Watching a Beached Whale Die

April 11, 2006:

I got lots of response from that last one, most of which reminds me of a Bertrand Russell quote. "Men fear thought," Russell observed, "more than they fear anything else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages ..."

Kevin G. and several others, on the other hand (perhaps) remarked that they thought it all a matter of opinion. That reminded me (everything reminds me of something else; it comes with vast experience - old age, too) of something Uncle Cy told us about the battle for St. Lo, France during the European Theatre of World War Two. "We thought there was probably no one over there in those buildings - they'd been pulverized by artillery; even if there were anyone there, the distance was too far for him to do anything. When the guy with the rifle started killing us at more than a thousand yards, we had to change our opinion."

That's the thing about "opinion." Sometimes, you're right, or you're dead. When you're a nation, or its president, it may be a whole, helluva lot of people are dead. I guess - what with Iraq having become what it is - we can see that now.

Kevin also remarked that he thought most people in the U.S. weren't really interested in the global effects of our actions. He's right about that, and that's what Ward Churchill was saying. His choice of language, moreover, is just that, his choice; its also immaterial, beside the point he otherwise made eminently well.

My "beached whale" remark drew stuff indicative of downright fury. Like I also said, the truth hurts.

And for those people, those who seek to throw word bombs (remember what I said about answering opposing arguments with facts, rather than invective?): you forget that I am the sworn enemy of this government. And I didn't draw first blood - they did. If I watch with satisfaction, or relief, the death of my enemy, how un-natural, or immoral, is that? That the United States is a beached whale cannot be gainsaid by anyone with the facts and a rationally functioning brain. That's the reason - for John and the several Hannity wannabees who gloated that I didn't have the power to overthrow the government - that I don't bother any more with plans for counterattacking the enemy trying to ruin me. I don't have to. All I have to do is watch.

The world, from pole to pole, seethes with rage against the U.S. The chickens are, indeed, coming home to roost. The fat man who is less than four percent of the people at the dinner table that is the planet consumes thirty five percent of what's on the table, and he wants more. He is walking around the planetary banquet table with his fourteen nuclear aircraft carriers, prowling around relentlessly under it with his sixty-four nuclear submarines, and he has stationed seven hundred fifty of his sentries in the form of military bases all around the table, all threatening to smash anyone who opposes his gluttonous appetite.

But now, someone has noticed that the fat man is on life support. He has a tube attached to him, one that supplies him with what in my analogy is life blood - oil. Without the thirty-three percent of the world's oil that he has to have to stay fat, he will cease to be the threat he has made of himself. The snarling grizzly will become a teddy bear. What do you think the other diners at the table will do?

Oh, I know what you're thinking. The whole world knows what you're thinking. What you are, what you've been, thunders so loudly that nothing you can say in your traditionally obfuscatory manner will be heard. You think all that high-tech, Buck Rogers military muscle you have means you'll just go take what you want. You think the rest of the people at the table will simply kowtow, fearful. Think again. Among the many things that have resulted from your relentless colonialism and exploitation of the planet has been a realization that you're not so mucking futch after all. After literally overwhelming your enemies in World War Two, burying them in men and materiel, you were barely able to get a stalemate in Korea. In Vietnam, your young men, armed with every high-tech super weapon known to man, could not defeat raggedly little peasant army enemy armed largely with B-40 (RPGs) rocket launchers, SKSs, and AK-47s.

The fact is that since World War Two, we've done one military pratfall after another, not to mention way our "security" forces here at home covered themselves with glory on 9-11, and Iraq is only the latest in a long string.

If you don't see a connection between that and the fact that our World Baseball Classic Team, made up of our millions of dollar a years "stars," got their asses kicked by teams like Nicaragua and Cuba, you're a nitwit or not paying attention.

Iraq, as I predicted long before we committed this latest Brobdingnagian blunder, is not only kicking our asses militarily, having killed 2,400 of our soldiers and wounded 15,000 more, the place we supposedly set out to liberate is about to sink into chaos. The cold, hard truth is that our "one parent family" reared, hothouse flower push-button military (yeah, sure - that's why we have twenty million Mexicans here to do the work our young men won't do) doesn't fight worth a shit. The world isn't afraid of us any more, not even a little.

But if that weren't enough, you've deteriorated so mentally that you won't face the truth (that, of course, is what anyone smart enough to pour piss out of his boot would expect of anyone as soft and decadent as the typical "American"). You won't face the truth about anything. The nation of liars ruled by liars (again, what would you expect?) lives in the past, repeating its chauvinist (look it up - it has nothing to do with being male) mantra, "greatest nation on the earth." That was then, you know - this is now. You also go right on bloviating and bellering bellicose bullshit, threatening all and sundry with invasion and annihilation, blissfully unaware that Communist China - that nation who practices the system that you keep chanting doesn't work - has you by the throat economically.

