That those HardRight forces re-conquered much political territory over those intervening years can be readily seen. Despite the lessons supposedly learned from the Vietnam debacle, new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were launched with little political opposition, mainstream media questioning, or persistent, ongoing public protest. These wars were connected to the massive amounts of money to be made from the control of natural resources such as oil and gas and precious metals, and to a hegemonic desire to reshape the geopolitical power structure of the Middle East.
THE DEADLY IRAQ CON
A decade ago, ten million protestors filled boulevards across the globe in an unprecedented, one-off, worldwide demonstration, trying to prevent the launching of the U.S./U.K. war against Iraq. It was obvious that innumerable governmental lies were being told, and deceptions employed, to get that catastrophe started. Those who objected were brushed aside as unpatriotic, hippie nay-sayers.
(Then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told Congress that those who question the policies and tactics of the Administration's "war on terror" were giving aid and comfort to the enemy: "Your tactics only aid terrorists -- for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies"")
Those who paid attention at the time (and who read the Downing Street Memos from England) were convinced by the evidence that the launching of the invasion of Iraq was based on fraud, deceit and outright lies. Ten years after the war was launched, it's even more clear now that a disastrous, immoral con was pulled on the American and British people by their rulers.
As the Iraqis demonstrated, "Shock and Awe" doesn't work if the local population refuses to go into shock and is not in awe of your technological superiority. The Occupation of Iraq that followed and the widespread use of torture by the U.S. and its allies -- helped lead to the Arab Spring of our own day. The so-called "victories" of those rebellions are yet another example of progressive movements defanged and diluted of their democratic power by the ruling elites.
DOMESTIC RIGHTIST DOMINATION
During the eight years of the CheneyBush era, regulatory laws were watered-down or eliminated to permit air-and-water polluters to re-write or ignore environmental regulations, and the forces of greed were permitted to manipulate the financial system for unchecked gain. The predictable result was the 2007-09 financial meltdown created by unregulated Wall Street manipulators, which led to a disastrous recession in the American and global economies. In the U.S. and elsewhere, there was top-down-enforced austerity after years of stagnation of middle-class dreams, as wages have been flat for decades, while the wealthy reap untold profits.
The RightWing, feeling its oats during all this revanchement, decided to try to take it all. The Republican right-wing believed that with liberalism and the Democrats dazed and confused, momentum was on their side. Their attitude: "Let's just quit our namby-pamby approach and simply repeal all of the Great Society and New Deal reforms in favor of a return to the Gilded Age of the late-19th Century, when for all intents and purposes freedom-from-restraints ruled triumphant over all financial and economic actions, with little or no governmental oversight." Greed, they were assured, would once again be enshrined as the nation's guiding light ("In Gold We Trust"). The rightist M.O.: If anyone gets in our way, ignore them or cut them down -- impeach Clinton, stymie Obama, make sure the government can't function, spend down the treasury to the point where there's precious little money for popular safety-net programs (but always enough for war-making and defense contractors).
POLITICAL REALITY IN 2013
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