Does the West's Swing Right Portend Trouble Ahead?

The West has undergone a powerful rightward shift over the past two decades.   Leftist parties have turned centrist.   Centrist parties have become conservative.   Conservative parties have left the traditional bounds of conservatism to embrace a radical, corporatist authoritarianism.

What good can come of this?

It's safe to say that Ronald Reagan would be unacceptable to today's movement conservative Republicans.   Richard Nixon would today be denounced as a socialist.

We have had the same march to the Right.   The NDP is quietly discarding and burying its socialist roots to transform itself into an electable liberal party.   The Libs have turned Conservative Lite.  The Conservatives, like moulting snakes, have discarded their progressive skins to propel themselves well past the bounds of traditional conservatism and into the realm of secretive authoritarianism.

The radical far right is also on the march in Europe.   A nazi-style movement has gained a political toehold in Greece.  Le Pen's movement played an unseemly role in the last French run-off.   And, with the rise of the far right, anti-semitism is resurgent.

The rise of the radical right in Canada and the U.S. plays out in ways far different but no less troubling.  We're clinging to Pax Americana in ways eerily reminiscent of the Cold War.   This time, however, it's China being cast in the role of the former Soviet Union.   The Free World naval exercise, RimPac2012, is about to get underway and, this year, Canada's military presence will be second only to America's.

Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Victoria will be the first Victoria Class submarine to participate in the exercise. Other Royal Canadian Navy units include HMCS Algonquin, Ottawa, Brandon, Saskatoon and Yellowknife. Two teams from Fleet Diving Unit (Pacific), including a dive team and the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Section, are also participating.

More than 150 soldiers from the Canadian Army’s 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry will work with the United States Marine Corps and other coalition units in an exercise to practice the evacuation of non-combatants.

In addition to extensive CC-177 Globemaster and CC-150 Polaris Airlift support, the Royal Canadian Air Force will deploy four CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft; seven CF-188 Hornet fighter jets; a CC-150 Air to Air Refueller; a CC-130HT Air to Air Refueller; and two CH-124 Sea Kings. The Royal Canadian Air Force will further deploy key air expertise to form the nucleus of the RIMPAC Combined Air Operations Centre.

Taken in isolation, RimPac is merely just another of the biennial wargames that date back to 1971.  But that would ignore the context that this year's exercise holds.   The United States now confronts a powerful economic and geopolitical rival with a rapidly growing and modernizing military force subordinate only to America's and Russia's armed forces.

The Bush Doctrine, not expressly rescinded by Obama, reserves to America the right to use military force against any nation or group of nations that threaten to overtake US military or economic supremacy.   If that sounds like real hillbilly stuff, it is, and the hillbillies have all the guns.

America has announced a "pivot" in its global military posture to China's doorstep.   US naval forces in the Atlantic will be reduced by 20% which will be transferred to its Pacific fleet.   US ships will be repositioned via forward basing arrangements with friendly Asian countries.   Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been in Vietnam looking to get a deal to lease America's former naval base at Cam Ranh Bay.

And Canada seems to think we should get in on the act.   DefMin MacKay is negotiating forward basing rights with Singapore, presumably for naval and air force units, especially units that might soon be flying F-35s.

The first Cold War was started quite deliberately in response to Soviet aggression in eastern Europe and a very real threat to western Europe.   Cold War II, it seems, will be far more obscure in purpose but potentially just as dangerous.   And it seems that the powers of the far right are backing us into it.   (By the way, I'm claiming copyright over both "Cold War II" and "CWII".)

I'm left with this awful feeling that there's nobody at the wheel this time.   The ReformaTories have a demonstrated preference for brinksmanship over statesmanship and justly deserve to wear the mantle of failure for our futile adventure in Afghanistan.   Will they plunge Canada headlong into a Far East Cold War (FECW)?  Is there anyone who can steer us safely out of an unnecessarily quagmire that could bleed us for decades?

My greatest fear of CWII is that large-scale conflict could be ingrained as self-fulfilling prophecy.  It's not defensive or responsive so much as it is provacative.   The first Cold War at least achieved a measure of stability but that took time and a degree of confidence-building.   This time our posturing is different, more aggressive, more in our adversary's face.   Why?

Fearmongers, Smearmongers - The Perverts Among Us

I think a lot of us instinctively sensed they were, well, pretty bent but it's become clear to me at least that today's uber-right are more than merely bent, they're perverts.

These dodgy lowlife advance their rancid ideologies and fundamentalist fantasies with fear and smear.   They shamelessly use fear to panic and herd their supporters and smear to hobble their opponents.

But does that make them perverts?   Well, consider a few definitions of the verb "pervert" -  to lead into mental error or false judgment; to misconstrue or misinterpret, especially deliberately; to turn away from the right course.

