GlobalTalk

On the Brink Again…

By Steve Clark

You wouldn’t know it in America, but the global financial system is teetering on the brink of collapse, just as in September, 2008.

Then, it was the bankruptcy of a Wall Street giant, Lehman Brothers, that threatened to pull down the whole system. This time, it’s Greece.

In moral terms, of course, the two situations are incomparable. It’s only as matters of factual impact that the two compare.

Lehman Brothers was a big bank that had made billions repackaging – with insurance giant AGI – home mortgages as speculative investment “opportunities” for the pension fund and 401(k) managers of middle class savings plans. When the over-heated housing market collapsed, sucking all the big banks to the brink of disaster, Lehman happened to be the most vulnerable and took the hit just before the U.S. Treasury moved in to bail-out the rest.

Greece isn’t a lender; it’s a borrower. Like the homeowners who were enticed by banks into putting meager savings into down payments on mortgages they ultimately could not afford, the Greek government was enticed into borrowing heavily from big banks in Europe to finance government services and jobs for its citizens. That worked okay as long as the global (and Greek) economy was expanding, but when the recession hit, the government couldn’t keep up the payments.

Here in America, strapped homeowners were forced to hand over their homes, but the Greek government’s collateral isn’t so finite and physical. Rather, its collateral is only the ability to collect more taxes from its citizens (or, alternatively, to keep up the present tax rate while providing less service).

A series of austerity packages has further collapsed the Greek economy, and the Greek people are rebelling. Some of that is in the streets; more significant, they are withdrawing their savings from the banks. Meanwhile, the “socialist” government, hanging by a thread, alternately begs and berates its citizens, unwilling to break from its failed policy.

Yesterday, in an open letter to the Greek people, Britain’s Ann Pettifor urged what amounts to revolution in today’s context. The founder of Advocacy International and a leader of the Jubilee 2000, Pettifor called on the Greeks to abandon the Euro and restore the Drachma. Only in this way, she said, could the Greeks dump the harsh demands of the European banks and the European Central Bank.

A voice in the wilderness, perhaps, Pettifor at least offers real and consistent clarity about the world’s financial crisis. Don’t imagine that it’s over. Indeed, coming up on three years running, it is grinding harder and ever more harshly on the world’s people. No progress is evident because the world’s politicians, particularly those leading France, Germany, Britain and the U.S., are committed to saving the banks because they are “too big to fail.”

By directing their government to abandon the Euro, the Greek people can take charge of their own destiny, keeping their taxes in their own country for real investment in the local economy.

Greek Collapse Threatenes Global Catastrophe

By Steve Clark

Fear is again in the eyes of the world’s financial titans. Again, our banking system stands at the brink of collapse.

For the past decade or two, suggesting that Greeks (and Icelanders, Irish, Portuguese, Spaniards and, apparently, Italians as well) could attain the same high-consumption lifestyle common to France, Germany, Britain and the U.S. by having their government borrow heavily to expand government programs, the banks of these richer neighbors lent heavily by buying Greek treasury bills. With the banks’ credit rating organizations (e.g., Moody’s, Standard & Poor, etc.) providing low but adequate ratings on Greek instruments, the banks achieved exceptionally high rates of return (interest) on their speculations. All along, they knew that if the Greek government could not pay the interest, it would have to go to the Greek people for the money, through higher taxes or cuts in government spending.

So now, inevitably, the worst case scenario is playing out. The amount that Greece owes these speculators (banks) is far in excess of what it can reasonably pay, despite a series of increasingly draconian austerity measures imposed in recent years. Jittery, the banks considered easing the crisis (by extending the term of the bills or lowering their interest payments) but ultimately refused, instead saying to their central bank (the European Central Bank – the amalgamation of the quasi-governmental central banks of, primarily, France and Germany) that it would have to provide the indemnification necessary to make the “private investors” (again, the banks, themselves) whole.

Meanwhile, the limit of the Greek people was reached. This week, violent protests erupted, and a government default is likely.

Observers are comparing a Greek default to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which kicked off the 2008 crisis and almost toppled the entire global financial system.

Iceland, a small state, has already collapsed (but to its people’s credit, it refused to accept the staunch terms of the European banks and is rebuilding its economy on its own). Ireland accepted the terms, and the harsh, imposed austerity is killing its economy (but the banks were saved!). Greece is much larger, and the popular temperament, perhaps, more like Icelanders (despite their opposite climates!).

