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Though your prognosticks run to fast,
They must be verified at last.
Swift
Be sure prognosticks may foretell a shower.
Swift
pp 93, Crabb's English Synonymes 1849.
Janeway (Eliot) teaches the value of history is to foresee the future. In his book, The Economics of Crisis, he leads you through the history of politics in this century as influenced by war and money. It's not a pretty picture. Most of our "leaders" are shown to be wolves in sheep's clothing as they take a back seat and;
a) Let someone else do the fighting (i.e., let's you and he fight, ala, Sidney Bern's book, Games People Play.) -- The British do this remarkably well in involving the United States in "NATO's private games.
b) Provide the financing, thus you get to supply not only the money but the goods.-- Here the United States has the upper hand.
c) Guns and butter is an illusion. In today's world you can't have both. -- So what, no one will hold you accountable for your promises.
d) In the twentieth century, Russia has played the power broker role in dictating how others will win/lose. -- Consider how Russia was elevated to a deciding role in Kosovo without any political, economic or military involvement.
e) England has always been absorbed in manipulating the balance of power. She has shown a consistent refusal to back movements of liberation with more than talk and gestures. Tony Blair has manipulated the United States military through the office of our President, what more needs being said.
f) For a President to succeed, he must have control of the Justice Department via the Attorney General and the Treasury Department via its Secretary.[page 276] Janet Reno has served the President well and no one can fault the Treasury Department in the continuation of low inflation matched with low employment. The bugaboo of spending for exports distorting the balance of payments has been quietly dismissed without explanation.
g) Brand the opposition as a Quisling (a traitor).[page 228] Of course this requires another definition for the word "quisling", but this is no problem for this generation of wordsmiths.
h) Russia learned that the behind the lines economic power brings success when you serve as an arsenal. Being the belligerent at the front risk loss of manpower, public support, financial gain and typically the war itself.[page 202] Boris and company seem to have forgotten this with their current "down-home" wars.
i) The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference was the occasion of postwar economic (money) planning. It failed. Envisioned by Keynes was a central bank of central banks that would be an international clearing house in which the relative assets of each country would be weighed and flexibility and liquidity would be portioned out to the respective economies. The U. S. position (maintained by Harry Dexter White, an avowed Marxist, won the day.)[page 200] Do we still need gold? Some countries are selling their stocks, but one has to wonder if this is short sighted. With no gold, and no other negotiable assets, what is a country to do? Well you fall back on what else, WAR.
j) FDR was a novice and a simpleton who was able to reach the American public via radio and appealed to them with the pledge that everything was going to be all right when in fact the opposite was true. Without the benefit of the Second World War, the US would have continued to be mired in depression. His proposals for Government intervention with the CCC, WPA, and other activities were unconstitutional.[page 177] Students of politics learned well that the best approach to success is "promises, promises, promises." Tony Blair's reign will either succeed or fail dependent upon whether he can keep the shells moving so that the publick is unable to judge where the pea is. Creationism is usually reserved for religion, but current day politicians have mastered the art and by establishing new departments, divisions, and task forces they maneuvered the public into a state of stupor. How else do you explain the low voter turn-out for elections.
k) The first demand of a wartime government is the inescapable need to take over the money market.[page 144] One would not exactly define current affairs in England as war, but again the wordsmiths prevail and we shall redefine the word. Certainly, take over of the treasury by Blair and company has essentially been accomplished.
l) All Presidents of the Democratic ilk begin their terms with a pledge for publick work/service/care and end with war. (Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Carter, Clinton) This needs no explanation or current day interpretation..
m) The yellow press was actually a term coined to describe the publication of newspapers on yellow paper but it later came to mean the "less than responsible" press that provides lurid descriptions to attract readers. [page 108] The Spanish-American war as described by Hurst certainly sold papers. Today, this is the venue of television. Is information to be emotive or not at all?
