The Rise of Our Dumbocracy

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/gary-corseri/55453/the-rise-of-our-dumbocracy

The Rise of Our Dumbocracy
Government
by Gary Corseri | April 19, 2014 - 8:00am

Roberts’ newest book (463 pages, from Clarity Press, 2014) is a compendium of 135 columns (bracketed by an intro and conclusion), written between August, 2008 and December 31, 2013. Roberts himself should require no intro to anyone a little hip to the alternative news media (where many of these columns were posted), or, for that matter, to any older codger aware of Roberts’ work as an associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal—or, to even-older codgers who may recall his role as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan years. (During those years, Roberts helped shape “supply-side-economics”—for which “the Left” has still not forgiven him; and about which Roberts writes persuasively in his 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.)

This is one busy guy! And smart! Being somewhat hip, and accelerating towards codgerdom, I must declare that PCR is simply one of America’s best chroniclers of this sad, brutal era of imperial overreach and moral decline. Anyone who wants to understand where we’ve been recently, where we are now, and where we’re heading, had better read this book pronto!

These hundred-plus columns hammer home some basic themes: Our Constitution has become little more than “a scrap of paper” (quote attributed to G. W. Bush—and sure does sound like something that moron would say!). Also, the official narrative of 9/11 is a “hoax.” That preposterous narrative has been used to justify our Nuremberg-Standard “war crimes” against Muslims (killing, wounding, traumatizing and displacing millions) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria. Our “unitary executive” is an excuse for “Cesarism.” Our Legislative and Judicial branches have surrendered their powers to our dictatorial Cesar—Obama (and his advisors!) and the quondam triumvirate of Cheny-Bush-Rummy—with barely a whimper. Our once vigorous middle class has been pummeled to a pulp thanks to jobs-offshoring, Supreme-Court maleficent decisions like “Citizens United,” and a rigged electoral system controlled by multi-billionaire oligarchs like the Koch Bros and Sheldon Adelson. Matters look none-too-sanguine for our future, of course, what with our “presstitute” media (a PCR neologism) lulling us with non-news or patent lies. Then, of course, there’s NATO. In case you’ve been too lulled, you may have missed the fact that NATO—originally a defensive alliance—has been transmogrified (since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991) into America’s imperial army, with “puppet,” bought-out governments in France, England, etc. (27 countries at last count) fighting America’s “War on Terror,” and everything else, and pushing nukes right up to Russia’s borders, itching for a fracas (possibly nuclear!) with the Bear his selfdom! And if that isn’t madness enough—let’s “Pivot to Asia,” challenge China in the South China Sea and see if we can’t chop-suey the planet!

Personally, I think our descent into the lower circles of the Inferno began long ago, but for Roberts we at least made obeisance to a system of Laws. They may have been imperfectly observed--what with slavery and Tribal People’s genocide, but nobody had ever thought to codify our vileness (before Bush special counsel, John Yoo!). The die was cast for that codification when the invincible Soviet Union proved less than invincible and, cosmeticized with hubris, we proclaimed ourselves, in the spellbinding words of Madeleine Albright, “the indispensable people.” Such a people certainly had a “right” to override UN mandates against bombing the hell out of Serbia (to wrest Croatia into our orbit), or, later, to turn “no-fly zones” in Libya into free-fire zones. The Executive branch of such a people, supported by a wimp, campaign-financed Congress, could pooh-pooh Constitutional protections against unlimited detentions and advance to torturing suspected “terrorists” (under Bush). “Cesar” could then order the killing of American citizens, without trials or convictions, in foreign countries—call it trial-by-drones--under Obama! (And our grinning, change-we-can-believe-in Prez could kibitz about his “kill-list” skills!)

[L0oniX]

1. Benghazi damn it all! No bus big enough for Gary Corseri.

Waiting for the ignorant "My mother drunk or sober" crowd to show up here.

[Fred Sanders]

2. The drone killings as a proxy to actual planes and war is not a good trade off, it exposes ethical

And legal weakness in the President.