Democrats, Wake Up!
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
May 23, 2007
The presently deteriorating political situation in the process of the Federal government's deliberations on critical issues in today's U.S.A. demands some frank speech from me now. During the days and weeks ahead, I shall formulate a programmatic policy-statement of the type urgently needed by leading political parties which have shown themselves currently unable to grasp the actual situation which menaces our own and other nations today. Therefore, for the present moment, I fill in the political gap left by the major party leaderships with a relatively few words to the wise.
Westward, south of Scandinavia, across continental Europe, from the borders of Russia and Belarus, and in the United Kingdom, Europe has become a spectacle of already failed, or failing incumbent governments. This is also virtually the present internal political condition of the U.S.A., a fact which I find the most notable characteristic presently among the present national leaders of the U.S. Democratic Party organization. For me, the most shameful of these spectacles is the chronic failures shown by the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties, especially since February 2006.
Naturally, in this report, my special attention to relevant lessons from the recent past, is focussed on the breakdown of the Democratic Party leadership since the overlapping incidents of the Alito confirmation, and the wretched way in which the Senate Democrats and Republicans, alike, sat on their hands while the core of U.S. industry, the auto industry, went under without a finger lifted by either party in our nation's defense against this terrible thing. Nonetheless, my passion is concentrated less on what has already happened, but on something far, far worse, which is about to happen, soon, unless our elected leaders mend their negligent ways.
In both Europe and the U.S.A. itself, the key to the waves of virtual abandonment of the functions of national sovereignty, is to be recognized in the interdependent, combined effects of the submission to a form of rape, and looting, which the combination of hedge-fund looting, and destruction of national sovereignty by globalization, represents. In effect, the U.S.A. and most of the population of western and central Europe have submitted, under the banner of globalization, to be sent in the direction of a threatened early return to a kind of imperial tyranny which was last seen in European history with the medieval alliance of a Venetian financier oligarchy and a brutish Norman chivalry.
In the meantime, the combination of the British Labour Party government and the Bush-Cheney maladministration, have committed repeated grossly impeachable offenses, while the Congress whimpers that it can do nothing for defense of our nation's Constitution against a usurper, the Vice-President Cheney—better called the President of Vice—who has used the President of the U.S. as he were like a badly maintained toilet-brush. It appears, that, like Hamlet, our Congress and our leading, pigeoned-livered, political parties, can do nothing for our nation's cause.
The fault lies not in our stars, "Dear Brutus," but in the fact that those who would be seen as our leaders, are showing the mentality of underlings whenever they are faced with the tyrants of wildly careening financier power.
Worst of all, some among the persons complicit in allowing this state of national affairs to prevail, are currently candidates for nomination to become the President of our United States. The acceleration of the early Presidential primaries has been particularly disgusting on this specific account. If that present trend were allowed to continue, the decision on leading candidates for the Presidential nomination would be made before any serious debate on the systemic substance on leading issues could occur.
'You Call These Candidates?'
So far, the candidates' debates among one another, have evaded any substantive commitment on any subject of actually crucial importance for our republic at this time. "Touchy-feely" issues predominate, while such facts are ignored as a world faced with the presently oncoming threat of an early, outbreak of the greatest financial and economic collapse in modern world history, and the fact that the cowardice shown by the Senate so far presents us now, not only with a nearly four-year-long, endless war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but a serious threat of even a thermonuclear exchange among the powers of Eurasia, and, probably, also involving the U.S.A. On both of those exemplary issues, the candidates so far, have nothing useful to say. They are inclined, instead, either to flat (and frankly false) denials of such dangers, or whimpering protests of the form of "Please, please, please, don't tell me it is really so!"
On the subject of the economy, the worst damage is being done by those hedge-funds which have destroyed the U.S.-owned automotive industry, in favor of cheap-labor types of foreign-owned replacements, which are the same hedge-funds which appear to be buying up leading candidates for the Presidential nomination.
Recently, the same United Kingdom government whose wild-eyed, flagrant lies led the United States into the presently endless war in Iraq, has orchestrated a threatened conflict with the thermonuclear powers Russia and China. In all cases, the drive toward war is pushed by lies of leading governments who are, nonetheless, treated as "respectable" by at least most of our leading candidates for Presidential nominations.
