We hover like vultures, waiting for the wounded beast to die: The murderous, torturing, depraved beast that the US has become, or always was. To the beast, it’s just a facet of nature, the predator feeding on prey. It’s not an ethical issue, the strong kill the weak in nature all the time. It’s an evolutionary strategy, that feeds the empire for a while and keeps it strong, until the inevitable corruption and decline.
The suffering of millions of victims is irrelevant to its subjects, insulated by distance, propaganda, and narcissism. But, what feeds on the death of others will be food for the vultures. And we hover, the doomsters, secessionists, anti-imperialists, decentralists, waiting for the beast to die; watching incredulous as the sheeple, living in their delusional bubble, go on with life as usual, believing in the myth of America as the shining city on the hill, the exceptional nation, immune from the laws of history and economics, the greatest superpower of all time, this century destined to be the American Century; Pax Americana, global hegemony through our infinite benevolence.
But it’s too late. The beast is already dead. It’s just a “dead man walking”.
The phrase refers to a convict on death row making his walk to the “gallows”, where he will be executed, meaning he is already a dead man, but is walking down death row one last time. It was made famous by the award winning Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon film, “Dead Man Walking” written by Sister Helen Prejean.
The US empire is also a “dead man walking”. It’s already dead, but keeps on walking for a little while longer, like a zombie. US officials mouth their ridiculous platitudes; Congress cheers; citizens engage in farcical elections; on it goes. No one knows how long, it’s only a matter of time. The US empire is similar to the death row convict in the film in one other important way: denial. But as the film progresses, more and more of the crime is revealed, until the culmination of the film, when he admits to both sister Prejean and to himself that he did the horrible deed. Will we do the same?
The US empire and its citizens remain in a condition of denial and woeful ignorance of their situation and their crimes. Even the 9/11 wake up call did not awaken the populace from denial in the slightest. The supposed perpetrators stated their grievances: Get infidel troops out of the Muslim Holy land (Saudi Arabia), stop killing Muslims, and stop supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Did we listen? Of course not. People here believe America is the light of the world, we promote goodness and democracy everywhere, and we have never done wrong (See Bill Blum anti-empire report for more on this http://killinghope.org/#essays). We believe we have the greatest economy in the world and renewed prosperity is just around the corner.
This is an empire whose President takes pride in “a job well done by our soldiers” in the invasion and occupation of Iraq that killed one million people and displaced half the population; an empire that is engaged in at least 6 wars at one time in Iraq (still), Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran (coming soon); an empire where a presidential candidate (Newt Gingrich) celebrates Andrew Jackson’s extermination of the American Indian by proclaiming that he knew what to do to America’s enemies: kill them. The other candidates of both parties, all compete to show they are the most blood thirsty, except for Ron Paul of course, who doesn’t have a chance in hell to be nominated. This is a country, supposedly about freedom, that locks up about half its black youth, mostly for non-violent drug crimes, incarceration substituting for 200 years of slavery; A country about justice, where 45 million have no health care, and a country about opportunity, where 1/3 of children live in poverty, in one of the richest countries in the world. This is a country transformed from the highest net producing country to the highest net consuming country, from the biggest lender country to the biggest debtor country, a country of beggars. This is a dead man walking.
The crimes are many and the denial is deep. And we don’t commit crimes from passion, temporary insanity, malevolence, or from our abused and tortured soul. We do it for money. Unlike the film, there weren’t just two murders and the double rape of a single woman. As US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler confessed in 1933, “I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
If anything this record accelerated after WWII. We murdered democracy in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador, etc. See http://killinghope.org/ for complete list.
How does the dead man keep walking?
It survives on “the kindness of strangers”, in the form of loans from other countries to prop up our debt, and monetizing (purchasing) the US debt by credit created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve Bank. What keeps it going is that people still trust the US dollar, US bonds, and US stock market as a secure place to put their money. The slightest loss of confidence and interest rates will shoot up, making interest on the US debt unpayable, just as has happened to many other countries in recent years.
How long can you live on your credit card, when you have no net income? As long as credit card companies trust that you will get a job or borrow from someone else, and pay the interest, they really don’t care if you ever pay off the principle. In fact they would prefer it if you didn’t, because then you are a steady stream of income to them forever. But if you should default on your interest payments, then you are a poor credit risk and the credit spigot will be turned off rapidly. Banks are the ultimate vulture capitalists, feeding off the funding and spoils of empire.
As long as the US can keep making interest payments on its debt, the dead man will keep walking. Consider how little it would take to make the interest unpayable. Figures from: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm around Jan. 20, 2012:
Total debt outstanding: $15,236 billion which equals 100% of US GDP. 2011 interest payments: $454.4 billion. Average interest rate (calculated): 2.98%
The 2011 federal budget was $3.8 trillion. $454.4 billion interest represented 12% of the budget. Holding the budget constant, if interest rates went up to 6%, interest would be doubled to $908.8 billion or 24% of the budget. At 9% interest equals $1363.2 billion or 36% of the budget. At 12% interest equals $1817.5 billion, or 48% of the budget. And holding the budget constant, means austerity for everything else of course. How much can you cut before producing riots and social unrest? If this sounds unlikely, consider that the federal prime rate on April 2, 1980 was 20.00%.
When does it become unpayable? Only Nemesis knows. Until then the Empire is a dead man walking.