Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The second event of major international concern surrounds Iran.  Ewen McAskill and Julian Borger have an article appearing in today's Guardian out of London containing the headline:  "Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran."

The first paragraph of the McAskill-Borger article contains the following dour words, which should be taken as a strong warning in the international community among those opposing preventive war in Iran:

"The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favor of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned."

Dick Cheney, as can be expected, is, according to McAskill and Borger, winning the debate over Iran.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are reportedly resisting an Iran attack.  Rice and Gates, however, are not conduits of the neocon global community thirsting for extended empire with a new Middle East beachhead while Cheney is.    

Such concerns about an Iran attack and new Cold War are understandable in view of the jingoistic attitude displayed by the Cheney-Bush war machine with a preventive war launched in Iraq that was deliberately mislabeled as "pre-emptive" along with other articulated designs for the region, where Bush has stated a goal of "spreading democracy."  

Such democracy is synonymous with infiltration by global giants such as Halliburton and Bechtel in the projected military stampeding of the Middle East into a New World Order with neoconservative designs of rigid control through the global corporate community.  

Corporate giants would be in a position to shove privatization schemes down the throats of the citizenry, which would be rigidly controlled as supplicant vassals reminiscent of mercantilism and the Middle Ages.

A comparable plan to that being hatched for the global community exists in America as well, where the safety net has been abandoned and a war economy coexisting with regressive tax cuts that eliminate opportunities for the impoverished and middle class to rise while creating a state replete with vassals to be used for the war machine.

With other work opportunities destroyed, guess where Americans go?  The answer is into the military, where they can then service the neoconservative war machine.  To those of you with a penchant for history reading, does this remind you of the Roman Empire?  

How about the Middle Ages?  

During the Middle Ages serfs and vassals were constantly reminded that they did not need to know how to read, that the only book they needed to know about was the Bible, and that the good reverends in their communities could interpret that for them so that they need not bother having to read at all.  Nothing like simplifying for the masses!

Ah, it all had such a simple ring!  Later the twentieth century English seer and creative genius George Orwell would devote himself to such themes in his two master works, "1984" and "Animal House".    

American progressives should coalesce with similar progressive forces in the global community to induce action on the part of national leaderships to resist the neoconservative global power play.  

Regrettably the progressive movement in the United States is short-handed at the moment with so many congressional officeholders of the Democratic Party being beholden to special interests to get elected and fearing to cross the fat cats who empower them.

That makes global action all the more imperative.  If the neocon war machine would have its financial might impaired in the manner of shutting off a spigot then action would result in America.  

Perhaps then even some of the timid Democrats would act in concert with the stated message of the majority of Americans in current polls to get America out of Iraq and cease provocative acts of international saber rattling.