Will America's Past Become America's Future? Understanding the New Imperial Empire

By: Sidney M. Willhelm - 11/01/02

If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. - Michael Collon, Monopoly

The fact is he [George W.] is wrestling with problems as tough as any president has wrestled with since Lincoln. - Former President George H. Bush

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. - Abraham Lincoln

We now face an economic elite not of greed, but one with an invincible resolve "to take it all"-"it" meaning wealth. Like the gangster Willie Sutton robbing banks because "that is where the money is," elites themselves loot into bankruptcy even the corporations they own as though gold mines, merely another appendage of wealth for-the-taking. Their opulence seems, to them, meager even as a typical CEO among Fortune's 500 receives in half a day what his hourly employee earns for an entire year, a pay differential over ten times the amount of twenty-five years ago. Among the most posh of the reigning corporate legion are the top 100 where yearly compensation accelerated from $1.3 million three decades ago to today's $37.5 million, rising from 39 times to 1,000 times above the average pay. The wealthiest one percent which held 22 percent of the nation's wealth in 1975 now possesses 42 percent. Combining last year's federal tax reduction with the proposed removal of estate taxes ingeniously results in a "fair-share" 40 percent of the benefits going to the same most affluent one percent, just another reallocation-from the public treasury to the private domain-of riches to the tiny few already bloating with great wealth. Unwavering and shameless to "get it all," a revitalized generation of robber barons knows no bounds. "The ability to magnetize shareholder ignorance," Warren Buffet of CEO fame admits, "has probably never been exceeded."

Yet, this take-it-all effort is not just about wealth; the elite needs enormous power, i.e., the capacity to transfer any source of wealth from one to another-namely from all of us and into the private accounts of the economic elite. Such clout must be sufficient not just to seize wealth wherever it exists as a "pot of gold" but to preserve and confiscate the world's prevailing and basic source of energy as its very own wealth: oil. Today's industrial elite repeats the history of its antecedent agricultural elite of the nineteenth century. The Planter Class of pre-Civil War America preserved its form of energy as its well-spring for great wealth, and now the commanding industrialists must do the same. The Planter Class sustained slavery for its wealth-creating energy-source. That energy was human energy bonded upon southern plantations to produce cotton and tobacco. The Landed Gentry succumbed as the nascent yet implacable industrial titans introduced inorganic energy-coal, steam, electricity, oil, gas, gasoline-to replace human labor simply because the new form of energy, with its innovative technology-mass production through factories-proved more efficient than the old. It is upon inorganic energy, with oil providing daily to a world of six billion humans an energy resource equivalent to 180 billion people, that industrialists perpetuate themselves as today's elite; ironically, they now face the same imperative to preserve their preeminence, as did the Planters, by forcefully sustaining an antiquated form of energy-wealth upon not just the nation but the entire world.

To maintain wealth-accumulation founded on slave energy, it was mandatory for the Planter Class to control the congress, the judiciary (especially the Supreme Court), and, most important, the executive (i.e., the presidency). Congress provided the laws to preserve southern energy (i.e., slavery); the court sustained, as originally conceived, the Constitutional legitimacy for that source of energy (i.e., slavery); and the executive perpetuated private ownership of energy (i.e., slaves themselves) by enforcing property rights beneficial to slaveholders. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, the Planter Class instantly realized it could not endure upon losing the critical political power for retaining its wealth. To protect its plantation-base economy under a dramatic shift in energy source, the Planter Class left the Union to found its own nation predicated upon its traditional form of energy-wealth (slavery) and, in so doing, had to force all Americans-southerners and northerners alike-to comply with its decision to secede. It thereupon resorted to war; traditional solutions for reconciling the seismic division afflicting the nation from the very founding moment could not keep slavery as the energy-wealth for a southern aristocracy.

