Author: Jonathan Schwarz

Rick Perlstein reviews a memoir by Terry McAuliffe—Bill Clinton’s golfing buddy, former chairman of the Democratic party, and friend to billionaires everywhere—here.

It’s even more horrifying than you’d assume. Given the people who run the party, it’s amazing there are any elected Democratic officials anywhere in America.

MORE: It turns out McAuliffe may run for Governor of Virginia in 2009. Any Virginians reading this might look into the two Democrats already in the race, Brian Moran and Creigh Deeds. I don’t know anything about them, but it would be hard for them to be worse than McAuliffe unless they plan to reinstitute feudalism.

Matt Stoller:

A whistleblower is coming forth against John and Cindy McCain, and the picture he is painting is not a pretty one. You’ve probably heard about Cindy McCain stealing prescription drugs from her charity in the 1990s. Today, Tom Gosinski, her former employee and a close friend of the McCain’s, came out on the record about the entire sordid episode. And it appears that McCain used his Senate staff and resources to cover up Cindy’s drug use, and potentially to prevent the Drug Enforcement Agency from investigating his wife’s theft of illegal prescription drugs. John McCain certainly used his political connections to begin a campaign of intimidation against Gosinski, because at the time – this was after the Keating 5 scandal – another major scandal would have derailed his career. Gosinski stayed quiet out of fear until today; a recent fight with cancer has strengthened his resolve. As he told me today, if he can beat cancer, he can go on the record regarding how the McCain’s do business.

Raw Story has more.

John Avarosis looks at the way a Washington Post interview with Gosinski somehow disappeared.

Time to rerun this.

Seven years ago today I would never believed it possible that Bush could fail to catch bin Laden, yet (1) get reelected and (2) maybe even get a Republican successor elected this year. It’s a testament to the right’s near-total control of our political system. They do good work.

In his memoir Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama describes the three years he lived in Indonesia during the late sixties after his mother married his stepfather Lolo. This was immediately after the Indonesian military staged a quasi-coup and carried out one of the biggest bloodbaths of the 20th century.

No one knows precisely how the US was involved in the coup itself and the subsequent massacres. However, several things are clear. The US despised Sukarno, the president whom the coup pushed out, because he kept Indonesia in the Non-Aligned Movement and was one of the NAM’s main leaders. Likewise, the US loved Suharto—the Indonesian general who seized power from Sukarno and subsequently ruled the country for 30 years—because he did exactly what we told him to. And there’s testimony and documentation that the US provided lists of people for the military to kill, as well as various kinds of assistance while they were doing the killing. As James Reston of the New York Times wrote (approvingly) in 1966:

Washington is being careful not to claim any credit for this change…but this does not mean that Washington had nothing to do with it. There was a great deal more contact between the anti-Communist forces in that country and at least one very high official in Washington before and during the Indonesian massacre than is generally realized. General Suharto’s forces, at times severely short of food and munitions, have been getting aid from here through various third countries, and it is doubtful if the [Suharto] coup would ever have been attempted without the American show of strength in Vietnam or been sustained without the clandestine aid it has received indirectly from here.

Beyond that, it’s still murky forty years later. And even this basic history is essentially unknown in America, since it reflects on us so badly. (For instance, see this story about a New York Times reporter; interestingly, he started his career as an assistant to James Reston.)

So all in all, this is the kind of thing would-be presidents of the United States don’t talk about. Thus, it’s truly surprising that in his book Obama both (1) provides the history honestly, and (2) discusses how societies forget this kind of thing on purpose, and describes how this is a basic, terrifying aspect of power. According to Obama, “history could be swallowed up so completely, the same way the rich and loamy earth could soak up the rivers of blood.”

Was Obama right about this? Well, according to Google, there is literally just one specific reference anywhere online to his writing about the coup.

In any case, I’ve now stuck the most relevant parts from Obama’s chapter on Indonesia over on my site. And if you want to hear Obama actually say “Even the smart guys at the Agency had lost count,” I’ve also posted an mp3 of the highlights.

McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate certainly demonstrates one thing: living through the decadent phase of the American empire is going to be REALLY EXCITING. It could only have been more surprising if McCain had chosen a polyp from his large intestine.

McCain-McCain’s Polyp ’08
Putting Country First!

A well-functioning empire would produce presidential and vice-presidential candidates for both parties who (1) are experienced in running the empire, and (2) operate predictably within a narrow framework. And indeed, the US empire used to be like that. Eisenhower-Nixon gave way to Kennedy-LBJ. When Goldwater captured the nomination in 1964 with some real psycho vibes, the liberal imperial mainstream could easily crush him—because the empire, then at its height, had the breathing room to offer lots of inducements to regular Americans. Then it was back to Nixon, a competent imperial manager.

The ascendancy of Reagan, who was just slightly less insane than Goldwater, indicated the system was under stress. Still, he was surrounded by people like George H.W. Bush and James Baker, who kept him from going off the deep end. Bush-Quayle and Clinton-Gore supervised a period of needed imperial retrenchment.

But over the past eight years, things have truly gone off the rails. In previous times, destructive nutjobs like Cheney might have been in the room when decisions were made, but they certainly never had the final word. Yet there he is, cackling with glee as he sets fire to one after another of the empire’s supporting columns. And the sane imperial managers haven’t been able to do anything about it.

The failure of the sane imperial managers—*cough* Kerry *cough* New York Times—isn’t due to their own personal faults. It’s because there’s much less slack in the system than there used to be. The empire no longer has the means to keep itself running in a rational way while simultaneously buying lots of people off.

Bush-Cheney have screwed up so badly there might be one last, small opening for sane managers like Obama-Biden. “Vote for us, and we’ll give you a better-run empire, and, and…gay marriage!” However, while there is a long-term constituency for this, it’s a pretty small one.

So before long, there will only be two options for the people who want to run things. First, they could organize a rational liquidation of much of the empire, which would free up enough resources to create a long-term winning coalition. Second, they could go completely bugfuck nuts, and try to maintain the empire while cutting back on all social benefits and counting on the thrills of military triumph and chialism to keep them in power. What won’t be possible is the Obama-Biden approach.

In other words, the days of a rational American empire are drawing to a close. We’ll be forced to discard either the empire part, or the rational part. And based on 10,000 years of human history, I’m guessing it’s the rational part that will go.

Whether McCain wins or not, Sarah Palin is a harbinger of the future. The fact there was no one able to prevent McCain from choosing such an obviously inadequate imperial manager, and choosing her in such a bizarre, panicked way, indicates that—as during the decline of Rome, or the last years of Saddam’s regime—everyone sane has already been eliminated from the power structure. And thus we’re left with nothing but the whim of whoever’s clambered to the top of the Crazy Pole.

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