I’m glad that someone (you and Seymor Hersh) are addressing the Neo-cons desire to get a firmer grip on the oil in the Middle East. It’d be nice if the MSM would take a look at that topic too, but I won’t hold my breath.

I think, though, that there is soemthign that no one is looking at, at least not adequately, to my knowledge. You write:

â€But if (Joe) and his friends remain in power, they will hasten the worst outcomes possible for the US.â€

What is ideally a better outcome? and realistically? The problem under the current circumstances is that even more enlightened leadership would operate with the same hegemonic-consumerist model that will enventually cause serious ecological damage or some kind of confrontation with China.(That is, assuming the Middle East doesn’t blow up first.) This is why I have a hard time with the criticism of Bush’s incompetence. It’s certainly accurate, but it fails to address the dangerous assumptions that underlie his political philosophy and does not make a case for a different direction in our strategic and economic orientation. That brings me to my next point…

You don’t mention alternatives to the consumer bliss-neocolonial model, and I’m wondering what one (both ideally and realistically) would look like.

Personally, i wouldn’t mind seeing the US cooperate with the EU or Asian countries on developing alternatives to carbon-based eletrical and transportation systems. I know it’s a pipe-dream, but are there more realistic ideas out there now.

The problem under the current circumstances is that even more enlightened leadership would operate with the same hegemonic-consumerist model that will enventually cause serious ecological damage or some kind of confrontation with China.

Excellent point, Kdm, that was part of my frustration with Kerry. For a guy who advocated alternative energy, he was still deeply in the dominant paradigm of consumer bliss.

First, you invest heavily in alternatives. Every Dem in 2008 ought to be saying, â€what if we had invested the $600 billion we squandered in Iraq on alternatives, and then push that kind of financial commitment (if our bankers will let us). If you can’t fund it with taxpayer dollars, do some serious partnering tied into new regulations on alternatives.

Second, you make sure are paying the real costs of goods from overseas. Importers don’t adequately pay for their security fees (and wee need to increase them, particularly with shipping containers). They don’t pay for the infrastructure in this country. They don’t pay for waste removal. You gradually raise those costs, forcing importers to pay the full cost of their goods. As a result, SOME things will get cheaper to make in the US. Probably not underwear, but probably a lot of larger manufactured goods. You’ll still be able to get a pineapple in the off-season, if you want. But since you’ll be buying local produce, your locally grown peaches will taste better than the pineapple.

Third, you adopt a rural strategy to bring back the family farm and the localized production that accompanies it. It’d have to be a two-prong strategy. First, charge the factory farms for everything they do (like environmental impacts, both from pesticides and from fecal waste). Make it easier for farmers to get non-predatory loans. Break up the big buyers so that farmers have more than two or three buyers to sell their goods to. SOme of this is just smart long-term–when peak oil hits, we’ll need diverse localized farming, and we sure as hell won’t want to continue spraying our crops with petroleum based pesticides. But I also think it will foster a localism.

Tax advertising, hard. Right now, companies get to write off advertising, which basically makes it subsidized propaganda with no controls on truth claims. Gotta end that.

That’s my start. It won’t end consumer bliss. But it will begin to wean people off of it while revitalizing local markets.

Hersh’s article is very interesting. Most disturbing is his conclusion that the lack of success of Israel’s mission wouldn’t deter Cheney, Bush and the neocons. The bombing of Lebanon has shown, once again, that a population that is bombed does not open its arms to the bombers. The anticipated Sunni coalition to oppose the Shia has similarly failed to materialize as the regimes who nominally support us had to support Hezballah after a few days. Hezballah still has the missles capable of hitting Tel Aviv; they haven’t been destroyed. So why would we go ahead against Iran? Especially when Iran has missles that presumably could hit our troops and bases in Iraq?

The shrinking housing market, rising interest rates and growing debt burden, along with higher oil prices, are already reducing the standard of living of most Americans, whether they realize it or not. I do think that most Americans might trade mindless consumerism for more self-sufficiency and real community if they understood that that was the trade-off. The only person who can credibly make that pitch is Al Gore. Any other Dem candidate is going to just be a little less of the same.

