We have look at The Bomb. Now we look at what winning the Cold War looked from a lower middle class (when there was still an apparition of a middle class) perspective. This chapter covers what the social landscape looked like in 2007.
Cliff Potts
October 1, 2014
We Won?
Many supporters, and critics of globalization see the dominance of theUnited
States as a natural prize for “winning” the
Cold War. To some degree this is true. The United
States ’ “win” of the Cold War is almost the second
chapter of the “win” against imperial Japan , and Nazi Germany. Some
conservatives, like William F. Buckley, Jr., see the Cold War as being the true
World War III. It is more of a natural extension of World War II, and did not
end until the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
Cliff Potts
October 1, 2014
We Won?
Many supporters, and critics of globalization see the dominance of the
As the U.S.
escaped unscathed from World War II, and ascended to the status of Superpower,
the nation survived a bitter competition, arms race, space race, and various
expensive proxy wars against the Soviet Union .
The Cold War threatened to turn hot at least eight
times from 1947 through 1991. The first incident was the Berlin Blockade from
1948 to 1949. The second was the Korean Conflict from 1950 to 1953. From 1956
to 1957 the Suez Crisis pushed the Superpowers to a virtual head to head
confrontation. In 1962 the Soviets installed medium range missiles in Cuba .
In 1973, during the Yom Kippur war, the Soviets threatened direct intervention
on behalf of the Arabs. In November of 1979, NORAD received a false alarm that
the Soviet Union had launched an attack. In
September of 1983 the same happened to the Soviets. Exercise Able Archer in
November of 1983 was viewed by the Soviet Politburo as a screen for an attack. Not
until the exercise was over did the U.S.
realize how close it had come to setting off a confrontation between the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R.[1]
In December of 1991, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
or Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, and walked away from one of the longest
political poker games in history. The United States was heralded as the
undisputed winner of the Cold War, and entitled to all the spoils.
While KGB documents prove that the Soviet Union was
more concerned about Germany
than the U.S. , it is equally
true that the Soviet Union would have to get through the U.S. in order to attack Germany . They made it pretty clear
that their aim was to dominate the defeated Germany
after the end of the war when they attempted to cut off Berlin
from the U.S.
and the British in 1947. That set the players at the card table for a game of
bet and bluff that lasted 44 years. In the end the U.S. won, but what did the United States
win?
The Business community may have won global markets,
but that has been of little benefit to the citizens of the United States . At best, it can be
said that the U.S. won access to an ever increasing pile of disposable foreign
junk. In the short term it may look like an increasing supply of inexpensive
goods. In the long term, given the trend towards planned obsolesce, it looks
more like the nation as become the repository of unsalvageable petrochemical
products which eventually fill up the decreasing space in community land fills.
Through the globalization process, this U.S. victory has made it easier to substitute
the higher cost of U.S.
labor with the much lower cost foreign labor and increase the profit margin for
the corporations. This is the essence of President Reagan’s supply side
economics, which was labeled voodoo economics by George H.W. Bush during the
1980 election cycle.
Mr. Reagan assured the nation that the corporations
could be trusted to be socially responsible and provide adequate opportunity
for U.S.
labor. We have seen the effects on the economy and the losses taken by the U.S. working
class since the time of Ronald Reagan. However, it must be noted that both
Reagan and the Bushes were working with the tools released when Nixon abandoned
Bretton Woods agreement in 1971.
Dubbed the “Nixon Shock,” this action was taken
without consulting the nations who had signed the agreement in 1944 or his own
State Department. This, in effect, set the stage to take the U.S. economy back to something that is more
reminiscent of the society of Charles Dickens’ England
than the enlightened America
which was taught in school. It set into motion an economic realignment best
reflecting Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations,
and the society of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Hard Times, not to forget Upton
Sinclair’s The Jungle.
It is a wonderful irony of history that the United States
has, in its victory, become a modern reflection of exactly the same society criticized
by Marx and Sinclair. Capitalism works, but it only works when there is
competition to keep it honest and responsive. In the absence of that, we have
what is going on in the United
States today. We’ve nothing to prove
anymore, and are proving nothing.
Today’s consumers are told they cannot live without
the latest cell phone with mp3 capability, customized ring tones, and the all
important text messaging (each additional service for additional incremental
cost). However, does any of this enhance life? On the other hand, does it
diminish the quality of life?
