Saturday 30th of March 2024

god on our side and we don't care which god…...

“The American Century Is Over.” So claims the July 2022 cover of Harper’s Magazine, adding an all-too-pertinent question: “What’s Next?”

What, indeed? Eighty years after the United States embarked upon the Great Crusade of World War II, a generation after it laid claim to the status of sole superpower following the fall of the Berlin Wall and two decades after the Global War on Terror was to remove any lingering doubts about who calls the shots on Planet Earth, the question could hardly be more timely.

 

BY Andrew Bacevich

 


Empire Burlesque,” Daniel Bessner’s Harper’s cover story, provides a useful, if preliminary, answer to a question most members of our political class, preoccupied with other matters, would prefer to ignore. Yet the title of the essay contains a touch of genius, capturing as it does in a single concise phrase the essence of the American Century in its waning days.

On the one hand, given Washington’s freewheeling penchant for using force to impose its claimed prerogatives abroad, the imperial nature of the American project has become self-evident. When the U.S. invades and occupies distant lands or subjects them to punishment, concepts like freedom, democracy, and human rights rarely figure as more than afterthoughts. Submission, not liberation defines the underlying, if rarely acknowledged, motivation behind Washington’s military actions, actual or threatened, direct or through proxies.

 

On the other hand, the reckless squandering of American power in recent decades suggests that those who preside over the American imperium are either stunningly incompetent or simply mad as hatters. Intent on perpetuating some form of global hegemony, they have accelerated trends toward national decline, while seemingly oblivious to the actual results of their handiwork.

Consider the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. It has rightly prompted a thorough congressional investigation aimed at establishing accountability. All of us should be grateful for the conscientious efforts of the House Select Committee to expose the criminality of the Trump presidency. Meanwhile, however, the trillions of dollars wasted and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost during our post-9/11 wars have been essentially written off as the cost of doing business. Here we glimpse the essence of 21st-century bipartisanship, both parties colluding to ignore disasters for which they share joint responsibility, while effectively consigning the vast majority of ordinary citizens to the status of passive accomplices.

Bessner, who teaches at the University of Washington, is appropriately tough on the (mis)managers of the contemporary American empire. And he does a good job of tracing the ideological underpinnings of that empire back to their point of origin. On that score, the key date is not 1776, but 1941. That was the year when the case for American global primacy swept into the marketplace of ideas, making a mark that persists to the present day.

God on Our Side

The marketing began with the Feb. 17, 1941, issue of Life magazine, which contained a simply and elegantly titled essay by Henry Luce, its founder and publisher. With the American public then sharply divided over the question of whether to intervene on behalf of Great Britain in its war against Nazi Germany — this was 10 months before Pearl Harbor — Luce weighed in with a definitive answer: he was all in for war. Through war, he believed, the United States would not only overcome evil but inaugurate a golden age of American global dominion.

Life was then, in the heyday of the print media, the most influential mass-circulation publication in the United States. As the impresario who presided over the rapidly expanding Time-Life publishing empire, Luce himself was perhaps the most influential press baron of his age. Less colorful than his flamboyant contemporary William Randolph Hearst, he was politically more astute. And yet nothing Luce would say or do over the course of a long career promoting causes (mostly conservative) and candidates (mostly Republican) would come close to matching the legacy left by that one perfectly timed editorial in Life’s pages.

When it hit the newsstands, “The American Century” did nothing to resolve public ambivalence about how to deal with Adolf Hitler. Events did that, above all Japan’s Dec. 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet once the United States did enter the war, the evocative title of Luce’s essay formed the basis for expectations destined to transcend World War II and become a fixture in American political discourse.

During the war years, government propaganda offered copious instruction on “Why We Fight.” So, too, did a torrent of posters, books, radio programs, hit songs, and Hollywood movies, not to speak of publications produced by Luce’s fellow press moguls. Yet when it came to crispness, durability, and poignancy, none held a candle to “The American Century.” Before the age was fully launched, Luce had named it.

Even today, in attenuated form, expectations Luce articulated in 1941 persist. Peel back the cliched phrases that senior officials in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon routinely utter in the Biden years — “American global leadership” and “the rules-based international order” are favorites — and you encounter their unspoken purpose: to perpetuate unchallengeable American global primacy until the end of time.

To put it another way, whatever the “rules” of global life, the United States will devise them. And if ensuring compliance with those rules should entail a resort to violence, justifications articulated in Washington will suffice to legitimize the use of force.

In other words, Luce’s essay marks the point of departure for what was, in remarkably short order, to become an era when American primacy would be a birthright. It stands in relation to the American empire as the Declaration of Independence once did to the American republic. It remains the urtext, even if some of its breathtakingly bombastic passages are now difficult to read with a straight face.

