How to Dismantle the US

It really hasn't taken that long, and it's nearly successful. The mouth-frothing "revolutionaries" think it's a return to True Principles--like slavery, a friend joked--but it isn't.

The counterrevolution began because of the moderate success of progressive politics in the late 1960's. The initiators? The extremely wealthy, who felt threatened by everything from civil rights to Medicare to that old perennial: taxes. They funded think tanks and talk radio that began to spread their ideology, supplemented later by Fox News: their views boil down to liberty for wealth and corporations, but liberties for ordinary people only to the extent they don't conflict with the interests of wealth-holders and corporations. In effect, they promote democracy for money, corporate "free" trade, and neglect or dictatorship for everyone else.

Ever notice that the Department of Education is a favorite target of frothers? Good public education promotes democracy, even in the workplace (!). It also creates a highly skilled workforce. This would be good, if you wanted a relatively egalitarian society. If you want greater class differences, managerial power, and profits for shareholders, with only a small minority able to get decent jobs, then you oppose school budgets until you destroy the public system--good people send their children to private schools (and have the money to pay for them).

The rest become surplus labor, like Marx's lumpen-proletariat, like the Roman mob getting "bread and circuses." That keeps wages down and destroys unions. "Free" trade does the rest.

Anyone earning wages (as opposed to capital gains), pays taxes to support the only parts of the Empire worth maintaining: prisons and the war machine.

What about the great consumption market that underlay American power? Now, corporations make their money in Asia, Latin America, even Europe: places where the middle class is emerging, or has been able to protect itself. In the US, dwindling numbers can afford middle-class consumption. Notice that US output has now recovered to pre-crash levels--yet with 10-19% unemployment, and few prospects for the unemployed. Corporations earn greater profits than ever, but mostly abroad.

Republicans block job programs, demand tax cuts for the wealthy, and try to de-fund all public programs but the military--and the police. You need the police, and fear of "Terror," to keep the restive masses in line. Fox, etc. promote the latter.

So, the Pentagon gets about $1.35 trillion, or about $4,000 per person. Other discretionary expenditures are nugatory in comparison. Social Security and Medicare ran surpluses from the payroll tax until this year, against which government borrowed, to reduce the deficit.

Meanwhile, other nations spend on green infrastructure, education and health: they surpass the US (14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics. Shanghai came in first). No wonder Google, etc. set up research centers in China!

Our military will be all that's left--until the world stops lending us money.