Milo and Clodius, the Death of the Republic, and the Privatization of Everythingby arendt
"While the potential dictators maneuvered for position, the capital filled with the odor of a dying democracy. Verdicts, offices, provinces, and client kings were sold to the highest bidder...When money failed, murder was available; or a man's past was raked over, and blackmail brought him to terms. Crime flourished in the city, brigandage in the country; no police force existed to control it. Rich men hired bands of gladiators to protect them, or to support them in the comitia. The lowest elements in Italy were attracted to Rome by the smell of money or the gift of corn, and made the meetings of the Assembly a desecration. Any man who would vote as paid was admitted to the rolls, whether citizen or not; sometimes only a minority of those who cast ballots were entitled to vote...Legislation came to be determined by the fluctuating superiority of rival gangs; those who voted the wrong way were, now and then, beaten to within an inch of their lives, after which their houses were set afire...
"Clodius and Milo were Rome's most distinguished experts in this brand of parliament. They organized rival bands of ruffians for political purposes, and hardly a day passed without some test of their strength.
- Will Durant, "The Story of Civilization: Part III, Caesar and Christ"
And now, thisI quote people because professional historians usually write much better than I do, and have a much deeper understanding of what is relevant in history than I do. Given that, anything I am writing today is a waste of your time. You should all be reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". It is a tour de force analysis of the gangster, "shock and awe" capitalism that has been let lose in the world by the Chicago School of economics. And, it is coming to the U.S. very, very soon.
If you can't afford the book, or don't have the time to read it, I highly recommend the lengthy and detailed review/synopsis of the book by Stephen Lendman
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10009We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.This post is going to be in "shorthand", because time is critical. Anyone not lobotomized by the corporate media is aware of at least three major crises that are being deliberately allowed to fester, with the intention of producing a "shock" that will allow the final destruction of democracy in America.
The three crises are:
1) the ongoing wars and provocations by our military in the Middle East (incuding the deliberate breakage of our military, and its replacement by a private mercenary army);
2) the deliberate destruction of the U.S. dollar and the U.S. manufacturing base by ongoing outsourcing and ruinous budget and trade deficits (which includes a huge component of military and DHS spending); and
3) the deliberate erasure of environmental protection or any adherence to world treaties about the environment, leading to increasing numbers of weather and eco-catastrophes that are perceived as opportunities to further destroy the government infrastructure and civil rights of people in the catastrophe zones.
America is now witnessing every behavior listed in the Durant quote above, right down to the Alabama witness against the show trial of the Dem governor who had her house burned down. The political scene is full of rightwing copies of Milo.
The left wing, however, is without any Clodius because, in America today, there are no Caesars to fund him. ( That is, Caesar, in the sense that someone spends significant real money in giveaways to the poor with the intent to organize them.) The closest thing the world has to a Caesar is Hugo Chavez. Now Hugo has given away a lot of money via cheap oil to poor people; and the best thing he has done is to help South America to buy its way out of IMF bondage. But he is chump change compared to the force the right can bring to bear.
You want to know what's coming? Think Crassus (the Laurence Olivier character in Spartacus) - the man who invented the fire department, and ran it for profit. He wouldn't fight a fire unless the victim gave him half or more of the stuff he saved from the fire. That's where America is headed with the privatization of government. And we are already halfway there with private prisons.
Recognizing that the end of the American Republic will occur long before the mirage of election 2008 vanishes in the heat haze, the main purpose of this post is to quote the Lendman review of Klein on what to do now:
"Klein notes another hopeful sign as well - shock effects were beginning to wear off, and in Argentina's 2001 economic crisis forced out five presidents in three weeks. It was spreading and most apparent in Latin America where it began with opponents of Chicago School doctrine winning elections like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, but he wasn't alone. It showed a renewed faith in democracy and condemnation of Washington Consensus dogma when people made a choice at the polls in free and open elections. Today's movements aren't replicas of the past, and one of the differences "is an acute awareness of the need for protection from shocks of the past" - coups, foreign shock therapists, torturers, debt and currency shocks.
"They've learned from the past and are building "shock absorbers into their organizing models." It's in movements less centralized, Venezuela's grassroots community councils, Brazil's Landless Peoples Movement, and the streets of Oaxaca, Mexico where thousands battled police since a year ago May and still won't quit. In addition, governments are rejecting old trade models and adopting new ones like Venezuela's ALBA bartering system making it less vulnerable to turbulent markets.
I encourage DUers to stop being keyboard commandos. DU is way too centralized. If you don't think the shock-and-awe that is coming to America will begin with shutting down or net-warring of the Internet, you are sleepwalking. The DU community is also way too isolated. So, while you still have some time, send an email to your friends at DU, or to people you respect at Kos or MoveOn, or ADS. And make sure they live within a few hours drive of you. Get organized before you get locked down.
I am taking my own advice. You will see a lot less of me, because I have some local support to find. I'm sure some will be happy for that.
In the hurricane that is being prepared for us, we will each need friends and allies in our neighborhoods to fight off the corporate takeover that is coming to privatize America. And those allies won't be sellout corporate Dems like Hillary, Barack, and John Edwards. Warmongers and healthcare sellouts all. People who will talk about the "danger" of Iran while the Constitution burns to cinders.
Yeah. You can call me paranoid. You can call Naomi Klein "hysterical". But, when Homeland Security comes to your door with the donor list from DU, you will call me "prescient". Its still a free website, although its now a dying democracy out there.
One last thing. In the dark days that are coming, don't be a "good German".