If you think the Ukraine revolution was US orchestrated and that western financiers hand-picked the new Prime Minister Yatsenyuk to financially loot that country, that the US government is using a Twitter clone to overthrow the Cuban government, and that the US is currently plotting a coup in Venezuela, you probably watch Democracy Now--the Fox News of the hard left. While there may be grains of truth to all those allegations, the overriding presumption of the hard left narrative is that American empire and global capitalism are somehow more corrupt and dangerous than Soviet/Russian/Cuban/Venezuelan kleptocracy. Which is nonsense. Russian style socialism/communism has, from the beginning, relied on wholesale confiscation of wealth, heavy handed nationalization of industries resulting in desperate shortages of consumer goods, and massive suppression of civil liberties. And the creation of a super-rich ruling elite. Its not the way to go. Hugo Chavez was no exception, and became legendary for his cronyism and corruption. Far from helping the majority of the Venezuelan people, he siphoned the oil wealth of his nation to prop up his regime and fill his personal coffers--as Putin is also doing. The hard left narrative ignores the realities of power. Until people recognize that power is a force of nature, they will never begin to understand what drives world events. Power doesnt care about ideologies, or morality, it simply rewards the best players. And power *uses* ideologies of every stripe to convince people of its rightness. But its a sham. Power will spit out the ideology the moment it becomes advantageous to do so. Power is the ultimate hypocrite. Only well-designed global systems can hope to tame this greed and indifference to suffering. And power players will always resist systemic checks and balances. So the games will continue. And wed better hope the good guys win. And by good guys, I mean people whose schemes are least harsh to collective human survival. Until American champions of peace, democracy and human rights become better players, theyll still be stuck in old paradigms of self-loathing of the inevitable excesses of their own empire. And they will project their own good motives onto people--like Vladimir Putin--who they should recognize as ruthless opponents of the very justice they seek.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 02:16:10 +0000
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