Pondering the Question of Tibet

As we know, China is the rising super-power while the US continues to falter and decline. The Chinese have created a nigh-on miraculous transformation of their society in a very short time, and this isn't the first time they've done it. The whole Mao-ist revolutionary period was one enormous transformation after another, almost unprecedented in world history. The current rise of China would be unbelievable if we didn't have the prior examples of Chinese transformations to consider.

Part of that transformative process has involved Tibet, a supposedly autonomous province of China that has been subjected to repeated waves of "reform" by the Chinese under Mao and every subsequent central government with the stated objective of getting rid of Tibetan barbarism, backwardism, and worse, while bringing the benefits of modern civilization to uplift the Tibetan masses and guide them into the 21st Century -- while preserving as much as possible of Tibet's unique and ancient culture.

That has meant in practice overthrowing rule by the lamas, exiling the Dalai Lama, disrupting and partially destroying the lamasery system, freeing the Tibetan peasantry from what had amounted to serfdom and in some cases outright slavery, bringing codified law, plumbing, drainage, electricity, roads and railroads, universal education and so on to the masses, instituting public health practices and much more in what is objectively a colonial/imperial project, driven from Beijing, to integrate Tibet into the Greater Chinese Domestic Empire.

In the West there is a highly romanticized notion of what Tibet was like prior to the Chinese revolution. We are ledto believe it was some sort of primitive paradise under the lamas, happy people spinning prayer wheels all the live long day while the Dalai Lama and his lines of Buddhist monks and nuns preserved, protected and defended ancient peaceful Buddhist practice from the Potala in Lhasa to the hundreds of lamaseries throughout the country.

Truly, that romantic version of Tibetan Shangri-la is... off the mark by quite a bit.

The Chinese knew how phony it was, but so did numerous Western travelers and observers -- prior to the Revolution, that is. Tibet as it was, and as many observers testified, was demon-haunted, riven with violence and intense poverty and disease, grossly and deliberately kept backward by the lamas, and despite the constant spinning of prayer wheels, was a society that was too often behaving the opposite of Buddhist practice.

Chinese intervention was not welcomed, not by a long shot, but resistance was futile, as is so often the case with colonial/imperial projects launched from powerful centers. There was-- and still is -- resistance though, and China has not been able to fully transform Tibet into a glittery simulacrum of what so many people seem to believe it once was. It's an uncomfortable hybrid of Chinese driven "progress" and oppression together with surprisingly strong remnants of its former lama-driven but essentially cruel feudal past.

This is the Chinese propaganda version of the Tibetan transformation since the Revolution:



Nice, right? Well, it's not quite like that. The gloss is not quite so shiny, and the benefits of living under strict Chinese colonial control are less than ideal for many Tibetans who face severe restrictions on their freedoms of belief and action and punishment for disobedience and resistance.

This is the Dalai Lama's propaganda version of Tibet Today and Yesterday:



Horrible, right? Well, it's not quite like that.

A different take:



Like most colonial projects, Tibet since the Chinese take over has been a mixed bag. There has been immense material progress while suppressing the lamaseries. There has been resistance and acquiescence. The Chinese have sought to sanitize and monetize the Buddhist, lama-dominated  Tibetan culture while exploiting the land and people for the benefit of China. All of which is typical of colonial projects undertaken in the West over the past centuries.

In addition, Han Chinese have emigrated to and settled in Tibet in numbers sufficient to make them the majority of the population. It's not clear to me whether they are unwelcome, any more than it was obvious that the British were unwelcome in all of their various colonies during the Imperial period.

Colonization is a mixed bag.

This is something I sometimes get into with regard to my Irish ancestry. Ireland was for 800 years a colonial possession of Britain, and for much of that time, the British behaved badly to say the least. Eventually, the Irish achieved a rough form of autonomy and then independence from Britain -- except for those in Northern Ireland who are still to this day subject to the Crown.

The Irish Republic, however, is almost as proud of its British heritage and legacy as the home country is.

