Hope for the Future?

The United States has reached the endgame in the game of Civilization.

We won. We dominate the world like it has never been dominated before except regionally at the time of the great empires.

We dominate militarily. This year we will spend more on our military than the next 15-20 most powerful nations put together.

We dominate culturally. Nowhere in the world are you away from elements of American culture.

We dominate economically. The Europe Union might be able to compete but probably not surpass without much greater unification. The same might be said of a combined all-Asian sphere. The American enterprise system favoring large corporations completely dominates the world and multinational institutions.

The ideological and political systems are dominated by American philosophy. The major competitive ideology for the last 100 years, communism, is totally discredited. Varieties of socialism, theocracies, and dictatorships are still extant but the ideological combination of American corporate capitalism and corporate biased democracy has control over all regional and international institutions.

We dominate religiously, protestant missions and media broadcasts based in the United States reach every corner of the world. Interestingly, religious tolerance is felt to be an American tradition and America is home to many faiths but anything outside of mainstream-to-conservative Christianity is just tolerated in the United States - it's not a part of the culture.

Politically, the Republican Party has aggressively embraced all of these elements that now dominate the world. The Democratic Party is less aggressive in its embrace and seems rudderless.

So given that these elements have won, that technically "we" have won, what do we do now?

This American victory was actually achieved sometime in the Clinton or Bush 1 administrations but no great plan emerged from this dominance. However, while Republican felt bitterly denied their rightful rule in the Clinton years, Republican elements developed their plans of how to use American power

Following the contested election of Bush, they were waiting for a precipitating event. 9/11 provided it.

The plans for greater control of citizens, greater religious favoritism, extended economic benefits for the rich and large corporations, lower social benefit and welfare programs, an even more expanded military with quick reaction legions stationed everywhere in the world, a disavowal of international agencies and agreements, a foreign doctrine of preemptive military intervention to protect American interests, and an explicit goal for the prevention of regional power centers that could oppose the imposition of American "ideals and values" were all revealed without much opposition to an American public frightened of terrorism.

In seeking how to liberalize the current Imperial reign you must turn to history.

We don't have any particularly favorable examples of things improving in "real" historic empires but in many ways the situation domestically resembles the situation about 100 years ago. Where in this time frame from 1880 to 1932 can be argued but the level of wealth inequality and the stock market behavior puts it at about 1929/30.

The bad-news / good-news situation that started then was that the Republicans so destroyed the economy that they lost national power for 20 years and a variety of progressive social reforms were started under the Democrats. These reforms only slowly improved the economy and it took the full employment and highly progressive taxation of a world war to fully revive the economy. However, from the 40's to the mid-60's can be considered a golden age for most of the people in the United States - unless they ended up as cannon fodder or were minorities that hadn't benefited from the social reforms.

My point, I guess, is that there should always be a political party, currently either the Greens or the Democrats - that is more inclined to look to the ideals and more populist traditions of America. They are there waiting for the "greed party" to screw up enough that hopefully a generation will learn and prevent them from getting that much power again.

The danger is that the "greed party" does not play fair and will do things to prevent that voice from being heard. Unless Congress cedes emergency powers to the "greed party" one of the more progressive parties should replace it and a path to reform based on the better American ideals will return.

One other danger might be that the main opposition party will incorporate most of the bad tendencies of the "greed party" and it would take longer for progressive elements to reform the system. Some of this may have happened.

Another variation that can be considered is the Libertarian Party, which incorporates some of the best liberty and freedom ideals of the "American system." Unfortunately they have no consideration that corporate entities, massive accumulations of wealth, and groups that operate outside the law can be as oppressive and powerful, or even more so, than government. I don't know how that combination of idealism and naiveté plays out.

So, if things get bad enough, and they are headed in that direction, the people will demand a change in direction. Progressives must be ready and start educating and organizing now.

The change apparently must come from within. If we do not like the imperial regime we have become, we must work to change it. The rest of the world will have to maintain any of their own progressive and democratic traditions, perhaps by regional alliances such as the European Union. They lack the power to change the new Imperial United States except by supporting progressive tendencies inside of it.

That's how I see it.

~~~~~~~~~

"Optimism is

a learned virtue, rain passes,

fresher flowers grow."