OpEds—
The wages of bottomless greed and public confusion are becoming evident everywhere we look
BY GUI ROCHAT
IT IS A SIMPLE FACT that we are addicted to energy consumption. This is much like the drug trade, because it is not battling the suppliers that will diminish the import and consumption of drugs, but the reduction in the demand which will reduce drug availability and use. The drug wars are a misnomer because if the demand remains, no effort how large or even well meant, will have any effect. Just so it is with the demand for energy such as the excessive oil consumption in this country. Unless we curb our thirst for energy supplies, nothing will prevent the intense expansion and efforts to supply what is so direly needed in a society that is fully addicted to energy consumption. This plain and simple fact is overlooked in the horror expressed at all the mistakes caused by increasing oil production and by sustaining the high profitability of the oil companies.
As long as oil is the main energy source and still relatively cheap, it is a pipe dream to expect a tighter control over production problems and that is a sine qua non for the prevention of further despoliations of nature. Only a popular demand for better public transport for example would be able to curb somewhat the enormous energy requirements at present in the US and it may be a start for a more rational manner of energy consumption. Of course the exploits of the Pentagon absorb an enormous amount of energy but even there it can be curbed if the public gets more conscious and better organized to withstand the restrictions placed on protests.
It is getting to be more and more obvious even to the least informed amongst the population that the interests of the large corporations and not the public (except as consumers) are being pursued by government. In fact only a popular uprising could sway the pendulum of power away from the vested interests even though one tends to underestimate the power of people. The structure of the capitalist system sustains this imbalance in power and the kind of humans who fit into the desired pattern seems to increase. Of course the promise of monetary rewards will attract exactly those who will keep the status quo growing and one can see it in the absurd salaries obtained by the so-called newscasters and opinion makers in the television medium.
In terms of the classical division of labor, the world is obviously divided into the three traditional and main classes: the owners in America and Europe and elsewhere in capitalist countries; the [international] middle classes (although, obviously, we also have our own domestic genuine underclass, a proliferating lumpen) meaning the populations at large in the West who retain most of the world’s consumer power along with the super rich; and the lower classes everywhere from South America to Africa to Asia, who produce most of the wealth garnered for the centers of power beyond their borders. One can only imagine here what kind of resentment and anger this provokes in exactly those populations that are being subjected to the ravages that the policy of wealth extraction brings with it.
This anger is totally ignored, practically invisible and incomprehensible to the first world publics, and not even considered where armaments guarantee the supposed safety of the extortionists as this is the usual institutionalized blindness of the owning classes everywhere. They never feel safe from the working class hordes, but with an intense propaganda apparatus and military might, the militarized police included, they have been able to stabilize their control, helped by the fact that this was the only intact surviving economy after 1945. The economic advantage has never been challenged and forms the basis for the present monetary control by the elites.
One wonders though how long and how far the common consent will stretch. Even when it appears to be breaking, it recovers quickly spurred on by nationalist propaganda from the diverse conservative media and a congress that sways with that what is most profitable to it. The mode in which representatives of the people get elected is for the most part by buying one’s ‘elective’ position and the way one votes in congress is directed by the private interests of the district that one represents. And even recourse in civil law is determined by a political system that appoints justices according to party affiliation.
What, may one ask differs this loudly lauded type of ‘democracy’ from the kind of primitive societies mocked by Jonathan Swift ? It still is a question of the rule by a cabal of the strongest, tolerated by a weaker majority while the vox populi is cleverly muted by such anomalies as the electoral college etc. It is remarkable how the public at large is more tolerant about race and gender than the opinion makers allow. And while race is the undertow of the attacks on the present chief office holder by some of the news media, thus causing groups of mis-educated and misled citizens to fall in step, little space remains for any reasoned critique of his policies.
That is the once fertile but slowly rotting ground on which the republic rests, literally owned by vested interests, controlling a population that floats on hope and false promises. The consensus is that the government is for and by the people, but that old saw has never really been true despite all the indoctrination about the goodness of the owners of this society. They fully depend on the relative wealth of the nation, that is to say what is wrought by the many to produce this wealth. The structure has always been that of exploitation and an absorption upward of surplus value, regardless of the pride with which the hollow idea of democracy has been touted to the masses. Official religion then performs as a lightning rod for the unease and the resulting dissatisfaction with things as they are.
‘The times they are a’changing’ and out of the shadows the real structure becomes visible, the tight collaboration between government and big business, the way government protects big business and the kickbacks government gets for using public funds to protect big business from its own greed. The present situation of British Petroleum, whereby the pension funds and small investors will suffer from heavy fines imposed by the government is only play acting because the big boys remain out of sight and out of harm. The public always pays and it pays dearly with threats of reduced social security and medicare insurance. Somehow the flow of wealth from the labor of the toilers is always directed towards the bosses.
But that is slowly coming to an end and the best indices for that are the ever more extreme protestations of the tea baggers and their leaders, because their existence is threatened and they know it. And they will be the first to be jettisoned by their conservative masters as soon as their usefulness is gone, but even then their deep obfuscation may prevent these camp followers from realizing what has been done to them. In the interim the class war goes inexorably on, though fully hidden because the word is anathema in polite American society. It transcends race and gender as well as age, because it does not differentiate in who is being exploited and who is being used to suppress others.
The seeds for change or call it revolution are always present, even or actually mostly in the most oppressive environment and from human history one can see that a small spark often results in outbursts of revolt. One halfway successful blowback action could set it off and the present oil spill surely prepares a very fertile ground for it as well as the deliberately obscure ‘new’ health bill and the diversions of huge amounts of public funds into Wall street hands. The profiteering supporters of this creaking system are trying by all means to salvage it and superficially very little resistance has as yet appeared but it will not need that much to erupt.
GUI ROCHAT is a senior editor with TGP and Cyrano’s Journal Online.