You would think that once Ireland achieved independence, the Irish would reject pretty much everything the British imposed on them, and they haven't. Not even close. Same with India, Ceylon, Burma, Singapore, etc., etc. The United States, among so many other former colonies, treasures its British colonial past.

And so it goes. From the outside, it looks like that's the course Tibet is on as well. Ultimately, China's colonial impositions will be put in an overall positive context while acknowledging the bad things that happened.

Under the lamas, Tibet was a cruel and brutal feudal and demon-haunted place, not at all like the Shangri-la paradise of lore and legend or as hinted by mostly Western "Free Tibet" activists. The lamaseries had so many thousands of monks and nuns in part because they were places of refuge ("I take refuge in the Buddha; I take refuge in the Dharma; I take refuge in the Sangha.") from a truly awful outside reality, full of suffering and woe. The Chinese disbanded and destroyed many of the lamaseries -- and preserved others -- while transforming the domestic society into something more closely resembling the modern material societies in China and elsewhere.

Is this a good thing? Not entirely, and not necessarily in any case, but given their druthers -- which is unlikely -- I doubt that most Tibetans would want to go back to the way things were before the Chinese took over.

They, like most colonized people, like much of the material benefit that comes with colonization. They like running water, decent housing, electricity, paved roads, automobiles, and electronics. They like education and opportunity where once there was none outside the lamaseries. The elements of progress make their lives easier and potentially more rewarding. They like the end of arbitrary rule by cruel landlords. lamas and village chiefs. They don't like the oppression and suppression that seems to be built in to the Chinese psyche. They don't like having their faith and beliefs challenged by modernity and materialism, even if they like the benefits. They don't like their traditional ways of life being replaced by... what? Colonialism always leaves the question open.

I ponder the question of Tibet these days because of my slow-walking return to Buddhism after so many years in another realm of existence altogether. Tibet is a primary Buddhist center, both for philosophy and practice, and the Dalai Lama is the principal Buddhist spokesman in the world today, widely revered even by non-Buddhists.

The President Problem and the Chinese Connection

Now that we know who Our Leaker is, we can begin to sort the situation out a little bit better.

Edward Snowden (This is his real name? So British, so peripherally royal, so... apparently benign. At least he's no Muslim!), a Booz Allen employee, former NSA and CIA employee, former Special Forces military trainee, former... well, what hasn't he done... outed himself in a lengthy but not terribly informative interview published over at the Guardian yesterday.  He's certainly a very well-presented young man, easily the most articulate spokesman for The Cause that was likely to be found. That the interview took place in a Hong Kong hotel, and indeed, so far as I was able to figure, the Revelations from him have all emanated from his perch in Hong Kong where Young Snowden has sought refuge if not asylum is more than a little interesting, given the visitation of China's Premier Xi with the President at the Annenberg spread in Rancho Mirage over the weekend ostensibly dealing with such matters as... cyberwarfare.

Go figure.

The Cause is what, exactly? Remind me again.

Oh yes, according to Young Snowden and his interviewer Glenn Greenwald, The Cause is The Debate. That's all they say they want, The Debate. "What kind of country do we want to have?" Snowden claims that he has not revealed anything that would compromise either any individual or the National Security State itself. All he has done, he says, is let people know something of what's really going on in that National Security State.

Message: You are being spied upon, and at an analyst's whim, you can be investigated and destroyed, with no recourse or appeal. Domestic surveillance is that penetrating and that pervasive. Is this the kind of country we want to have?

That's not The Debate that's under way, however. Far from it. The Debate that is underway is almost entirely a matter of Getting Obama, as seen in the inordinate number of blame-casting anti-Obama screeds that this and the other "scandals" promulgated subsequent to the Correspondents' Dinner have triggered.