Using that 1941 issue of Life as his bully pulpit, Luce summoned his fellow citizens to “accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world” to assert “the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.” (Emphasis added.) For the United States duty, opportunity, and destiny aligned. That American purposes and the means employed to fulfill them were benign, indeed enlightened, was simply self-evident. How could they be otherwise?

Crucially — and this point Bessner overlooks — the duty and opportunity to which Luce alluded expressed God’s will. Born in China where his parents were serving as Protestant missionaries and himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, Luce saw America’s imperial calling as a Judeo-Christian religious obligation. God, he wrote, had summoned the United States to become “the Good Samaritan to the entire world.” Here was the nation’s true vocation: to fulfill the “mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the Psalmist called a little lower than the angels.”

In the present day, such towering ambition, drenched in religious imagery, invites mockery. Yet it actually offers a reasonably accurate (if overripe) depiction of how American elites have conceived of the nation’s purpose in the decades since.

Today, the explicitly religious frame has largely faded from view. Even so, the insistence on American singularity persists. Indeed, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary — did someone mention China? — it may be stronger than ever.

In no way should my reference to a moral consensus imply moral superiority. Indeed, the list of sins to which Americans were susceptible, even at the outset of the American Century, was long. With the passage of time, it has only evolved, even as our awareness of our nation’s historical flaws, particularly in the realm of race, gender, and ethnicity, has grown more acute. Still, the religiosity inherent in Luce’s initial call to arms resonated then and survives today, even if in subdued form. 

While anything but an original thinker, Luce possessed a notable gift for packaging and promotion. Life’s unspoken purpose was to sell a way of life based on values that he believed his fellow citizens should embrace, even if his own personal adherence to those values was, at best, spotty.

The American Century was the ultimate expression of that ambitious undertaking. So even as growing numbers of citizens in subsequent decades concluded that God might be otherwise occupied, something of a killjoy, or simply dead, the conviction that U.S. global primacy grew out of a divinely inspired covenant took deep root. Our presence at the top of the heap testified to some cosmic purpose. It was meant to be. In that regard, imbuing the American Century with a sacred veneer was a stroke of pure genius.

In God We Trust?

By the time Life ended its run as a weekly magazine in 1972, the American Century, as a phrase and as an expectation, had etched itself into the nation’s collective consciousness. Yet today, Luce’s America — the America that once cast itself as the protagonist in a Christian parable — has ceased to exist. And it’s not likely to return anytime soon.

At the outset of that American Century, Luce could confidently expound on the nation’s role in furthering God’s purposes, taking for granted a generic religious sensibility to which the vast majority of Americans subscribed. Back then, especially during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, most of those not personally endorsing that consensus at least found it expedient to play along. After all, except among hipsters, beatniks, dropouts, and other renegades, doing so was a precondition for getting by or getting ahead.

As Eisenhower famously declared shortly after being elected president, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.”

 

Today, however, Ike’s ecumenical 11th commandment no longer garners anything like universal assent, whether authentic or feigned. As defining elements of the American way of life, consumption, lifestyle, and expectations of unhindered mobility persist, much as they did when he occupied the White House. But a deeply felt religious faith melded with a similarly deep faith in an open-ended American Century has become, at best, optional. Those nursing the hope that the American Century may yet make a comeback are more likely to put their trust in AI than in God.

Occurring in tandem with this country’s global decline has been a fracturing of the contemporary moral landscape. For evidence, look no further than the furies unleashed by recent Supreme Court decisions related to guns and abortion. Or contemplate former President Donald Trump’s place in the American political landscape — twice impeached, yet adored by tens of millions, even while held in utter contempt by tens of millions more. That Trump or another similarly divisive figure could succeed Joe Biden in the White House looms as a real, if baffling, possibility.

More broadly still, take stock of the prevailing American conception of personal freedom, big on privileges, disdainful of obligations, awash with self-indulgence, and tinged with nihilism. If you think our collective culture is healthy, you haven’t been paying attention.

For “a nation with the soul of a church,” to cite British writer G.K. Chesterton’s famed description of the United States, Luce’s proposal of a marriage between a generic Judeo-Christianity and national purpose seemed eminently plausible. But plausible is not inevitable, nor irreversible. A union rocked by recurring quarrels and trial separations has today ended in divorce. The full implications of that divorce for American policy abroad remain to be seen, but at a minimum suggest that anyone proposing to unveil a “New American Century” is living in a dreamworld.