The whole of Euro zone finance is threatened, but today the New York Times suggests that British and American banks may be insulated enough to dodge the bullet. Yet, the article highlights just how intertwined they are with the European banks.

Of course, I don’t know if a Greek default will bring the whole system to the brink of a new collapse, but I’m certain that sooner rather than later, some default will do the deed. Neither speculation nor hoarding, the two wings of contemporary financial “investment,” is real investment in real productivity. Rather, they are the swinging pendulum between bubble-building and bubble-bust management. The financial titans do not do real investment, and they have squandered whatever claim they might make to define the terms of the next social contract.

I’m not cheering for collapse with its immense human suffering, but only a popular movement for real investment through civil society-led initiative at the global grassroots will deflect this careening big bank catastrophe. The situation is dire.

Expose Sarkozy-Merkel Plan to Swindle Civil Society and Boost Big Banks

By Steve Clark

In Paris next month, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will urge the G-8 to embrace a “bank tax,” their version of a program that GlobalTalk (with credit to James Tobin) has advanced for many years.

While it is no surprise to GlobalTalk that the European banks and their fronting politicians are swinging toward a tax on commercial transactions, their program is a sham and should be rejected by progressive forces. It is simply another way to tax the public to funnel revenue to the big banks.

In contrast, the commercial transaction fee advocated by GlobalTalk would tax all electronic transactions – including the banking industry’s – and channel those funds to a new global problem-solving authority led by civil society and rooted in local communities worldwide. None of the revenue would go to the banks, themselves.

After nearly crashing the global economy in 2008, the big, global banks are now hounding governments into fiscal austerity. Forcing Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain into near bankruptcy, these banks are also squeezing Germany and France who are the Euro’s biggest backers.

To get the banks off their backs, Sarkozy and Merkel now want to tax commercial transactions so interest, payoffs or guarantees due banks on treasury instruments, especially those of financially weakened European states, can be covered. Annually, these bills total hundreds of billions dollars.

Given the endorsement of Sarkozy and Merkel, the European banks obviously like this idea, despite its appearance as a tax on their own operations. Normally, they would never want government scrutinizing their domain, much less imposing taxes on it, but these are not normal times. After vastly overextending themselves in the credit binge of the last 40 years, they are desperate to recoup. While accepting government intrusion is a risky venture, they are used to dominating treasury policies and expect to limit their political exposure. Details of how the tax would operate have not been publicized, but the banks do not expect to pay any of the tax themselves. Rather, they expect to collect a tax on certain categories of electronic commercial transactions but not necessarily those in which they are a party. And, if somehow the banks’ own transactions are taxed, they anticipate passing this cost along to the other party via an open or hidden bank fee. While the European banks are committed to this plan, American and British banks have yet to sign on. That may come this May.

To generate positive PR for their proposal, Sarkozy and Merkel say that some of the revenues will go to aid “Third World development.” No doubt, they hope that NGOs, which have long suffered from a dearth of adequate funds, will jump at the chance to get some kind of new revenue stream, thus building momentum for the new tax. NGOs should not be so easily used and should resist the temptation.

It is outrageous that only a tiny portion of this revenue stream would go to global problem-solving, the real key to alleviating our world’s impinging social and ecological catastrophe. Though specifics were avoided, Sarkozy went so far as to suggest this development fund might amount to about $120 billion annually, an amount completely inadequate to address the world’s need. Moreover, it is less than a tenth of what a tiny but universal 0.25% transactions tax would generate. Presumably, the other ninety-plus percent would go straight to the banks.

Over the past four decades, the treasuries of western capitalist nations – especially, the U.S., Britain, Germany and France – worked hand-in-glove with the speculative explosion orchestrated by western banks. Since the financial collapse of 2008, operating on the principle that banks are “too big to fail,” these state treasuries have worked hand-in-glove to syphon funds from every possible source into bank liquidity and profit. Still, the whole system is barely hanging together. Hoarding is now the dominant program of the banks, and, unthinkingly (from the strategic perspective), they are crashing the global economy with their austerity demands on governments.

What is needed is quite the opposite, and it should not involve financial support for banks or for their pliant western treasuries. Rather, a new, global social contract needs construction, one in which a universal tax on the commercial transactions of the global economy is collected by the banking system and channeled to global problem-solving led by civil society and implemented by the global grassroots.

The next social contract must be global in scope and enshrine civil society as a full partner, much like organized labor was brought into the social democratic (New Deal) contract of the post-war era. Necessarily, banks and treasuries will continue to be key players, but the inclusion of civil society and the institutionalization of a local-global problem-solving revenue stream are critical to social and ecological survival in the epoch ahead.