A casual observation of the comings and goings on the
campus of a junior college will show you dozens of people jabbering away to
unknown associates while they move through a community of scholars utterly
oblivious to the community around them.
The good for the quasi-dysfunctional, socially
isolated community of highly narcissistic individuals has to be questioned. The
cell phone has completely changed the protocol where a phone call will take
precedence over a real conversation. There is
a life separate from the universal cell phone network. What was originally sold
as a security device has become so indispensable that people of all ages, and
economic classes, have to have them plugged into their ear every waking minute
of the day. It is considered a social calamity not to be able to rattle off one’s
home phone number along with an assorted list of cell phone numbers. What has
been gained?
Additionally, we are now wired (loosely speaking) to
the entire world through lap-tops, desk-top PCs, Blackberries, and Palm Pilots
to thousands of data streams which are incredibly useless. Information may be
power, but when the information is useless what power does it have save for the
ability to waste the individual’s time having to get rid of it? This deluge of
information is so great that we can no longer judge what is useful and what is
not. Moreover the useful gets lost in the debris. How many text messages,
e-mails, voice mails, and telemarketer pitches have any real value? We have
this great tool called the internet which has yet to prove itself to be of
value as a revenue generator except for the select few who manage to become
“known.” Being “known” does not guarantee that the services provided are
quality or responsive to the customer’s needs. An example of this is Yahoo.
The Yahoo experience is one which has to be
experienced, and no written work on their blatant disregard for the end user
will suffice. Time is money, but not if you’re using Yahoo’s Business Model.
They expect the people using their services to contribute original ideas and
dedicated work, while they collect the rewards. If Yahoo shared a penny with those
of us who send out its advertisement-laden e-mail, the time we expend would be
justified. The funny thing is that most of us are willing to work to make them
money. At best, this is a form of indentured slavery at the intellectual level.
In 1941, Robert A Heinlein wrote a novella called Logic of Empire. In it he illustrates
that the exploitation of a new frontier often requires the frontier business to
engage in unethical behavior. This is necessary to make the venture viable
until they can adequately share the rewards of the venture. In Mike Royko’s Sez Who, Sez Me from the 1980s, Mike,
the son of a Chicago tavern owner, said, “In order to make it in America you
have to work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, and have the ethics of a
grave robber.”[2]
Yahoo’s
free services on the internet are a frontier business. The internet only became
a commercial venture in the mid 1990s. Even now, Yahoo is reporting diminishing
advertising revenue. Using Yahoo Groups and e-mail is not free; it has
opportunity cost. Pushing Yahoo’s ads costs the end user time and intellectual
property. The creativity of others is the driving force behind the Yahoo model.
Yahoo’s income is tied to the creativity, drive, hard work and intellectual
property of the end user. We build the stream for them. Most people would
consider this immoral.
If there is any good that one can say about the Yahoo
model is that they do not have the force of law to keep the participants in
line with their objectives. Yahoo has decided that they cannot share the
revenue with the people who make the revenue stream work for them. The error is
within the internet, in the user community, the crime – as defined as hurting
others -- lies in the Yahoo business model. The mass of users work for Yahoo
without pay, and that is slavery.
Collectively we ignore people in our local community
so that we can log in under an assumed name and act like complete and utter
buffoons. After a while even the most relaxed and forgiving individual wants to
pound his head on the desk in utter disbelief and frustration at sites like
Yahoo Answers.
The following are but a few of the questions asked
(collected on the afternoon of May 29, 2007 at approximately 5:18 PM CDST):
·
Why did Jesus borrow so much from the Pagans if
he came to save us from Paganism?
·
Why do chicken hawks mistakenly believe that
there comes a time when service to country is not their duty?
·
Why do yellowbellies that never served feel a
need to troll the ids of those of us who have?
·
Compared to the so-called "atrocities"
in Abu Ghraib, what do you think about the techniques our enemies use?
·
Amnesty for illegals will create a far bigger
welfare class. Does this help Democrats or Republicans?
For the sake of illumination, it would be good to
look at one question and the answers given (just as they appeared without
editing).
Q: In the U.S.
A: You've just answered your own question.
A: Because they are use to saying anything
they like to their constituents and
they buy into it.
A: Oh please. Both sides can come up with
tons of so-called reliable statistics
proving that their side is smarter. Neither side can or will ever prove anything decisively, and to try to do so is a
total waste of time and energy. Use
your brain and stop being a partisan
hack.
