Glock 'N Spiel.

The Octopus: Who gives a Frack?

Not that I need add to the commentary about last week's atrocity, however, since certain observations have yet to be made, as for example, Upton Sinclair's comment that a nation that dedicates itself to the manufacture, sale and distribution of weapons will either use them or be buried under their weight, I thought it incumbent upon me to point out certain realities.

On the Monday of the same week that this massacre occurred, I write a post entitled: The USA's War on Itself.  

In this post I pointed out several of the reasons that I believe the absurd-sounding title is accurate, one of which is in the very first paragraph, and has to do with the Reagan administration's reckless policy of supplying an unending stream of weapons to hordes of fanatics dubiously equipped to wield them responsibly. A policy the NRA has domesticated, using the 2'nd Amendment of the Constitution as a fig leaf behind which to hide their paranoiac derangement and profit-hungry motives.

However, on top of this, we've built an edifice of Macho-militarism suffused in adolescent Superman fantasies with American might playing the part of the caped avatar of Truth, Justice, and the American Way; a Way the current, well-educated urbane president is as adamant as the book-hating, jingoistic, clownish former one was, in proclaiming is not open to negotiation.

And that Way to which they refer, that philosophy, The US has swathed itself in is that referred to in a former post as "Si vis pacem para bellum", the strength displayed in peace wards off War. A belief that ensconces us in the peculiar belief that arming ourselves to the teeth is a demonstration of peaceful intentions to those who might wish us harm, despite the fact that exactly who those might be is never named, and that, no matter who it might be, our level of armature is such that it would be national suicide should they hurl their forces against ours.

It is from this perspective that the US is able to ignore the airspace of other sovereign nations and send in killer drones to murder whoever we decide has become inconvenient. To wage a War on terror with terror, a war on drugs against its own citizens, a War of never-ending duration for Peace, even as we base the entire economic security of the State on the foundation of War-profiteering.

We just finished a Presidential campaign in which none of these major assumptions and bases for our ascendancy in the world were mentioned:

Not a word about the uselessness of Congresss and the elevation of the Executive branch to one that is completely above the Laws to which the rest of us are subjected.

Nary a sentence on the morality of using predatory and unmanned aircraft to destroy and terrorize entire populations.

Not a comment on using such dessicated terms as "collateral damage" to refer to the casualties of our careless attacks when they happen to be women and children, even though their presence in the company of our target was known before the attack was launched.

And although they love using the term Democracy, and Republic, never once is it wondered how they can exist at the heart of a Nation whose economic structure and military thrust is Empirical.

So while the NRA will be inveighed against and lambasted for their role in the deadly assault by a monster who murdered his own mother, before, Rambo-like, wading into a group of six-year-olds like he was Captain America fighting the Nation's foe-du-jour, the fact is that when one is the world's major force for force, the globe's main purveyor of increasingly destructive armamentaria, and the defender of the philosophy of "Might is Right" and Law is what we make for everyone else to obey, disregarding the Blowback that such a mindset will inevitably engender, that such a violent attitude will somehow, mysteriously affect the actions of our own citizens is regarded as heresy.

But the fantasy of American Exceptionalism, comes with a steep price. When the engineered collapse of the Soviet Union by the Reagan Administration is looked at, not as a victory for Democracy over Communism, as it so obvious isn't, considering that everything the US Government has done since then has instead subverted Democracy, as, for example, its powerful Central Bank's power grab makes the FOMC look more and more like the Politburo, and the various PACs like Party Apparatchiks, it should be by now apparent that it was a geopolitical event orchestrated to ensure that there would be no adversary capable of standing up to the US, as it extended its quest for oil resources to quench its insatiable thirst, beyond its borders and set about insuring its uninterrupted supply from the Middle East, and then the Caspian region.

Thus was the stage set for the VP during those Reagan years, now president, GHW Bush, to elevate to the position of Secretary of State the Avatar of the Oil Lobby, Dick Cheney, behind whom stood Halliburton, the owner of a new and barely tested technology called horizontal fracking: a technology they used to drill across the border from where they were based, as a guest of the Kuwait Royal Family, to the oilfields of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Then, as Saddam's objections wet unheeded and his accusations ridiculed, as such technology was thought non-existent, the entire nation was roped into defending the criminal actions of a 'private' enterprise and waging a War they exulted in as they marveled, together with the world, as CNN piped all the thrills of deadly, unmitigated violence into our living rooms with all the safety and clarity of a video game, as we unleashed our newly minted military technology against a pathetically backward foe. (As easy, and, make no mistake, as dastardly and cowardly, as attacking a roomful of six-year-olds with automatic weapons).

Since then our growth into what we are today, the world's foremost exporter of Terrorism, has grown unabated and unremarked upon, even as more money than the entire GDP of Nicauragua was spent on the Presidential campaign, during which such monumental issues got totally ignored.

If you look with unjaundiced eyes at what has occurred in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it becomes increasingly apparent what a huge debt we owe to the long-suffering Russian people. For, far from the US protecting the World from the Communist menace, it should by now be apparent that it was quite the other way around. Without Russia to stop us, we have run rampant over not only other people's governments, but more importantly, especially as it goes unnoticed, over all of our own most cherished beliefs. Well, with the exception of one. The 2'nd amendment still remains unassailed, sacrosanct, and completely, judiciously, methodically, misinterpreted to mean something it never was meant to. So much for the importance of the Founder's intentions.

So we'll argue how horrendous this act was and how we need stricter gun laws, and jawbone ourselves back into our preferred state of catatonia, but, as we already know, nothing will change, because, in our heart of Darkness, where not a tear is shed for the hundreds of children slaughtered by our weaponry, our country sits in command of the most deadly force on the globe ready to unleash its might onto whatever foe is deemed dangerous. Because, as Madeline Albright answered, when asked if the premature deaths of an estimated 250,000 children, because of the sanctions against Iraq, was worth it, replied, "OH, I think it's worth it". And so, for some reason, do we.