The “Tobin Tax” or “Robin Hood Tax” has come a long way since it was first proposed in the 1980s by American economist James Tobin. It gained favor in the early 1990s but was lost in the speculation, greed and financial manipulation of the go-go era that followed. Now, the banks, Sarkozy and Merkel want to morph it into a program to further buttress finance capital and its mismanagement of the global economy.

Here at GlobalTalk, we are happy that the transactions tax has resurfaced, but it is critical to stress and highlight the political stakes this time around. It is time for progressive forces to coalesce in opposition to Sarkozy-Merkel’s camouflaged bank handout and demand the progressive alternative. Rather than continued reliance on the banks to pull the rest of the economy out of its doldrums, we should demand direct investment in local-global problem-solving through civil society and the global grassroots. This is the way to save the foundation of the global economy: our local communities and the environment.

It is time to make globalization work for people. Leverage Sarkozy-Merkel’s call for a transactions tax to demand a new social contract. Hold the banks accountable. Let them do their part, but don’t let them run the show. Empower civil society and the global grassroots.

Catastrophe in Japan…

By Steve Clark

The catastrophe in Japan now overshadows the crisis in Libya which came in the wake of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, both unresolved and unsettled. These are just the current, momentary calamities in a world skating on the edge of socioecological collapse and a threatening dark age.

What about oil prices breaking the $100 a barrel threshold? Or the tottering financial houses in Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain? Last summer, the BP explosion and oil spill threatened the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. A few months earlier, the earthquake in Haiti caused massive devastation that remains tragically unaddressed.

As much as these events display the world’s incapacity to address its crisis, so too do countless thousands of steady, on-going situations such as the global food shortage, the AIDS crisis, the scourge of women’s deaths in childbirth, the war in Afghanistan, the genocide in Darfur, the…

As a concentrated example, the catastrophe in Japan is instructive. Directly caused by a natural disaster (the huge earthquake and resulting tsunami), the catastrophe was aggravated by its location in a highly populated and technologically developed region. The lucky ones, tens of thousands of people, were instantly impoverished while thousands of unlucky others were suddenly killed. In this highly developed country, refugee operations will go one for years.

And that doesn’t yet account for the possible meltdown of two nuclear reactors, both of which are already spewing harmful radiation but could get far worse. The worst case scenarios are devastating for Japan and possibly disastrous for Canada and the U.S. on the next landmass eastward in the path of prevailing winds.

Whatever the scale of the nuclear disaster, Japan, among the world’s five largest economies (depending on how you measure), will now be mired in relief and rebuilding which will take years, even decades to succeed, if indeed it can succeed. For a decade the country has endured a stagnant economy and declining standard of living. From where will the capital come to invest in the future?

Perhaps, like Haiti, northern Japan will be left alone to endure its wounds. Like the Pakistani victims of last summer’s monsoon floods, northern Japanese will be left to their own devices.

Or not. The resiliency of the Japanese and their government is well-known. As a people, they are known to stick together. And, as a nation, they are still among the world’s richest. Perhaps, in this devastating catastrophe they will find the means to dig themselves out.

If so, they will be the exception to the rule, the rule being, once on the downslide, reversing the slide is next to impossible.

Americans, despite our faith in our exceptionalism, would do well to grasp this reality. Well, perhaps, in Wisconsin last month we did. Finally, we stood up and said enough is enough. We did something. We fought for ourselves because the corporations and financial elites aren’t doing it for us. Indeed, they are scouring the land, scraping off whatever they can in their own desperate effort to fortify against the onslaught of the world’s crisis. In Wisconsin, however, when they came for the public worker unions, they finally bumped up against a structure with some resources to fight back.

So, here the world and we American progressives now stand. The mounting global crisis presses in from all sides and in all kinds of ways. The corporate, financial and energy elite are hoarding wealth, speculating on the ebb and flow of the crisis and avoiding any responsibility for the general situation. Indeed, they are consolidating their hold on the U.S. government, refusing it the initiative and financial capacity to be proactive while they mount an escalating assault on the savings and earnings of American workers.

Desperate, we drew a line in Wisconsin, though we still lost that battle. But can we win the war? Can we force accountability on the big banks and energy corporations? Can we force them to fund systemic, worldwide problem-solving along the local-global nexus? Can we empower civil society and the global grassroots in time to save our world and prevent the next dark age?

