Dawn of a new day

Image: prozac1 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The memorial services I saw yesterday were all tastefully conducted. Very moving. Very poignant. And, so, here we are... September 12, 2011... the start of a new day, a new decade, arguably a new era. The War on Terror is winding down. A presidential election, which may define the new decade, is looming (or, some might say, already well underway). If America still remains the world's only superpower, that distinction is rapidly slipping from Uncle Sam's grasp. We no longer pretend to be the world's policeman... at least I hope we don't.

During the past couple of weeks, I've posted a number of conspiracy-theory stories. If I had pretenses of becoming a novelist in my old age, I might write the following fictional account of the decade just ended, and the current conditions:

A president who was a competent steward of America's wealth and power, delivering a balanced budget, was humiliated... impeached over a blow job. An election that was so close that a few thousand hanging chads might decide it was thrown to the conservative contender by a conservative bare-majority on the nation's supreme court.

Once in office, this president shared his power with his vice president in a manner unprecedented in prior American history. As for this vice president... well, emphasis on the "vice." He spent his years out of office, between serving one president as secretary of defense, and his son as VP, employed by a major defense contractor. He reportedly amassed some $40 million dollars in compensation during that stint in the private sector.

Some eight months into this president's first term comes a catastrophic attack upon America by the Fu Manchu of terrorists. Some aspects of the attack are strange and remain unexplained. In particular, how was it that two of the worlds tallest buildings could be reduced to rubble so quickly and completely? More baffling, how was it that another, smaller building in the complex could implode and collapse hours later? Some still believe that elements in our own government, eager for a Mid-East adventure, were behind, or at least involved, in this disaster.

And, so, a month later, America is in Afghanistan. But this is not enough. The administration in Washington is determined to project power into the heart of the Arab oil fields. So begins the drumbeat of lies about a dictator's possession of weapons of mass destruction. So begins the drumbeat of lies about his connections to 9/11's Fu Manchu. And so begins the second front of the so-called War on Terror.

Among the big winners in this two front war, coincidentally, is the firm which in the 1990s had paid the now-VP of the United States some $40 million. Billions of no-bid contracts come this company's way.

As America's treasure is tossed away in the deserts of Iraq, the pirates of Wall Street bundle worthless mortgages and other securities into financial products which no one can comprehend. Paying themselves massive bonuses, they loot their own firms and send the American financial industry --- one of the few economic sectors in which America remains a world --- to the brink of total collapse.

In 2009, a neophyte president, who only 8 years earlier was a mere state legislator, inherits the economic shambles left by the looting and pillaging barbarians of the far right. With no more treasure in the national coffers, he borrows hundreds of billions in or to pull the nation back from the brink of depression. The Wall Street pirates merrily continue awarding one another hoggish bonuses, without any sign of remorse. An old crook named Bernie Madoff,whose Ponzi Scheme tanked, is sacrificed on the altar of national outrage, and the good life goes on for everyone else on The Street.

Two years later, the economy is in yet another mess. The 9%+ jobless rate persists. There is talk of a structural change in the job market. An estimated 2.5 million of the jobs that disappeared during the Great Recession are said to be gone forever... shipped overseas or erased by increased efficiencies.

We are reassured that education is the answer. At the same time, a concerted attack in launched upon what once was, and may still be, the finest educational system in the world. Public universities are starved of legislative appropriations, while federal loans are made available in vast amounts to for-profit universities, which pay their admissions staffers a bonus for every additional butt they can place in a seat (or online).

K-12 public schools are ridiculed, their teachers threatened with loss of jobs and tenure, the teachers' unions decertified. The private, for-profits --- in this case, charter schools --- are favored over the traditional public school systems.

Meanwhile, the middle class shrinks while the top one percent of the population now controls an estimated 42% of the nation's wealth.

What is it the wealthy need to ensure their predominance in the political, as well as the economic, area?

--- A flat earth in which goods and services can be produced at the lowest available wages, wherever they may be found.

--- An education system of private prep schools and elite universities for their progeny, while the rest of us send our kids to resource-depleted public schools and community colleges.

--- An electorate of ignoramuses, kept dumb, fat and happy by Wal-Marts, Mickey Dees, reality TV, Internet porn, pro sports,and Bud Lite.

--- Low, or better yet, no taxes.

Of course, this is just the novel I might write, if I aspired to be a novelist. None of this could be true. Right?