my comment from just yesterday
someday we may find the courage and strength within our own country to form militias to take down this cancer killing our once great country and spirit.

Posted by: annie | Aug 7 2006 17:30 utc | 4

There are two answers to the the emerging Fools Paradise (and they aren’t mutually exclusive). One is: A corps of Jacobins, who defend collective reason. A sort of Jöntürkler movement intervening from above, rather than from below.
That gives you modern Turkey, if things go reasonably well. France, if things go very well. Syria (and until recently Iraq) if clanism subverts things completely. Or should we say, we all need to converge around the Chinese model?
The problem with this authoritarian answer is that human evolution is then pretty much done. Also this junta, unlike the above examples, would be a defensive measure, and hence be part of a dialectic of decline.
The other answer is active disintegration of the polity. This of course may lead to civil war.
***
Some people seem shocked by what Billmon is mumbling into his whisky glass, but if so they obviously don’t have any such “Fools” in their family. I have a bunch of perfectly charming in-laws from Texas, who believe in the Rapture, unconditional support for Israel and all that stuff. I have more than once thought that for people like that the only solution is, if not a bullet, then the threat of a bullet.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 7 2006 18:03 utc | 6

When I first heard about this poll result, I felt angry and crushed at the same time.
Maybe the backslide into dumbassage has something to do with Santorum and Hoekstra claiming that Iraq did have WMD after all, a big announcement they made sometime in June. They left out the part about the munitions being pre-1991 and probably degraded to the point of uselessness and didn’t mention that the Iraq Survey Group had reported on these weapons and assessed them as unimportant. Their “revelation” got a lot of play at the time, even tho the DoD stated that the WMDs in the document were not the ones we supposedly went to war to find. No doubt that wasn’t discussed as much in certain quarters.

Posted by: Zotz | Aug 7 2006 18:19 utc | 8

You’ve fallen into Fukuyama’s fallacy.
There are several different ways of interpreting the phrase “Last Man,” and not all of them involve the creation of the bourgeois utopia.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 7 2006 18:22 utc | 10

Annie – re your post above — thanks so much for bringing my attention to the Fountainhead post; there is so much to keep up with these days.
Fountainhead — The Neocons’ Greatest Sin
By Anwaar Hussain about the changes in his thinking over the years was truly enlightening, logical, and to be expected — and I am going to send it around.
Re “What a Fool Believes” – WMD in Iraq belief back again —
The old-fashioned conservative SF writer Jerry Pournelle has written many times on his “Chaos Manor” blog that he is against this Neocon/Jacobin adventuring to change the world. He was against the war on Iraq, but since it was obviously steaming ahead, he just hoped it would turn out successfully. He wanted to live in a US REPUBLIC, but thinks that the changes in the US are too far along now — the US is turning into an Empire with citizens gradually changing into subjects.
When he is in a bad mood, he writes that he only hopes for a COMPETENT empire. But he strongly suspects that he will not get that either.
Pournelle is dismayed by the changes in Washington. He knows whereof he speaks – he used to have high level connections there because he was in NASA research, government advisory group, etc.

Posted by: Owl | Aug 7 2006 18:34 utc | 12

Spengler + Narcotics = Millenialism?
Spengler + Narcotics = A really, really bad trip.

Posted by: billmon | Aug 7 2006 18:40 utc | 14

you’ve been & are living under a military junta – the modalities are just different
but the essence is exactly the same
once the militance of american becomes more practical, more effective – they will be extinguished & forgotten as any palestinian, as any iraqui, as any lebanese

Posted by: r’giap | Aug 7 2006 18:58 utc | 16

Personally, I’m arming bears.

