The Decline and Fall of the America Empire: Part One 1945-2011

There is no really good way to compare countries. You have to use every piece of information available.

But...how many people are trying to sneak into Mexico? All the traffic is in one direction. Doesn't that tell you something about the place? Same was true of communist East Germany. People took extreme risks to get out of there. If somebody risks death to get out of the US, you can safely bet he is a criminal. A tall, expensive, electric fence is not needed between France and Spain because both countries are reasonably good places to be. There is surely some immigration traffic across that border, but the sense of urgency is missing. Just like between Canada and the US.

We don't want to see a power vacuum created. God only knows what would fill it.

But unfortunately, a lot of that unity had been bad for a lot of people. We used to have unity against civil rights, women's rights, true religious freedom, sexual preference, etc. The old national unity surely felt great in the 50s if you just happened to perfectly fit the standard definition of a 'good' American.

I would not recommend that you try telling a black person that America reached its peak before the Civil Rights Act was passed. Unless you can run really fast.

The Soviet Union was responsible for its own actions in Cuba.

 

Becoming so closely allied to the Soviet Union was not entirely Cuba's choice though. If America had not treated them like an enemy with the invasion and assasination attempts as well as the trade embargo, then Cuba would not have had to go to the USSR for protection and they would have had no reason to allow missiles to be put there

The US was just as aggressive to the Communist countries and their 'ideological enemies' everywhere.

Even today despite Fidel himself admitting that his system is now hurting the Cuban people, it is still in a better state than many of the USA's 'friends' in Latin America like Colombia and Bolivia

 

I think there seems to be general agreement that the US is in trouble, if not in decline.

The question is – what does it do?

Earlier I put forward some ideas as to why I thought the US in decline here are some musings on those -

Nothing can be done about dwindling resources but the husbanding of what the US has left could be improved and a move to more sustainable methods could be undertaken. The profligate consumerist model needs to be reengineered. I think this would need a new ‘New Deal’ to bring about - along with some pretty unpopular measures (a year on year increase in gasoline prices for example).

Anti-communism fuelled the cold war that created the military-industrial complex that was the forerunner of the wealth and corporate system that dominates US politics today. A large number of American’s have been indoctrinated over many years to fear and loath left wing ideas and champion the wealth and corporate system which has been portrayed as ‘capitalism’ and claimed to be ‘freedom’. That needs to change.

There needs to be a new Bretton Wood in which Keynes’ original plans are dusted off, undated and put into action although it would reduce US power and influence.

Again nothing can be done about other economies but what many nations are discovering and especially the US and UK which took it more to heart was that ‘globalisation’ was the export and often the imposition of a neo-liberal economic model of unregulated capitalism while completely ignoring to accompanying it with the social models built up to cushion society from the detrimental effects of unregulated capitalism. What are needed are global laws and institutions that can regulate and check global capitalism. Again that would lessen US power and influence

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Can it be done?

The problem I think is that so much of what is thought to be ‘American’ is contradictory to these solutions because long years of indoctrination and propaganda that taught them that.

 

I saw an interesting thing with Zizek talking about how what has happened in the past few years is that the idea that capitalism and democracy are so inextricable has started to fall apart a bit. China is incredibly capitalist and doing very well from it, but the government and most of the people don't seem overly fussed on democracy....

It could be argued that the democratic experiment has failed just as much as the Communist one, even at the end of the Cold War and the boom in the 1990s when pro-capitalists were claiming that the Capitalist Democracy had proved to be the perfect model for the time, alienation and voter apathy were increasing rapidly and continued to do so......

I agree with you (Balbus) that the Keynsian model should be reexamined, it's amazing how that model is blamed for the current problem even though it was pretty much abandoned 30 years ago.

However, there was a reason that it was abandoned, the western economies did seem to be grinding to a halt in the 1970s...

My personal view is that it's just a case of messed up priorities, of course America's leadership in terms of technology is an amazing achievement (and for all of this talk of 'the end of America' it is still miles ahead of pretty much everywhere in terms of high technology) establishing a European style national insurance system would be just as much of a world beating achievement

 

Petroleum is the big issue. We still export coal, so we still have plenty of energy; just not the right kind.

It's almost exactly 50%, as demonstrated by recent gridlock in congress. Unfortunately, fact-free "news" sources like The Fox News Channel, talk radio, and right wing propaganda web sites have significant potential for giving the right a solid majority in the near future. Right wingers no longer have to hear any facts that don't support their agenda.

Public education has failed to teach these people how to think for themselves. They have only learned job skills.

Chinese currency manipulations really need to be addressed at the international level. This is a huge problem.

 

CD

That is the con that is often pushed by the supporters of neo-liberal ideas.

