The big breakup

So how will it go down, this mess we're in? Dysfunctional empires can last a long time (Byzantium) or not (the Soviet Union). We've been more violently divided, in 1861, and yet the nation survived, albeit with more than 600,000 killed. America suffered worse governance and severe big-business malfeasance in the decades after the Civil War, but the damage was limited by the decentralization of cohesive small towns, farms and close families, the opportunity of the frontier, rising living standards and finally was reversed by the rise of the Progressive movement. The nation saw worse unemployment and economic collapse once before in modern times, but finally the federal government led by Franklin Roosevelt responded with vigor and effectiveness. And yes, a big war helped. We were mired in Vietnam and finally gave up and still America sailed on, passing two centuries.

Times now are tough and alarmist sentiments are easy. We can always muddle through, can't we? One observer has written glibly about how we'll add another 100 million people in suburban bliss. Most Americans can't imagine a future that's not pretty much like the recent past, maybe with a few wind turbines and solar panels added. Still, I can't think of a moment in history quite like what we now face.

The stock market is swooning again. One reason is sobering enough: Fear of slower growth in China, which has taken the spot held by America for a century, as the nation expected to lead the world out of recession. But the market has been in a secular bear for a decade. The real American economy is a wreck in its fundamentals — something very different from the crises listed above. Before, we were always an economic powerhouse, a petro superpower, and each generation was guaranteed a better standard of living than its parents. No more. Another banking crisis is very possible, as is a new bubble in Treasury bonds. We make so little here now that we can't undo the huge imbalances of debt. The Ponzi scheme has collapsed. Long-term unemployment is a human tragedy and political nitroglycerin. What of the commons has survived the Reagan Revolution is now falling apart. We're mired in two wars that are only the most obvious pieces of untenable military overstretch.

And we know some things. We know the Democrats are unwilling to put together an effective progressive agenda and sell it to America. How could they when so much of the government is now controlled by corporate interests? We know Wall Street and the big banks have gotten away with it, and they will be cooking up new trouble for the economy and expecting the taxpayers to once again pay for their swindles gone wrong. Addressing climate change, building 21st century transit and rail systems, retrofitting suburbia for a peak-oil future, rebuilding our educational, research and manufacturing dominance — nope. Confronted with historic discontinuity and unsustainablity, our course will remain unchanged. The solutions are there — we refuse to undertake them. The confluence of business, political and even cultural interests and forces will make it so. The elites, even in the media, are well paid, live in fine cities and are educated in the conventional wisdom. They are paid to not get it. We know all this.

So, how's it going to go down?

In the near term, Republicans are expected to make major gains in the mid-term election, perhaps retaking one or both houses in Congress. They are being careful to conceal their program from all but their true believers for, as Frank Rich pointed out, it is far more radical than even that of George W. Bush. Given the ineffectiveness and cowardice of the Democrats and the White House, it's not inconceivable that the GOP could win the presidency in two years. But we've seen this movie before. The policies that now define the Party of Lincoln are doomed to failure, doomed to make things even worse.

Conservatism, particularly of the theocratic kind, is helpless against the complexity of modern society and the challenges of this century. Wait until they start to take their "government hands" off Social Security and Medicare, fulfilling the Norquist fantasy of returning America to the pre-New Deal. Wait until "getting tough on the deficit" hits the entitlement-dependent white-right. Or the banksters and bond market overplay their greedy hands, or the imbalances used to enrich the top 2 percent finally irrevocably tip over. When the bread and circuses of Wal-Mart and reality television run up against real reality. When America has been looted to the bone by the capital markets. Eventually even the Wizard of Fox will be exposed as nothing but cheap conjuring. Events can slip the leash of control, even one held by the geniuses from Harvard and Goldman Sachs. History, on whose leading edge we live, can overpower even the lobbying money of the plutocracy or the I-want-a-pony wishes of the masses. Then, God help us.

We will enter, we're already there, a period of dangerous instability — and that's barring further shocks. James Howard Kunstler prophetically called it "The Long Emergency," and sees Americans ending up growing their own food to survive in highly localized arrangements. Dmitry Orlov has likened the coming storm to the downfall of his native Soviet Union. Former Reagan Treasury official and conservative intellectual Paul Craig Roberts fears major societal collapse into tribalism. Niall Ferguson has drawn parallels between America and the British Empire, which suddenly became Little England after the exhaustion of two world wars, a changing trade paradigm and the cost of global imperium.