It's all about the Persons of the President and those around him, not so much what's been going on -- something we're still only vaguely aware of. Domestic surveillance per se is certainly not the issue, as neither Snowden nor Greenwald -- among many others -- are intrinsically opposed to it. What they seem to be railing against is not the surveillance itself, it is instead a matter of how the surveillance is carried out, by whom, under what controls if any, and to what use the information is put. As far as I can tell, universal domestic surveillance is fine in their view as long as a) we know it is going on; b) it is done according to clearly stated and enforceable rules and regulations with adequate public review and oversight; c) certain categories of people are exempt from scrutiny (ie: media, perhaps the highest levels of corporate leadership, elected officials, maybe some others).

Because that is (apparently) not the way the various surveillance programs work now, revealing them is the surest way to engage The Debate that will lead to the proper sort of domestic surveillance. Or so it would seem.

The Obama Administration is to blame for the current faulty surveillance programs, and (of course) for lying about them to the public. It's what Presidencies do, after all. But in this case, it is worse than any ever in the history of the world, because Obama campaigned on Hope and Change, and he has Betrayed Us!!! Obama is personally to blame for this. No President has ever been as deceptive and deceitful as this one, ever.

Of course, this is all politics, the same sort of factional war-gaming that's been going on forever in the halls of power, but with the added thrill of potentially being able to Get yet another President, and that's always fun.

The first President who was Got in my lifetime was President Kennedy who was shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and we have had a President Problem ever since. No President since then has been able to get through his term(s) of office unsullied if not actually driven from the Throne by forces arrayed against him. Johnson was forced to issue his famous, "I shall not run and I shall not accept" statement from the Throne after the nation erupted in disobedience and riots over the war in Vietnam and aspects of racial discrimination. After more assassinations in 1968 -- MLK, Robert Kennedy -- Nixon won the Presidency, which he held onto barely into a second term before he was forced out of office due to overt criminality which he, bless his heart, claimed was not criminal because the President was doing it. Ford, who followed Nixon, was our first unelected president, as Nixon's vice president had been forced out for his own corruption and criminality, and Ford was chosen by... lot? Who knows? At any rate, he was appointed to the position of Vice President when Spiro Agnew was removed from office, and he stepped in to the Presidency when Richard Nixon resigned. Ford was essentially a nonentity placeholder -- except for this: both Donald Rumsfeld (as SecDef) and Darth Cheney (as Chief of Staff)  became national players under Ford, and we would be privileged to witness the result of their decades of public service (or what you will) under Bush II. Monstrous. Ford was followed by Carter, a highly moral man but deeply flawed President, who couldn't seem to get his act together at any time during his brief tenure, primarily because -- I've always thought -- he was popularly elected as a cleansing agent and the Washington Establishment (Digby's "village," my "Palace") would have none of it. Out he went. Then it was Reagan's turn to hold the office, though what he actually did in it is still somewhat of a mystery, especially after he was shot, and it appeared that a formerly shadowy cabal (Haig, Bush the Old, others) took over. At any rate, Reagan's term(s) of office were transformative to be sure, economically terrifying and disastrous for many Americans, and genocidal for millions abroad. He left office under a cloud of suspicion over the grotesquerie of the Central American campaigns, the Iran-Contra monstrousness, the routine corruption and corporate favoritism that was a feature of his regime, and his personal problems with Alzheimer's. He was followed by his apparently sane Vice President, George Bush the Old who promptly got us into a monstrous war with Iraq that left hundreds of thousands dead and who otherwise led the nation into unprecedented levels of instability. Of course, the minute the Presidential Throne was taken over by the Clintons, the Apocalypse drew nigh. The Clinton years were an endless round of "scandals" leading to the revelation of sexual peccadilloes leading to a ridiculous failed impeachment. It was certainly a Show, but as for the rest? The Clinton years consolidated the Reagan Revolution... from a political standpoint, it was the final stand -- and final rout -- of what little of a "left" was left in politics and government. While the Clintons are riding high now, the Clinton years had some really disastrous political aspects, many of which would be brought to the fore by the Clinton successor, George Bush the Lesser, who was installed in office under as dark a cloud as had ever hung over the Presidency, elected by a majority of the Supreme Court, contrary to law and the Constitution, because they could. The Bush II regime was perhaps the most gawd-awful in American history (I'm not familiar enough with the Bad Presidents of the 19th and early 20th Century to say with certainty) leading to millions dead and made refugee as a result of wars, economic collapse, terrorist attacks and so on. The Bush years were an unprecedented nightmare for the nation and for much of the world, a nightmare from which there has been no recovery, despite the intention of redemption with the election (twice now) of Barack Obama and the nearly complete disappearance of Bush the Bad.

