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."
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