I can see a few other outcomes:

1. The man on the white horse. When chaos reaches a certain level most people will eagerly embrace, say, Gen. David Petraeus. He's shown little MacArthurism in him. But if both political parties and most institutions have lost legitimacy, the military might be forced by events to step in. Or the elites, desperate to save their bacon, might draft this universally admired soldier as president. The move might gain further power as thousands of discharged combat veterans drive the streets of America unable to find work. This will be our Rubicon moment.

2. Secession. Republican pols and tea partiers keep floating this idea. I actually think it's a good one and could be carried out in an orderly and peaceful manner. (I've advocated the same in metro Phoenix, making the East Valley into a separately governed Zion County). Then Grover Norquist and the gang can create their Randian paradise in the new CSA. Unfortunately, America is not divided by sectionalism as in 1861 (although many Southern states had unionists). Today, the divisions run through states and metropolitan areas. Still, I say let the red states go in peace and people can move as they choose. Of course, these states are almost universally net takers of federal subsidies. The Republicans want to control the entire country, despite their rhetoric of states' rights and local control. And the corporate oligarchy needs American law, tax havens and the remains of its productive economy to pluck — not to mention American "consumers" plugged in their slave feeding pods, a la The Matrix.

3. Devolution. This would be another orderly way for a bankrupt and hamstrung federal government to accept reality, particularly if faced with ever greater instability and gridlock. Keep control of national defense, foreign policy, the constitutional basics. And leave the rest to the states, including most taxing and regulatory authority. If Arizona wants to be a law-of-the-jungle toxic dump where the devil takes the hindmost, see how that works out. And give the blue states the ability to set up advanced social democracies, or even an America of the mid-20th century with forward-leaning infrastructure and economies. The experiment of 1789 may not be able to withstand the stresses of so many people, global empire and entanglements (Washington would roll in his grave), a hollowed-out economy (Hamilton would spin). This is another way to avoid bloody breakup or decades of more self-destructive division. Yet, because of the reasons listed above, it probably won't happen.

4. War with China. This could come from a crisis over Taiwan, China's own internal instability, competition for scarce resources or the inevitable need to stop current trading and debt arrangements. China is happy to watch America exhaust itself in the Muslim world, hoping that will do the trick, leaving America to do a sudden global withdrawal as Britain did. But conflict is not impossible to imagine. If it happened, any of the above scenarios might face a losing America. A greater, if fleeting, imperial moment might await a winning America. But it won't be the America we once knew.

5. Muslim revenge. The longer we intrude in the Middle East and Afghanistan, keeping armies there, depending on oil from dictatorships, allowing an intransigent Israel to do as it wishes, playing with fire in Pakistan and ignoring all those millions of angry, unemployed young men — the closer we get to a horrific reckoning.

None of this may happen. I certainly don't want it to happen. But these outcomes are no longer out of the question. With unemployment worse than anytime since the Depression and a record number of people on food stamps — and no relief expected for years... With the destabilizing forces of climate change, competition for resources, peak oil, the costs of empire — and America refusing to address them... With the corporate and political elites determined to do a Thelma and Louise with the beloved country...

How's it going to go down?

Comments

[Petro]

I'm going with the Devolution (3) scenario. However, we did come close to White Horse (1) once before on FDR's watch, and I'm not sure our government has the stuff to resist a putsch like that this time. Of course, the violent possibilities (4,5) are wildcards that would sweep away anything else.

Speaking of China... such a confrontation would surely draw in the rest of the world, and I wonder where the other players would stand after all of our adventuring since the last global conflagration? I'm sure, at a minimum, the Southern Hemisphere is lost...

[soleri]

Devolution could get a boost from the Roberts court if they decree positively on some 10th Amendment issues. But would they? The politics of the GOP base is not necessarily the economic interests of their overlords. But, in turn, that raises a kind of metaphysical question about the sincerity of nihilists. Do they hate "Washington tyranny" so much that they'd voluntarily restrict their own power? I rather doubt it.