In my view, this record of presidential disaster following the murder of President Kennedy should be seen as part of the problem of the presidency itself, an anachronistic quasi-imperial position that should never have been instituted, but once it was seen to produce such imperious problems (which was almost immediate with George Washington) should have been abolished. But it wasn't and we are now where we are.

The efforts to blame particular presidents for whatever is wrong miss the point: the presidency itself gives rise to wrong on a massive -- and apparently increasing -- scale, and attacking or replacing the person who sits on the Presidential Throne does not change that. After so many essentially failed presidencies, as enumerated above, it should begin to dawn on observers that the presidency is itself the problem, and until that is dealt with, nothing else will be resolved.

Constitutionalists, of course, will never get that because of their worship of the Holy Writ that provides for the Presidency. So long as the Constitution is considered sacred, the Presidential Problem will remain.

What's been going on lately with the various "sudden" scandals of the Obama Administration, all of which have been known of for months if not years, strikes me as a deliberate and calculated move by a certain faction within the Shadow State if you will to either bring this particular presidency to an end or to so hamstring it that there is no internal choice but to follow the dictates of that faction. I call it the continuation of the Cheney regime.

But what of the China Connection? I don't think we can totally ignore the coincidence of the domestic spying revelations and the visitation of the Chinese Premiere together with the hightailing of the leaker to Hong Kong -- which is part of China, no matter the apparent efforts to give it some kind of Libertarian gloss.

This will shake out in ways we can't completely anticipate, but I'd say we can expect to see little of The Debate, and a great deal of stomping around and bombast. It's hard to imagine that any of the factional players are in any way interested in overturning or reversing the American slide into authoritarianism. Instead, they are still competing among themselves over who will have the reins of the Security State going forward.

China is likely to be the model.

But then we knew that, didn't we?

Or Is It Like 1989?

The Revolutions of 1989



Did somebody mention the "Ceausescu Solution?"



Tiananmen?



Or will it be something like we've never seen before?

The New Normal

The Conventional Wisdom likely to be borne out after the election on Tuesday is that Republicans will make substantial gains in Congress, the Senate, statehouses across the land and governorships. Indeed, they may make unprecedented gains. Historic gains.

No one expects the Democrats to maintain a majority in the House, though the Senate is likely to stay nominally Democratic for the time being. Right now it is a toss up whether Harry Reid will hold on to his Senate seat in Nevada or lose it to TeaBagger favorite Sharon Angle. Odds are shifting toward Angle. If Harry loses his seat, the Senate Majority (or Minority, depending on outcome) Leadership would fall to someone else, and who that might be is somewhat murky at this time. Whoever it might be, one can be sure it won't be anyone more "Progressive" than Harry Reid. In other words, not "Progressive" at all.

Gridlock and worse it predicted by those In The Know, a repeat of the post-1995 Clinton era in which Government ground to a halt several times while the Republican Congress and the nominally Democratic White House contended with one another for supremacy.

And there was the little matter of the Impeachment over some stains on a Blue Dress.

Many in the chattering classes are looking forward to a return to that situation for it enhances their own glory, or at least they think it does, and a wide range of new right-wing blood can be injected into the punditocracy.

Yes, this is all about normalizing a further lurch to the right in our governing class.

The New Normal.

In this New Normal, Republicans who are actually not in charge of the Government will be in effective control of it. In other words, Democrats will be in charge, but their orders and commands will come from Republicans -- who in turn will be operating from the strictly reactionary corporate playbook.

