Chuck Grimes ---------
I'd disagree. The neocon package precisely _does not_ represent the objective material interests of the US ruling class _as a whole_, which objectively must 'transnationalize' itself, at most it represents those sectors whose 'business' is dependent upon control of the state: finance, defense contractors, oil and 'pro-Israel' Americans.
That the neocon ideology maps or corresponds to the current ideological subjectivity of the American ruling class in this late age of capitalism (as C. Grimes suciecntly describes it) is incidental - various potental governing coalitions could and have filled these shoes, including thse in the democratic Party, etc. Clintonism filled the same subjectve role/need in the 1990's, etc. This explains the similarities with Kennedy and so forth.
What needs to be explained is why are the _neocons_ in command at this moment? Short answer: they have moved into a yawning void of US ruling class programatic cluelessness as to _what is to be done_ in response to the open outbreak of a crisis of US financial hegemony with the collapse of the stock market bubble post-2000 and, more immediately and acutely, a crisis of regime legitimacy in its' foriegn (and in reaction, now domestic) relations, as a result of the 9/11 attack.
But more generally, from whence the cluelessness, the policy vacuum? I had a little exchange over the recent Davos meeting, where loathing for the Bush Gang and its war drive were near universal. This was interpreted as evidence that the globalizing capitalist class - the George Soroses, etc. - was opposed to Bush, IOW, that the Bush Gang phenomenon could not be explained as a direct product of any capitalist crisis. My response was: Ah, but how many sectors of the _American_ ruling class were represented at Davos? I suspect, not many, and the Davos tends to revolve around the Eurozone.
IOW, the American ruling class is quite narrow and provincial, a tendency further encouraged by the universal tendency towards localized insularity of the bourgeoisie and associated apparachik priviligensia that is the flip side of the growing transnationalization ('globalization') of the same. But 'globalization' impinges upon the historical path of the American bourgeoisie + social base (= apparatchiks) in a most contradictory way: this ruling class also tends to insulate itself off from the rest of the worlds' ruling classes in an attempt to keep on the only historical road it has ever known, that of its exceptional insulation from the rest of the world.
This was true even at the zeinith of post- WW2 and Cold War US "internationalist interventionism"; this was not ever truly "international" but rather was conditioned by the requirement that it maintain this exceptional insularity. When the US productive and financial advantages that underpinned this policy faded, the response was Reaganite "neoliberalism" that ignited 'globalization' only in a still US-centric financial sector (together with the other state dependents: defense and oil), while shipping whole lines of production overseas and fostering the bloat of a highly insular commercial sector. This came to a culmination under Clinton, who did make some ideological effort to lead the American ruling class out into the globalized world (hence the virulence of the Republican Right reaction), but which ran out of time in both the business and foreign policy blowback cycles.
So, it is game over: the American bourgeoisie stands naked and exposed before the world. A near-psychotic delusionary reaction has set in. The Black Commentator has eloquently chronicled this process through an African-American racial prism, which does quite well here, though I would not agree that the Bush 'Pirates' are incidential to the problems of US capitalism:
"Conspiracies will abound in the world, however - directed against the United States. Far from exhibiting devilish cleverness, the Pirates have launched an incredibly stupid war-against-all, telegraphing every move and undermining the stability of the few allies that might be useful to their project. They have totally misjudged or discounted the effects of public opinion on the foreign elites whom they hope to co-opt as subsidiaries to the New American Century. We believe the Bush men cannot conceive of political parties outside of the American model (an absence of parties), do not harbor actual feelings of belonging to a nation (their sense of nation is a set of ambitions and conceits) and therefore cannot perceive such feelings in others, and are contemptuous of all forms of power other than those in which they are superior. They are quite limited men who have reached too far."
http://www.blackcommentator.com/38/38_cover.html
This last sentance completes the circle: the American neocons are merely the most "evolved" of the provincials, as even the Buchananite
"Neoconservatives are pro-bombing, pro-empire heavyweight intellectuals (very rarely a business or military background) who have filled the vacuum on the Right, where most Americans have little interest in foreign policy. They dominate Republican foreign policy because they care about it, whereas most Americans don't. NATO expansion was an example; most Americans don't think about it and don't care. "Neocons" do. Also they heavily influence the Democratic Party from whence they came."
OTOH, "Americans, who have lived abroad and know foreign cultures, are much less likely to be "Neocons." Indeed Neoconservatives are notable for their absence of experience in foreign nations (except sometimes England, or, more rarely France), most never lived abroad, don't speak foreign languages, and never served in the military themselves. They are almost all Washington "policy wonks" who also rarely worked at all in private, much less international, business. They provide the brains, while the Military/Industrial/Congressional complex, provides the brawn of the WAR PARTY, meaning those who want, or thrive during, wars or preparation for war.
The neocons are merely the most 'eddicated' of the American provincials; Dennis Redmond summarized it neatly in his "Geopolitics in the 21st Century":
"Structurally speaking, the US is no longer a global Empire, but is instead a relatively wealthy but increasingly vulnerable semiperiphery, racked by social polarization, chronic underinvestment and current account deficits. The November 2000 coup, when an unelected gang of Petro-fundamentalists hijacked the Federal government without a pipsqueak of protest from the Democrats, was not an unfortunate exception to an otherwise healthy democracy; it was the logical end-result of the neoliberalization of the Democratic Party, as well as a viciously provincial political culture and a hopelessly archaic and undemocratic 18th century system of governance".