Posted by: beq | Aug 7 2006 19:29 utc | 18

Like the joke I heard by some redneck comedian, that went something like: “My grandmother has a bumpersticker on her car that says “God Is My Copilot”. And it made me wonder how it was, that the creater of the universe has enough spare time on his hands to ride along with grandma to the Wal-Mart store to pick up her stool-softeners”
Because these people, in one sense have already been raptured, at least from the reality I am familiar with. You can see them standing there, but they’re already gone. In some ways, its a testament to their faith, a way of showing their faith — to being gone, already. The more factual information presented, in fact, the less chance of them believing it. Its a war of facts against faith, and facts are always seeking to undermine and destroy faith, and when religion is fused with politics, policy becomes scripture, patriotism becomes piety, and the president becomes god-like.
But, to be sure, this transference is not in any way humble or deeply spiritual, or else they might be agitating for an Amish or a Shaker way about things. No, this transference is born within the strictly american ethos of exceptionalism, and manifests itself as a kind of temporal, ever faster NAS-CAR culture, indian casino, winner takes all, me, me, me, go for the gold — hyper-sanctimonity. And because such a culture is so fundamentally unsustainable in every, reality based detail, it must draw upon such a hyper-sanctimonious notion of faith to keep it afloat. In this sense, they are correct in assuming that, at this point, it is their only hope in forstalling the near, total collapse of their faith based reality. A sad case of life, immitating art, or at least the black velvet version of it.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 7 2006 19:50 utc | 20

@Edwin.
Ah, yes, maybe not the centre of the world, but pretty damned worthy of some attention. The USA has 17.000 nuclear warheads. Imagine yourself in a Whiskey Bar, you’re at a table – a person between you and the only door puts handgrenades and guns on the table in front of him, keeping one Glock in his hand which he waves about with, taking pot shots around the bar. Where’s your centre of attention now?
Read A Canticle for Leibowitz if you want to know what the USA will look like if things don’t seriously change.

Posted by: SteinL | Aug 7 2006 20:12 utc | 22

Given my current opinion of “democracy” in America, I think at this point I’d settle for a reasonably competent military junta
Dream/Nightmare on, billmon. If you can’t get a “reasonably competent” Congress, how do you figure you’ll get a “reasonably competent” junta? They both serve the same Master after all, and it is the Master that is the problem.

Posted by: jj | Aug 7 2006 20:15 utc | 24

If you can’t get a “reasonably competent” Congress, how do you figure you’ll get a “reasonably competent” junta?
Maybe they could contract the job out to Halliburton.

Posted by: Billmon | Aug 7 2006 20:43 utc | 26

If you can’t get a “reasonably competent” Congress, how do you figure you’ll get a “reasonably competent” junta?
a junta hopefully might be more representative of the people than members of congress. different set of ‘special’ interests.

Posted by: annie | Aug 7 2006 21:51 utc | 28

When you’ve got enough warheads to nuke every city over 1 million on the planet twice, and approximately 30-40% of your citizens are batshit insane, and the attitude of the other 60-70% towards Armaggedon is, approximately, “hey, whatever,” it tends to make you pretty freakin’ important.
The United States is decending into fascism. I suspect that this is what it was like in the early days of Nazism. As a Jew I’ve never quite understood how it happened before.
In the worse case scenario, there is definitely the possibility of total extintion, but I think that Europe will not follow the US into hell, and I don’t think that the US is likely to nuke Europe. I don’t think that the various Islamic counterparts to the US will have the ability to take out Israel, the US, and Europe. I suspect that they will settle for the US, Israel, and perhaps Britian.
If things do get this bad, our door will be open – unless the wind is blowing from the south in which case don’t bother.
Of course it may not be this bad – the US has once before seriously considered becoming fascist. That was during the McCarthy period.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 7 2006 22:19 utc | 30

“there are some reality based americans. just because they keep calling us the lunatic fringe doesn’t mean we’re either”
Just call us the “reality based fringe.”

Posted by: billmon | Aug 7 2006 23:02 utc | 32

Just call us the “reality based fringe.”
the RBF

Posted by: annie | Aug 7 2006 23:23 utc | 34

A junta formed of paleo-cons and the generals might not be a bad thing.
At the very least it would provide stability and predictability and the end to insane ad hoc adventures.
Another quote pertinent to the long view (prompted by the shutting down of half of Alaskan oil):
The world’s present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.


Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But… it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.
King Hubbert, 1981. Quoted in:
Link

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 8 2006 0:29 utc | 36

The moderate (I’m becoming more and more immoderate with age)Left does not particularly welcome a junta, but many of us see a military coup as the last defense against Armageddon, in the (unlikely) event that Bush could be persuaded to mount a war on Iran that involves the use of tactical nuclear weapons. We understand that our government is presently run by persons who can plausibly be considered certifiably mad, and that the normal checks that our Constitution provides to limit the consequences of governmental madness do not seem to be working.
I personally think a coup is unlikely; the threat of one should be enough to deter the decision that would make it a real event. The other reason is the failure in Iraq and the upcoming elections. The Bush junta do not have to public backing right now to go to big-time war, and of course, they no longer have the troops.
As to the point about the US being the center of the world –those of us who came of age in the 1950s and early 60s certainly thought so. It is going to be a difficult readjustment. But don’t sell the American people short. They are more resilent than present evidence suggests.

Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Aug 8 2006 2:16 utc | 38

Evolution is not some idea of progress. Evolution is random chance making some beings more adaptable than others to certain situations. You can argue about “progress” in terms of political systems, certainly, but the pseudoscientific term of “evolution” in terms of political systems gets me all semantic.

Posted by: Rowan | Aug 8 2006 2:21 utc | 40

“it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.”
That’s another ceiling that we all know is out there somewhere and maybe dead ahead.
Even in a whisky bar though, one can only worry about so many shitstorms in one go.
Well says I (and this is strictly for half-drunk aficionados of the esoteric) here is another one: How about some Financial Spenglerism: R.N. Elliott, the 1930s stock market guru, forecast a giant bull market for the second half of the 20th century, which was to complete, according to him, an exponential growth period of human activity that began in the 14th century. The ensuing bear market, Elliott postulated, would be a consolidation period of the entire growth period since the Renaissance, and would take us, at a minumum back to (adjusted for inflation) levels not seen since the Depression. Sounds like energy problems to me. Not even nuclear war could achieve that (unless on the scale devoutly desired by Dispensationalists).
How about some Millenialism to help us pass the gloomy 100 years it’ll take us to get to the low?

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 8 2006 3:00 utc | 42

Here’s our “reasonably competent” military at work:
——
According to Specialist Barker’s statement, Private Green not only raped the girl but also shot her and her family after telling his comrades repeatedly he wanted to kill some Iraqis. Mr Bierce said that on the day of the attack, Specialist Barker, Sergeant Cortez, Private Spielman and Private Green had been playing cards and drinking Iraqi whisky mixed with an energy drink. They practised hitting golf balls, Specialist Barker’s statement said.
———–
Sounds like they are both morally and militarily prepared.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 8 2006 3:25 utc | 44

That’s “should” be entering a 20-25 year period of peace and prosperity. Any day now. Still waiting . . .

Posted by: billmon | Aug 8 2006 4:24 utc | 46

@Knut Wicksell and who ever else don’ get it…
What is it with people, “trained incapacity,” denial of incremental complexity, unwillingness to know things, dammaged critical thing skills, from public indoctrination otherwise, known as the American Education system?? I want to scream sometimes, “When will you people get it,! what part of are already at war with Iran don’t you get!!!
War does not start with armed conflict, shots fired or troops on the ground it starts in the class rooms of military schools e.g., the study of military science and War College studies, the boardrooms and think tank war rooms, of the elite. “war is an act of violence or corhersed manipulation which intends to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.” Ashley Montagu emphasized that the top down nature of war, that almost all wars are begun not by popular pressure but by the whims of leaders and that these leaders also work to maintain a system of ideological justifications for war using but not linited to nationalism, religion, ideology etc…
Covert and overt war are just as equal, an anthropological view should focus less on battles, and more on elite strategies and war preparation. Critical social analysis looks at the relationship between war and war preparation and several aspects of social life in which we study the pathologies of fear, conflict, conformity and war. As I have stated before Scott Ritter sd,
“…Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran….”
and
“..Most Americans, together with the mainstream American media, are blind to the tell-tale signs of war, waiting, instead, for some formal declaration of hostility, a made-for-TV moment such as was witnessed on 19 March 2003.”
Further, Catherine Lutz in her work entitled: , she has blown wide open the ideology and memetics that covertly govern our way of life in America. She has shown empirically and scientifically. Lutz writes, Our Legacy of War [we] …”have already been in a permanent state of war since the late 1930s. Mainly outsourced to the global south since 1945″, however, that has changed the essence has not. Militarization is one of the most significant impediments to human development and to democratic aspiration. As the saying goes, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
Finally Lutz writes,