Initially, it seemed the South might win its war under the renowned Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Lincoln's replacement of one general after another testifies to the existing military uncertainties on the part of the North. As Lincoln settled upon his military leader, General Ulysses S. Grant, and the South made strategic military errors, the Confederacy's initial advantage faded. Further, the North constructed factories capable of manufacturing armaments on a scale far exceeding the South's highly labor-intensive weapons' production. Given such realities, the outcome for the Civil War was no longer problematic as it was at the very beginning of that conflict but inevitable: the North would defeat the South. Industrial production eventually replaced agriculture for wealth-creation; a fresh economic elite-the industrialists-would, obviously, supplant the Planter Class to command a reunited nation. Turning to the present, we find a society coping with the identical issue faced in the middle of the nineteenth century. The nation, as before, encounters the economic necessity to abandon its current energy sources; it must supplant its carbon-base (fossil, e.g., oil) energy with non-carbon-base energy sources-wind, solar, hydrogen, water. Increasingly, the non-carbon becomes, especially in light of rapidly-rising environmental costs, more economically efficient than the carbon just as once carbon energy proved more efficient than organic energy (humans under slavery) for production. Any such replacement clearly threatens the existing wealth-creating energy upon which the prevailing economic elite relies. Like the Planter Class of yesteryear, today's economic elite must be just as determined and militarily aggressive in order to preserve its wealth-source for energy. Just as the Planter Class monopolized its energy by owning an overwhelming percentage of all slaves, the industrial elite seeks its monopoly by controlling not just the oil within the nation, but also much of the oil throughout the world even though it is a form of energy progressively incompatible with the emerging renewable-energy alternatives.

Through political control over the Executive by the industrial elite, an ever more powerful Bush Cabal is destined to repeat the history of the Planter Class under the circumstances being explained in this essay. The Cabal, moving out from its Executive power base, rapidly subdues all other branches of government, and implants its indisputable authority within government agencies (the military is, obviously, the critical agency; the police apparatus of the state is next-FBI, FEMA, CIA, National Security Agency, etc.) by successfully putting into place Bush loyalists-individuals fervently devoted to Bush himself. The Bush Cabal, like the Planters, must reign over the Court since it is the Constitution which grants legitimacy. In fact, the Cabal demonstrated its remarkable acuity by positioning the Supreme Court to anoint Bush-the-Executive rather than Albert Gore as the 2000 presidential winner. The critical question now is whether or not the Court will continue to endorse an elite which rules so that it can perpetuate its very own kind of energy-wealth. Will the Court tolerate an Attorney General who massively trashes civil liberties, a president with the privilege to deny all legal rights by declaring even citizens "enemy combatants," and repressive measures as the USA Patriot Act? Although the evidence is, at present, too tenuous to assure prediction, we simply must anticipate general compliance by the Supreme Court to the demands forthcoming from the Bush Cabal. The Court consistently affirmed slave-energy-wealth unto the Planter elite, and will, basically, grant the industrial elite the dispensation to perpetuate its carbon-energy-wealth. All this explains the Cabal's strategy to achieve the Court's acquiescence: control by appointment. Just as the Planters made certain that slave owners would abound within the Supreme Court, the Bush Cabal consigns only its partisans to all courts at all levels.

Moving on to another branch of government, the Cabal confronts Congress through intimidation in any way it believes it can. The charge by Vice-President Richard Cheney leveled against congressional people of "leaking" state secrets clearly illustrates intimidation; reliance upon the FBI to investigate "senatorial" leaks is intimidation; to question congress people through "loyalty" checks is intended to force submission via intimidation. In fact, the Bush Cabal has triumphed Congress, and it knows this so emphatically that it harbors no fear of the most effective Constitutional power to check-mate a despicable executive: congressional impeachment. The Cabal will, obviously, press for the laws it needs to enhance its monopoly control over oil. The South American country, Columbia, illustrates this point; the Bush Administration gained quick passage of a law allowing more aggressive military support to protect the oil pipeline within that country. However, any future legislation the Cabal considers essential for its purpose, but which Congress refuses to approve, will pose no impediment; the Cabal will do what it wants even without congressional approval, and, further, it will bend, stretch, or violate any existing law that "stands in its way." All this is a possible reality-to-come for Bush as was indeed the case for President Ronald Reagan during the "Iran-Contra Era" when the Executive regularly violated congressional mandates restricting the president's power to act in South America. The ultimate proof of Executive dominance is already before us: the Bush Cabal has announced that it has the intrinsic right to, like the Planters of a previous century, launch its war. It has made plain such an intention in a manner clearly apparent by making Congress subordinate in the war-making decisions before this nation. Bush has explicitly declared that he will do no more than "consult with Congress" just prior to launching his "regime change" invasion of Iraq. The Cabal appears intent upon exerting its armed might over any nation where its energy-source (oil) for wealth is in sufficient abundance-countries, in addition to Iraq, as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, any nation involved with the Caspian Sea deposits, Indonesia, Columbia, Venezuela, Mexico, etc. All this military engagement will provide the "empirical" evidence for the perpetual wars the Cabal desires for the foreseeable future to "document" the "need" facing all Americans, namely, personal security-liberty defined as freedom from all threats posed by terrorism/terrorists.

