The CIA and Me

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Today’s empires, OTOH, after the map has largely been solidified — another aspect of “stability” — are now free to work on behalf of international movers and shakers, without concern for national boundaries. Yes, they have to be careful to give the appearance of patriotic planning, lest their own populations kick them out of power. But I have no doubt that what really matters to the governing class is pleasing the internationalist list of plutocrats and oligarchs, and those a bit below them on the wealth and power ladder. They do their bidding and they craft policy with them in mind. But American officials have a much easier time faking the patriotic stuff for this reason, especially:

Most of the movers and shakers, the plutocrats and oligarchs, happen to BE American. And America’s economy overall is still roughly in the neighborhood of a quarter to a fifth of the total. As in, we still dominate the world on total share of the world’s wealth and economic activities, so it’s much easier for American governments to play the game of appearing to work on behalf of one nation. In reality, that governing class doesn’t care about boundaries. It cares about Capital, which crosses all of them.

One of the differences between us is that you have people consciously doing these things, and then consciously hiding them. That’s still old conspiracy theory to me. I don’t see that. I don’t think it ever works that way. It always seems, instead, to be driven by fears, visions, and haunting beliefs. So the people with power are just as much victims of ideological beliefs as anyone else in the process is.

I also think that if we ignore the effects of post-coloniality in all this, it just means we end up with a false picture. No one in the first world can just directly count on being able to economically and/or militarily dominate anymore. They are in constant negotiation/conflict with the many-headed forms of resistance, counter-movement, and conflict that shakes the post-colonial world in various ways and places all at the same time. Telling an all western story, even a leftist one, is just one more western ideological vision.

I see wealthy and powerful people consciously trying to increase their wealth and power, and I see an economic system that makes it easy for them to do this, once they reach a certain critical mass of capital. I see the legal structure set up to make it so they don’t really have to be “consciously” secretive, because they’re protected from the get go. The laws and rules are written with their “privacy” in mind, not ours. We don’t get to see into their boardrooms and their lobbyists meetings and their international conferences. They get to ask us for tons of information, or they just take it, and we don’t get to know much at all about them. ISPs, Google searches, Facebook, etc. etc. They take from us what they want, whether we want them to or not. We don’t get to do the same to their head honchos.

The government keeps tabs on the masses, but asks very little about the movers and shakers, primarily because they pull the strings, fund their campaigns and provide lucrative revolving door opportunities after their public careers. A judge recently said it was okay for the Trump DOJ to do this:

Trump’s DOJ Demands Personal Info on 1.3M Visitors to “DisruptJ20” Inauguration Protest Website StoryAugust 18, 2017 Watch iconWatch Full Show

I think you misread me, when you say I see this as a conspiracy. I see it as a horrifically immoral economic system, that is so obscenely tilted toward the wealthy and the powerful, they rarely have to play at cloak and dagger to get what they want. It’s baked in. It’s a natural evolution of a system that concentrates massive wealth and power at the top, and broadcasts a dangerous message far and wide that neck-breaking hierarchies are “natural” and fighting against them is anti-American, blah blah blah.

I think the part in bold is especially . . . well, questionable. I see no evidence that this is true. In fact, the gap between the Haves and the Have nots has never been greater. Right now, just six humans hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the world combined, and most are Americans. That’s on the individual level. On the corporate level, most of the companies with the biggest cash reserves, overall wealth, power and sway are still American and few fall outside the West. None that I know of come from the so-called Third World.

And when it comes to the military, we still hold a ginormous edge. Firepower, technology, communications, a thousand military bases around the world, our empire stretches across the globe. We are the sole super power in the world. Yes, we’re the hegemon. But we have an empire and we’re the hegemon. It’s both/and.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

I see wealthy and powerful people consciously trying to increase their wealth and power, and I see an economic system that makes it easy for them to do this, once they reach a certain critical mass of capital.

None of which is shaping the world the way the constant, multi-faceted, wide and contradictory and complex push and pull within post-colonial nation states is. AND the American, always off balance and out of kelter reaction to it. Those reactions are driven by ideoligcal visions more than any other thing. Fears, wishes, hopes, beliefs, nightmares, misperceptions, and so on. Ideas of stability, ideas of identity, reactions to domination, the desire to dominate in the name of some strange combination of ideals and cynical realism (which is just not really realistic.) That IS history.

So yes we see differently. I never accepted mainframe marxist analysis. I was always much more into the revisers—to be pedantic and name a few names, Althusser, Raymond Williams, Zizek, Bhabba, Bakhtin, & co.

What you and I are going to have to do is nurture those ways in which we talk as allies.

Well, we went through this before, and it appears it wasn’t resolved the last time. You’re making an assumption about the way I’m “framing” this and it’s wrong.

Yes, I’ve read Marxian and Marxist theory, and have gotten a ton out of it, especially because I’ve learned how diverse they are, contrary to the mainstream view of most Americans. But I’m by no means locked in to any one school, and I pride myself on being free from all of them. My intellectual life has been engaged in breaking with orthodoxies, in fact, going back to the first moment of “liberation” at the age of nine, when I broke with the Christian church.

I’m a non-orthodox and, often enough, a heterodox thinker. I don’t do “schools” of thought. Please stop assuming that what I’m saying is from one narrow school or another. It’s not.

What I’ve written above is a result of a long period of study, observation and contemplation, and I’ve read all the thinkers you listed, too, except for Bhabba. But it’s primarily my own observations I use when I describe how I see things. The various leftist, liberal or mainstream economists, historians and philosophers I’ve read have really just given me the language needed to express what I feel about the world . . . they spark that inside me. They open my eyes to new ways of seeing what exists. But I don’t blindly follow anyone or anything.

No gods, no masters. I sincerely believe that.

As for being “allies.” Of course. But good allies try their best not to make assumptions, and that goes for moi as well. I’m guilty of that too.

Time to hit the hay. Take care, ZN.