The roots of contemporary militarization are many, but it will help, I think, to begin by reviewing some of the more significant ones, as it is these which provide the challenges to transnational movement activists. Those roots centrally include the capitalist organization of the production of weaponry and the profits to be made through their sale and the war-related profits to be made in armament resale and through the provision of services to militaries and to suffering post-war communities, including humanitarian aid, reconstruction contracts, and the shadow economies of prostitution, food, and so on. The roots of militarization also lie in the widespread belief in the inevitability and efficacy of violence as a route to power; elite political use of fear and narrow security rhetorics to control populations and extract wealth internal to states and transnationally; masculinist nationalism and militarized religious fundamentalisms that purport to justify violence in defense of group ideals; the global inequality of consumption that creates incentives to attempt military capture of resources and resource access; the rebordering of states to maintain that inequality, particularly as it increases; the dualism of shadow and licit economies and the fictions that accompany it.”
Most importantly, the U.S. government used its post-World War II wealth to invest heavily in military research and development, and was able to both appear capable of prevailing over any other force as well as to dominate the global market in the military (and other) commodities it developed. The “unipolar” world of the 1990s resulted in a temporary diminution of militarization as it became more difficult to legitimate the tremendous economic and social costs. On the other hand, the U.S. share of the
global arms trade ballooned after the end of the Cold War, with more than 150 countries worldwide buying U.S. weapons. At $10.5 billion in 2002, US arms deliveries constituted over 40 percent of the official world total.
3 The great majority of the governments to which the U.S. sold weapons have been unelected ones, and most are or have been identified, even by the U.S.’ own State Department, as violators of their citizens’ human rights. The antidemocratic effect of militarization on both the imperial center and the countries which are the setting for overseas military presence have been well documented (*refs, Johnson, Schirmer, Schultz); this occurs directly through the enhanced power of militarized states
over their populations, and indirectly through both the enhanced power of the military industries whose fortunes become inseperable from those of the state and the anti-democratic ethos promoted by national
security rhetoric and practice.”

US is already outsourcing special operations, intelligence to the MEK terror group, current and former intelligence officials have sd.
The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say.
…Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.
“We are already at war,” in Iran the UN officials have said. In addition, McGovern also confirmed Scott Ritter, in that we already have US Marines in Iran working w/the MEK terrorist. And bolton has no problem with it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 8 2006 5:08 utc | 48

I’ve been saying what Billmon said for a while now. Hell, that’s one of the reasons we left the US, maybe the more important one.
As hard as it is to conceive of it, I’m convinced that America 1.0 is over. The collpase will work itself over during the next decade. Nothing we can do now will stop it.
My guess is that we’ll end up with a Putin-like rergime, and a Russia-like fractured state, with better entertainment, sort of a cross between Brazil and Russia. Might be good for some, bad for others.
But America as we knew it is over.

Posted by: Lupin | Aug 8 2006 5:31 utc | 50

Geez,…I hope the Chinese don’t get to thinking they are the center of the world. China has four times as many people as the US. And besides. If they ever decide to dump their US T bills they could sink the Leviathan without firing a shot.

Posted by: pb | Aug 8 2006 6:05 utc | 52

Also, I recommend, The Nature of Human Aggression (New York: Oxford University Press) here’s a taste: Perspectives On Violence

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 8 2006 7:19 utc | 54