Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Today's topic: why we're not bombing Iran.

There's a nice flame-throw over at Black Agenda Report by the redoubtable Glen Ford:

"I submit that the Lords of Capital and their servants -- today, as in 2003 -- understand perfectly well that the system they oversee cannot long exist under the current paths of world development; that their only hope to perpetuate themselves into future decades is to violently upset the planetary game board, as often as necessary. From the financial oligarchy's perspective, the death of the world as they know and possess it -- their world -- is imminent, and can only be avoided through acts of horrific aggression, terror and barbaric reversion to primitive modes of accumulation, i.e. brute theft and pillage."

Join me in digesting the latest avalanche of lefticated yelping about an imminent Iran attack -- some sudden flury of Zionic judo chops to the Persian nuke sites, triggering the final mideast fireball.

This is, what?, the third such foolskrieg over America's dark enemy number one. The whole business is nothing but a very silly distraction.

This ever-looming sudden world-pivoting air strike will be coming to your TV screen, just like the Soviets swallowing the "free" chunk of Berlin never came.

But it's not the wrongheaded deja-vu prediction, not the grade-school fire-drill bit I want to cast an object to. When reading this, I got, and still get, annoyed by the underlying picture it paints of the state of our empire.

My fellow Americans: despite what our liberal media claims, the state of our empire is strong -- strong enough to give any silver age emperor like Barack Aurelius, maybe for his full 8 years, a state of all quiet on the empire front.

Even as we ride out the whitewater contradictions of this latest corporation-induced global economic cataract, the Obama years may prove to be very much like the Clinton years: not really like the boots-on-the-ground years of Truman or Kennedy/Johnson.

Odds favor the empire gaining, both by intent and circumstance, a respite from its slaughter-benching chores. And the imminent rise to power of a voodoo Redeemer, if he can reform our home front, may well make our earth-circling empire, for this spell of history, look like civilization's glorious benefactor.

Then again, maybe it won't. Maybe the boots of our freedom storm troopers will need to follow the occasional rain of bombs, here there or somewhere. Maybe the Pax Baraca won't last much past his landslide re-election. When it comes to anti-empire armed struggle, not every interval will find its champions.

So at best, we fans of darkness and end-times can only hope -- hope without the power of magic.