A controversial report was released in 2009by the little-known but highly influential RAND corporation, which does much of the planning and direction for the nation's geopolitical strategy.
(Skip quoted parts if you aren't interested in being educated today.)
The gist of the report is that various insiders in the American government and international NGOs (i.e., World Bank/IMF), were trying to find the money and personnel within American government to build a private army, with the firepower and discretion of a military unit and the legal authority of a police force, and do so without arousing determined opposition from Congress, state and local governments, the American people, or other civilian authorities.
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The report usually uses experience in Iraq as a practical example. But it repeatedly that the proposed military police organization must be able to function in the United States, and that this condition is more important than any other. It also expresses frequent distrust of civilian police chiefs, US Army officers, government officials, and the general public, emphasizing that the "stability police unit" has to be "cohesive" and its "leaders" (it is never explained to what authority they would be accountable) would be able to "influence" personnel without running awry of the leaders of the larger organizations.
The way it seemed they decided to go about doing this is by "housing" what they referred to as "stability police force" in another agency. The report expresses frustration with an inability to procure extremely large amounts of money and personnel (the report stipulates half a billion dollars and several thousand men) without running into constitutional or political brick walls.
In the aftermath of OWS, the controversial National Defense Authorization Act essentially repealed habeus corpus. Obama received most of the blame for this. And now the election is upon us. Romney, the big business guy, says he intends to increase funding for the military and axe Social Security, raising the question of how he intends to keep the country stable without Social Security.
It would seem that this report, together with Romney's affiliation and general world view, contain the answer: essentially, turn the US into a military dictatorship, and instead of passing out welfare checks, point guns at everyone's heads - or at least have a sufficiently mobile and well-armed force discrete from the mainstream justice system to take out any serious opposition. The closest paradigm would be the Nazi SS/SA or Soviet KGB.
This would
corroborate the impression of some that the real intention of NDAA was, "the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army."
An oft-overlooked fact about Bush, who stole the two previous elections, is that his father was head of the CIA for many years, and worked closely with these same insiders on their armed geopolitical schemes, such as Iran-Contragate. Given the ideological and organizational parallels between Bush's "handler" Cheney and Romney, I restate my belief that their approach going forward will be similar, that if Romney cannot win the election outright he will steal it just enough through electronic vote-rigging and other shenanigans.
Now, this doesn't mean voting Obama is a fix; it was, after all, Obama who signed the NDAA into law, and went from saying he
"didn't stand with" the "handful of hedge funds" (who control most of the nation's wealth) to meekly going along with their plans: in essence, he has no power. The election is in effect a choice between the evil and the impotent.
So, what is to be done? How should these developments be conceived?
History is instructive here.
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The best practical examples in how a representative government can descend into military dictatorship in the hands of an armed elite are the rise of:
-The Roman Praetorian Guard
-The Nazi SS/SA
-The Soviet NKVD/KGB
-The Chinese army/secret police
-The rise of Saddam and the Kim family
Although it is generally believed that Hitler founded the Nazi Party and SS, in reality that is not true. The Nazi Party existed before Hitler, its original largely socioeconomic ideology growing out of a strain of thought that went back to the late 19th century. The people, connections and ideas defining the SS and SA were originally what was called the Freikorps, a paramilitary organization produced organically by ultramilitarism during World War I and the opposition of a handful of professional soldiers to peace with the Entente and both the Kaiser and the social democrats. What Hitler brought to the table was tremendous personal energy and genius that allowed him to take control of the small party, fuse its national-socialist ideology with racism and demagoguery, making it palatable to the masses and catapulting the movement into the mainstream.
By the same token, it was not actually Stalin who formed the KGB, but Leon Trotsky, drawing heavily from the secret police elements and disaffected bourgeois that survived the Czarist era. Likewise, in China, it was not Mao who formed the PLA; most of the work was done by two men named Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao. Mao, like Hitler and unlike Stalin, was personally brilliant and charismatic. Stalin - like Mao's ultimate successor, Deng Xiaoping - was an organization man who built a cadre of insiders and on the election of these few gained ultimate power.
We can see similar trends with the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard was formed by Augustus during the last cycles of the Roman Civil War. It was traditional that a Roman general have a small bodyguard, typically loyal to his aristocratic family (comparable to the British Beefeaters or Household Guards). What Augustus did was keep this bodyguard active as a professional military force after the war ended, and in the city of Rome proper, which was against the Roman constitution. (This is the reason why the American Constitution, which is in many ways essentially a simplified and upgraded version of the Roman Constitution, makes the President CinC and contains a variety of restrictions designed to prevent this situation from occurring.) After Augustus died, the Praetorian Guard, along with some other material things and trappings of power, became traditionally passed down from successor to successor, even if the "succession" was less than peaceful. Over time, the Praetorian Guard became a force in its own right, culminating in 193 when the Praetorian Guard actually auctioned the Roman Empire off to the highest bidder.
So, what can we learn from history?
It is in the nature of all human institutions to strive to increase their power. Individual people are mortal, organizations are not; this is a fundamental advantage of the latter as they can outlive both their mission and individuals. Time and again effective leaders created paramilitary organizations that ultimately became forces in their own right, and allied with the most powerful political patrons to ensure their own funding and power.
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The long-term cause of this situation lies in the Great Depression and World War II, the creation of the OSS and empowerment of the Federal Reserve, the untimely demise of FDR, Truman's preoccupation with the Korean War, and the pressures of the Vietnam War. What happened was that the OSS and Fed were created for a supposedly transitory purpose and through ever-growing military budgets and authority, and civilian and military preoccupation with other problems, the two organizations continued to increase their power, create offshoots, and seek additional personnel and sponsors compatible with their role, inherently hostile to the national interest and therefore anyone so affiliated.
McCarthyism was a huge boon in this process and was in my opinion the decisive factor. Over time, the general authority, credibility and effectiveness of government and the Presidency have diminished due to the corrosive effects of capitalism, libertarianism, and racism, giving these clandestine organizations ever more money, power and legitimacy.
So what do we do now?
Again, history is instructive.
The very nature of these organizations is their weakness. They rely upon the pretense of constitutionality, but not the fact, to establish their legitimacy. They therefore lack both feedback towards American society and their own succession. Therefore, their lack of a real mandate will cause their functioning to be corroded by self-interest and infighting while their inability to respond to the needs of the people will destroy their political and economic support. To provide concrete examples of what I'm referring to, consider the 1917 Russian revolution, the 1979 Iran revolution, and the 1989/1991 Soviet revolutions. Eventually things will simply get so bad their center of gravity - funny money and the tatters of the Constitution - will completely vacillate.
For us young people looking to take back control of this planet, what we must do, is simply continue to study and educate ourselves as to the situation. If we keep doing that, eventually popular awareness will reach such a level that events will take shape on their own. It is really that simple.
The TLDR is that arguing on the internet can, in fact, save the world.
I realize what I wrote was very long and most of you probably won't read it, but I encourage you to check all my facts and reasoning. My claims are as huge as they come but show me where I am wrong.
I need to write a book. I will get started at the buffet. Part of why I want to live with some peers is for motivation. It is honestly much harder to be motivated living alone and it bothers me to say that.
