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February 21 2021
Great Propaganda / Poor Decisions
Looking to add some human interaction, however socially distanced, to my
mostly cloistered life during the COVID-19 pandemic, I registered for
a series of foreign policy focused group discussions (conducted via Zoom)
through the local library. The series is titled 'Great Decisions' and
sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association [0], a non-profit founded in
1918 (it formerly went by the name League of Free Nations Association)
that is supposedly "dedicated to inspiring the American public to learn
more about the world". Sounds inspiring -- Americans could definitely
do with a better understanding of the world beyond it's borders, right?
But education in the modern nation-state always serves a purpose and that
purpose almost always is in service to the interests of the ruling class.
Through the fine art of framing the acceptable threads of inquiry are
presented to the student as the full spectrum, an unobstructed survey
of the lay of the topical landscape. Thus the Overtone view-port is
rolled into place with little awareness on the part of the subject.
And so it is with FPA's Great Decisions. Further investigation into FPA
reveals close ties with the Center for a New American Security [1] (CNAS),
the American Enterprise Institute [2] (AEI) and similar champions of
American Imperialism. The AEI is so rabidly pro-business there's really
no need to further lay out the case against them regarding it's role
in systemic violence, but the CNAS is perhaps not as familiar though
it's role is just as destructive. A recent essay by Nathan Robinson in
Current Affairs [3] lays out CNAS's participation in shaping American
foreign policy via the revolving door between a massive for-profit defense
industry and the various government entities tasked with shaping policy.
All this is nothing new; President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell
speech [4] warned of the risks to American democracy by the rising
Military-Industrial Complex, already a cause for concern. Interestingly,
Eisenhower's early speech draft used "Military-Industrial-Congressional
Complex", a more complete diagram of the web of influence; the suggestion
of regulatory capture was deemed too much reality and the congressional
reference was removed.
Getting back to FPA and it's Great Decisions project, I found it odd that
the first discussion, 'Global Supply Chains and US National Security',
completely ignored the oily nature of both and all the degradation that
feeds, both to human and non-human life. Fossil fuels, particularly
oil, literally underpins the very existence of the massive US military
which, according to Science Daily "consumes more hydrocarbons than most
countries" [5]. Naturally that level of consumption produces a fair
amount of pollution and in fact the US military is also the world's
biggest polluter [6]. Similarly the global supply chain, a Just-in-Time
Rube Goldberg contraption writ large, would simply not be feasible without
a steady drip of hydrocarbons and the extractive mineral industries.
Given the twin realities of peaked or near-peak fossil carbon and
diminishing mineral concentrations, and that the massive use of same
is the primary driver of climate change, sea level rise and all-around
ecocide, ALL of which most definitely pose a national security risk, all
FPA wants it Great Deciders to ponder is the risk a rising China poses
for the future sourcing of important products like pharmaceuticals and
the imported electronic components which the for-profit defense industry
has apparently become overly dependent on. FPA's hired pens go on to
muse that an over-correction might result in consumer unhappiness if
re-localized sourcing leads to higher prices, a dark prospect indeed.
This is what my fellow Great Deciders where expected to discuss. When I
pointed out the absurdity of debating the particulars of a whole way of
living that has no future they just stared back dumbfounded. One woman,
clearly a well-meaning Lefty who just wants to Do The Right Thing (TM),
lamented the lack of an American-made smart phone option. She simply
couldn't grasp that her iPhone would increase in cost by at least a
magnitude if fully sourced and assembled in the US. The reality is
that the global supply chain makes mass consumerism possible by making
all these consumables available at a price point that the majority in
the developed world can afford. If only a few can afford something
it's market growth potential is greatly diminished which may make its
manufacture unfeasible; production scalability depends on specific
material, tooling and labor costs. If there's enough demand among the
elite, say for luxury yachts, a cottage industry may form to satisfy
the demand but this really is more of an addendum to mass consumerism
and likely of little interest to the large global national conglomerates
that shape foreign policy.
Additionally, my fellow Great Deciders seemed largely unconvinced that
a failure to achieve a radical reduction in energy and material use in
the developed countries would mean a failure to attenuate abrupt climate
change which in turn would lead to exiting the relative stability of
the Holocene which makes large scale agriculture possible. And that,
as climatologist Paul Beckwith [7] says, leads to "all hell breaks
loose" as crops fail, people migrate toward the poles and civil society
frays in a myriad of ways, opening the door the usual oppressive living
arrangements that characterize times of chaos. Sounds like a whole lot
of consumer unhappiness and a big a national security issue.
Reflecting further on my experience with the FPA Great Decisions group
and the lack of breath in what my fellow Great Deciders were willing
to contemplate, it struck me that in a way this is how domesticated
animals behave. Certain things are first established as "a priori" [8],
i.e. basic needs like food and shelter must be earned, and that earning
is done through appeasing the master, be it an individual or government.
For a dog this is pretty straightforward enough but for a big-brained
primate the domestication needs to impose more sophisticated stops on
what is considerable. And that's where Great Propaganda comes in.
It can take many forms and may be secular or not. But always it relies
on framing a meta-narrative such that the subject "just knows" at a gut
level what's what without having to actively thinking about it. By their
own admission my fellow Great Deciders hadn't really thought much about
the global supply chain but they knew China was "bad". They had little
interest in discussing the connections between consumerism and systemic
violence, but they knew keeping the world accessible to US interests via
"active engagement" was important. That they are in some measure complicit
in the abuse of people and places elsewhere was not on the menu.
The historian and culture critic Morris Berman [9] once opined, "An
idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you".
While I'm unsure rampant narcissism, hyper-competition and materialism
as an end goal comprise an ideology they are seemingly the defining
attributes of American "culture" now and anything that isn't an aid
towards those ends simply isn't worth a second thought.
Anyway.. not sure I'll continue with this discussion series. It seems a
bit pointless and also it's a bit depressing to have further confirmation
of feeling like a stranger in a strange land. That said, I'm curious how
the upcoming 'The coldest war: toward a return to Great Power competition
in the Arctic?' discussion will go. The FPA material seems to take it as
a foregone conclusion that an ice-free Arctic will both occur soon and
lead to more conflicts as the US, China and Russia vie for oil and gas.
I've seen no consideration of an abrupt increase in extreme weather
events which many are predicting withing a few years of the first Blue
Ocean Event [10]. Perhaps the ruling class figure they'll still need that
oil to keep the military operational so they can maintain their grip on
power, even in the midst of collapse.
It seems the FPA has no interest in Great Decisions participant feedback
for shaping foreign policy, only in producing Great Propaganda in service
to already decided upon policy even as things are clearly starting to go
sideways. At the end of empire most of us are spectators, wondering as
Professor Berman, "Are we there yet?".
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Refs:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Policy_Association
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_a_New_American_Security
[3] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/02/the-insidious-influence-of-the-arms-industry-on-foreign-policy
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_industrial_complex
https://youtu.be/OyBNmecVtdU (YouTube)
[5] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620100005.htm
[6] https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-polluter-2408760609.html
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
[8] https://paulbeckwith.net/2020/01/11/how-arctic-ocean-blue-ocean-state-will-crush-humanity-like-a-bug/
https://paulbeckwith.net/2020/07/03/risk-risk-risk-and-more-risk-risk/
[9] https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16498.Morris_Berman
https://youtu.be/9AXJgm4Hftg
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Event