The White House, which has been nearly passive or actively yielding in the face of Republican resistance to its largely corporate favoring programs, will certainly be inclined to continue on the same path, with the added bonus of being able to blame the Rs for policies the White House itself favors.

The domestic economic situation will get worse for the vast majority of Americans, and it will get wildly better for the handful at the very top. And this will be normalized into the "Recovery" that has been so very elusive. Reducing the standard of living of the masses has obviously been part of the economic policy of the White House and Congress throughout the Endless Recession. We can anticipate that the reduction in living standards that's been under way for years will only accelerate under the New Normal of a nominally Democratic government -- controlled by Republicans.

But it will be very comfortable for some. The trick -- and the opportunity -- will be in finding some comfort for the masses, millions of whom have already been pushed into poverty, millions more soon to join them.

Will Americans learn to accept their New Normal poverty? From appearances, most of those facing or experiencing hardship already have. Millions upon millions have already been forced out of their jobs and their homes, and despite their discomfort, they really aren't making much of a stink about it, nor are they even threatening to. That fact alone has emboldened the Ruling Class into believing that they can get away with pretty much anything. And so far, given the remarkable success of the TeaBagging operation of the Ruling Class, they appear to be right.

The New Normal will mean an ever greater expansion of Ruling Class interest and authority and a further diminution of Peoples' interests and authority. "Government" will get smaller by handing an ever greater amount of its operations and authority to private corporations unaccountable to the public. With less and less authority, the Government will have less and less to do with the People for whom it is ostensibly established and become far more openly in thrall to the corporate interests it actually serves.

The New Normal will mean that the People will go along with this fundamental change in what the Government is and how it operates, and they will do so on a very simple basis:

JOBS

Tens of millions of Americans are idle due to the Endless Recession and the utter failure -- no, I call it Languid Indifference -- of the White House and Congress, with the connivance of the corporate class, to get them back to work. This situation has been a matter of policy, not accident, and it has been pretty obvious that the policy has been implemented in order to reduce the wages and benefits of those who manage to stay employed and to ensure that people returning to the workforce and new workers do so at significantly reduced levels of compensation.

The failure to raise employment levels during the last two years (even at reduced compensation) is an albatross around the necks of the Democrats ostensibly in charge, and it is the principal reason why so many of them are going to lose in Tuesday's election.

The Republicans have been promising "Jobs" throughout the election season (Democrats for the most part don't even mention "Jobs") and they will likely deliver. In their characteristic way.

We can assume the elimination of wage and hour laws, the crushing and elimination of unions, and the "relaxation" of health and safety regulations. Of course, this will all be agreed to by the White House -- "reluctantly" -- in order to "Get America Moving Again."

Basic employment standards in this country will be reduced and normalized to global standards, and sure enough, unemployment will begin to fall. I would not be surprised if unemployment is halved in the next two years, provided that the Newly Normalized reductions in employment standards are implemented. If they are resisted, the screws will continue to be put on the masses.

Of course all social programs are in dire jeopardy, but those that enhance the income and status of the Ruling Class will not be going away. Social Security and Medicare will continue, in the New Normal, but on the unstated premise that their function is to enhance the wealth and privilege of the wealthy and privileged classes. Workers -- those who have work -- will see their benefits reduced, but they will not be eliminated. Accessing and utilizing benefits will become more difficult, for some, impossible. But the benefits will still be there.

The People will have less and less say -- eventually none -- in the course of the Nation's future. As it is, elections are in no way referenda on that course. One does not get a vote on the Programs being implemented; one's vote is limited to an advisory on how harshly and how quickly those Programs are to be implemented. But even the advisory role will be extinguished in time, and elections will have as much effect on the Ruling Classes in this country as elections had under the Roman Empire.

Because, of course, the New Normal involves the "progress" of our Nation's governance from that of a faltering Republic with Imperial pretensions to that of a nascent and growing Empire with a Republican history.

The path is set. It would happen regardless of which Party is in ostensible control of the Government. Both Parties are in essential agreement on the course of our future, and it is an Imperial course without question.

