senate, are content for big government to initiate wars without a declaration of war or even Congress’ assent, and to murder with drones citizens of countries with which Washington is not at war. Republicans do not mind that federal “security” agencies spy on American citizens without warrants and record every email, Internet site visited, Facebook posting, cell phone call, and credit card purchase. Republicans in Congress even voted to fund the massive structure in Utah in which this information is stored.

But heaven forbid that big government should do anything for a poor person.

(from The Institutionalizaton of Tyranny)

The only shortcoming and this is by no means any sort of criticism is that the book really only covers the descent during the period of the reign of Barack Obama. This may sell the great work of Dr. Roberts short in the opinion of some in that he has not included the Bush years in which he was as honest and vigorous a critic of Obama’s war criminal predecessor as he is of the current occupant of the Oval Office. I would love to see a future volume published that includes the hundreds of fine pieces that he wrote during the period leading up to 2008. He does however have a website which has an archive of this work and I would strongly recommend checking it out. It can however be argued that the Obama regime has been far more damaging to the long-term prospects of America in that the current narcissist in chief has not only codified the crimes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their burgeoning list of accomplices in a myriad of high crimes but in many ways refined upon them.

Obama as we have learned thanks to the patriotic efforts of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden presided over the expansion of a metastasizing high-tech surveillance colossus that spies on millions of otherwise law abiding Americans and then stores the data that has been mined for some vaguely defined future use. This will surely be available for when one of Obama’s successors decides that it is time to truly up the ante and begin the pickups, inquisitions, detentions, show trials and perhaps even executions. He has also presided over the new drone warfare programs that have been used for the targeted killings of American citizens without due process.

The true measure of one’s credibility in these sad days of imperial overreach and ultimately collapse is consistency and Paul Craig Roberts has been as much so as they are when it comes to taking on the forces that have overseen the transformation of America into The Homeland.

Published by Clarity Press

http://www.claritypress.com/RobertsAnthology.html

A Monument to the Exceptional

It is an exceptionally mighty symbol of an exceptional people. Rising up into the skies above lower Manhattan like a gleaming, giant steel and glass phallus, it is official that One World Trade Center is to be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Oh what a pure  example of the American whup-ass pride of the twenty first century because ours is now bigger and they whoever dareth to try to knock it down this time shall feel the wrath of God himself sent forth from the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan with nuclear tipped missiles. It is yet another very disturbing illustration of the post September 11, 2001 world of down the rabbit hole, hit the reset button on history parallel reality that the state-corporate media heralded the tallest building in America and in the top three on the entire planet. Thanks to the length of the 400 + foot antenna we are number fucking one and in a land desecrated by economic collapse, moral decay, terminal dumbness and eternal war that means one hell of a lot to many. You can’t exactly eat it nor use it for shelter but boy oh boy, you can sure run that shining symbol of American pride right up the flagpole and salute. God bless America!

I imagine that sounds pretty damned sardonic, let alone downright unpatriotic to some but in the proto-fascist wasteland that is 2013 where all that this country once stood for has been dragged through a trough of shit thanks to legions of corrupt politicians, criminal gamblers, warmongers, stone cold authoritarians and corporate parasites it is at least in my opinion deserving of mockery.  While the wonderful and healing nature of the new 3.9 billion dollar tower is marveled at in state-corporate media pieces that peddle dreck to morons, others such as this one in Bloomberg push “large supply of class A space that will be accumulating in the Trade Center area” and quote the very embodiment of the ugly American that is Donald Trump in how to sell square footage to potential occupants.

The 9/11 attacks were the basis for a radical reconfiguration of our society and would justify every rotten restriction of civil liberties, foreign war and taxpayer dollar what was sucked into the maw of the monstrous security industrial complex that was created. The attacks have allowed for the empire to speak loudly and wave its big stick of military power at the Muslim world. The two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought economic ruination to this once wealthy and powerful country and while yet another one was just avoided in Syria there is much agitating this week for a new one in Iran. We have become a far more warlike nation, not that this country’s history is not saturated with wars but there was at least the pretense of ramping down and ending them. Today, thanks to September 11, 2011 providing the impetus we are as Orwell’s Oceania, and the most harrowing thought of all is that there are now children approaching their early teenage years who have known no world other than that of The Homeland. There is no way out of all of this that is good, in twenty or thirty years - provided that the country still exists which is no given with the constant pushing for Middle Eastern wars with the allies of China and Russia that could trigger nuclear Armageddon – the positions of power will be occupied by the new generation who have known no other world than that of paranoia and fear, retribution and propaganda. For the rest of the world, you are either with us or against us.

Were there any deviation from the course it was eliminated on September 11, 2011 when with the tenth anniversary of the attacks that the new national religion was established. As former Reagan administration official turned establishment critic Paul Craig Roberts so aptly put it at the time: "In the US on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, politicians and their presstitute media presented Americans with "A Day of Remembrance," a propaganda exercise that hardened the 9/11 lies into dogma". The day was on a Sunday and the ultimate corporate propaganda institution that is the National Football League used their games to hammer it home. Ordinarily an NFL game is nauseatingly drenched in jingoist nationalism, the skies are filled with millions of dollars of flying death pre-game as the field length old glory tarps are rolled out and the military marching units provide a pre-coin flip and halftime presence. This past weekend’s Veterans Day games were gut wrenching enough but on 9/11/11 it was total overkill. Yet it provided the historical stamp of approval on the story, there would be no more questioning tolerated of the attacks being the blowback generated by militarist U.S. foreign policies and anything less than total supplication of oneself to the 9/11 born state of post democratic America would result in shunning or worse. The NSA’s Utah facility is going to be filled with the online, purchase and communications data of any and all who have ever dared to blaspheme our glorious ascension as a red, white and blue phoenix from the crater where the original twin towers stood.

9/11 became the basis for the new society of the new American century.  Take for example, radio host Glenn Beck built a lucrative and somewhat influential political organization based on the “9/12” show of national unity in the aftermath of the attacks. It drew heavily from disaffected former members of the Republican base seething with resentment at Obama, Muslims and other ridiculous invocations of the flim-flam man Beck who trafficked in conspiracy mongering and self-enrichment. He is an establishment friendly ripoff of Alex Jones and subsequently parted ways with establishment GOP propaganda organ Fox News.The yearning for national unity is understandable in this fragmented land of woe but it is a very dangerous thing when a demagogue is able to harness it. The real national unity movement should be for a “9/10” reversal of the fascism that erupted when the towers fell, it could start with a renouncement of all foreign wars, especially those in the Middle East in which our “allies” in Tel Aviv and Riyadh continue to push for this very week. The revocation - and that is TOTAL revocation of the PATRIOT Act as well as the defunding of the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance programs would be required as well. The last thing to really rally round the flag together for is the restoration of the rule of law and every war criminal and exploiter and their media accomplices should be tried as enemies of the state and put into prison where they belong.

But that will not happen in that there are too many vested interests and the disease has become too deeply embedded in the national character. Instead of mustering the courage and strength that could save us while there is still a limited window of opportunity it is easier to go along with the programs, absorb the propaganda as it is delivered to indoctrinate through professional sporting contests and television series such as Homeland and bow before the false idols of an exceptional greatness - like the gleaming imagery of the tallest building in the land, One World Trade Center and the sanctified ground upon which it was erected.

For freedom, for glory, for God – now leasing.