Permanent war invites a permanent executive. Bush will replicate what Franklin Delano Roosevelt achieved under war-time conditions: extend the "right" for a presiding president to remain in office. Roosevelt's own anticipation of war upon the Axis powers of his day-Japan and Germany-provided a rationale to violate the two-term tradition initially established by the nation's very first president, George Washington. Today, presidential rule beyond two terms is prohibited not by tradition but by the Constitution. Thus, Bush must violate the Constitution itself to overcome the two-term restriction. At a propitious moment, he will make the effort and, further, most likely will succeed. Upon his success, Bush will become the very first dictator to command the nation and, due to the country's awesome military power, an encompassing empire of oil-laden countries spread over the globe. Only at the very founding of the nation has any president seriously considered becoming permanent. President George Washington-revered Revolutionary War hero, patrician, and more wealthy than any citizen-had three options from which he would choose: his popularity meant he could be a dictator, become a King (under pressure from the strong bloc of Americans wanting a monarch similar to the "other" George of Washington's day, King George), or assure an elected president for the future by stepping aside, having served what, afterwards, became the nation's two-term tradition. The current President George will also confront three options by insisting, forcefully and self-righteously, that he and only he has the indisputable "right" to "lead" the nation at another critical moment in history to advance the wealth-objective of the industrial elite. It is now a momentous instant to assert a similar presidential privilege as did Washington:

1) concede to the Constitution and do whatever is possible to maximize a victory in the forthcoming presidential election in 2004;

2) become a dictator and, like any dictator, face the difficulty of lacking the crucial legitimacy needed to command; dictatorship means there can be no Constitution and, therefore, it will be necessary to assert that "war circumstances" provide all the reason-the Supreme Commander In Chief-to "justify" a dictator;

3) become the undisputed ruler over the nation by becoming Emperor, and then turn to religion for the very kind of legitimacy any emperor promotes to justify the "right" to be the absolute ruler, namely, Divine Power of the Deity-hence, the Bush Cabal's relentless efforts to make God a paramount reality for our times by vigorously promoting the religious right's Christianity-God Bless America-agenda. Each option enables the Bush Cabal to pursue the mission of preemptive and perpetual warfare in order to eliminate foreign challenges threatening its antiquated energy-source-fossil fuels-so as to perpetuate and, indeed, accelerate the flow of unbounded wealth directly unto the industrial elite of our times. The Cabal contemplates only success for its foreign wars. However, it most surely realizes, as did the Planter Class of a previous era in regard to the Abolition Movement, the very real possibility for domestic dissent jelling sufficiently not only to challenge but assault its rule. Therefore, today's economic elite knows it must prepare and deal with a "people's movement" which could surface in the near future with enough vigor to threaten its autocratic intents. Military repression and internment into encampments, to be quickly erected at strategic locations throughout the nation, will be relied upon to suppress any significant internal dissent. The evidence is already before us: the use of police, at the behest of the Secret Service, to corral demonstrators into isolated protest pens, while allowing supporters to line the open streets, in many cities where Bush delivers his fund-raising speeches. Both "legal" police actions, as arrests and imprisonment, and police violence besieged Bush street protestors in Portland, Oregon.premonitions of turmoil and repression under our very own King George.

Sidney M. Willhelm is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant

Source: LIBERAL SLANT

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