The problem was that the US at that time was beginning to feel the problems of being engaged in a long, expensive (and unwinnable) war in South East Asia which it refused to fund through taxation and so was finding it hard to keep up with it’s commitments to the Bretton wood agreement, which lead to the Nixon shock of 1971.

In my view if the US had actually followed the Keynes plan at Bretton Wood rather that imposing their own half arsed version then things might have been very different.

And then there was the 1973 oil crisis.

(oh and by the way one of the best descriptions of what later became termed Stagflation is in Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace)

Thing is that economics doesn’t happen in a vacuum, Keynesian ideas can be good guidelines but they are not the be all and end all. It can help but if you don’t deal with underlying problems (deficits, dependence on oil) or make bad decisions (having wars) it might not be help enough.

But turning to neo-liberalisms wasn’t the answer it didn’t deal with any of the underlying problems it was a just another bad decisions that has made the situation worse.

 

Karen

Well as a greenie I’d have to say I’m not in favour of fossil fuels but my point is that it is not production but waste that is the problem, that’s what I mean by ‘husbanding’ the resources.

Here is something I posted elsewhere -

Energy production

Talking of production is a bit of a capitalistic con game.

Its not production that needs to be addressed first it is consumption, saving energy.

The problem is that in a capitalistic context production is the one that is emphasised because its about ‘making money’ doesn’t matter if it’s wind or coal, nuclear or oil, its about selling a product ‘energy’ to people and making - cha-ching - a profit.

But in lessening consumption…well there is little profit in that for a capitalistic investor (although there is for the individual).

Look at virtually every developed city or even individual home with a thermal camera and you will see the waste, and that is all energy being sold at a profit.

In the cold we burn more in the heat we turn up the air-conditioner. I mean we still build towers of steel and GLASS in the middle of deserts, huge greenhouses, that are only then habitable through the use of air conditioning.

If we insulated the homes we have and built any new ones to suit their environment and with a mind toward low consumption in regard to lighting, heating and cooling, then production would not be such an issue because we would find we were producing way too much – and bang goes the energy sector profits.

I’m all for renewable energy, but we have to get out of the ‘market’ mindset that is generally pushed my most media - that is fixated on ‘production’ (meaning production of profit) and move toward thinking about limiting production (less profit for companies).

 

That was exactly what I was thinking when I read this post about how "things don't happen in a vacuum". While it is possible to say that if the US had not had the Vietnam war and the 70s oil crisis then the economy wouldn't have slowed down, but being the richest country in the world (being any country in fact....) you are going to run into all kinds of unforeseen and uncontrollable difficulties. I'm really interested in Communism and I have millions of 'what if's about the USSR....

The plans are usually pretty good, the problem is that they will always be half arsed applications in any society at every level. I'm a teacher and even if my entire lesson is perfectly planned and executed (which it never is....) then it will still produce a lot of half arsed efforts from students

It's important to remember with America and the 'pointless' wars that they do contribute a lot to the economy. Not so much nowadays with privatisation, but the military is a massive employer, industry and science in the US benefit immensely from them...


I totally agree that what followed Keynes was far worse. The whole Friedman/Chicago thing that has almost become accepted as 'reality' has one major drawback in that it has never worked anywhere. That whole philosophy has had several catastrophes but no success stories, generally countries seem to abandon it after a few years of suffering and get back to normal. It does work in that a few people always get filthy rich.....

It's like the IMF, I can't think of a single country that has benefited from their 'help'. Greece called the IMF in 2009 and it has gotten worse and worse, the fact that the EU didn't manage to keep the IMF out of Greece may still destroy the whole Euro.

sorry for the long rambling post, I was talking to someone on skype at the same time :embarrassed:

 

Karen

A large number of American’s have been indoctrinated over many years to fear and loath left wing ideas

I think it is far higher than that because many who are to the ‘left’ of many American right-wingers are still on the right. I mean it has long been commented on that the US political system seem to be basically dominated by two right wing political parties, one just further to the right than the other. It is not noticed because there are no credible alternatives and many Americans don’t see it that way because the mainly right wing media claim it isn’t true.

It is something that has happened to British politics since the 90’s. New Labour essentially accepted and adopted neo-liberal ideas. They portrayed this as a move to the centre ground, but the problem was that because of the shift to neo-liberal ideas the ‘centre’ had moved to the right.

To many of its old supporters New Labour was just ‘Tory Lite’, a right wing party that just happened to be to the left of the other right wing party. The media, especially the right wing media still carried on calling New Labour a left wing movement, there were even those that still called it socialist (1)

In the US the process has become a lot more established.

(1) At the moment there are problems with the marriage of neo-liberal ideas and the labour party, it is like a wife who’s discovered her husband has stolen all her money and has been screwing his secretary since their honeymoon. The best thing might be a separation and divorce but there are many in the Labour party that believe neo-liberalism when I claims it is a reformed character that has got a new secretary and will pay back all the money. The media especially the right wing media are claiming this new wariness or neo-liberal ideas means Labour is ‘lurching to the left’.

