Keeping it up

Our central rule relating to just about everything the government does was most succinctly put by George H.W Bush:

George H.W. Bush, attended an environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. When asked by a reporter why the US refuses to pledge to reduce greenhouse gases, H.W. Bush replied: “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

The idea is espoused by every modern administration. Sometimes explicitly sometimes inferred. The American way of life- a car in every garage, a comfortable suburban existence, must be maintained at all costs. This American dream is the driving force behind our foreign policy. Built on the back of abundant domestic energy resources and industrialization, and now kept up through military control of Middle East oil and borrowing from Asia. What started out as the American dream was morphed into the American privilege, then morphed into the American entitlement. Something people used to strive for has become something people are owed just for being American. They hate us for our freedom, not freedom of speech or religion, but freedom to have it all, drive what you want anywhere you want as much as you want with the A/C on and the jacuzzi warm and ready at home to relax in and drink beer and eat Arby's in when you get home. This is America, where freedom is now symbolized by burning gas and hauling ass, if I can't jump in my truck and go anywhere I want and not worry about how to pay for it then I'm not truly free.

It's what terrorists are after us for. They hate our way of life Bush likes to repeat. A remark he is sometimes derided for, but he is more right than he is given credit for. Though not in the way he likely meant. It's not that 'they hate us for our freedom,' it is that they hate us for the things we do to maintain 'The American way of life.' With the depletion of our domestic oil supply, we have became increasingly involved militarily with the oil supplying countries. The size of this bailout that everyone thinks is staggering isn't that much more than our annual defense budget. Less, actually, if you incluse all of Bush's non-budgeted war spending. All that money to keep the oil flowing, and to make ever bigger better weapons ever better military vehicles and ever more expensive missile defense systems that give the cold warriors ever bigger hard-ons and ever bigger salaries and bonuses, all on the taxpayer's dime. Without cheap plentiful oil the American way of life could not be supported. The only choice our leaders have had is to keep the oil flowing by force. Carter was actually the first to ennunciate out oil driven strategy, which you can hear about in a worth watching interview here.

An ever greater percentage of our material production has been going overseas. Our trade deficit is getting larger and larger, all the wealth that used to stay in the country is going out. The 'cheap' things we buy are creating new growing economies around the world, on our dime. Meanwhile we pretend that everything is swell by borrowing money from other countries, to buy things from other countries, and to pretend that we are making tons of money by lending money to each other and charging each other interest and fees on the borrowed money. Our productive economy built in the early 20th century has become a parasitic economy, feeding off each other's debt, buying ever more and increasingly expensive consumer goods with borrowed money to keep the wheels of consumer debt turning, and borrowing money from abroad to fund it all. An earlier generation built railroads and American industry, the next built the highways and fought WWII, the next built subdivisions and fought Vietnam, and the next built exurbs and more subdivisions, sold American industry, and fought in the Middle East for a new world order, a thousand points of light, WMD's, and GWOT. George W Bush will leave office having almost doubled our national debt. A few will make out, collecting from all the good little Americans buying their houses and TV's and cars and gadgets on credit, but eventually somebody is going to be left holding the bag. The entire government has been trying desperately to keep the charade going this week, dire warnings of our economic growth slowing down from the President and the Treasury secretary himself. Their solution? Borrow more money. That's the ticket.