A: Bill Gates is not a Republican is he
stupid or what?
Dems. out number Reps. on the web so who's informed?
What college was it thatLincoln
Maybe in 08 the sad Good Old Perverts will disappear.
The Log Cabin Republicans will stay with it.
Dems. out number Reps. on the web so who's informed?
What college was it that
Maybe in 08 the sad Good Old Perverts will disappear.
The Log Cabin Republicans will stay with it.
A: Because democrats try to trick the lower
class into voting for them.
Democrats are like big con artists, they sell you non working products then run away when you find out they dont do anything. Have you ever talked to any of
those democrats anti war morons?
They dont even know who the kurds were in Iraq
A: It goes both ways. Republicans say the same
about Democrats. It's like a
college football game: Georgia
Bulldogs vs. Florida Gators, Michigan vs. Ohio State , Auburn vs. Alabama
A: So they can pander to their class of victim
voters. The ones that they say
"the system is holding you down."
All of this (which is on the mild side) is the
constant fare served up in Yahoo. Yet this service has been touted on
television as a place to get real answers to real questions. This level of
quality is not unique to Yahoo. The newest hot venue on the web is CherryTap,
billed as a virtual bar or night-club, and this site is equally low in content.
The difference, however, is that Mike who runs CherryTap does not make
pretenses as to what it is; it is an adult (R rated not X rated) oriented pub
strictly for fun. Yahoo, on the other hand, is the forced dumping ground for
thousands of users who sign up for AT&T DSL service.
We “defeated” Communism so we could have the right to
impose similar intellectual tyranny? That has to cause one to pause. Could it
be that the conservatives were so opposed to communism because, in the end,
they were so much alike? That has to make one wonder.
A casual observation of the people who occupy the
on-line community seems to indicate a techno-savvy collection of people, who
are, for one reason or another, living in social isolation. Some are there
because they live in remote corners of the nation. Some are there because their
work schedules conflict with social opportunities within their local
communities. Some are there because they are suffering some form of loss in
their home life that compels them to seek some sort of “safe” social
interaction. Some are there because they need an alter ego to balance some
facet of their real life. Mr. Hyde is otherwise a timid Dr. Jekyll. The
converse is also true; people who are caustic in real life have to have a place
for an elegance of expression. People hide behind a screen name to hide who
they are and act in utter abandon in fulfillment of some fantasy life. This is
not dissimilar to the Spring Break, or Shriners, mentality which drives people
to party hearty in some resort town and hide in the anonymity of a crowd. As
Carl Bernstein, a senior correspondent for the ABC network, instructor at New York University
As long as we are enjoying the carnival and consuming
the goods and services offered, we collectively fulfill our duty to the
corporations. If we don’t, or can’t, fulfill that duty it matters little to the
corporations, since in the corporate cosmology there is always someone else who
will buy the “slop” they offer. The corporations care very little about the
quality of what they are offering.
In the case of Yahoo,
specifically, all they are concerned with is selling hits on the ads which are
bought by other corporations to sell you their goods. It is interesting that
Yahoo does this based on the number of accounts which they have in their
database. This is not too different from the method used by the Wall Street
Journal in the sales of ad space. However, Yahoo’s numbers are inflated because
many of their users have multiple accounts. Only with some serious accounting
and crosschecking would Yahoo be able to tell their customers, the small
companies and aspiring web businessmen and entrepreneurs, what the real participation level is. Yahoo does not do
that. As a matter of fact to get any real information out of Yahoo requires
hours worth of work searching the Yahoo help database. CherryTap, is only a bit
better than Yahoo.
The corporations
expect you to lay down your money for the good of the country’s economy like a
good patriot of the United
States of America . Think not? How many cell
phones do you have, or had, which have been discarded because they were
obsolete and yet still functioning as a phone? How many PCs, or laptops, have
you retired into some forgotten corner of the basement or attic, or smuggled
into some landfill just because they were not able to run Microsoft’s latest
operating system even though they worked perfectly otherwise? Your job in the U.S. economy is
to consume, and the corporations never question where you get the money, or how
much you get paid, as long as you can buy their offerings. Everything is about
consumption.