Given our current circumstances, you can't go wrong with pessimism. That said, there's a big difference between muddling along and Kunstler's hoped-for unwinding of the American economy. In the latter instance, we're talking about the premature and possibly violent deaths of millions. Likewise, Orlov's post-Soviet unpleasantness would be a sheer catastrophe in our country. Americans may be plucky but Russian stoicism would serve us better.

Tribalism is a recurrent nightmare in a culturally heterogeneous nation. But just how real is this threat here? I probably wouldn't want to be a black person in an America looking for scapegoats. On the other hand, would Baptists take on Mormons? That's much harder to see.

The oligarchy may be blind and self-interested, but their needs are better served by a population anesthetized by lotteries and reality TV. Egging on the mouthbreathers with 2nd Amendment "remedies" doesn't help. At some point, they may want Murdoch to scale back the Crazy enough to calm the rubes down. I'm not sure what game they're playing here but it's quickly getting beyond their ability to control.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Neither secession nor devolution will occur. The fact that "Republican pols and tea partiers keep floating this idea" doesn't change the fact that the federal government would not permit it and those advocating it have neither the organization, the military skills and arms, the will, nor the popular support to carry out the inevitable guerrilla war it would entail, much less to make success remotely plausible against a highly centralized, modern standing army.

Civil wars are fought for serious economic reasons or deep cultural reasons. In the former case, that means real players (i.e., parts of the Establishment with opposing and irreconcileable interests); in the latter, it requires a depth of popular feeling which simply isn't a cultural factor here. We aren't Yugoslavia and we aren't Rwanda. Libertarian political economy won't enflame modern America to the point of revolution.

As for devolution, that would not be in the interests of the economic Establishment to support. They want a stable theater for investment, with relative uniformity, continuity, and predictability. An America on the model of Renaissance Italy is not consistent with modern corporate philosophy.

The value of the "mouthbreathing rubes" to the mainstream Republican Party is as a pressure group waiting in the wings but never appearing on the stage. They make mainstream Republicanism look almost attractive by comparison, and make compromise on terms favorable to Republicans more palatable. If 19th century German marxism can make the Iron Chancellor move well to the left, the constant drumbeat of Tea-Partiers could make feckless Democrats -- especially the "moderates" in the Party -- move to the right. Indeed, we've already seen this in action.

At most, one might see a return to isolated acts of terrorism by the far-right. The militia movement was doing well for awhile, but Timothy MacVeigh turned the public against it decisively. Ineffectual but violent groups and individuals such as these do serve the Establishment by making it possible to increase authoritarian powers without actually threatening the existence of the Establishment. They also serve to take the minds of the public off more fundamental issues, such as the economy.

War with China is completely inconsistent with the existing model of international capitalism by which both China and the West prosper. There is no ideological difference now, and each party needs the other (within the context of this model) to succeed. China is an export economy and cannot afford to cut off its nose to spite its face: the thesis that war is brought about by economic competition for resources is inconsistent with the economic results of such war. If the United States did not go to war to stop the Soviet Union from invading and occupying Hungary and Czechoslovakia in a Cold War where our Western European allies were fearful of Soviet invasion and the opinion of the world was at stake, it will not go to war over the island state of Taiwan, which is also not primary to U.S. economic or resource needs. China, for its part, is not going to commit an act which will surely result in extreme economic sanctions undertaken against it by its primary sales market.

I don't know what "Muslim revenge" constitutes. Presumably Mr. Talton is referring to some act of large-scale nuclear or biological warfare undertaken, not by governments, but by terrorist organizations. While not impossible to conceive of, it's somewhat unrelated to the question of the fundamentally economic issues driving the question, since it could presumably happen even during the most prosperous times.

Of the options listed by Mr. Talton, that leaves the Man on the White Horse. That, however, presumes a state of affairs which we have, as yet, no reason to suppose will come to pass.

Another possibility -- perhaps more logical in the consolidation of power, and certainly more along the lines that the Establishment prefers -- is so-called "friendly fascism" (a term coined by Bertram Gross):

http://books.google.com/books?id=KLmyw-p7IwUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=friendly+fascism&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

It was published just before the Reagan revolution in a completely different era, and predicts stagflation (which we may yet see) as a tool with which to consolidate power; it's cranky in a number of ways, but also contains a great deal of insight and realpolitik.

