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As the pressure mounts, as this despair and impoverishment reach into larger and larger segments of the populace, the mechanisms of corporate and government control are being bolstered to deal with the coming civil unrest and instability. The emergence of the corporate state always means the emergence of the security state. This is why the Bush White House pushed through the Patriot Act (as well as its renewal), the suspension of habeas corpus, the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the practice of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens, and the refusal to ensure free and fair elections with verifiable ballot-counting. It is all part of a package. It comes together. The real motive behind these measures is not to fight terrorism or to bolster national security. It is to be able, when and if the time is right, to seize and maintain a fascist-like control of our government and society.
Hints of our brave new world seeped out when the director of national intelligence, retired admiral Dennis Blair, testified in February and March 2009 before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He warned that the deepening economic crisis posed perhaps our gravest threat to stability and national security. It could trigger, he said, a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1920s and '30s. "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications," Blair told the Senate:
The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.
The road ahead is grim
We have few tools left to dig our way out. The manufacturing sector in the United States has been dismantled by globalization. Consumers, thanks to credit card companies and easy lines of credit, are $14 trillion in debt. The government has spent, lent, or guaranteed $12.8 trillion toward the crisis, most of it borrowed or printed in the form of new money. It is borrowing heavily to fund our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet no one states the obvious: We will never be able to pay these loans back.
We are supposed to spend our way out of the crisis and maintain our part of the grand imperial project . . on credit! We are supposed to bring back the illusion of wealth created by the bubble economy. Yet there is no coherent and realistic plan, one built around our severe limitations, to stanch the bleeding or ameliorate the mounting deprivations we will suffer as citizens. Contrast this with the national security state's very carefully laid out preparations to crush potential civil unrest, and you get a glimpse of the future. http://www.apfn.org/THEWINDS/archive/government/camp9-97.html
According to new laws that supersede not just old laws but the Constitution itself, the military can now be ordered by the president into any neighborhood, any town or suburb, to capture a citizen and hold him or her in prison without charge. The executive branch can do this under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress after 9/11, that gives the president the power to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against anyone (allegedly) involved in planning, aiding, or carrying out terror attacks. And if the president can declare American citizens living inside the United States to be enemy combatants and order them stripped of constitutional rights, which he effectively can, under this authorization, what does this mean for us? How long can we be held without charge, without lawyers, and without access to the outside world? It remains to be seen.
The specter of the coming social unrest was raised at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S.ArmyWarCollege in November 2008, in a monograph by Nathan Freier titled Known Unknowns: Unconventional "Strategic Shocks" in Defense Strategy Development. The military must be prepared, Freier warned, for a "violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States" that could be provoked by "unforeseen economic collapse," "purposeful domestic resistance," "pervasive public health emergencies," or "loss of functioning political and legal order." The resulting "widespread civil violence," the document said, "would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis, so as to defend basic domestic order and human security.""
"Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, the Department of Defense would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multistate or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance," the document read.
In plain English, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government run and administered by the Department of Defense. They are actually considering this. And so should we.
"When growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we're looking for that," Freier continued. He then referred to "statistical modeling" showing that "economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one- to two-year period."
Director of National Intelligence Blair articulates the newest narrative of fear
As the economic unraveling gets much worse, we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists who threaten us most, although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet whenever they need to give us an exotic shock. Instead, the power elite will finally tell us it is the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions, right-wing militias, and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who are now the enemy. Crime, as it always does in times of poverty and turmoil, will grow. And those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together with the criminals in slick, corporate news reports (loyally delivered by the new courtiers) about the growing criminal underclass.
The destruction that the corporate state has wrought has been masked by lies
The consumer price index (CPI), used by the government to measure inflation, is meaningless. To keep the official inflation figures low, the government has been substituting basic products they once tracked to check for inflation with ones that do not rise very much in price. This trick has kept the cost-of-living increases tied to the CPI artificially low. The disconnect between what we are told and what is actually true is worthy of the deceit practiced in the old East Germany. The New York Times' consumer reporter, W. P. Dunleavy, wrote that her groceries now cost $587 a month, up from $400 one year earlier. This is a 40% increase. California economist John Williams, who runs an organization called Shadow Statistics (http://www.shadowstats.com/), contends that if Washington still used the CPI measurements applied back in the 1970s, inflation would be about 10%.
The advantage of false statistics to the corporations is huge. An artificial inflation rate, one far lower than the real rate, keeps down equitable interest payments on bank accounts and certificates of deposit. It masks the deterioration of the American economy. The fabricated statistics allow corporations and the corporate state to walk away from obligations tied to real adjustments for inflation. These statistics mean that less is paid out in Social Security and pensions. These statistics also reduce the interest that has to be paid on our multitrillion-dollar national debt. Finally, corporations can escape having to pay real cost-of-living increases to their employees.