On Friday, May 11, 2007, the NPR Business Report
opened with the teaser, “Do you know what your job is in today’s economy?” The
answer given was a loud and resounding, “To Consume!” It went on to report that
Wal-Mart posted the worse sales in 33 years. For the month of April the
corporation lost 3% in sales from the previous month. So, not only are you to
consume, but your job is to consume the goods offered by Wal-Mart. It is your
job, according to NPR (the non-commercial, listener supported, public radio
network – National Public Radio). The report went on to say that most analysts
peg the slump on higher gas prices eating away at disposable income. Another
analyst put the blame on Wal-Mart’s haphazard approach to product display. He
referred to it looking as if they used a “shot-gun” to set up their displays.
The story ended with the kicker that Target posted a monthly loss of 2% as
well.
It is interesting to hear the independent National
Public Radio hyping consumerism with Wal-Mart’s name so prominent. Mind you,
they said nothing about Sears, K-Mart, Macy’s or J.C. Penney’s as if there were
no retail outlets other than Wal-Mart and Target. As has been established in
this report, as far as the public perception is concerned, there aren’t any
other outlets. NPR only told the story of Wal-Mart and Target, because that was
the focus of the story, and what the audience could relate to. They reinforced
the prominence of Wal-Mart with a positive spin and linked shopping at Wal-Mart
to the concept of duty as a good citizen of the nation. Within the parameters
of this one story on NPR we hear that it is our duty to shop, and to do so at
Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is the only outlet which counts in the global economy, and
by shopping at Wal-Mart the consumer upholds their end of the social contract.
Mass consumption of the goods sold is within the
framework of the current ethos. The call to consume followed the attacks on the
United States
on September 11, 2001. In an address shortly after that occurrence, President
Bush encouraged U.S.
citizens to “go shopping.” This was not rhetorical. A communiqué for the local
office of Emergency Management (before the advent of Homeland Security)
reinforced this dictate of Mr. Bush.
Our duty as citizens of the United States
in the early days of this new war was to go shopping. No mention was made of
the effects of the economic slump or of the underemployment factors which were
making their presence known already. What was obviously not taken into account
was that 3000 of the best and brightest of the business community had just been
murdered. An individual, let alone a corporation, did not make it to the World Trade
Center
It is worth considering, at this point, the money
flow in the Wal-Mart coffers. Wal-Mart’s own employees spend a good portion of
their disposable income at Wal-Mart. With the exception of rents, utilities,
gasoline, and state mandated auto insurance, most of the purchases by
Wal-Mart’s employees are made at the company store. For all the hype about jobs
created by Wal-Mart very little of the revenue stream goes into the local
community. The Wal-Mart Superstores, offering both groceries and dry-goods,
leaves little in the way of free commerce for the local community from either
the Wal-Mart “Associates” of the local body of the public at large.
The revenue collected from the community is then
deposited into the store’s corporate account and placed under Wal-Mart’s
corporate control. This moves the money from the local community to Bentonville , Arkansas
From Bentonville, 70% of the revenue stream goes to
various vendors. Some of it heads to Mexico . The bulk of it heads to China . Very
little of the revenue stays in the United States . This allows the
Chinese and the Mexicans to invest in their own communities and create more
jobs in their community. This has been a windfall for China , but has not yet allowed Mexico to climb out of it post-peso collapse of
1994 and the chronic drug wars that have created economic and social chaos in Mexico .[4]
According to NPR’s story, your job as a citizen of
the United States ,
is to build the economies of other nations. Shopping at Wal-Mart builds the
economies of China and Mexico (to name
but a few). By paying substantially higher prices at the gas pump you a
re-building the economies of various other nations as well. Where those funds
go is a bit harder to trace since they funnel through the futures market.
There is an upside to the higher gas prices for the U.S. economy;
however. At today’s price for crude oil ($63.46 USD at 11:20 AM on May 30, 2007
for a delivery date of July 2007 and $69.26 USD for Brent on the Spot Market as
of May 18, 2007) U.S.
oil wells are now active again. This follows years of domestic production being
dormant.
The cost of doing business is higher here in the U.S. than
elsewhere. Therefore, the cost of pulling domestic oil from the ground is
higher. This is putting money into the petrochemical industry all the way down
to the individual holding mineral rights on a local level. Where that money is
going, however, is anyone’s guess. The frugal oil holders don’t seem too
inclined to belly up to the Wal-Mart bar and lay down the cash. So the money,
some say as much as $7,000.00 USD per day per well, is vanishing into some type
of “safe” investment someplace. It is worth noting that rents for the well
equipment on private land is often not enough to compensate for the gasoline
used to take the drive to check the property. Land owners may make as much as
$150.00 a month. That is not exactly a windfall.