A recent essay William Rivers Pitt on the Truthout website's Perspective feature discusses that situation in detail. Pitt quotes Paul Craig Roberts, writing for The American Conservative. "As a result of many years of persistent trade surpluses with the United States, the Japanese government holds dollar reserves of approximately $1 trillion. China's accumulation of dollars is approximately $600 billion. South Korea holds about $200 billion. These sums give these countries enormous leverage over the United States. By dumping some portion of their reserves, these countries could put the dollar under intense pressure and send U.S. interest rates skyrocketing. Washington would really have to anger Japan and Korea to provoke such action, but in a showdown with China - over Taiwan, for example - China holds the cards. China and Japan, and the world at large, have more dollar reserves than they require. They would have no problem teaching a hegemonic superpower a lesson if the need arose."

"The hardest blow on Americans," concluded Roberts, "will fall when China does revalue its currency. When China's currency ceases to be undervalued, American shoppers in Wal-Mart, where 70 percent of the goods on the shelves are made in China, will think they are in Neiman Marcus. Price increases will cause a dramatic reduction in American real incomes. If this coincides with rising interest rates and a setback in the housing market, American consumers will experience the hardest times since the Great Depression."

"In short," Pitt says, "China has the American economy by the throat. Should they decide to squeeze, we will all feel it. China's strong hand in this even extends to the diplomatic realm; China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and could veto any actions against Iran proposed by the United States."

Pitt goes on to point out correctly that "the American military is stretched to the breaking point." Like I say, the world isn't afraid of you any more. You're a beached whale. The Truthout article goes on to report that two "vaunted economists - one a Nobel Prize winner and the other a renowned budget expert - have analyzed the data at hand and put a price tag on the Iraq occupation. According to Linda Bilmes of Harvard and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University, the final cost of the Iraq occupation will run between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, surpassing by orders of magnitude the estimates put forth by the Bush administration. If an engagement with Iran envelops our forces in Iraq, and comes to involve Syria, our economy will likely shatter under the strain of fighting so many countries simultaneously. Add to this the economic threat posed by China, and the economic threat implicit in any substantial disruption of the distribution of Mid-East petroleum to the globe.

The article continues, "If Iran and Syria - with their significant armaments," missile technologies and suspected chemical weapons capabilities - decide to engage with the relatively undersized US force in Iraq, our troops there will be fish in a barrel. Iran's position over the Gulf would make re-supply by ship and air support from carriers a dangerous affair. In the worst-case scenario, the newly-minted American order of battle requiring the use of nuclear weapons to rescue a surrounded and imperiled force could come into play, hurling the entire planet into military and diplomatic bedlam."

No, my friends, I have no reason to attack my enemy. He's doing himself far worse than I could. The streets have filled up for the last few days with another of the incontrovertible signs of your impending demise, millions of illegal alien Mexicans and their supporters, at first carrying the flag of Mexico, then ("oops!") the stars and stripes, all demanding that "los estados unidos" be made comfortable for them. "Liberty, they cry, and they mean license." When they have accomplished their stated objective, to overwhelm the citizenry with the political power of numbers and take control, they will make of the nation another like the one they left. Add that cancer to the ones I've already mentioned. You're a beached whale.

And, parenthetically - for the morons wearing the signs say "You're an immigrant, too" - I am NOT an immigrant. I was born here. That my great grandparents came from another nation has nothing to do with my status as a citizen. As a matter of fact, the people who were here when the first Europeans landed at Plymouth Rock (or, for that matter,Vineland, centuries before) were also "immigrants." None were ILLEGAL immigrants.

But the "American" waving the flag of Mexico are right. They'll bury you. They'll bury you because you won't do the work they will do - the very same work I did as a kid, and young men like me always did. They'll take over your country, to make the ruin of it their own nation is, because you're too lazy and fat, too corrupt, decadent, and effete to do anything about it. A beached whale.

Like Professor Churchill's essay, the essays by William Rivers Pitt and Paul Craig Roberts tell it like it is. But White House parrots like those on FoxNews,"Talk Radio," people like the exhibitionistic Anne Coulter, would (or will) do the same with those essays as they have done with that of Ward Churchill. Teach it to yell "Traitor!", it will yell "Traitor!" Parrots have bird brains. They fly away when things get tough and loud, to come right back with their "traitor!" calls as soon as things get quiet again.

So, I'll just watch the beached whale die. Death rattle of a dying beast that it is, the bird-brained babble of the whale's Anne Coulters is music to my ears. My enemy will soon be dead, I'll still be standing.