Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| USA must learn to play well with other children |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-11-01
The well-publicized requirement that the USA stop paying dues to UN organizations which raise the status of Palestine too high is a golden opportunity to think about how badly the USA goes about diplomacy. If the move becomes common, the US could end up further and further isolated and helpless. What if the International Atomic Energy Agency recognizes Palestine as a member? If the US cuts it off, it loses a key arena within which it has been pressuring Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. And so on and so forth. The USA has no talent for “playing well with other children.” If we will “play” at all, we want to be the leader, nay the commander. If the other children stop doing what we want them to do, we either make war on them (Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Vietnam) or take our marbles and go home (UNESCO and UN). Our diplomacy is all a mask for command and control, not a mechanism for coming to mutually agreeable compromises. To listen to our politicians and diplomats publicly “laying down the law” to other countries is to be appalled at USA arrogance. If we are good at giving orders, we are also good at taking orders. Thus the predominance in USA’s governance of the BIGs (BIG BANKS, BIG OIL, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG PHARMA, BIG ISRAEL). Our politicians have so thoroughly learned to take orders from these folks that they do not even see anything wrong or questionable when they do so. The 987 kow-tows that Congress gave Bibi in the USA’s Knesset shows the lack of anything like back-bone or honor in the USA’s politican establishment. The idea that whatever will make money for large corporations is “good for the country” is so entrenched that we now see the USA poised to allow the building of the so-called Keystone XL pipeline across the USA to carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to USA seaports, despite the near certainty of terrible environmental damage to the USA from building and operating the pipeline and, over and above that, the fact that building the pipeline will accelerate the on-rush of global warming by adding to the use of fossil fuels at a time when the world (and the USA) should be moving away from use of fossil fuels. (The environmental damage done in Canada by the process of extracting oil from tar sands is another reason the USA should refuse to build the Keystone XL pipeline.) Similarly, the rush in New York State to allow “frak” extraction of natural gas despite extreme danger and much certainty about resulting environmental damages is, again, a sign that government will do almost anything—including things quite contrary to the health and safety of the citizens—to accommodate profits for corporations. Last in this list, the USA’s refusal to tax the wealthy at high marginal income-tax rates, shows that the whole system of governance has been transformed from a system for the protection of the people to a system for the enrichment of the very rich.[1] But if the USA works as hard as possible to roll over and play dead at the commands of the rich corporate bosses (who have their own corporate and personal “bottom lines” as driving considerations, not the good of the American people), it also “plays” in the world system of nation states like a spoiled brat who will play only if he gets to make all the rules and also gets to play king of the mountain. The USA would be a good deal better off if we ended “command and control” in both places, returning governance to a system for achieving social betterment of all (and not just for enriching the corporations and the very rich individuals) and returning our role in international affairs to a role of seeking the common good rather than of riding rough-shod over those who will not accede to unreasonable orders. Fortunately, as to this second point, USA’s power seems to be waning and the possibility of reform of our diplomacy may become more possible. Revoking the “no money to UN if it recognizes Palestine” law might be a good place to start such a revision of diplomatic policy. As to ending the oligarchic system of government in which Wall Street dictates the system of regulation which leads to disaster (the roll-back of Glass-Steagall led to the disaster which came to a head in 2008), one can only hope that the OCCUPY WALL STREET protests catch the eye, the ear, the mind, and the conscience of USA’s governors, both in Wall Street and in Washington. Things can hardly get worse. ----------- [1] At current tax rates, an individual whose taxable income is $1,000,000 will pay $327,314 in taxes and retain $672,686. If there were a new tax-bracket taxing incomes over $500,000 at 50% (rather than at today’s 35%), the same individual would pay $402,314 in tax and retain $597,686. This would scarcely be “confiscatory” for such incomes. People earning $10,000,000 would of course pay close to a 50% income tax rate rather than today’s 35%. |
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