EW, ok I’ll reveal a bit about myself here by linking over to this editorial from my very favorite magazine, The Small Farmers’ Journal. The oped I’m attaching is delving into a little known, pervasive, hideous, unAmerican plan by the Dept of Ag to chip all farm animals. The chips are to locate, say your stray hen, who’s gone for a toot over to the neighbors, costs vary, the chip at first cost $75 per animal and could track by satellite your pet/dinner. Now people can do it themselves for much less … think what that does to the cost of meat in US and our exports as well. http://www.smallfarmersjournal…..Miller.pdf

Second question: would this argument be electorally effective?

As a purely practical matter that is the first question.

But a broader observation: â€consumer bliss†as an underlying political strategy has been breaking down for decades. For working class Americans, the era of generally rising standards of living – i.e., rising real wages – ended about 1973.

Since then, times have gotten generally harder for the poor (e.g., a declining real minimum wage), and been no better than stagnant for people in the broad middle. Only for the top third or so has the standard of living continued to rise, and now even they are starting to get squeezed.

It is no accident – not a plot, but still no accident – that culture-war politics has been ascendent since the 70s. The GOP has done exactly what their Middle East buddies do: pander to religious fundamentalism as a distraction. Dems have inadvertently made it easier for them by concentrating on the socially marginalized while not offering much to the economically struggling.

Telling people they have to â€give up consumerism†would backfire – to people just hanging on, it sounds like a promise of even smaller paychecks. Consumerism is already being buried. Old-hat as it sounds, something like â€get America working again†would play much better – and it implicitly draws a link between the palpable incompetence of the Bushies and the broader squeeze that people feel themselves in.

Publius cites another key item from the Hersh article:

Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.†The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.†After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,†the consultant said.

.

We don’t know if this is true, but it may as well be. It’s reeks of Bolton and Cheney, perhaps making a ’last stand’, hoping that history will admire their elan (rhetorical Peace With Honor). We’re near the end of the movie now, the part when the evil genius is finally cornered – forced to drop all pretense and sincerely try to persuade us that he ’meant well’. Unfortunately, the guy’s nuts!

Great post, EW.

I was at least as interested in who that consultant was. I thought it might be Perle or Ledeen, but by the end the consultant sounds sane, so neither is possible.

I also find it interesting the way Hersh says NSC–he’s talking pretty exclusivley about Abrams. But he doesn’t say it. I might return to this article to try to map out the WAY Hersh describes people.

And one more thing. Notice the way he describes Condi. She’s still trying to mediate differing viewpoints. But that’s not her job anymore. Her portfolio is State, not NSA.

Which led me to another question. Where the fuck is Stephen Hadley? Aren’t we paying him to mediate disputes? Why hasn’t he surfaced in the infighting going on over Lebanon and Iran? Why are we paying an NSA who seems to be on a longer vacation than Bush?

What is the pretext for this farm animal tracking scheme? Cattle rustling? Livestock suicide bombers?

ew,

One minor quibble. Not all of the movies we export are bad.

EW, you wrote:

Our political system has, for the last several decades, traded consumer bliss for political stability. That consumer bliss has, at least since the 1970s, depended on a kind of neocolonialism dressed up as â€free trade†and â€globalization.â€

I’ve seen bits of this here and there, but have yet to wrap my mind around it. Would you recommend a book or two that goes over how this works step by step? Thanks.

Hi ew.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on one issue that I thought you were going to touch but did not. There are various people, some of them economists (for what that’s worth) who claim that the fact that oil is priced in dollars (not, say, in euros) is key to many things. These claims go so far as to say that there would be a total US financial and economic meltdown if there was a significant worldwide move to price oil in euros (step one: international demand for the dollar disappears) and that the US would go to war to prevent that. Then have a look at the various countries that have moved to price oil in euros (or other currency). I wondered about all this a few times before spending some time digging up links, reading, and trying to fit it into a coherent picture. Understanding economic cause and effect arguments is definitely not my strong point. But from what I read and understood, the issue looks real. Have you looked into it at all? I can post a couple of the more useful URLs I read if you’re interested.

Terry