Triage is taking place and the outcome will be the death of the conventional sources of information. Internet sources are superior to books, papers, magazines, radio or television. While some Internet sources are suspect, the lurid is categorized and is accessible to those who seek such stimulation. Television (both public and commercial) has reached a new low and is unworthy of being seriously considered as a source of news. Radio reaches the automobile enabled more than any other market and as such must be entertainment more than anything else. The magazine trade has no scruples and serves up a weekly dish of scandal, tacky pictures and poorly written articles. Newspaper is hardly a correct name for what appears daily; supported by advertisements, driven by profit motives; editors who have been chosen to present politically correct pap, lack the guts to call a "spade a spade" (even this term will not pass review at some papers as there is concern that it may have racial connotations.) And finally books which are tailored to grandieze a person or philosophy are pushed into the market place with massive advertising budgets. If that's not enough, popular historians rewrite history as they seek to push an agenda. Which brings us to the library; that warehouse of information that serves to refresh the publicks interest and knowledge. Removal of old books and other information sources leaves the shelves filled with today, with no trace of history, yellow or otherwise.
n) On Vice President choices: Mark Hanna warned:"Don't any of you realize that there's only one life between this madman and the White House?". [page 105] How many vice presidents of late have become president either by death or removal from office of the president, or by succeeding him. We have been very fortunate, so-far.
o) The jingo press - The aggressive press (and others) who beat their chest and say, we've the money, the men and the fortitude to stand up and be counted. Jingoism may have had its roots in talk of war but applies to daily goings-on. Simply put it's stand up and be counted, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Where is the jingo press? How can they turn a blind eye to shenanigans of public officials, either elected or appointed? Why haven't they insisted that politicians be accountable? Alas there is no jingo press, instead we have Rather, Brokaw and others that put on a nice show but have never once shown emotion in what they are presenting (tears aside).
p) Manifest Destiny - Used to defend our war with Mexico which resulted in Texas and much of the Southwest in an area extending into Colorado becoming a part of the United States. Henry Clay said, "... nations... look on us, in the prosecution of the present war (Spanish-American war) as being actuated by a spirit of rapacity(like a raptor, living on prey) and in the inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement." [page 54] The United States once again finds itself having to wrap itself in Manifest Destiny. Who else is to police the world and keep it safe. Safe from what?
q) George Washington in his farewell address warned us not to"entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour, or caprice (unpredictability, or tendency to do things on a whim)." [page 14] The first and last president seem to be at odds on this. How do you explain our Bosnian and Kosovo interventionist policies other than to say the President is being manipulated by Tony Blair.
r) Norman Angell was a journalist. He did it all, before becoming a journalist. He was a cowboy, a prospector, reporter. He pointed out that the victor does not reap the benefits of war. Instead it is most likely that the "looser" does better in the years following the reconstruction. Above all Angell warned that to colonize was to assume responsibilities which were to far outweigh the gains from the benefits of "owning" the colony. And in war, the winners wind up choking on the spoils of war while the losers are reduced to ruins (only to recover and prosper later more-so than the winner). (Wrote book, The Great Illusion: A study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage, Heinemann (London, 1914)).[page 4] Unfortunately, Angell did not consider the more dangerous policy of some conquering nations. That is, the native population is to be displaced. Where? It matters not, as long as they are replaced by your own. Cases in point; settling of America by the Europeans at the expense of native Indians, Kosovars routing of Serbs, depopulation and repopulation of tribal areas in Africa, etc. The only example of recent years that fits Angell's model is the Falkland Island war with Argentina.
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The Economics of Crisis, Eliot Janeway, Weybright and Talley, 1968.
This is a book about war, politics and money (yours and theirs). Beginning with Norman Angell's, The Great Illusion, and continuing with Friedrich von Hayek's, The Road to Serfdom, Janeway puts today's problems in perspective. Unlike Orson Wells in teaching us more about the end of the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth, Janeway cites book and verse to show the historic path which we are surely following.
However, the seers of the past did not portend the danger to democracies of the rise of special interest groups that have come to wield powers far greater than those of the majority.
De Tocqueville used the topical treatment of "America" (a subject sure to rouse interest in France, as well as other countries in the mid 1800s) to bring his visions of what democracy could be. Tocqueville's statement of 1834 should be taken seriously today, " If America has not as yet had any great writers, the reason is given in these facts; there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America. ... Unbelievers are to be met with in America, but there is no public organ of infidelity."
Censorship has many forms, but, the most excruciating is that in which a minority (in this case special interest groups) influence publick opinion and thus politics and thus passage of "laws" that while seeming to protect the rights of one group remove those same rights from another.
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