With few exceptions, today’s problems are global ones, manifest, of course, in local circumstances. Their solutions require a sustained worldwide response. We need a funding stream (a funding torrent!) for systemic problem-solving organized by civil society and implemented at the global grassroots. The wealth of global commerce must be taxed, not to off-set the deficits of western treasuries, but to invest in real crisis management along the local-global nexus. It is the global banking system’s duty to collect these funds through a fee on every electronic commercial transaction. Those are the funds that can save our world.

But before the banks will do that, the world’s people must first mobilize a global consciousness movement to press this demand. Here in the U.S., we must inject this demand into American politics. We Americans drew the line in Wisconsin, but defense is not enough. Like a tsunami, corporate interests are rolling over us. We need to sharpen our demand and astutely direct the counter attack.

Young People Want to Save Themselves and Save the World. What Stands in Their Way?

By Steve Clark

The spontaneous revolutions under way in Tunisia and Egypt are led by locally-based civil society organizations that have been stymied by corrupt, despotic regimes and a lack of resources in their efforts to solve local problems. Unable to advance against this stacked deck, they are embracing political struggle.

These civil society groups represent the service-oriented, socially aware, young adult generation that has been educated by decades of global mass communications and is increasingly networked by social media. This is the generation with the greatest stake in the world’s future. Led to political action by resolute social service activists of older generations, the youth insist their dictators must go.

Clearing out dictators is necessary, but that alone will l not free up the resources necessary to fully employ today’s young adults in community-based and regional problem-solving. The dictators control only a tiny portion of the necessary funds. Most funds are tied up by the greed, speculation and hoarding of the world’s financial and energy elites.

The first blows of the global revolution are now being fought in Tunisia and Egypt, but the revolution will not succeed until it captures a permanent revenue stream that enables adequate and sustained funding for problem-solving by civil society and the global grassroots.

For this, a global movement, directed at the world’s banking industry is necessary. Only the banking industry has the means and access necessary to tap global commerce to save our world. Speculation and hoarding must end. Commercial transactions must be taxed. We must tax global commerce to fund civil society and pay our young people to do the social and environmental service they so much want and we all so much need.

But the world’s dictators, bankers, insurers, energy monopolies and defense contracts – currently gorging on global commerce for their own sake – hide out, deflect obligation and, ultimately, offer stubborn and, sometimes, violent resistance.

As Tunisia and Egypt show in microcosm, however, the masses, united, cannot be denied. Building from these examples, we must build a global movement to compel banking industry collaboration in local-global problem-solving.

Walk Like the Egyptians

By Steve Clark

As some Tunisian with a cell phone proved last month, leadership in global revolution can come from any source.

Americanocentric as an American cannot help but be, I labor long over the failure of the Obama Administration to challenge the power of the financial elites and I anguish over the consumptive habits of Americans and our apparent unwillingness to tax ourselves for our common good.

Then, I see the Tunisians and Egyptians rise up and overthrow long-entrenched, U.S.-backed dictatorships, and I realize that what happens in America is just one small slice of what is happening, can happen and will happen in our world’s unfolding global revolution.

Right now, I stand in awe. I want to walk like an Egyptian.

That said, going forward, both Tunisia and Egypt need help and support. I don’t think Tunisia gets much U.S. aid, but, derivative of the 1978 treaty between Israel and Egypt, Egypt gets about $2.8 billion a year in U.S. aid, about half in military aid. If these rebellions succeed, neither nation is likely to get anywhere near as much U.S. aid as before, though what they get may be more fairly distributed. Certainly, House Republicans will find a good excuse to cut the flow of funds, particularly military funds, to any popularly-approved Arab state.

That means that the civil society organizations that are playing leading roles in the rebellions—that is, the service organizations at the cutting edge of Egypt’s and Tunisia’s social crises—will not get enough money to actually solve the socioecological problems that plague their societies. They’re not getting enough now, and they’re probably going to get even less.

We’ve seen this before. Take Haiti as an example. Or Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Gaza, to name just the hottest of the world’s current hotspots. If they and much of the rest of the world does not get enough funds to mobilize their communities in effective, local problem-solving, their crises, even with new governments, will not go away.

The resources necessary for this task can only come from the world’s system of global exchange. If the situations in Tunisia and Egypt are to re-stabilize in strategically positive and hopeful ways, the global financial system—the bankers and speculators who now pursue the hoarding, hegemonic ethics of industrialism’s imperial age—must be held to account. The global banking system must be compelled to collect a fee on every electronic commercial transaction and make those vast revenues available to catalyze collaborations between civil society and the global grassroots under direction and guidance of a new, popularly-managed Global Problem-Solving Authority.

