Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Drop the insult “Israel-Firster” for the more important “One-Percent-Firster” |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2012-02-04
There has a flurry of blogging recently on the use of the term ”Israel-Firster” link to MondoWeiss. I think there should, instead, be an even greater flurry of concern about ”One-Percent-Firsters”. And now let’s talk about the 1% and 99% But let’s get real. If there’s one thing that is really, really bad for the American 99%, it is not the side-show of Israel/Palestine but the center-ring of the class-war of the 1% who are now in such triumphant ascendancy over the 99%. According to one source, “The Crisis of Neoliberalism”, Dumenil and Levy, Harvard Univ. Press, 2011, the economic system that rules most of the world, “neoliberalism”, was put in place precisely to advance the interests of a single “class”, the 1%: [T]he overall dynamics of capitalism under neoliberalism, both nationally and internationally, were determined by new class objectives that worked to the benefit of the highest income brackets, capitalist owners, and the upper fractions of management. The greater concentration of income in favor of a privileged minority was a crucial achievement of the new social order. In this respect, a social order is also a power configuration, and implicit in this latter notion is “class” power * * * Not only class relations are involved, but also imperial hierarchies, a permanent feature of capitalism. The reason the USA supports Israeli lawlessness is the power of the pro-Israel lobby (an important part of the 1%) to compel subservience among American politicians even in derogation of more generally recognized American interests (such as human rights, the rule of law, the safety of American armed forces in the broader world, a desire to be safe from terrorism, etc.) The Israel lobby is not the only segment of the 1% acting for its own selfish interests against the interests of the rest of the American people (the 99%). Two better known examples are the Military-Industrial-Complex—which enriches war-profiteers—weapons-makers and military contractors—at vast increase to the national debt—and the banking lobby, which brought Americans and much of the world the financial meltdown of 2008-present and the subsequent bailouts. (“Too big to fail” is not a fact of nature but a very self-serving heads-I-win-tails-you-lose slogan of the BIG-BANKs.) As a third example, consider the USA’s refusal to deal with the undoubtedly serious threat of global warming. This refusal is another ill-effect of the oligarchy’s power over government, likely led by the oil lobby. I refer to the 1% generally as the “BIGs”, and thus to the Israel Lobby as “BIG-ZION”, the banking lobby as “BIG-BANKs”, the Military-Industrial-Complex as “BIG-WAR”, the pharmaceutical lobby as “BIG-PHARMA”, the oil lobby as “BIG-OIL”, etc. Taken together and throwing the billionaires in with the corporations—which they generally own and often control—I call this whole system of control of government by the 1% “American Oligarchy”. One reason the oligarchy is bad news as an overlord of America is that the very rich and the corporations do not care about the things ordinary Americans care about. They want nothing from government but the continuing and increasing opportunity to enrich themselves. Worse, in a way, is the fact that corporations have very short time-lines of concern. They want profits and they want them now! That means that corporate over-lords are not going to worry about long-term problems—problems such as world-over-population, global warming, looming scarcities of water and food. World-wide scarcity is more likely to seem a profit-opportunity to the very rich, especially in the short term, rather than a disaster to be headed off. I discuss a possible Constitutional Amendment to destroy the power of the “American Oligarchy” in an essay called Constitutional Amendment to combat “regulatory capture”, “electoral capture”, and Citizens United . The One-Percent-Firsters Because the power of the 1% is so extreme and so devastating to the rest of America (our 99%)—to say nothing of devastating to most of the rest of the world—shall we call that the 99.99% ?—I think we should refer to those who seek to protect the political power of the 1% as “One-Percent-Firsters”. This group consists, first, of the billionaires and high corporate officers—that is, the 1% themselves. Next come the politicians that the billionaires and corporations have “bought and paid for” (to echo Thomas Friedman’s notable phrase). I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.Nor may we forget the main-stream media, which is corporately owned and thus a system of enforcement for the 1%. Lastly, there is the public educational system—which is starved of cash so that the American 99% will be very poorly educated and the 1% will purchase a decent education for their children in expensive private schools. In another essay, I have laid out a program for ending the political stranglehold of the 1% in America. In simplest terms, it would require: • no political action to be performed or spending to purchase performance of political action except by human beings • a per-person per-year cumulative maximum on such expenditures Think about it. No corporate spending for lobbying or electoral manipulation. Billionaires and the working poor held to the same annual limit for political spending—a limit far lower than $10,000. If the 1% lost the overwhelming power that it now has, the Israel-Firsters would also lose their power. I am a Ninety-Nine-Percent-Firster. How about you? ----------- [1] For example, we have Sheldon Adelson, who with his wife, an Israeli, recently gave Newt Gingrich $10M to say that Palestinians are an “invented people”, saying, as to loyalty: ”All we care about is being good citizens of Israel.” |
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