Destroyed by Total Capitalism America Has Already Lost Tuesday's Election
A Commentary by Jakob Augstein
11/05/2012
Germans see the US election as a battle between the good Obama and the evil
Romney. But this is a mistake. Regardless of who wins the election on
Tuesday, total capitalism is America's true ruler, and it has the power to
destroy the country.
The United States Army is developing a weapon that can reach -- and destroy
-- any location on Earth within an hour. At the same time, power lines held
up by wooden poles dangle over the streets of Brooklyn, Queens and New
Jersey.
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/hurricane-sandy-causing-widesprea
d-flooding-and-damage-in-new-york-a-864194.html> Hurricane Sandy ripped them
apart there and in communities across the East Coast last week, and many
places remain without electricity. That's America, where high-tech options
are available only to the elite, and the rest live under conditions
comparable to a those of a developing nation. No country has produced more
Nobel Prize winners, yet in New York City hospitals had to be evacuated
during the storm because their emergency generators didn't work properly.
Anyone who sees this as a contradiction has failed to grasp the fact that
America is a country of total capitalism. Its functionaries have no need of
public hospitals or of a reliable power supply to private homes. The elite
have their own infrastructure. Total capitalism, however, has left American
society in ruins and crippled the government. America's fate is not just an
accident produced by the system. It is a consequence of that system.
Obama couldn't change this, and Romney wouldn't be able to either. Europe is
mistaken if it views the election as a choice between the forces of good and
evil. And it certainly doesn't amount to a potential change in political
direction as some newspapers on the Continent would have us believe.
A Powerless President
Romney, the exceedingly wealthy business man, and Obama, the cultivated
civil rights lawyer, are two faces of a political system that no longer has
much to do with democracy as we understand it. Democracy is about choice,
but Americans don't really have much of a choice. Obama proved this. Nearly
four years ago, it seemed like a new beginning for America when he took
office. But this was a misunderstanding. Obama didn't close the Guantanamo
Bay detention camp, nor did he lift immunity for alleged war criminals from
the Bush-era, or regulate the financial markets, and climate change was
hardly discussed during
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/race_for_the_white_house_2012/>
the current election campaign. The military, the banks, industry -- the
people are helpless in the face of their power, as is the president.
Not even credit default swaps, the kind of investment that brought down
Lehman Brothers and took Western economies to the brink, has been banned or
even better regulated. It is likely the case that Obama wanted to do more,
but couldn't. But what role does that play in the bigger picture?
We want to believe that Obama failed because of the conservatives inside his
own country. Indeed, the fanatics that Mitt Romney depends on have
jettisoned everything that distinguishes the West: science and logic, reason
and moderation, even simple decency. They hate homosexuals, the weak and the
state. They oppress women and persecute immigrants. Their moralizing about
abortion doesn't even spare the victims of rape. They are the Taliban of the
West.
The Winner Makes No Difference to Europe
Still, they are only the symptom of America's failure, not the cause. In
reality, neither the idealists and Democrats, nor the useful idiots of the
Tea Party have any power over the circumstances.
From a European perspective, it doesn't matter who wins this election. Only
US foreign policy is important to us -- and Obama is no dove and Romney no
hawk. The incumbent president prefers to wage his wars with drones instead
of troops, though the victims probably don't care if they're killed by man
or machine. Meanwhile, despite all the criticism, his challenger says he
wouldn't join Israel were the country to go to war with Iran because the US
can now no longer afford such a thing.
In any case, it is wrong to characterize Republicans as the party of
warmongers and Democrats as the party of peace -- or even to call the latter
a left-wing party at all. After all, it was Democratic presidents Harry S.
Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who started the wars in Korea and
Vietnam. Republican presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon ended
these wars. And Ronald Reagan, who Europeans see as the embodiment of both
the evil and absurd aspects of American politics, was a peaceful man
compared to the standards we have since become accustomed to. He only ever
invaded Grenada.
The truth is that we simply no longer understand America. Looking at the
country from Germany and Europe, we see a foreign culture. The political
system is in the hands of big business and its lobbyists. The checks and
balances have failed. And a perverse mix of irresponsibility, greed and
religious zealotry dominate public opinion.
The downfall of the American empire has begun. It could be that the
country's citizens wouldn't be able to stop it no matter how hard they
tried. But they aren't even trying.
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Received on Mon Nov 05 2012 - 15:07:46 EST
