Monday, August 18, 2014

The Carnage of Capitalism (with Comment)

THE CARNAGE OF CAPITALISM (click for Article)

Comment:


Stephen Kinzer's ("The Brothers") rather unsettling account of precedent setting patterns and policies established during and following World Wars 1 & 2 after several unabashed decades of corporate/government unholy allied practices in the name of "healthy commerce at all costs" accurately conveys how that dynamic paradigm was formulated, developed, implemented and yes, 'fostered' with post-war policies beginning with the Dulles brothers (Allen Foster and John Foster) and their dealings while in and out of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell and on into their positions as Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively.

While much of their verified cronyism and back-room/insider dealing would be abjectly unlawful within many of today's revised legal parameters, they nevertheless set the tone of monied exceptionalism into the 30's, 40's and 50's and for decades to come.

Subsequently, in the late 70's and 80's when global finance, currency trading, bundled debt, leveraged stocks etc. became their own lucratively nascent and nepotistic industry--but one without any real manufactured product other than increased (or squandered) wealth itself--the proverbial mule was let kicking and sprinting out of the proverbial barn. The wild beast has begotten generations of legions which will be extremely difficult to discourage, round up or recall.

This manipulated wealth has become a colossal engine which drives everything from national elections to the mega-industries of medicine, education, correctional facilities (many now corporate run), bundled corporate run HOAs (existing nowhere near the neighborhoods of their concern) big pharma and its R&D, food, energy, resource policies, FOREIGN policy and operates hand in hand within a new normal that brazenly ignores--in fact proactively embarks upon the dismantling of--any codified humane consideration for our common welfare.

Other than vapid and hyperbolic image hawking for the benefit of consumer market eyes and ears, there seems to be little corporate recognition of future consequences or real regard for the imminent and irreversible environmental damage about to be forever leveled upon our planet. That we still must tolerate climate change deniers while the tipping points toward catastrophic events are becoming alarmingly nearer than ever anticipated is truly disturbing. It all but ensures with abrupt seriousness that these events must indeed come to occur before those voices that tout their mythic nature are considered ridiculous enough to be muted, and coordinated efforts shall become crucial for survival in the face of undeniably vivid developments. We shall scramble as best a threatened and terrified species is able.

Along with an ever increasingly smaller and insulated power peak, the classic democratic process is hobbled, evidenced strongly by the recent identity crisis within the Right's conservative big tent, as well as the recent inefficiency of the Left's no longer potent moral high ground. The hopes, dreams and plans of the common citizen are rendered adrift and at the mercy of the unmerciful with any plausible representation frozen as an amber bound gnat within long-term legislative paralysis.

Argue the political particulars if you must, but the optics of the final outcome will be quite out of our control.