“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
- Paul Wong
- DEBBIE MIZEL/Daily
Benito Mussolini
Because we have a president who doesn”t read history books (or any books, for that matter), I”ve been thinking about a few things we should keep in mind during our ascent into the New World Order.
Wait, I”m sorry. I guess they”re calling it “America”s New Role” now. So let”s roll. Like a rolling stone.
For this war to work, the economy has to be steaming and belching at full capacity. Our president said it himself. (My suggestion: Tune in, turn on, drop out.)
Displaced Enron workers can work for defense contractors.
According to Dubya, there is also apparently a moment we must seize.
Now we”re being asked to swallow a new historic period.
In this, the decisive decade for our way of life, we, the right, the proud, the just, have found a new answer to our woes. Forget about the abortion clinic bombers Attorney General Ashcroft won”t capture in his terrorism dragnet. Forget about Columbine and the Enron scandal. Forget about our own sorry state of life and the fat slobbery of prosperity. We have a new distraction. We”re going to war!
Sit down and watch the tube.
That”s because there are no alternatives to Horatio Algerism. We are right. Capitalism is the most efficient way to innovate. Our corporate leaders, who obviously got to the top with the tools of honesty, self-reliance and investment in the future, expect others to do the same. They expect growth. And they expect new markets. They expect results.
Our will is strong, there”s no doubt about that. We”re simply lying to ourselves if we think our will is strong enough to take on the rest of the world.
Yet we expect to win. We will have a triumph of the will, even if it kills us. (Which it probably will.)
We expect no less.
I”m relatively pessimistic about our short- and long-term prospects. How can I feel any different when I know we have an unquenchable culture of bloodlust, more guns than citizens, media that lies to us and a government in the final exhausting heat of a race for empire? We”re taking big strides, people and though its inevitable we”ll fail in our fight with the rest of the world, Rome acquired the most territory in its history during its last gasps. Hey, so did Germany. But then again, we”re fighting for market share, so it doesn”t matter if we abandon our roots.
As long as we don”t admit we”re wrong, we”ll die honorable deaths. And in the meantime, we”ll have what we”ve been referring to as prosperity.
Although ultimatums usually get me into trouble, I have only one criterion for my continued citizenship in this war machine.
I will not be subject to an integrated national identification system, for this spells the triumph of the infrastructure over the people. There is no trust when power is involved. All we can expect is abuse. Link this with a system which matches faces to credentials as one passes before a camera hooked to new face-recognition technology and soon the political dissident becomes the desaparecido, whisked to the private prison-industrial complex”s answer to the gulag. Or like Enron accountants who are supposed to testify before public hearings, we”ll all commit suicide.
Merging database software, identification equipment and economic records with the newly integrated CIA and FBI databases will be a great boost for the lagging tech sector. And what better way to celebrate the marriage of business and government than with the surrender of personal autonomy?
Our wedding presents to GovCorp will be our previous identities. And we”ll get something in return the choice between rolling with the tidal wave or rolling under a rock. At least we can cross our fingers about campaign finance reform, but big whoop. We”ll get something that goes only half way unless we”re articulate in making our demands to get soft money out of the campaign system.
Alas, rolling on in silence is my fate, as this is my final column. And for the record, I do love my country I just don”t confuse it with my government.
Thanks for reading and good luck to you all.
I suggest you buy guns.
Cheers to the fucking Coca-Cola war!
Josh Wickerham wants to thank you for being patriotic and not talking back. He can be reached via e-mail at jwickerh@umich.edu.