Tipping Point: Are we headed toward theocratic fascism?

by Steven Jonas for BuzzFlash

"In 1987 the Yale historian Paul Kennedy published a prescient book entitled The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. From the back cover copy: 'Although the United States is at present still in a class of its own economically and perhaps even militarily, it cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the 'number one' position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategical realm, it can preserve a balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain those commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of ever-shifting patterns of global production. . . . [T]he United States now runs the risk, so familiar to historians of the rise and fall of previous Great Powers, of what might roughly be called 'imperial overstretch:' that is to say, decision makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the sum total of the United States' global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country's power to defend them all simultaneously.'" The U.S. is entering the phase of Kennedy's 'imperial overstretch....The U.S. military is running out of troops. It has too many overseas obligations. It is also running out of money. The mis-named 'entitlements' will be cut back but they can be cut back only so far. The taxes on the rich who now run the country so well in their own interests will be raised a bit, but only so far. With the export of so much U.S. capital and the conversion of its economy from a basis on manufacturing capitalism to finance capitalism, the current army of the unemployed is going to become permanent....The only way for the corporate/finance class to suppress and control that rising discontent among those who will no longer be taken in by the race-based policies of divide-and-conquer will be all-out physical repression. I see nothing but the advent of religio-fascism ahead, very likely lead by Hitler-in-heels-with-a-Smiley-Face."

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