Threats...Danger...
Fight...Fight...Fight...Fight
by
Bill Bonner
by Bill Bonner
An
election is an advance auction of stolen goods, as Ambrose Bierce
put it. The bidding began many months ago and continues in the Big
Apple this week, with each candidate burnishing his shield, sharpening
his sword... and raising the stakes.
Republicans
can tell which way the wind is blowing. They’ve come out with a
flattering convention theme – "A Nation of Courage"
– and an agenda at least as bellicose as their opponents.’
Kicking
the scrawny butts of nearly unarmed Third World nations is not the
sort of thing that epic poems and granite monuments typically celebrate.
Besides, when you are the world’s only superpower, it’s not courage
that you need... it’s prudence. You just don’t want to do something
rash or stupid. But that seems to be what both parties are bent
on.
Conservatism
is dead in America. George Bush will put the crown on his own head
on Thursday and announce a reign of grandiose ambition, expansionism,
recklessness and self-delusion. It makes little difference whether
he wins or loses. Neither party plans to cut spending, though it
is debt that threatens the republic far more than terrorism. Neither
party can face up to the $44 trillion "funding gap" in
federal finances, nor to the current account deficit, nor to the
challenge of low-wage competitors in Asia. Even Alan Greenspan is
talking about the need to reform Social Security and Medicare; but
which national leader is going to tell the voters that they will
get less than expected? Nor does either party question the "War
on Terror"; it’s a fool’s war, which is why it is so popular.
But
Nature has to have her way... no matter what we think. America cannot
continue to be the world’s only superpower, for Nature will not
permit a monopoly for very long. And yet, no foreign nation is strong
enough to offer a serious military challenge – at least not yet.
So the U.S. of A. must ruin itself... and needs leadership that
is up to the task. In Bush and Kerry, America seems to have found
its Louis XVI... it’s Nicholas II, its Theodosius, Rome’s last emperor.
In Bush and Kerry, America has found leaders worthy of a nation
of happy hallucinators.
What
is astonishing to us is the way both parties have become war parties.
We predicted it; but we are still surprised by it.
"Last
night, in Madison Square Garden, I took the stage at the Republican
National Convention to speak to America about the threats we face
in the world," said an e-mail message from Rudolph Giuliani...
"President
Bush has been the steady hand we need in these times of uncertainty
and danger. He understands the stakes... he chooses to fight terror
in places like Baghdad and Kabul, rather than in New York and Kansas.
It is the right way to fight this enemy, and it is a fight we must
win...
"In
order to take the fight to our enemies, we must have the strength
of conviction and support for our Armed Forces... this is not a
fight that favors sensitivity and nuance. This is a fight that requires
strength, determination and resolve."
An
edited version reads as follows:
"threats...
danger... fight... fight... fight... fight... fight... fight...
"
We
cannot recall when America was in such a fighting mood.
Too
bad the fight is an expansive fraud. But it is a convenient and
foreseeable one. "The first panacea of a mismanaged nation
is inflation," wrote Hemingway. "The second is war."
Government
has proved completely inept at fighting illiteracy, poverty and
drugs. Liberal activists found that they could no longer expand
government spending – and their own authority – except by becoming
"neo-conservatives" and focusing their do-goodism on foreign
policy. Besides, who will oppose war spending when the nation is
in danger?
 Of
course, the nation is in no danger at all. A handful of murderous
fanatics represent a threat to Americans – along with muggers, rapists
and reality TV – but not to America itself. Only by reacting to
terrorists in an absurd and hysterical way can the nation defeat
itself.
Bush
and Kerry have come forward just when Nature needed them...
Spend,
spend, spend... fight, fight, fight... from the comic to the tragic...
America creates her own calamity...
September
2, 2004
Bill
Bonner [send
him mail] is the author, with Addison Wiggin, of Financial
Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st
Century.
Copyright
© 2004 LewRockwell.com
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