Bessner concludes his essay by suggesting that the American Century should give way to a “Global Century… in which U.S. power is not only restrained but reduced, and in which every nation is dedicated to solving the problems that threaten us all.” Such a proposal strikes me as broadly appealing, assuming that the world’s other 190-plus nations, especially the richer, more powerful ones, sign on. That, of course, is a very large assumption, indeed. Negotiating the terms that will define such a Global Century, including reapportioning wealth and privileges between haves and have-nots, promises to be a daunting proposition.

Meanwhile, what fate awaits the American Century itself? Some in the upper reaches of the establishment will, of course, exert themselves to avert its passing by advocating more bouts of military muscle-flexing, as if a repetition of Afghanistan and Iraq or deepening involvement in Ukraine will impart to our threadbare empire a new lease on life. That Americans in significant numbers will more willingly die for Kyiv than they did for Kabul seems improbable.

Better in my estimation to give up entirely the pretensions Henry Luce articulated back in 1941. Rather than attempting to resurrect the American Century, perhaps it’s time to focus on the more modest goal of salvaging a unified American republic. One glance at the contemporary political landscape suggests that such a goal alone is a tall order. On that score, however, reconstituting a common moral framework would surely be the place to begin.

Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible StatecraftHis new book Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars, co-edited with Danny Sjursen, will be out next month.

This article is from TomDispatch.com.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 

 

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of the importance of cowshit…..

 

BY 

Michael Warren Davis

 

America, with conservatives’ blessing, has become utterly dependent on big corporations. We rely on the global supply chain and its left-wing gatekeepers for everything from food to clothes to medicine. Hell, the United States imports more than $7 billion in fertilizer each year.

That’s from my book The Reactionary Mind. (My editor, a paragon of good taste, removed the next sentence:  “We don’t even make our own cowshit.”) I chose the fertilizer example because it was self-evidently ridiculous. And yet, lo and behold, we’re now hurtling towards a food crisis thanks to the global fertilizer shortage

Why is there a fertilizer shortage, you ask?  Because the United States imports 93 percent of our potash, a key nutrient used in making fertilizer, while Russia and Belarus are responsible for 40 percent of the global potash supply.

Naturally, the folks who decided to make us dependent on fertilizer imports are the same people who decided to blockade Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. That should tell you everything you need to know about our ruling class.

But it gets worse. The same Very Smart People who orchestrated the fertilizer shortage are also working hard to blacklist the cattle industry. Cow farts are tearing a hole in the ozone, they argue, which is why they have to cripple our ranchers with new methane taxes. It’s getting so bad in the Netherlands that cattle farmers are in open revolt against the Dutch government. 

 

No cows, no cowshit.

These Very Smart People are poised to upend the global economy. And they don’t care. Many of them, like Bill Gates, publicly fantasize about switching the developed world to synthetic beef. They want to drive all those ranchers—about 500 million around the world—out of business. They would gladly force us all to eat their nasty Impossible Whoppers. For them, this isn’t an unfortunate side-effect of saving the planet. It’s the reason they get out of bed in the morning. 

 

This is evil. More than that, it’s unbelievably stupid. By sanctioning Russia, the people who want us all to eat plant-based meat substitutes are also making it harder to grow the plants used to make those plant-based meat substitutes. Bill Gates and his fellow oligarchs are attacking meat farmers andvegetable farmers at the same time.

You can’t make this up.

By the way, whenever you mention Bill Gates, people assume you’re talking about progressives. Yet conservatives also deserve credit for this catastrophe. They’re the ones who are constantly going on about the blessings of capitalism and free trade. 

To be fair, a trained economist could probably tell you how we save eight cents per ton by making our Illuminati Burgers out of soy grown with fake Russian dung—assuming stable global markets, of course. But, as everyone without an economics degree knows, global markets aren’t stable. 

To you and me, it’s obviously a bad idea to become dependent on fertilizer imports. It’s obviously a bad idea to become dependent on any import that your people literally can’t live without. Obviously, it’s an especially bad idea when that industry is dominated by a hostile power. Obviously. To you and me, this is all clear as day. But that’s because we’ve never studied economics.

“Aha!” the economists cry. “It would have been fine, though, if we’d only kept up peaceful relations with Russia.” Well, I doubt that. But let’s say they’re right, just for the sake of argument. Haven’t those economists been feeding from the same trough as the foreign-policy hawks—the ones who’ve been urging the United States to invade Russia since 1947?

Neoliberals argue that, the more dependent nations become on a global supply chain, the less likely we are to start World War III. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you; so, as long as we’re all feeding each other, we should be fine. Yet not only did that fail in practice, it wasn’t even our working theory.

