The Humble Beggar

February 23rd, 2005 at 17:01 Björn Hallberg

So George W Bush is touring Europe to mend ties, scheme, gloat and be smug. Some European governments seem to have swallowed the bait. Or at least they’re smiling politely. But this is not as much an issue of cooperation, military and economically as it is one of consent. Consent to terror and the American way of life as it were. As I see it the plan is to keep the outside world believing in America’s intention to do good.
Invade, occupy … demand consent and speak softly … rinse, repeat. It’s pretty obvious. It only goes to prove what contempt the American side has for honor and international laws. And what their agenda really amounts to. By breaking laws one day and strictly abiding by them the next, no one is sure what to believe. And for the in-the-box statesmen of the world, the choice is obvious.

They want to believe and they feel as though their own kind would never betray them. That they would rather put their trust in the untrustworthy than take a chance with an outgroup, even within their own country. Behold the marvels of the representative democracies. So support is more or less guaranteed. At least until the US does something so outlandish that even their so called allies are forced to take a proper stand.

And besides trumping up support from your equals or people in your own strata, another obvious reason to bother with Europe and such overt deception at all is that not all people are so perceptive. Many live in a nickelodeon world where gullibility is king.
And on a grander scale obviously the US has no intention of  letting Europe develop along its own path. That could be dire. Europe might even decide to build up its own fighting forces, jump NATO and start opposing the US. You can tell the US is unsettled by the EU project and what it is becoming in terms of economy and influence. So, if even a few seeds of discord were sown this week, it was surely worth W’s time. And at the very least it bought the US some more time to carry on plundering and  slaughtering.

I believe this strategy is so deeply integrated into the American government framework that there is no separating right or wrong, honor or disgrace. As Roosevelt used to say, "Speak softly and carry a big stick". This duplicitous attitude is what best the American foreign policy over the last one hundred years. And the brilliance lies not in being able to have the tools for any situation but in that it keeps the outside world confused and uncertain of how to respond. Obviously with no stick at all, America would be like the rest of us, and with no soft words, America would drift towards becoming a true Totalitarian regime in very little time. Of course the latter would provoke a very nasty response from the rest of the world. And there is no profit in that, at least not until such a level of dominance has been reached that one can operate virtually unopposed. America obviously has no desire to make the same mistake that Germany did in 1939, to start a futile battle from a hopeless strategic position. And why would one conquer what one already controls. I guess people have gotten a lot smarter in the last fifty years or so. The idea is the same, make to mistake, but the means to achieving it are much more subtle.

Looking back it’s a bummer for the US that they had to restart the process. I mean, I guess they figured WWII would be the rise of American influence. And it was, at least until the Soviet Union stepped in. One semi-totalitarian state to deal with a fully totalitarian state. Birds of feather. And even if the US eventually managed to break the Soviet Union, not just by the overt arms race but also by much more covert and less honourable measures, it weakened them tremendously. After the decline of the Cold War, things have started anew. The eternal expansion bubble has begun to form and the US stands poised to unleash its villainy. Much like a hundred empires before them.

On the matter of confusion, one could make an analogy to the way double-legislation worked in Germany from the rise of the Nazi party to the start of WWII. Many have wondered why no one even bothered to change the old legislation of the Weimar republic. And how that relates to the new laws that were passed during the 1930’s, often blatantly breaking and contradicting anything that already existed. Obviously the first reason is confusion. No one will be able to tell what is going on. The outside world can be reassured and often did this quite amicably themselves and without much effort from any German official. People have a tendency to lull themselves into a state of false security, and no one want to deal with the prospect of World War in case it could have been avoided.
Also, the supreme, almost Godlike power to be able to interpret and decide what the law really says is reserved for the highest echelons of society, in this case the Nazi party. It bestows them with even more power since they alone can tell the people "the truth". In that way it’s not so unlike clergy who function by laws that are above and beyond any mortal or indeed the uncooperative masses. And no one questions divine law without retribution.
Anyway, the second reason why this is so interesting relates to the intentions of the people who keep making duplicate amendments to old laws and disregard either. The Nazi party probably chuckled amongst themselves at the stupidity of the outside world and indeed its own population. They knew they had no intentions of following any laws or being honourable so what did it matter what laws they passed or if they happened to conflict. That is one possibly way to look at such developments, focusing on the contempt of any rules and laws but one’s own.

As we have the good fortune to be able to see WWII in retrospect we know what the Nazi party had in mind. We can’t be sure what the American elite groups are planning but there is an unsettling similarity here when it comes to legal quagmires and foreign policy. The dualisms that the US are playing on, whether it be things like the "Patriot Act" (which conflicts with the basic constitution) or the way allies are being deceived, run over, returned to grace are quite astonishing. In my opinion, this passes dangerously close to what we have witnessed many times before throughout history and most notably just before WWIII. Not that America’s position is such that it needs to declare WWIII. America is on a far better platform and can expand without the need for declaring traditional war. Declaring WWIII is reserved for the rest of the world, when we are finally fed up with the crimes, the expansion and the insults. And that is what is so bothersome. No one wants that kind of responsibility. And it is bound to make you look bad, the future US propaganda machine will be working over-time to trash any necessity and decency in such an act.

And what happens after that? In the case when things either come to a global conflict or we all just silently allow ourselves to fall under American dominion, bit by bit and country by country. What kind of world government will we see? Can even the American politico stand up to brute force of corporate greed? And if so, will they create an empire that will be taken from them the moment it is complete.

Entry 33 filed under: Europe. This entry was posted 3 years, 9 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.