Or how about these synonyms:  2. seduce, corrupt, demoralize. 3. divert. 4. mislead, misguide. 7. pollute, defile; impair, degrade.

That pretty much sums up the perverts of today's far right, including Canada's prime pervert, Slimin' Stephen Harper.   This perv couldn't help himself yesterday when he was in the north on the same day two aged Russkie bombers made a patrol pass well outside Canadian airspace.  Steve got up on his hind legs before the dutifully assembled and robotic reporters and bellowed how fortunate we were that Canadian fighters had intercepted the Russian Bears and turned them away before they could penetrate Canadian airspace.

Now that's a fine example of the prime ministerial perv at his fearmongering best.   He insinuated the Russians were an actual threat somehow intent on violating Canadian airspace had they not been forced to turn away by our fighters.   To the gullible idiots who happily feast on Steve's droppings this must have made perfect sense and allowed them to indulge in both fear and joy.   And, of course, that was Steve's target audience - anyone ignorant or gullible or idiotic enough to believe a word he said.    In other words, a lot of Tory supporters.

To anyone who actually swallowed Steve's fear mongering bullshit, here are a few questions you should really try to answer:

1.   If the Russians were remotely interested in violating Canadian airspace, why would they make their approach at a spot where they could most readily be intercepted by Canadian fighters?

2.   If the Russians were remotely interested in violating Canadian airspace, why would they try it with a 1950's vintage, lumbering, eight-prop driven Tupolev Bear bomber with the radar signature of a battleship and flying at high altitude where it would be most readily detectable by our radars and most easily intercepted by our fighters?

You see, nothing Steve said made sense.  He was deliberately misconstruing or misinterpreting the events to pervert reality, to lead the gullible into mental error and false judgment.   He wants the voting public to conclude that stationing a handful of F-35 fighters in Cold Lake or Bagotville could somehow defend Canada against swarms of long-range, high-speed, ground hugging cruise missiles which is what those Bear bombers would be using from far outside Canadian airspace if the Russians ever did want to attack.   Rank fearmongering by our Pervert in Chief.

But the Pervert of the Day Award goes not to the dank denizen of 24 Sussex Drive but to Britain's Sunday Telegraph and its two hacks, Christopher Booker and Richard North, for their smear job on IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri.

These two pervs and their rightwing rag slimed Pachauri in December in a piece entitled, Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri.   The article accused Pachauri of "making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies" and speculated the money Pachauri made on the side, "must run into millions of dollars".

As George Monbiot details in The Guardian, the smears caused the charity Pachauri actually works for to call in KPMG to review his financial affairs.

The audit found that, beyond Pachauri's 45,000 sterling salary, his extra income was a total two thousand pounds, more than half of it royalties from his books.   The income he did earn from outside organizations went entirely to the charity that employs him, The Energy and Resources Institute.  As for his chairmanship of the IPCC, Pachauri earns a big, fat nothing.

Read Monbiot's article for it reveals how freely the rightwing media deliberately slime those whose views they oppose.  They don't even make a pretense of fairness much less honesty.   They too are the perverts among us.

Corporate Populism - Krugman's Wake-Up Call

Western democracy, as we've grown it since Magna Carta, is under attack today not from foreign totalitarianism but from domestic and global corporatism. Indeed, today's "corporatism" could just be the 21st century's equivalent of fascism. In today's New York Times, Nobel economist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman warns that's the very struggle underway today in America.

"...[Wall Street's] rage against regulation seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in particular, ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required large-scale taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing some new restrictions? Apparently it did.

So what President Obama and his party now face isn’t just, or even mainly, an opposition grounded in right-wing populism. For grass-roots anger is being channeled and exploited by corporate interests, which will be the big winners if the G.O.P. does well in November.

If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics to whip up the base; then, when the election is over, give priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate of “real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove.

But won’t the grass-roots rebel at being used? Don’t count on it. Last week Rand Paul, the Tea Party darling who is now the Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky, declared that the president’s criticism of BP over the disastrous oil spill in the gulf is “un-American,” that “sometimes accidents happen.”

The mood on the right may be populist, but it’s a kind of populism that’s remarkably sympathetic to big corporations."

It sounds to me that this hellspawn of RJ Reynolds and Lee Atwater, today's Rovian Corporatist Republicans, have perfected the art of manipulating a large segment of the American people by luring them to a populist movement that is really a corporatist service. It worked for years on tobacco, it's working still - and will for many, many years to come - on global warming, why ought it to do any less well on thwarting regulation of their interests to protect the public interest?

Harnessing populist discontent to advance a corporatist oligarchy is simply brilliant. Diabolical certainly - but brilliant.