The wild card in this New Normal is that the financing for this Empire is coming from the Chinese. Their model is highly admired among America's Ruling Class, and we're likely to see more and more of it adopted in this country. But the overseas adventurism that is incrementally expanding the American Imperial Project is happening under the gaze of Our Chinese Financiers and -- could be -- Overlords.

They can stop it at any time. But for the time being, they seem quite content with American Imperialism as the New Normal.

I wonder how long that will last.

What To Do

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Posting as Iraq Vet For Human Rights over at Glenn's Place, writer Helen G. (I'm not sure she would want me to use her full name or maybe any name but her pseudonym) asks the right question of all of us, given her own personal experience as a soldier in Iraq, bolstered by the enormous number of documents from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan now in the public domain thanks to... someone, assumed to be PFC Bradley Manning... who leaked them to WikiLeaks.

What do we do now? And what needs to be done to change the trajectory? To make amends to those who have been harmed?

To the extent I have a larger goal than merely observing and opining on the Passing Show, it is to be found in bringing the present day Imperial Project to a... halt. Right now, it is simply running out of control, almost on its own account, with no discernible objective besides finding and crushing resistance to American Imperial Hegemony. It's a Killer Operation for its own sake. It's insane.

Well, we've been down this road before, actually repeatedly, and it took concerted action by the American People over long years to bring it to a halt. What it took was inducing the Ruling Class to decide to desist.

The Vietnam/Indochina example could be instructive, and in that regard, this is what I posted at Glenn's Place in response to IVFHR's query:

Ultimately it was the decision of the High and the Mighty to end the Indochina debacle, but they didn't reach that decision by accident.

The American People have to position themselves, once again, to convince those in power to STOP IT.

It's not going to be easy. It may not be possible before tragedy overwhelms us.

But there were key elements in how it was done vis a vis Vietnam and Indochina that we should keep in mind.

1) Opposition to and ultimately ending the draft. Without a draft -- or even with one, but with serious resistance to it -- the military could not function as an Imperial Conquering Force.

There is no draft now, of course, but you've alluded to its equivalent: a crypto-draft due to economic circumstances. And it's broader than just the volunteer military: we have to include the vast numbers of mercenaries the Government is recruiting and paying.

What would convince young men and women not to join the military -- even under severe economic strains? As important, what would convince those inclined to become mercenaries not to? How can they be convinced, for example, that serving the Empire isn't "patriotic?" That's what has to be done, and it's an uphill struggle. I'm thinking of how difficult it could be to convince Irish youth not to join the British armed forces when time was. Just so in the United States today. Nevertheless, serving the Empire is not patriotic.

2) Refusing commands. In Vietnam, this phenomenon scared the hell out of the generals and admirals -- and eventually out of the civilian command as well. It was never as widespread as it is sometimes made out to be, but any hint of mutiny or action against authority is terrifying to military commanders, and it is essential that troops and officers refuse to carry out orders -- especially when they are, as they so often have been in our Imperial Escapades, flagrantly illegal. The troops MUST resist and refuse. How do you convince them it is patriotic to refuse orders and resist commands? Got to find ways. Until the troops refuse, commanders will continue as they have been.

3) Congressional de-funding. We the People have to insist that the Congress cease funding the Empire. It's not so much about defunding the wars -- though that has to be done, too -- it is more about defunding the whole panoply of Empire that is like a virulent infection on the Potomac. Our Rulers are in love with their notions of Power bound up with their Imperial Project. In order to convince them to desist, We the People have to be prepared to stop paying for it. And that's the toughest nut to crack. It means real risk and sacrifice by many Americans. There have been calls for a General Strike, for example, with at best a handful of participants nationwide. Yet no other action on the part of the People is going to make much of a difference on the Powers That Be. They have to see that the People are determined. At this point, they are only seeing that from the TeaBaggers -- and that just gladdens the hearts of the High and the Mighty.

So those are essential actions that have to be taken or the Imperial Juggernaut will roll on.

Of course at any moment, China might pull the plug on financing the Empire and the whole thing will fall apart anyway...

