American Theocracy - Multitude

AMERICAN THEOCRACY, KEVIN PHILLIPS, VIKING, 2006, 462 PP.



MULTITUDE: WAR AND DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF THE EMPIRE, MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI, VIKING (PAPER), 2005, 426 PP

PREFERENCE

Denigration, deterioration, degradation and a whole host of other negative words clearly describe the world I see reflected in most of what I read and experience.

The legal system in which I am entangled has little to do with justice and each day presents me with a new more egregious example of its failure.

Yesterday, I was given more information about one of the cases that I have been following for awhile. A case filled with a lot of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, ignoring of the basic rules of procedure and finally such contradiction that all I could do was laugh.

The facts are simple in the latest twist: after having a motion for a retrial denied, the defendant made a request for a transcript, so he could file an appeal. The request is pro forma and there is no reason that it should not be granted, but it was, as the hearing contains prima facie evidence of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

My friend hollered loudly in a legal matter.

A transcript arrived, but it was doctored and neither certified by the court reporter or signed by the judge.

He hollered some more to the Justice Department and other higher powers. He then received pounds of documents (no certified transcript) that included the judge’s order for the transcript.
The two orders (one denying the order for the transcript, the other granting it) were signed by the judge at exactly the same time and on the same day.

So my friend now has two orders from his judge in his possession that are exactly similar: one granting him what he needs to file his appeal, the other denying it. And of course a useless transcript as it is neither certified nor signed.

Such behavior is emblematic of the behavior I see everyplace I look in American society and what I have experienced under the color of law since my return to the USA in July of 2001.
The legal system is bankrupt and anyone denying that assertion must be classed with those who still deny global warming through the conversions in that area are coming thicker and faster as the glaciers and ice caps melt at ever increasing rates and our daily weather seems to be produced by an erratic roulette wheel rather than by the ‘seasons’ I grew up with.

In May, I have experienced mainly October for most of the month, then 900 heat (rare) for a few days, then a thunderstorm that would have frightened Thor. Anyone who is older and with some semblance of memory knows that the weather is changing before their eyes.

REVIEW

The two books under review both address problems I and the friend mentioned above, face as we struggle to reclaim our lives in a system that has gone mad.

The Phillips book is totally focused on the USA, providing over 450 pages of evidence for his thesis that reflects my preface above. It could easily be entitled: ‘We’ve Lost It’ or ‘The Decline of the USA.’

Anyone reading my letters written during the past 5 years would not be surprised by any of it. I have lived through the recent degradation and described it as honestly as I am able to do.
Phillips concentrates on three areas:

1. The coming oil shock – we re running out of oil, the petroleum age is over, habits run deep and those in charge of our government are deaf, dumb and blind wherein the needed changes are concerned.

2. The religious takeover of the Republican party by born again fundamentalists who, under the aegis of W , have pushed an agenda on the American people that is alien to both our founders and most of our history. An agenda based on ideology that is an inadequate way to handle our problems and that can’t begin to deal with them for biblical hand waving can’t solve complex 21st Century problems.

“Ideology is a lot easier, because you don’t have to know anything or search for anything. You already know the answer to everything. It’s not penetrable by facts.” (page 235, Ex-Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil)

The main criticism I have of W and his cohort of fumblers has little to do with politics per se. What I object to most is the continual lying, the almost total incompetence and a pride in ignorance that is a horrible model in a society that increasingly requires a lifetime of learning to survive.

Phillips has great expertise in polling and getting people elected. His discussion of religion and voting patterns is packed with data and a must read for anyone concerned with what has happened to the USA.

3. Debt is the third issue which Phillips and a few courageous others think is the most frightening factor in the current American situation. We are now the largest debtor nation in history and so beholden to others that if one debt holder panics and begins selling $s or a big oil nation insists on denominating oil in euros, the slide of the $ could land the nation in the territory of 1923 Germany.

“Debt, directly or indirectly, as decayed the very soul of America.” (265), James Medoff & Andres Harless, The Indebted Society.

We are borrowing close to three billion dollars a day just to survive.

In essence the world produces products and we print $s to buy those products. A scam of gigantic proportions. The USA is now borrowing and spending most of the world’s savings and our own savings are now in negative territory.

Phillips goes into the debt crunch at length. It is the best popular discussion of the matter I have read.

Those who can step back from our present context and overview it dispassionately are rare, as money usually generates immense passion.

The essence of what Phillips is saying about American decline is based on previous models of past imperial and financial powers: Roman, Spanish, Dutch and British.

I’ve read some of the scholarship and agree with what Phillips is saying about how indicative the present state of our economy is: We now make money from money, not products. Finance not manufacturing is in control. In the past that has always indicated decline, end time.

Combine that with American dependence on oil from without, our religious imperial fanaticism and the recipe is a perfect match up with past declines.

W is to Phillips a know-nothing leader who is exacerbating all these trends and literally leading the country off a cliff.

Alas, I agree.

Hardt and Negri are all well aware of the American debacle, but their focus is planetary and what they are selling is hope.

Now without hope, we are lost. No argument about that. As a prisoner, I am doubly aware of that

BUT

That hope requires a tad more facts to function for me and though Hardt and Negri are astute theoreticians and have read through libraries of leading edge material their practical suggestions are very flat.

If you are short on hope, Multitude may juice your mind and help you breathe more easily – a necessary function – but its admitted practical paucity will make the reader aware of just how dire our situation is.

And the elephant in everyone’s living room is not adequately discussed in either book.

The books on global warming and its most dangerous consequence are flooding out. We are back in 1969 waiting for the equivalent of Earth Day to happen, but on a planetary level. That event will focus our minds and subsume the concerns of both Phillips and Hardt and Negri, for what we are headed for will force a rethink of everything we are doing, since the human actions of the past 250 years have set loose a series of changes that will require a reorganization of human life, as the very parameters that define the air bowl in which we live are transmuting before our relatively unaware eyes.

Ira Einhorn
May 2006