The End of the Great American Bubble

by Carroll Byrd

Americans live in the biggest bubble in the history of humankind. Its the sort of thing that ought to be in the Guineas Book of World Records. A clear majority of people in this country do not have a clue as to what the rest of the world is like. They do not know, for example, why we are hated by so many others. They actually believe the fairy tales they are told about an axis of evil where people hate freedom and resent us for our goodness. Nor do they know what our own government is about. Many of them do not understand that all this rhetoric about freedom and spreading democracy and fighting evil is just window dressing for the real motivations of our leaders, which are power, empire and money – realities which at this moment in history are spelled oil oil oil. They live within the only evil empire there is and do not even know that it is an empire, much less that it is evil. They do not know of our long history of supporting torture in other countries before we decided to take it into our own hands to do the dirty work. They do not understand what it means to have your dreams of a more equitable society destroyed by the CIA or the US marines.

The people who run this country are not similarly deceived about what they are doing. They know that money is the bottom line. After all, they are in the service of the multinational corporations who would not want them to be confused by the sweet rhetoric put out for public consumption. They know that the central tenet of our foreign policy is empire. They call it “hegemony.” They know that the reason that we are in the middle east is, and always has been, oil. Even Bush has finally admitted this.

Why is there be such rage expressed against our country? Well, yes, we have set ourselves up as the ruler of all nations, granted ourselves the right to attack any nation at will, tortured the citizens of other countries whenever we chose, determined who will run other countries regardless of democratic elections, made sure that the wealth of developing countries is securely in the hands of the corporate elite where it can be spent on private yachts and swimming pools rather than on health care for the poor, sabotaged desperately needed international ecological agreements to stop global warming and other environmental problems, undercut international justice by power and example, and generally treated all none Americans with contempt. But why make such a big deal of these things? Americans don’t get it. Why should they hate us?

The bubble I am talking about can, perhaps be simply defined by two beliefs:

1.We are so powerful that we need not respect the rest of creation.

2.Our foreign policy is driven by righteousness.

It is a huge bubble indeed.

And this is not even to address the domestic insanity of believing that we are a compassionate and caring people when we can’t even pull together an adequate system of universal health care – something which every other industrialized, and many none-industrialized, countries have managed to do.

I believe that Katrina is the harbinger of the end of the Great American Bubble. In so far as it was a natural disaster, it was in part due to global warming which our country denies is real. But it was not entirely a natural disaster. Bush had been informed in 2001 by FEMA that New Orleans was a huge disaster waiting to happen. But he was busy. His time and money (which is to say our money) was being invested in fighting an illegal, hopeless, ill conceived and brutal war in Iraq. How could money be allocated to prevent a catastrophe in New Orleans when our leaders were already busy bankrupting the country in one more foreign war? Perhaps all this showed some Americans a few important points about our national priorities. I am sure at least that the Blacks, Latinos and poor Whites did not fail to notice.

One hurricane won’t do it by itself, but there are three kinds of forces that are coming together that will create a series of crises that will hopefully wake Americans up to their true situation. These are ecological, economic, and political in nature. They will be hard for even accomplished bubble people to ignore.

Ecologically the continuing effects of global warming and the emerging world-plagues will make it clear we live within an interdependent world-wide biological system that has to be treated with care if we are to survive as a species. The Avian flu is likely to be the next messenger in this respect.

Economically we cannot deal with the dwindling supply of oil (for which we refuse to make realistic plans) and at the same time manage the huge debt that Bush and his ilk have run up trying to rule the world, without sooner or later having a melt-down. It looks like it may be sooner.

Politically the rest of the world has now seen the iron fist that really has always been there beneath our velvet gloves. Bolton’s embarrassing and unbelievably arrogant performance at the UN will certainly succeed in alienating our few remaining allies. The US cannot unilaterally run the world. Nor can it deal with a globe that is united against us. They can do us great damage. Even simple acts, such as choosing not to buy the bonds by which we are financing our wars, and selling their oil elsewhere will have a huge impact on our already severely strained economy.

Our arms will not – cannot – protect us from the ecological, economic and political forces that will put an end to our bubble living. We are not so powerful that we can treat the rest of creation with contempt without paying a heavy price.

Our foreign policy is driven by the greed of the rich who are protecting their privilege, whatever the cost to the rest of creation. The poor of the world already know this. Soon the working people in the US will wake up to the fact that the wealthy people that they have elected do not have the best interest of the ordinary citizen at heart. We are not a righteous nation.

The days of the bubble are numbered.

The ecological, economic and political shocks that will wake us up will not be painless. But if they do pop this bubble that has for too long protected us from reality, perhaps it will be for the best. When the leaders of America give up their drive to empire and the United States takes its place as one nation among many in a democracy of nations, perhaps there will once again be hope that humanity will cope successfully with the several threats to its survival and wellbeing.