Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The only way to govern successfully is to actually solve the underlying systemic problems, but doing that requires overthrowing a corrupt, self-serving elite.
Regardless of who wins the presidency, a much larger question looms: will the U.S. be ungovernable 2017-2020? There are multiple sources of the question.
One is of course the remarkable unpopularity of the two candidates for the presidency. For all the reasons that are tiresomely familiar, whomever wins the presidency will remain deeply unpopular with roughly 40% of the adult populace.
Though we can’t say “never,” let’s say it’s “extremely unlikely” that fans of Hillary Clinton will cotton to Donald Trump, or vice versa: both candidates have been public figures for decades, and it is highly unlikely that the usual “I will serve all the people” speech given by the new president will change many minds.
It’s not too difficult to foresee not just gridlock, but angry gridlock. Neither candidate can count on even the slightest shreds of goodwill from the other party, and with bi-partisanship already dead on arrival, precisely how much governance can any deeply reviled president offer the nation?
Whether pundits like it or not, one issue that will not go away after the election is the dominance of the nation’s financial and political elite: the top .01%. As many of us in the alternative media, and to a lesser but still significant degree, in the mainstream media have been noting, the dominance of the elite class of financiers and politicos has increased in the 21st century.
I have described this in a number of ways: the state-cartel model, neofeudalism (with the bottom 95% being either debt-serfs or dependents on state bread and circuses), or the neocolonialial-financialization model: The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (May 24, 2012).
Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown and White House Burning: Our National Debt and Why It Matters to You, described this as The Quiet Coup in a seminal 2009 essay:
“The finance industry has effectively captured our government–a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”
Regardless of who they vote for, an increasing number of Americans are coming to understand that their oppressors are not foreign “terrorists” but homegrown elites who have become wealthier and thus more powerful in the past seven years of “prosperity.”
As I have shown many times, the top 5% of households have done very very well in the past few decades, and the bottom 95% have at best clung on and at worst seen the purchasing power of their earnings plummet.
You can’t fix this without overthrowing the status quo. Policy tweaks such as “more job training,” more social benefits, tax cuts for the middle class–none of those simulacra reforms will change the dynamic or the power structure of the U.S.
And since nobody in power is going to change the status quo that so richly benefits them, the resentment of the power elites will only grow in the next four years. The other unspoken issue is that the bottom 95% are starting to see through the Ministry of Propaganda’s unrelenting spew of fake factoids and “happy talk good news”:
All the “red button” issues boil down to this: the top .01% make all the important decisions to serve their own interests; the top 5% of technocrats and professionals who have done very well for themselves in the past seven years will support the elites, and the bottom 95% are effectively powerless– not just politically, but financially.
I would argue that Simon Johnson’s financial coup is 50 years behind the governance coup in which the Deep State decided the “people” must be stripped of power lest they mess up “what’s best for them,” which is of course decided for them by the elitist organs of the Deep State, which I have sketched out here:
You see the dilemma for the elites running the nation: if they keep exploiting the nation for their own benefit, they risk a social revolution that threatens their cozy state-cartel arrangement.
But if they return some power to the people–well, the people might actually renounce the Imperial Project, endless war, saber-rattling, and elite dominance of the nation.
Regardless of who wins the election, the U.S. will be ungovernable in a period of self-reinforcing crises. All the flim-flam financial gambits that created the illusion of prosperity are falling apart, and the Imperial Project is losing its grip on the narratives and on the ground.
The only way to govern successfully is to actually solve the underlying systemic problems, but doing that requires overthrowing a corrupt, self-serving elite, the same elite that will never relinquish its power or its wealth.
