Northern Virginia who introduced me to Sir Arthur Keith has admonished me to outline for you the debate going on in the halls of government between various factions of the inner party.
Op Ed pieces are beginning to appear in our national newspapers which reflect that debate. Numerous articles are floating the trial balloon of “ending states” which harbor terrorists. In addition. several other press organs are breathing life back into a notion born of our most excellent imperial adventure over the skies of Serbia. In the words of an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal of 9-14-01. “any state that harbors or abets terrorists – or abuses its own citizens – forfeits its sovereign rights.”
In actual practice we must understand
that the attack on the twin towers in Manhattan occurs within the context of a clearly defined imperial structure of rewards and punishments.
The multi-racial empire of the old phone number list Soviet Union fragmented into its ethnic and racial components (collapsed to a lower order of complexity) because its centrally planned economy could not provide enough tangible benefits to all the constituent groups within that empire to purchase their continued allegiance. The young turks of the KGB decided that they would be better off and have more power with a smaller. ethnically cohesive Russian nation state.
The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter.
The same exact thing will happen to the United States if the empire can no longer provide tangible benefits to its citizens that justify the expense of the imperial adventure. And the expense of maintaining that empire has success built on failure just increased dramatically – at least $20 billions in lost real estate. a $40 billion anti-terrorism appropriation. plus untold costs associated with shutting down air travel and the financial markets for a week.
Until now. the empire has been ruled by a financial system of rewards and punishments.
The American consumer benefits from
Imports manufactured with cheap foreign labor. In addition. American consumers benefit from the availability of cheap credit to lack data purchase those goods – cheap credit made possible by the recycling of the dollars we pay for those imported goods back into U.S. securities by the exporting countries. Because of this basic circular money flow. Americans have been allowed to consume far beyond their means for decades. and it feels good. It is one hell of a seductive arrangement.