For decades, the elites of both parties been advocating for both “free trade” and “wars of democracy.”  We became more dependent on the nations we intended to invade. We fed the crocodile, hoping it wouldn't eat us next. Honestly, the Gateses and the Kochs and the Clintons and the Bushes might as well have walked around Indiana setting wheat fields on fire, for all the good they did us.

This is why I say all conspiracy theories are nonsense. There’s no secret cabal of the rich and powerful controlling human affairs. There is a cabal, of course, and they do control human affairs. But it’s not a secret. They go on TV and brag about it.

We invent these fantasies about an omniscient, omnipotent elite because the truth is so much more terrible: our rulers have no earthly idea what they’re doing. There are no satanic pedophiles, no chemtrails, no alien overlords. There’s no false flag, no second gunman. There’s just Bill Gates standing in an empty warehouse holding a Tofurky sandwich going, “C’mon, try it. You’ll like it. Honestly.”

 

The good news is that, while the food crisis may squeeze us, we’ll get through it all right. Most of our fertilizer imports come from Canada. Bear these two things in mind, though.

First, because there’s a global fertilizer deficit, we’ll be competing with every other country for the remaining supply. For instance, Brazil imports over 40 percent of its potash directly from Russia. American farmers are now going to be locked in a bidding war with Brazilian farmers for Canada’s exports. We may not starve, but they might go broke.

Second, American farmers will win. But that means millions of hungry families in Brazil and other developing countries. Our neoliberal empire is bad for Americans; for the Third World, it’s absolutely devastating—and not for the first time. Remember this every time some big-brain says we need to trust “the experts” (or, better yet, “the adults”). The experts are wrong. In fact, they’re not even experts. They understand economics even less than we benighted laymen. And there’s the rub. You can read a whole library’s worth of books on Newton and Einstein and Hawking, but you’ll never be a physicist if you can’t grasp the first principle: what goes up must come down.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Warren Davis

Michael Warren Davis is author of The Reactionary Mind and a contributing editor of The American Conservative. Subscribe to his newsletter, The Common Man.

 

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meanwhile in the donbass…...

While the West blames Russia for provoking a global food crisis, which the UN has actually been warning about since 2021, liberated areas in Donbass are engaged in agricultural production. Despite pressure from Kiev – which has cut off access to electricity and water, Donbass farmers are continuing their work, growing wheat first and foremost.

Together with an international group of journalists, we were able to visit the Kalmychanka farm enterprise, situated in the Starobelskiy district, Lugansk People’s Republic. In the Soviet period, the area was home to a massive collective farm, and today the enterprise continues to be considered one of the leading grain producers in the region.

Our guides explained that before the start of Russia’s special military operation, the grain grown here was sent to European countries. Today, thanks to sanctions, the new supply route will run through the territory of friendly countries.

Viktor Molotok, Kalmychanka’s director, told us that the farm did not suffer any damage in the course of fighting, thanks to which its 5,500 hectares of fields have been sowed with wheat, oats, sunflowers, and corn. Molotok says that all of the farm’s employees have remained on the job, no one has quit, and that salaries are being paid out in rubles, in accordance with LPR law.

A total of 82 people work at the farm, with 56 more to be hired at harvest time.

 

“All of the harvested grain will be placed in storage facilities. I think we’ll start selling in August-September, since right now our financial situation is stable; we can wait until prices rise and then we will go to market,” Molotok said.

 

The farm director explained that “today, Russia is buying wheat through the Starobelskiy grain elevator. The company Gelios Plyus from Rostov-on-Don transports the grain to ports, and from there it is sent to Turkey, Algeria, Syria, and Egypt – friendly countries that are ready to pay real money. There aren’t any problems with deliveries. For example, this year we sold Russian sunflower oil producers over 800 tons of sunflower seeds. We used the money we got to pay salaries, taxes, etc. Things are going well in our business.”

Commenting on Western sanctions and the refusal to purchase his farm’s output, Molotok didn’t seem fazed.

 

“That’s their decision, let them not buy it. Our enterprise is operating as normal. The special operation practically hasn’t affected our work, apart from the need to find new logistics markets to take our production. I think this question will be resolved in the near future,” he said.

Today, Molotok explained, Kalmychanka is selling its production through Russia-based traders. “They buy from us directly, the documents are processed by the Customs Committee and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry; output is transported to Armavir, Russia, where sunflower oil plants are situated, and to other Russian cities.”

 

 

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https://sputniknews.com/20220720/sputnik-correspondent-donbass-farmers-unfazed-by-sanctions-will-sell-food-to-friendly-countries-1097612652.html

 

 

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