And that, I think, is what it will eventually come down to: When China no longer needs or desires the American Imperial Project, they will pull the financial plug, and there will be nothing, short of self-immolation, that the United States will be able to do about it.

The End of the Republic Is Not the End of Empire

There's an immodest tendency (especially in the Blogosphere) to equate the difficulties the United States is going through these days -- what with the various wars of aggression, the Endless Recession, a government of, by and for the plutocrats, and the tattered, pissed upon Constitution -- as some sort of modern day parallel with the end of the Roman Empire.

And this misses the mark badly.

What's happening is a somewhat murky parallel to the end of the Roman Republic and the inauguration of the Roman Empire, not its end at all.

The United States went through an earlier Imperial Era (we could argue "Empire" is at the root of The American Dream as promulgated by the Founders, but that's another topic for another day). The American overseas imperial ambition began with the overthrow of the Native Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 by American planters and adventurers. In 1898, the United States seized by force -- a war of aggression, gee -- an entire (rotting) Empire from Spain and so joined the tail end of the Imperial free-for-all that characterized the ambitions of (mostly) European powers during the 19th Century.

It didn't work out well.

Not for anyone. Not the Natives who were starved, brutalized, exploited and oppressed throughout the era, and not for their colonial masters, either, who found themselves embroiled in ever more catastrophic World Wars for global hegemony and domination.

The 19th and the first half of the 20th Centuries were disastrous for Natives and for Imperial ambitions in turn. There may have been progress in some other realms -- materially, certainly, for the imperialists -- but not so much progress in terms of humanity.

A bi-polar global political arrangement emerged out of the chaos and wreckage left in the wake of WWII (it's hard to believe just how awful conditions for the survivors were in the aftermath of World War II -- except in the United States, which had escaped the destruction wrought nearly everywhere else.) On the one hand were the Godless Communists led by the weakened but extraordinarily resilient Soviet Union, and on the other were the Free Peoples of the World, led by the United States.

Soon enough, the bi-polarism broke down to accommodate the growing nonaligned independence movements that liberated former imperial enterprises of various European and American powers from their colonial fetters. The Third World was born.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, this tripartite arrangement has broken down. Especially since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, DC -- extraordinarily simple and effective when results are measured by "predictions," but again, that's another topic for another day -- the United States, in concert with much of the rest of the English speaking world, has set about reviving and reimposing aspects of the British Empire in certain sectors where its lessons were not learned back in the day.

While what's going on resembles the days of the British Raj, and certainly today's targets are the very ones the British didn't quite get right when the Sceptered Isle reigned supreme, it is a basically American Imperial enterprise under way, with a basically political rather than a more pointedly economic objective (ie: steal from the Natives to enhance the wealth and power of a handful of British aristocrats and the Crown). That's not to say there aren't such crass economic motives, for there certainly are. It is merely to point out that the primary objective of the Imperial Wars of Aggression currently under way is the establishment and perpetuation of a "peaceful" political order in these restive lands without serious resistance to US Power.

Boiled down, all this is about is crushing resistance. Permanently. Of course it is an impossible objective to achieve, and that's part of its beauty. By being desirable but impossible, it can be pursued forever. It becomes a mythological quest, pursued for its own sake, and conveniently enhancing the power and wealth of the Oligarchs and Plutocrats along the way while step-by-step ensuring the extinguishment of even the pretense of Constitutional self-government.

Beauty.

This is the introductory phase of the establishment of a New Empire at the end of the Republic; it is not the End of the Empire by any means. Instead, it is the opening phase of the establishment of an Enduring Anglo-American Empire.

Perhaps the confusion arises from the conflation of the American Republic with its earlier Imperial thrusts -- which were not enduring and which were conducted from the premises of a Republic. Rome was a Republic throughout its early Imperial expansion, don't forget. Consolidation of that Empire and stabilization on the domestic front required the extinguishment of the Republic -- in the guise of "saving it" of course -- in order to proceed successfully. Which the Romans did. For hundreds of years.