The ONLY way to de-thrown the elite, is to cut them off from their “oxygen” – that is the Federal Reserve and the legality of them being able to manufacture “productivity” by printing money with no production. Period, full stop. Until and unless that happens, the people of this nation will be controlled by those elite through their Mortgages (control of their place to live), Credit Cards (some must now have to afford food) , Education (and the perceived future that brings) through student loans, transportation through car financing etc. People would not NEED credit or the slavery that goes with it IF the Federal Reserve system, and their member banks could not raise the “price” of these things, through the mechanism of inflation, beyond the reach of the average CASH buyer. The only people who cannot be controlled, are those wise enough to have learned, or inherently know, that debt to the banking system is SLAVERY and MUST be renounced AS SOON AS POSSIBLE through debt payoff. If everyone was free of the chains of student loans, credit card debt, mortgages and various other “debt instruments” the people would rise and have their REAL voice heard, and not be forced to be a cog in a wheel of deception and slavery. ANYONE who wishes to be truly free, and wants to face the REAL ENEMY, needs to burn the following excerpt from USA Banker’s Magazine, August 25, 1924 in to their mind, and then reference often when thinking of issues from war with other countries to poverty in this one to student loan debt and controlled, corrupt politicians.
“Capital must protect itself in every possible manner by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages must be foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through a process of law, the common people lose their homes they will become more docile and more easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of government, applied by a central power of wealth under control of leading financiers. This truth is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of Capital to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance. Thus by discreet action we can secure for ourselves what has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”
We became a nation divided as the number of people receiving every sort of imaginable entitlement became an increasingly larger percentage of our population, until where it’s finally at – about 50%. Can you imagine a county where only 50% of the people work, and are forced by law (taxes) to support the other 50%? Does this build harmony? And for the sake of diversity, the Democrats want to import more, dependent turd worlder’s.
Who wouldn’t resent the FSA and their Democrat leaders? This is what is going to make the country ‘ungovernable’. There’s is no fixing it.
Then Hillary, says ‘we are great right now’. Well maybe the low IQ Neegrows, and SPICS believe this – but us 50% who are paying the bill don’t think so.
Are my comments being deleted? 🙁
Well, this one wasn’t.
Disappearing comments happen now and then, I’ve had it happen, I suspect some sort of glitched spam filter or something since it isn’t consistent and doesn’t seem context related.
I’m reading Yanis Varoufakis: The Global Minotaur. He is the former finance minister of Greece. He has a proposition that a state must either be a surplus or a deficit state. In the end one’s surpluses are another’s deficits. The US drifted out of surpluses in 1971 and had to break Brenton Woods after using its surpluses (recycling surpluses) to rebuild the rest of the world after WWII.
After reading his book “and the week suffer what they must”, I get the impression he is not that “leftist” at all and is more upset with the gifting in the system that leads to exploitation of the weak. I see Krugman and his ilk as far worse economists.
It “volunteered” itself as the world’s recycler of other country’s surpluses after it had no more surpluses to give.
It is an interesting from that view point. He proposes that a fixed rate currency exchange (Gold, Euro, etc) will eventually all fail unless there is some surplus recycling method build in. I am not sure if a gold system would be viable in a world of instant capital transfers, the added leverage of fractional reserve lending, and the ability of a country to manipulate the currency supply and interest rates.
The dollar hegemony since 1971 might be beneficial for the American “state” ie. getting something for nothing and having the rest of the world finance it with their surpluses, but it certainly has taken its toll on the middle and lower class.
The video below gives an intro to the concept.
Sadly as I watched helplessly as an apprentice mechanic in heavy industry at 18 in 1973 to now the total dismantling of American industry and the accusatory attitude that it was wages and benefits that destroyed competition and rendered us unprofitable . No mention of the gradual influx of illegals polluting the entry level wage scales and trade treaties profiting a small minority 1% and politicians using their voting power for self interests , you don’t earn $130 grand for 10 years and become a millionaire ! Corruption so obvious and yet in the media it was union wages that brought us down and now “THEY” have over played their collective hand and are smelling tar,feathers and torches and just can’t seem to understand it ? Well fly away if you can or hide in your panic room your token black in the White House did what you wanted and wow surprise it’s all fucked up now ! Like a diseased field you must burn it till it under and then start over but you our former representatives will be watching from a cage you will not be forgiven your crimes run to deep ! I hope we can save our nation but I sincerely doubt it !