The price for existing homes is slumping.[5]
Mortgage payments are being made later and later each month by more and more
home owners based on a report in the San Jose Mercury News from April 17, 2007.
Foreclosures are up 25% in California
according to the September 13, 2006 edition of the East Bay Business Times. The
Tribune reported, on September 14, 2006, that “…Florida ,
Texas , California ,
Ohio and Illinois
- accounted for 50 percent of the nation's foreclosure activity,” and “In
August, more than 115,000 properties in the United States entered some stage of
foreclosure, a 24 percent increase from July and a 53 percent increase from
August 2005 ….”[6]
This cannot bode well for local economies in the respective communities. It
shows the slump in income has resulted in an inability to retain the gains
previously made.
You are called to do your duty for God and country by
allowing the corporations to bleed the local economy for the sake of building
the influence of the corporations in some far flung land. The right to lie down
and die economically was also what was won when the Cold War ended.
The logic is simple. George H.W. Bush was bought,
backed, and packaged by the corporations. That is the way the system works in the United States . It is only as moral
or immoral as the people involved. It was George H.W. Bush who met with
Gorbachev at Malta
in December 1989 and declared the Cold War over. In February of 1990 the
Communist Party was pushed out of power. In December of 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved. Forty-four years, two and a half
generations of brinkmanship left civilians and Cold warriors wondering what was
next. Capitalism had won.
Popular mythology credits Ronald Reagan for toppling
the Soviet Union . This could simply be because
Ronald Reagan was far more popular with the U.S. citizens than George H.W. Bush
was. Bush’s administration was tainted with higher taxes, Noriega in Panama , and a refusal to “finish off” Saddam in Iraq ,
and refusing to acknowledge the recession on the east cost and the west cost in
1990.
Reagan, on the other hand, gave U.S. supply side economics. He held
the Oval Office as a severe recession swept through the U.S. from July 1981 to
November 1982 due to a tight monetary to control the still raging post-Vietnam
inflationary spike and the effect of the oil shock in 1973. He recalculated how
unemployment was tabulated so he could cut the unemployment rate in half. In
1983 unemployment dropped from 14% to 7%.[7]
Reagan watched over the U.S. ’s
deindustrialization, and demanded that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin wall. As an
eloquent spokesperson for the corporations, he simply packaged and delivered
what was started under Nixon in the previous decade. By all accounts, Ronald
Reagan, on behalf of the corporations, won the Cold War.
The best description of supply side economics comes
from George Carlin’s May 27, 1972 performance at the Santa Monica Civic
Auditorium recorded in his third album, Class
Clown. “Glue two things together, that no one has ever glued together
before,” he proclaims, “and some schmuck will buy it.”[8] This is the essence of a supply side economy.
It can also be summed up in the words of Shoeless Joe Jackson, played by Ray
Liotta, in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams:
“If you build it, he will come.”
This alone explains why, even after the dotcom
implosion from 1999 to 2001, the internet is still around trying to prove it is
economically viable for all but a few. It does make one question the loyalty of
the corporations. As sited in the beginning of this report, however, a
corporation is loyal to whoever fills the coffers best. They will do their duty
to whichever God or country buys more of their goods or services. One has to
conclude that the Communist Chinese are better customers than the Republicans
in Washington , D.C.
[1]
World War III. (2007, May 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Retrieved 02:45, May 29, 2007, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_III&oldid=133654039
[3]
Bernstein, C. (2000, October 28). An A-Z of cultural terms. The Guardian.
Retrieved June 17, 2008, from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/oct/28/dumb5
[4]
The War on Drugs creates a Black
Market for controlled substances which in turn drives up the cost of contraband
and funnels money into the accounts of criminals operating in Mexico .
[5]
When this report was originally conceived, in early March 2008, the sub-prime
fiasco had not yet manifested in the news media; now it has become a major
factor in the 2008 Presidential election.
[7]
Turgeon, Lynn. Bastard Keynesianism: The Evolution of Economic Thinking and
Policy-Making Since World War II. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. 7 Mar.
2008 <http://books.google.com/books .. > pp 35-36.
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