Remnants of the Roman Empire still survive and operate.

The establishment of an Enduring Anglo-American Empire is what I see going on now. It's very halting and imperfect to say the least, but it is proceeding bloodily and relentlessly. It is being financed by the exploitation -- and progressive impoverishment -- of the American masses who are simply and efficiently being relieved of their wealth with breathtaking speed -- and by the likeliest rival to Anglo-American hegemony, China.

This situation actually puts me in mind of what was going on in Ancient Greece, the Peloponnesian Wars and all that. The Persians -- the rivals of the Greeks, right? -- though actually defeated by the Greeks at Marathon, were according to Thucydides, very active players and financiers in both Greek imperial expansion (under an ostensible "Democracy") and in the Peloponnesian Wars that wracked Hellas and the colonial holdings of the Greeks for a generation. The Greeks couldn't have done what they did without Persian influence and especially without Persian finance. And of course the exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, but they were never well off to begin with.

So it is now, the Anglo-American quest for a New Imperial hegemony is being financed by China, which appears to have no additional imperial ambitions (they seem happy enough with what they've got, don't they?) so they're content to let the British and the Americans work over resistance groups wherever they find them.

Which is probably the underlying reason why the Chinese continue to finance this Imperial adventure. The Chinese don't want to have to deal with these resistance groups, either, do they? But they have more important things to deal with at the moment, let the Outer Barbarians serve as mercenaries to the Middle Kingdom and at least keep the fiercer Barbarians at bay.

Working out just fine... for the Chinese.

What a tangled web, eh?

But back to my point: this is the End of the Republic, not the End of Empire.

The Anglo-American Empire will endure for at least as long as its peoples can continue to be exploited and impoverished (another generation or more), and for as long as its Chinese financiers believe it is worthwhile to fund it (another several generations if the signs are to be believed.)

Americans will be little the wiser.

Let's see. Where are we now?

With the economy now apparently headed straight to the crapper and Arch-looter Henry Paulson demanding all the rest of the Wall Street Bailout cash NOW, NOW, NOW, and the Obama Regime getting ready to maintain as much of the Status Quo as possible under the dire circumstances, and the American People being completely forgotten in this Maelstrom of Misery that everyone knew was coming but nobody wanted to -- or could -- do anything about, where are we now? Really?

Often, I've said, "Look to China; there's your Future." And of course this has been met with your typical American Blank Stare. If it isn't on the toob, or in the NYT it doesn't compute. Now if it isn't on the Blog, it doesn't compute, either.

Authority must be maintained at all costs.

But China is still showing the way to the Future, as authoritarian, undemocratic, and politically repressive as it is, what you see there is what you will be seeing here sooner or later. Don't forget, China OWNS the USA, and China's lead will be followed.

China, after all, is way ahead of the Wall Street Looters in working its way out of the economic difficulty they too face thanks to the appalling lack of plain business sense displayed by the Masters of the Universe. China is ahead, way ahead, because they know how to do this.

And because they are our Owners, they're going to show us how to do it, too. Whether we will comprehend and follow instructions is another story.

I've wondered why the Real Left, while critical of the Obama Regime's imperialism and corporatism, has largely been silent so far during the transition from Bushevism to Obama-mania. And I've wondered if it isn't because, apart from some marginal issue -- like imperialism and corporatism (!) -- the Real Left actually agrees with the Obama Program, as much of it as they can parse out of the carefully couched phraseology.

Even the imperialism and corporatism, even the militarism, doesn't get the Real Left all that upset, and we already know that the right wing is practically rapturous over the "steady hand" they see on the tiller. Nothing fundamental is going to change at all; we'll just get poorer and enjoy working for our New Chinese Overlords, who we will find, in the end, are actually pretty decent and smart as whips (errr... ) compared to the long discredited Masters of the Universe we used to serve.

Even right wing whack-job David Horowitz now loves him some Obama. Bill Kristol sings the praises of Big Government. George Will is now nothing but a crank.

Eyes on the Prize, people. Eyes on the prize.