Where are we now?
By now everyone knows that this country is divided. That there are red states and blue states and we can’t name anything else. That the partisan divide is increasing and that what we need from our politicians is more bipartisanship.
The purpose of this essay is to recognize this divide while turning it on its head, but before continuing it is necessary to distinguish this overarching political divide from a sub-divide that is two years running; the split in the ruling elite over the continuance of the Trump presidency.
The military-intelligence-security complex together with the establishment media and hawkish neoconservative elements have targeted what they regard as Trump’s weakest spot — his supposed affinity for all things Russian. True or not this plays well with an American public that has been educated about the ever present communist menace.
How well this has worked is illustrated by the near total acceptance of the narrative of a Russian “hack” of the DNC despite there being no forensic evidence to support that conclusion, while at the same time forensic evidence has been produced pointing to an inside leak, for instance with a thumb drive.
While Trump’s adolescent behavior and glaring incompetencies are on daily display, the rival Democratic Party knows personality traits and policy choices are viewed through a red/blue filter, and are not enough to incapacitate him. However, both reds and blues respond on cue to notions of collusion with the enemy and treason.
The Democratic Party has no practical reason to favor impeachment as a solution, but enjoys the titillating effect that repetition of the word has on the target population. The strategy seems to be to keep the Russian charges, as well as lesser charges of illegality, sufficiently alive until the run up to the next election begins in earnest.
It is possible to hate Trump and not love the Democratic Party, just as it it possible to hate the Democratic Party and not love Trump. For that matter, it is possible to hate both political parties, good to recognize. Because both are responsible for bringing the political economy of this country to such a wretched state that ignorant, populist salesmanship could gain a substantial hold on the electorate.
Maybe there is an abundance of bipartisanship that the parties are not given credit for. According to the Pentagon’s FY 2018 Base Structure Report, “The DoD manages a worldwide real property portfolio that spans all 50 states, 8 U.S. territories with outlying areas, and 45 foreign countries.” This property occupies 26.9 million acres, practically all in the U.S. or U.S. Territories. To put this in perspective, Pentagon property acreage, if rearranged, would occupy all the land area of District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont. That’s just the landlord aspect.
Last year, on this weekend of MLK Day, an estimate of the number of U.S. military bases in foreign countries was arrived at in a Baltimore University international conference of anti-war activists: Approximately 800 formal military bases (possibly exceeding 1,000 counting “lily-pond” bases) in 80 countries. That’s bases. Then there is the matter of permanent duty military personnel stationed in 166 countries ( DoD Defense Manpower Data Center, Aug. 10, 2018) out of the world’s 195. There is bipartisanship support for this force projection.
A Washington Post story of Oct. 14, 2011 revealed that: “Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.” Given what we now know about the forthcoming of the U.S. intelligence/security community, we could be forgiven for considering this as but a little peek at the vast and growing apparatus looming over us. The security camera has become a defining cultural meme. For the national security state there is bipartisanship.
Vitally, there is bipartisanship for the stewardship of our political economy by Wall Street. Its agenda is not solely domestic but truly international as well, with the military as its enforcement arm. It operates with the sanction of both political parties.
It is this type of bipartisanship that keeps both parties safely locked in place with the state and the corporate elite. Is there a chance that something can shake this orthodoxy? If the newly elected young progressives in the Democratic Party have their way, perhaps, though U.S. imperialism doesn’t seem to trouble them. We’ll see. It could go a few ways. They could be turned, or, if not, then marginalized or co-opted. The party leadership has put on their smiling, sincere faces but regards them as heretics to the cause. If the party becomes viewed as unduly bound to the 99% to the detriment of the 1%, then money from financial elites will flow to the rival party. For this reason, the party leadership takes any slight to the 1% very, very seriously.
James Rothenberg, of North Chatham, writes on U.S. social and foreign policy.