In the absence of a strong progressive political movement and leadership, crises are in fact a method by which oligarchy consolidates both wealth and power. Crises erode the ownership share of the middle class but that ownership does not evaporate: it goes to those who foreclose, those who buy low during crisis to sell high later, those who own what society will always need (land, housing, medical services, jobs, etc.) and who are thereby able to pressure ordinary citizens to accept their terms or go without those things.

Want a job badly enough? How cheaply are you willing to work? Ready to forgo those benefits yet?

Also note that crises encourage large-scale solutions and expanded government powers, and an increased blending of the private and public sectors; and when the government is controlled by oligarchs, that means increasing their own influence.

[Petro]

Hail Emil,

"As for devolution, that would not be in the interests of the economic Establishment to support. They want a stable theater for investment, with relative uniformity, continuity, and predictability. An America on the model of Renaissance Italy is not consistent with modern corporate philosophy."

I could be wrong here, of course, but I think you're missing the main argument for devolution. The point being that the "Establishment" will at some critical point find that it will be more economically feasible to fortify their gates than to attend to the affairs of disparate communities.

The "useless eaters" will perhaps at that point be left alone to, I don't know, uselessly eat.

And brew fine beer. ;)

[Emil Pulsifer]

Petro, one of the best beers I ever had was the house stout at a San Antonio microbrewery called Blue Star. It was incredibly rich, malty and chocolatey without being bitter; apparently there was nothing in it but classic beer ingredients, but the selection, blending, and balance of ingredients, the roasting method and the brewing technique all combined to naturally produce that result.

They also had a "chocolate stout" that had some synthetic flavoring added, which ironically didn't taste at all like chocolate but more like cough medicine.

They sold it by the pint glass but patrons could also bring a gallon jug (or some variety of large container) and have it filled.

This was years ago so I don't know if it's still as good.

[Petro]

Heh. Emil, since I moved to Portland I am paralyzed by the selection of local micro-brews.

And with that, I shall not hijack the thread of Jon's rather dark post with all of this merry talk of beer.

Cheers!

[soleri]

Ken Silverstein, the Harper's editor and author of What's the Matter With Arizona? (July 2010) was the guest on KJZZ program Here and Now today.

http://kjzz.org/news/arizona/archives/201008/hn_arizonagop

[azebel]

Ya, what Emil said.

[Jim Hamblin]

Considering what's afoot, we're mulling over a plan to revamp our living arrangements and split time between Oregon and Mexico. Period! There are plusses and minuses, to be sure, but we see little merit in hoping for an Arizona transformation.

[Mick]

I think everyone is missing the big picture.

The US is going to have HOLODOMOR. Look that up and see what it means.

George Bush came into office with a single real objective: transferring all the wealth to the upper 2%.

The policy of the United States government remains the same -- to wipe out the middle class, crush wages in the United States, to outsource as much labor as possible, and to replace American workers with immigrant labor.

Millions of Americans are going to starve to death. The government is determined to make it so. The rich, the plutocrats, the corporations, the CEOs, the globalists, and the multinational corporations and bankers demand it.

We will have holodomor in the United States. It is already beginning.

I'm a clinical pharmacist, and I'm stuck working part-time because there are no jobs. No one is hiring -- not even pharmacists.

If anyone knows where pharmacists can get a job, I'd appreciate it.

[Mick]

The globalist plan is to elect Jeb Bush in 2012. Bush, who is a fanatical globalist, will grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. He will wipe out the border between the US and Mexico.

American workers will be replaced with immigrants, by the millions. Millions of Americans will starve. It will be holodomor.

Bush will push the US to join the European Union, so that a global government can be created. The earth will become one big plantation, with most of the population falling into the slave class.

[Rate Crimes]

It'll go sideways; meandering frenetically.

[Rate Crimes]

"If anyone knows where pharmacists can get a job, I'd appreciate it." - Mick

You haven't been watching enough TV. See a few episodes of "Breaking Bad". No résumé required.

[Petro]

Haha, Rate Crimes, well done.