Chris Floyd, "Process of Elimination: The West's Rapid Slide Into Slaughter"

"Process of Elimination: 

The West's Rapid Slide Into Slaughter"

by Chris Floyd  

“As it is written: "Though we seemed dead, we did but sleep." We have finally returned from a series of grueling and at times bewildering traversals of the planet in several directions. Still a bit dazed, we will shortly be back in fighting trim. In the meantime, I would by no means insult your intelligence by suggesting you go immediately to Arthur Silber's site to partake of the feast of biting, bitter yet buoyant wit and slashing insight that he has produced during our time away. Surely it would be superfluous in me to point the readers of this site to Silber's work; surely your own discernment and good sense have already led you there on a constant and continual basis.

But on the off chance that some stray pair of eyes (among the ever-dwindling pack of peepers that wander by these precincts) have not yet hied to Silber - do so, now. For there are ugly things afoot - an acceleration of the already long-accelerating on-rush of the nations of the West into the hardest, most brutal kind of authoritarianism. It is happening on an array of fronts, aggressively, simultaneously, from every direction. As Silber notes in this landmark piece, "Caught Up in Nightmare: Killing Jack Rabbits": "The ruling class now visits on its domestic populations the same fate it has delivered for hundreds of years to those deeply unfortunate peoples who lived in targeted foreign countries. In their pursuit of power, wealth and dominion, the ruling class systematically brutalized, tortured, "relocated" and murdered those foreign peoples in vast numbers. (All this continues today, of course; see Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, et al.)

England and the United States are hollowed-out societies, with their former productive capacity vanishing at an ever-increasing rate. In close alliance with the State, the most powerful and wealthiest corporations continue to amass record profits, but only by siphoning up every last bit of wealth held by the numerically greatest, but otherwise weakest and most defenseless, part of the population. Every significant piece of legislation must be viewed in this context. This is true even of legislation which styles itself as concerning matters which would not appear to be directed to policing the "undesirable" elements of the population. Thus, Obama's heralded "health reform" bill, which I dubbed The F**k You Act, has very little to do with providing health care, but everything to do with brutally controlling the weakest segments of society and extracting what little money they have left for the benefit of already vastly wealthy insurance companies and their constant partner, the State.

Although it is perilous to make such judgments as events continue to unfold, the evidence strongly compels the conclusion that we have entered the death spiral for the West's ruling class. The disfavored members of society have less and less economic resources of their own to be extracted, and fewer (and often non-existent) opportunities for improving them. Simultaneously (and inextricably connected to this point), the same disfavored members are increasingly unable to defend themselves in any area of their lives. The growing surveillance State watches over them day and night, privacy approaches the point of complete eradication, and the State continually adds to the weapons it uses to harass, intimidate, brutalize and imprison them. The State's methods of control are increasingly, brazenly explicit and crueler by the day...

If we broaden our perspective, and if we look beyond particular developments and attempt to grasp what is happening over a longer period of time, the nature of the horror that awaits us takes on a clearer shape: The West's ruling class is embarked on a program of killing and elimination. A general caution should be kept in mind. I'm not suggesting that this program is one that the ruling class has explicitly identified, even to itself, at least not necessarily. The ruling class is intent upon increasing its own power and wealth; in one sense, that is its only concern. I suppose, in some fantasy world, the ruling class would be content to enjoy its immense power and wealth while "ordinary" people pursue their own lives of contentment. This, of course, is the goal which the ruling class announces, and which it desperately tries to convince both itself and us is true.

But we don't live in that fantasy world. In this world - and, I would argue, in any world where brute power is the final means of settling every dispute, especially when that power is consolidated in the State - the ruling class seeks power and wealth by dominating and controlling the weaker segments of society. The ruling class may not set out to kill those people it finds unnecessary for its aims, but if the ruling class can maintain and increase its power and wealth only by eliminating them, it will eventually eliminate them. This is the logic of the ruling class's desires. It is certainly true that the ruling class could change much of this if it wished to: the productive capacity of both England and the United States could be reinvigorated, and much new wealth could be created and enjoyed by many more members of society. But the ruling class believes that would necessitate the diminishment of its power and wealth, so they will not consider the possibility seriously.

The ruling class dreamed a nightmare, and made it real. We are now caught up in it. For many of us - certainly for me, and very possibly for you - the end result is clear: the ruling class intends to kill us. Not today or tomorrow, the ruling class hasn't reached that point of desperation quite yet, but they'll kill us soon enough. We have no value to them; we're superfluous; we're not needed."

Here Silber is giving more eloquent and deeper voice to a theme I was trying to sketch out some years ago, in a piece called "Worm Turning." Written in 2004, it focused on the Bush family, then in power; but of course, the critique applied - and applies - far more generally to our thoroughly bipartisan elite. As I put it then (with slight editing here to broaden the point): "Underneath all this bristling array there is nothing but a tiny white maggot of greed, wriggling and gorging on scraps of rotting meat. No deep beliefs or high ideals inform the [elitist] ethos, which can be boiled down to one sentence: Grab your pile and screw anybody who gets in the way. War, energy and corporate finance just happen to be where the money is at. And raw, secretive political power - unfettered by courts, laws, legislators or public scrutiny - is the most effective way to safeguard and augment these investments.

That is not to say that the elitist credo lacks all nuance. There is in fact a very important refinement to their wormy greed: Loot should always be obtained without the slightest risk to your own financial position. The "free market" must be shunned at all costs - and manipulated by string-pulling, deceit and intimidation when competition is unavoidable. Thus the elite model is to cozy up to governments - preferably strongman regimes free to ladle out public money to their favorites with no questions asked. Our elites don't sit in dark corners and cackle over the idea of children being chewed to pieces by American bombs. Nor do their nostrils flare with righteous rage at the thought of homosexuality or abortion or nipples on national television. It's just that war profiteering, corporate rapine and cynical pandering to the public's worst instincts are the easiest way to get the unearned riches they crave.

Perhaps if they could obtain these same privileges as easily by other, less horrific means, they would. As it is, they take the world as they find it, and go about their business without fretting over the consequences - the dead, the ruined, the spreading hate, the poisoned planet. Why should they care? As the maggot cannot see beyond the meat, so too these men of greed-stunted understanding can see nothing of worth outside their own bottomless appetites."

Back to Silber, and to our garishly nightmarish present-day: "Before the ruling class finally eliminates the "undesirables," there is a necessary preceding step: the most disfavored, weakest elements of society must be demonized. I heard the following article first mentioned by Rush Limbaugh; it was quickly picked up by many conservative commentators (including self-identified "libertarians"). Limbaugh praised the article in glowing terms; he thought it identified the crucial issue in especially eloquent terms. For Limbaugh, the crucial issue was one made familiar in connection with history's bloodiest and most horrifying episodes of mass murder, although Limbaugh himself failed to note that fact. I'm sure it was merely an oversight. The crucial issue is, obviously, that the rioters are, as Limbaugh summarized it, "human only by virtue of their DNA." The rioters are not actually human at all; they are sub-human, animals deserving only to be put down."

There is much, much more in this single post by Silber - including the deeper historic context of our landslide into eliminationism - not to mention the other recent offerings. Again, if you have not yet read them, I urge you most strongly to go there and read them now.”

- http://www.chris-floyd.com/

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