[lbo-talk] The very worst custodians of empire

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Thu Jun 29 10:48:02 PDT 2006


On 6/29/06, Paul <paul_ at igc.org> wrote:
> How much are we thinking of the "old" U.S.?
>
> America is in throes of a vast transformation, going from a country of
> great expectations to the most unequal in the developed world, with the
> least mobility, and the most day-to-day insecurity for the vast
> majority. This is new - and the trend is for even worse ahead. (Never
> mind what happens if there is an old fashioned depression in the midst of
> this change.)

America is the most unequal in terms of class, but in terms of race and ethnicity, it has become quite good at integrating upper crusts of almost all racial and ethnic groups. For the upper crusts of non-whites, opportunities for advancement have never been better. Jewish and Japanese Americans are the most notable beneficiaries of this opening up -- on the average, they are doing better than generic whites. At the same time, class inequality within each racial and ethnic group has become vaster. This has had a particularly devastating effect on Blacks: better-off Blacks no longer share the fate of worse-off Blacks, so worse-off Blacks have been deprived of community resources to fight back in practice, despite the continuing high level of liberal-to-left sentiments among Blacks at the level of opinion, which has ceased to translate into action.

Insecurity that does exist in the United States is currently targeted on three communities at home: poor Blacks; Latino immigrants; and the overlapping groups of Arabs and Muslims; and it is externalized into wars abroad. These will continue to serve as safety valves for discontent.

Moreover, the richest rich in America are still well protected by a fat buffer group of the top 20% income bracket in the USA. Neither the richest rich nor the top 20% don't seem particularly fearful of collective uprisings from below. There just isn't any threat of expropriation to them on the horizon. Many of them are probably afraid of becoming victims of individual crimes, but in this respect, their fear is paranoid: most victims of street criminals are poor, rather than rich, and they are mostly victimized by those of their own races/ethnicities.

Anti-Semitism from above, of the sort that led to pogroms in other countries and the Holocaust at one time, has never been strong in the USA -- which after all has never had a pogrom against Jews -- and it's practically vanished.

What has emerged in the USA is a multicultural empire, very unlike the Jim Crow empire of the past, seeking to lead other great powers' elites by consent, in order to control the rest. As long as you support that multicultural empire, you -- male or female, gay or straight, Jewish or gentile, Black, Latino, Asian, Arab, or whatever -- are always welcome here. If you can claim a mark of racial or ethnic distinction -- the "cultural heritage" thingy -- and you choose to use it for the cause of empire, you are even more welcome here than generic whites who support the same.

-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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