Running on Fumes

As we march deliberately into the end of the era of the United States as hegemonic world power like so many lemmings over the edge of a cliff, the government and the rich people keep telling us that nothing is wrong. For most people, that's enough.

Since the abandonment of the gold standard during the era of New Deal reforms, the economy has been slipping steadily into an insurmountable hole, or debt and write-downs and outsourcing that is beginning to catch up with us. And we stand now poised at the precipice of a collapsing world financial infrastructure, looking straight down the barrel of a gun loaded with international fiscal ruin - and with Dick Cheney behind the sights that's a dangerous proposition. As far as I'm concerned, it might be the best thing that happens to humanity in my lifetime.



The steadily increasing national debt, now standing around $9 trillion is only the least of our problems. The concept itself is a quagmire, explainable only in jumbled economic jargon and a long discussion about modern monetary theory. But strip off all the bullshit and the idea is simple: we're using money that only kinda sorta actually exists on a material basis. And we're using lots and lots and lots of it. Since the advent of the Reagan revolution we've been trapped in a continuous reaffirmation of Keynesian insanity - the notion that supply-side economics was ever going to work is interminably couched in a system of privilege and inequality that knows no bounds. Giving to the poor by giving to the rich? Seriously?



In the meantime, we've deregulated almost every industry, gutted the environmental reforms of the 1970s (which made us then, unlike now, a world leader on the subject), corporatized the media, opened the revolving door between Washington, K Street lobbies, interest groups, and the private sector, ruined Social Security and subverted the Health Care system, made a mockery of mental health and veterans benefits, clamped down on immigration while opening loopholes for immigrants' exploitation, and gotten to the point where the President can hand out military contracts to his buddies in the context of an un-endable, un-winnable, extremely profitable war. I think we're doing terribly, to be honest.



Add to this the fact that even the most astutely realist political scientists agree on the fact that China's economy will be larger than ours in the next fifty years and the fact that we currently operate on a 300 million dollar-a-year trade deficit with that country and the picture gets grimmer. India isn't far behind. What's left is an America trying to retain the world heavyweight belt by force instead of retiring gracefully and changing the nature of the sport. It's like we have the choice to be Ali or Tyson and instead of thinking it over we've bitten off the ears of everyone who even sniffs in our direction the wrong way. Instead of stepping down and encouraging mutual competition, we are the bully who has been outnumbered and continues to talk shit. And we all know what happens to that guy.



If we could only stop now and try to mend the mistakes of the past instead of rewriting the Monroe doctrine and stealing from third world countries in a last ditch attempt to line our pockets we might realize that there is something altogether more important at stake than being the world's strongest nation-state: being the world's smartest. Aside from the fact that kids in America are, on average, dumber and fatter than their European, Australian, and South American counterparts (do a little looking on this), the country as a whole is missing a great opportunity to use the last gasp of our cultural influence (America as a culture is still cool, apparently) to create a worldwide movement of tolerance and subsistence instead of division and consumption, we might just manage to tip the scales back to neutral, especially on the environmental question.



The nature of international politics, as any PoliSci professor over 50 will tell you, is anarchic, unpredictable and violent. But this assumes that politics and the international system have some specific nature that dictates them instead of realizing that the whole fucking discipline is less than a few hundred years old and that a lot has changed even in the last 20 years. Imagine an international politics that involves white kids and brown kids thousands of miles away playing the same videogames on a worldwide invisible network, talking to each other in real time as they interact in a virtual world. Fuck anarchic, this shit is incredible. In the context of a world where that goes on everyday, telling me that we didn't sign Kyoto because of differences in linguistic understanding and policy restrictions is a slap in the face. Why won't we act like normal human beings that live in a finite world for once? This is our children's future.



The simple answer is deafening and silencing at once, and it crushes the spirit of those of us who see more clearly (or perhaps more vaguely). The simple answer is that a few people are making a lot of money, and they don't want to stop making that much money. And what's worse, they can't be blamed. They live in a system that constantly requires them to preform a simple and never-ending task - make more money. And he we stand, faced with the realization that the system we live in is fundamentally opposed to our material reality, a reality that includes a dwindling oil supply, a skyrocketing debt, a mortgage and credit crisis, rampant poverty and unemployment, and a planet that is screaming at the top of its poisoned lungs for us to slow the fuck down. But the engines of the system are churning along full tilt, all cylinders firing, churning liquid capital out of the earth as the economy sucks in fresh dollars out of thin air.



Simple physics tells us that combustion engines need three things: fuel, air, and ignition. The system has plenty of sparks to go around - nationalism, the American dream, stuff upon stuff upon stuff. But what happens with the oil runs out and the mystical, airborne mint breathes its last dollar bill? We all seem to know the answer, somewhere between our hearts and our stomachs, and yet we remain defiant, our foot stamped on the accelerator as we grind down the gearbox, doing 95 in a 60 in 3rd gear. I hope we have the sense to hit the brakes before its too late. But right now, it looks like I'd better get ready to tuck and roll.