A decade ago, a dear and close friend returned from an environmental fact-finding mission (photo expedition and ecosystem documentation) of the Ural mountains in Russia. He spoke eloquently of the threats to the incredible diversity of species left in this region, mostly threats from a starving and hungry people who had been given no choice but to eat what they could kill, and at times even slide into cannibalism as a means of survival. There was also of course the incredible pollution of water outside the mountain range itself, requiring a distillation of water and grain into the ever more damaging vodka, that is consumed by most of the people, beginning at an early age. He suggested that he was looking at the future US, where the haves will isolate themselves with private security forces and black market economics, and the have nots will battle it out for what is left.
He isn't wrong. This form of Russiafication of the US is rapidly developing along many lines. Indeed, it would be the dream of libertarians everywhere should the US decay into the forms of society that persisted in Russia during most of the 1990's and beginning of 2000. What more could they ask of a nation: abandon the rule of law, abolish economic system and establish a complete market based barter/cold cash exchange of goods and resources, rule by private militarized security forces paid for by and protective of those who retained the great wealth and privatized infrastructures, etc. Russia was the test, where the blue light caravans of Mercedes carried the wealthy and privileged around through the streets from party to party, while those who had nothing used whatever means necessary to acquire the most essential needs. No government meant no environmental protections, thus destroying the already fragile ecosystems and polluting even further the water and air; no government meant no subsidation of resources, thus no growing of food to feed the masses, just importing the resources for the haves. It was a objectivist libertarian dream state, and it didn't last. Why?
Because those that had, and those that could have, began to prey on one another; since they could get nothing further from the masses. These battles over control of resources, and by that point resources included young women sold into porn slavery and vast segments of the population reduces to feudal serfdom growing food at the point of guns held by the forces of the neo-feudal lords of capital, began to disrupt even the chicest and most affluent neighborhoods of St Petersberg and Moscow. Putin had had enough. It was time to put the nation ahead of the objectivist dream. Declaring all sorts of new powers, Putin used the military to control the crime sprees, and used his international political power to subjegate and nationalize the infrastructure. The experiment failed, because it proved that all that liberty based on capitalism is not liberty and justice for all, but rather a feudal system of elites preying upon the masses' desperations until there is nothing else left to prey upon but one another.
And yet, voices throughout the US, seem to believe that what failed in Russia can be made better in the US. Much like the empire building of the bushco dictatorship strives to be better at the process than its fascist role models, the dream of unfettered rule of capital to take over the US gains momentum each and every day. Liberalism is a mask for turning the haves into lords and ladies of a neo-feudal world, where millions upon millions of US citizens will be economically reduced to abject poverty and forced by circumstance to perform the most menial labors as slaves of their masters, just to eat and drink. Do people realize that bottled water costs more than beer?? Do people realize that driving their cars is nothing so much more than a regressive system of moving capital from the many to the few, extracting complete obedience to the demands to destroy the environment to quench the thirst for the perception of free movement? Does the impending bankruptcy of cities and counties throughout the US, register in the minds of the people, that only the wealthy among them will be able to have emergency services and use of the commons?? I think not. And it might already be too late.
UPDATE: just when you think you can move on to the next issue, this little news story pops up today 3/30 in the Progress Report (can you say "private militarized security forces" for the elites again?):
SECURITY -- PRIVATIZING THE NATION'S MILITARY: Private military company Blackwater USA mostly trains military and police personnel and provides security for government and private clients, including the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. But this week at a conference in Jordan, Blackwater announced it was ready to shift from security to combat, becoming an army for hire. "We're low-cost and fast," said Cofer Black, Blackwater's vice chairman. "The issue is, who's going to let us play on their team?" Blackwater faced criticism after deploying hundreds of its mercenaries for general law enforcement in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, under a contract from the Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, Blackwater's President Gary Jackson wrote on March 7, 2005, that terrorists "need to get creamed, and it's fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such folk." Brookings Institution scholar Peter Singer suggests that the U.S. government hiring Blackwater mercenaries for combat could be problematic: "No matter how you slice it, it's a private entity making decisions of a political nature. ... It gets dicey."
You have discovered arachnoanarchy
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