Meanwhile, our friends in western and central Europe are in terrible shape politically and otherwise. What were formerly the Soviet-dominated Comecon states of eastern Europe, are in worse economic condition today than under Soviet domination, and are, with one or two exceptions, at most, in wretched internal political condition as well, inclined to a reckless form of arrogance which is in direct proportion to their lack of competence. None of these nations, as also the U.S.A., have shown any capability of defending themselves against the predatory forces of the hyena-like packs of hedge funds which are consuming the bone and marrow of those nations' welfare.
In Europe, the prevalent trend is toward fragmentation of political parties, thus creating weak, minority forms of parliamentary governments, or inherently weakened forms of coalition governments, a state of affairs with very ugly potential consequences under present world conditions. Typical are Belgium's case, on the one hand, and the fact that in recent elections in the United Kingdom, there were incongruent patterns of results in elections in England, Scotland, and Wales, with Labour generally losing ground in these cases. There is, after all, the danger of "too much democracy," under conditions of crisis in which no party is able to win majority support for urgently needed remedies for crisis.
What I Have Proposed
The crux of the world's strategic situation now, is the onrushing breakdown of the world's economy, chain-reaction style, under the impact of the greatest hyperinflationary bubble in world history. This is a bubble, centered in the pure swindle known as "hedge funds," which is centered in a lunatics' delusion far worse than the John Law-style bubbles of Europe's early Eighteenth Century. Unless leading nations, such as the United States, take actions to put the present world monetary-financial system under governmental reorganization in bankruptcy, the entire world will be plunged, soon, into the kind of chain-reaction collapse which sent Europe into a great new dark age during the middle of the Fourteenth Century.
Any concerned person has merely to look at the mass of nominal hedge-fund capitalization to see the indication that there is no way that that mass of financial claims could survive. Only a general reorganization of what is presently the world's inherently bankrupt monetary-financial system could avert a early collapse of the planet as a whole into a prolonged dark age. One third of Europe's population was wiped out in this way during the Fourteenth-Century dark age; the threat today would cut much deeper.
The obvious problem is, that although the U.S. abandoned its effective control over its own U.S. dollar, as it did this under the professional direction of George Shultz during 1971-72, the U.S. dollar has remained the principal denominator of international debt among the nations of the world as a whole. A collapse of the dollar would not eliminate just the U.S.A.; it would set off a global chain-reaction in the monetary-financial system, wiping out most of the booked valuation of claims against the U.S. dollar, while collapsing economies around the world through a collapse of the dollar-related markets. When the hedge-fund bubble is factored in as part of the bubble ripe for popping, we have a situation today which is far worse as a threat to humanity of this planet, than the collapse of the House of Bardi set off during the middle of the Fourteenth Century.
The only remedy for this threat would be putting the world financial-monetary system as a whole into reorganization by a concert of governments, and conducting the management of that bankrupt system under principles modeled on the Franklin Roosevelt Administration's design for a fixed-exchange-rate, protectionist system. Otherwise, the entire planet goes to Hell! That is the only choice actually available to you. One or the other decision; there is no significant in-between. You thought you had enjoyed the meal; now, you are faced with paying the bill for your indulgence in a deregulated, free-trade system of attempted globalization.
There are some governments which would not accept that reform, unless they were given no feasible alternative. To push through the needed reform, we would require a concert of agreement among no less than the combination of the U.S.A., Russia. China, and India. We would expect a number of additional nations, hopefully including Japan, to support this decision, and then most of the rest of the planet would join, whether with a hearty laugh (perhaps from Argentina, among others), a smile (perhaps from Italy), or only an assenting grimace (from certain others).
This reform of the monetary system, would require the replacement of a monetarist system by the kind of credit system embedded in the intention of the U.S. Federal Constitution. The bulk of the credit needed would be devoted to capital formation in long-term investments, pivotted on a large mass dedicated to the basic economic infrastructure required by a modern standard of productivity and living, and a matching high-technology driver in agriculture and industry.
Actually intelligent U.S. politicians would agree with my proposal, if only because, if they are really intelligent, they would recognize that they have no sane alternative.