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt make all the more clear that, while they hide from blame and accountability, it is our world’s financial elites, alone, who control the resources necessary to broadly and fully address our mounting global crisis. While we clear away dictators immediately in our path, we must focus our demands squarely on these financial elites.

Olbermann Departure Begs Question: What Next?

By Steve Clark

Good Night and Good Luck!

That’s the way Olbermann closed his nightly, one-hour commentary on American politics. He wished us well, but his doubting tone made it plain that he wasn’t at all sure how things would work out.

Commentators on his “firing by mutual agreement” stress his abrasive personality and his conflicts with past employers. They speculate that NBC’s takeover by Comcast spelled his doom (as if Comcast is substantially more conservative than NBC).

What these commentators fail to note is that Olbermann’s “problems” with employers were nothing but his insistence on journalistic freedom, the right to express his opinions as he feels and thinks them. He didn’t buy the view that “neutrality” in news reporting is desirable, much less possible. He insisted on telling it like he saw it and letting you, the viewer, draw your own conclusions.

Yes, this runs counter to the popular Jon Stewart’s call to “restore sanity” in news. But I watch Stewart, and I know he spends far more time mocking the stupidity of FOX than he does the leftiness of CSNBC.

But centrist pundits just loved that they could bash Olbermann alongside O’Reilly and, thereby, posture as the most reasonable commentator: “Oh, the left and the right…both extremists, one just as bad as the other. Woe to me, woe to our Republic.”

While the Obama administration flails vainly in an attempt to cling to America’s crumbling center ground, Olbermann knows that the center cannot hold, not in times of crisis. In a crisis era – and this is a crisis era – the old mainstream is untenable. A new riverbed must be carved out of the plain. It’s not a left or right adjustment. It’s a new pathway.

Hopefully, Olbermann’s not done (that’s a stupid sentence; of course, he’s not done). Along with Michael Moore, he is now among America’s most prominent, progress voices. The question is how to use him (and Moore) to lead American to a new riverbed and the world to a new social contract.

Right now, it’s too early to decide tactics for 2012. It may be that, weak as progressives appear to be, the best we can do is mobilize the United Front Against Fascism and attempt to re-elect Obama. On the other hand, it may be that with leaders like Olbermann and Moore we can define a cogent, new-mainstream agenda, rally the nation’s youth and its Hispanic minority and move the electorate in a fresh direction, one in harmony with the needs of the world’s vast majority. Perhaps, the oil/defense and financial elites will diverge, splitting the Republican Party and creating a four-way race for the Presidency.

Whatever 2012 holds, the struggle for liberty and justice for all people, not just rich Americans, is the defining battle of the era ahead. Undoubtedly, Olbermann will be on the people’s side.

Perspective on Latest Wikileaks Dump

By Steve Clark

If you're like me, you're not at all surprised by the revelations of the lastest Wikileaks dump. As Jon Steward observed,the evident duplicitness of U.S. diplomacy is so well-known, you're probably yawning over this new expose.

However, the mere fact that you know the general doesn't mean that the particulars don't matter. Of course, you wouldn't spend the time to go through the 23,000 pages yourself, but here's a couple short posts from the Financial Times that the Carnegie Institute posted, which, I think, make some good points and summarize what should be the lesson for the U.S. government. Check them out:

Wikileaks Should Prompt a Rethink on Iran (Op-Ed by Karim Sadjadpour, a Carnegie Middle East Associate)

Wikileaks Shows Out-of-Control U.S. Secrecy (Op-Ed by David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Visting Scholar)

Airport Security Mirrors Obama's Failed Global Security Program

By Steve Clark

The new body scanners at airports represent the political line on global security that the Obama Administration has adopted. Selling their line, Administration officials have copped to the conservative line that we can solve security with military might and advanced security technology. True, the Obama people concede, its not nice to personal liberties -- and that's unfortunate -- but "the government's first duty is to protect American lives."

So, performing that first duty requires the high tech solution of full body scanners. Well, sure it does, if you also have embraced the right of the U.S. government to unilaterally (a) define who is a terrorist and (b) how to suppress "terrorism."

Already, Obama Administration apologists are citing Israel as the example to which we should be looking for what airport security is likely to become. Okay. Got it. Since Israel cannot exist as the occupier state that it is without U.S. military support, it stands to reason that resistance to that occupation, if it can find a way, will target the U.S. and Americans as surely as it targets Israelies and their government.