 

We've reached the point where change will not come without great consequences....

I think regardless of the type of financial system we used, this nation still remained stable or at least able to recover until arguably either 1980 or for sure in 2000.

In the late 1970s Jimmy Carter became very concerned with the knowledge of the economic hardship America faced if it wanted to remain stable with its power. He failed in trying to communicate that concern to the people. Ronald Reagan came in and ran us on crony capitalism fueled by massive deficits and tax cuts. Clinton was not a liberal but he at least tried to maintain the middle class (at least while he was in office - NAFTA would be fully realized later) and these years marked probably the last time we will balance our budget with anything resembling the fully functioning United States.

I'm not a Democrat... I'm more of a libertarian socialist. I would've probably been a Dem in years past, but the system is now too obviously broken to care about in relation to a major party.

Republicans really are the symbol of the greed and the social sicknesses that will be remembered for how they took advantage of the globe with the use of war machines and took advantage of their own people, funding it with lies. They will be remembered for generating a base of disenfranchised people bamboozled by lies that cater to the xenophobic pits of human nature. They will be remembered for oppressing an entire generation while dismantling all forms of social justice as well as respect for labor. They will be remembered as the men who replaced us with machines and then got more concerned about stock numbers than what would happen to our lives.

The Democrats will be remembered as the other team you could root for - but they always seemed to suspiciously throw the game.

 

Their immorality knows no bounds. I couldn't rep you ,but nice post. The last 100 years will be looked upon as an aberration when seen and studied by historians. It will be seen as caused by that most destructive of human qualities-greed. It has become rather like a disease of the heart and is being paid for by the rest of us. The question,to me is---how will it be changed? Can it? "They" have at their disposal everything from the cop on the street up to and including the military,whose main duties are seen to be protecting the serious capitalists and corporations from the rabble. Whoever gets in the way of them,always pays,somehow.

 

America is so top down that change has to be bottom up.

Once the land transitions to rule by the people, things will be better. It will be a kind of better not measured by the size of cars, the amount of power usage, or even digital technology.

By all means they should continue to be used, but IMO society will have to find itself less obsessed with it's techology. Governments already shouldn't be testing some of the experimental equipment they do, or even the things about the CIA that were exposed a few decades ago. The people in society also shouldn't be walking around with digital screens constantly infront of their faces or plugs in their ears.

 

Once again it seems to come back to what can be done.

I believe that the decline of US hegemony needs to be managed, hopefully in a way that isn’t too detrimental to its people and the world, because the alternative could be dangerous.

The problem is that I don’t see this happening now and it doesn’t seem to be even on the horizon.

As I’ve commented before I think the US is in need of a political movement demanding reform and change the only problem is that instead of a movement for good reform and beneficial change appearing you got the astrotruffed Tea Party Movement.

 

Part one: 1984-2011. Part two: 2012- the beginning of new application of the Wheel, Do wheels always need brakes (breaks?)?

 

I find the people who are most informed about what's going on identify themselves as neither liberal or conservative. They see all the left/right back-and-forth is a joke. What I don't know is how people can take politicians seriously, period, regardless of the corporate party to which they belong.

 

Hey Rat, this is me, others might not know you, but we go way back and you have always been on the right, way to the right.

I mean you used to openly be a right wing libertarian, then you found out you couldn’t defend your views so you started claiming you were ‘neither of the left nor the right’ although you carried on pushing right wing views.

And now you are claiming you are not ‘political’ at all?

Oh come on pull the other one it has bells on it. I’m sure that before long you’ll be up to your old ways of promoting right wing libertarian views while screeching loudly all the time that you are not…

It seems to me that the very politics you support is the very problem with the US today.

 

LOL!!

Oh, here we go again.

Loosely defined, a libertarian is someone who champions liberty and freedom. It's not an issue of right or left. I have never belonged to, nor subscribed to the Libertarian party.

 

Rat

LOL, oh yes and the German Democratic Republic was a champion of democracy. As I’ve pointed out many times it is always better to actually look at what people's actions rather than just accepting what they claim to be doing.

You can be a right wing libertarian without been a member of the official US Libertarian Party, in fact I’ve known there are some right wing libertarians who think it doesn’t go far enough.

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So what in your opinion would be the best political course for the US at this time?

 

I don't involve myself with systems for managing people (ie. politics), therefore I have no political solution. I have ideological solutions that I know would never work, which are interesting to talk about but little else.

I am an anarchist. Not the fake liberal type of anarchist who covers their face and breaks shit, but a person who truly believes in the idea of no government and absolute freedom. Again, I know this would never work, but it's my stance ideologically speaking.