Okay, so, yes, we need a new Middle East policy -- other than blanket backing of whatever Israel wants -- but we need a new one on fighting terrorism as well. Bombing the hell out of tribal regions in Pakistan probably isn't going to help cut the surge of Islamic youth into the "terrorist" ranks. And we need a new policy on airport inspections, too. We cannot out-tech terrorists; they are smart and will develop alternatives. All we will achieve is an angrier, more frustrated society twisted as much as possible to blame "terrorists."

It all goes together, which is the one thing that Obama and his people refuse to recognize. To pursue a high-tech/low-liberty strategy in airport secruity is the same as what Bush did after 9/11 in Afghanistan: al-queda bombing and invasion without an all-round, adequate and sustained nation-building program.

The answer is to (a) sharply contract U.S. "defense" activity worldwide (the financial savings can be applied to social problem-solving and deficit reduction) AND (b) forge a massive expansion of global-local, civil society-led, social problem-sovling through a worldwide fee on every commercial transaction in the global market.

A fee of this nature -- first advocated two decades ago by Yale economist James Tobin -- would channel more than a trillion dollars annually into collaborative problem-solving.

Does that sound too fanastic?

More fantastic than imagining that the Obama (or Bush) program will work?

Put Destruction First; Construction Will Follow

By Steve Clark

This was an admonition of Chairman Mao, speaking of the revolutionary process. He wasn’t speaking only of governments but also of outlooks and ideology.

It makes sense, at least at certain historic junctures. Usually, we can build upon what we have, but at certain times it’s not possible to go forward without clearing out the junk that’s in the way.

Right now, the U.S. state stands in the way of history. Not because it is evil (why call names?) or has bad intentions (why speculate on motives?) but because it is the last great ruling power of the imperialist stage of the Industrial Age.

Depending on how you measure, industrialism came into being some 500 years ago, gradually taking control of states and turning them to serve its interests. In the last century, its intense competition for markets led to imperialism, the fight with both native forces and competitors for control of markets all over the world. Over the centuries, a succession of nation-states dominated that process with the U.S. assuming the controlling position after WWII.

But industrialism’s need for ever larger markets nurtured a human population that has expanded to the very edge of ecological sustainability, though it is expected to nearly double again over the next 50 years. Habitat destruction, pollution, climate change and fossil fuel depletion anticipate the end of industrialism, but the emergent forces of the new age – shall we say, the Service Age or the Global Age – are not yet strong or cogent enough to formulate a positive agenda for the kind of revolutionary change now required.

Thus, humanity labors under the continuing regime of nation-states, most of all, the American state which is the world’s sole superpower. That it is a relic of another time is evidenced by its inability to accomplish much of anything with its immense military might other than vast swaths of social devastation.

Progressive members of my generation (I am a Boomer) realized early in our adult lives that the U.S. state had “issues.” Some of us (I admit) went so far as to believe that the revolutionary overthrow of the government was necessary. That was foolish (it was never remotely possible), but it is still a fact that the U.S. state stands in the way of progress.

Obama’s election – actually, the assembly of the progressive majority that elected him – offered hope that the U.S. government might be led in progressive direction, but the failure of Obama and his people to articulate a constructive vision and agenda for the world’s future (and America’s role within) has so far caused a resurgence of the right. Now, with Tea Party control of the House, the country – and the world – faces two more years of doing nothing in the face of the world’s mounting socioecological catastrophe.

Two more years of nothing…then, we may get another shot at going forward. That is, only if progressive forces succeed in forging a positive program that excites people and motivates them to vote. Otherwise, we’ll get at least four more years of nothing.

But nothing has a good side, if you believe Mao. The Tea Party Republicans are out to destroy government, and they are doing it. They are going to do it. They are tearing down the U.S. state from within. Put destruction first; construction will follow.

That’s where we stand. It’d be nice if revolution was smooth, orderly and without the recklessness of arrogant misleaders, but it isn’t. The edifice of the U.S. state most likely will remain intact and functioning, but its strategic power and influence is about to fall off the cliff. Despite the chaos ahead, that is a good thing. Rather than lament or bemoan the Tea Party (and there’s no reason to cheer them on), progressives need to get themselves and their own program together.

Where do we want to go from here? What plan do we offer for the post-imperial age?

It is the void in answer to these questions that is really worrisome.