How America Learned to Play God
The Aftermath of 9/11: America’s Second Great Transformation and the Emergence of a Brave New World
by John Chuckman
November 6, 2013
I call America’s pattern of behavior since 9/11 a “great transformation” because it involves revolutionary changes for
the country and, unavoidably, the entire world. In its internal affairs, America has effectively weakened the
protections of the Bill of Rights and instituted many of the practices of police states – all under the insidious
rationale of “protection from terrorists,” a subject heading which incapacitates the courts and serves to draw a great
dark cloak over matters vital to all. Secrecy, always a favorite tool of cowardly politicians, now has assumed an
enormous, central position in America. Spying, both on your own people and on those abroad, has become pervasive.
America has increased spending on military and intelligence to levels dangerously high both for the stability of the
world and the future integrity of its own society. These resource-wasting establishments also will entangle any state in
all sorts of costly unanticipated difficulties over time. Foreign policy has shifted to adopt the once-laughable,
malevolent fantasies of the Neocons as official America policy, including an unapologetic and unprincipled use of
America’s military strength around the world and a savage effort to remake the entire Middle East to its own liking,
ignoring the region’s acute problems and treating the hopes of tens of millions for better lives as so much collateral
damage from a bombing run.
These massive changes add to a social and governing structure which already had grown far away from the people, a
structure which in many ways resembles that of pre-revolutionary, 18th century France, a state ruled by and for a class
of landed aristocrats, a class of church aristocrats, and a ruling family and its armies. In contemporary America, the
great hierarchies are the Pentagon, an immense web of sixteen intelligence agencies, and the great corporations with
their immensely wealthy owners.
America’s first great transformation was the Civil War, a war which was not about slavery as is commonly believed and
generally taught in public schools but about the division of powers between states and the federal government, affecting
the very economic and political structure of the nation. The United States under the original Constitution was a very
different place than we have come to know it. The Civil War reduced authorities of the states, demolished many
formidable internal barriers to trade and to federal political power, and elevated the federal government from a mere
debating forum between states into a powerful central authority. The Civil War transformed, too, the United States into
a world-class industrial nation and military power which would in coming decades embark on new colonial wars and
adventures. The Civil War made possible the growth of mighty national industries and the coming Age of Robber Barons and
was a necessary precursor to the changes now underway.
For a good deal of time, America grew a healthy middle class, and for a brief golden era even industrial workers in
America prospered remarkably. Political rights and freedoms tended to expand with that growth. But real per capita
income of middle to lower-middle class Americans has dropped for many years now, a result in great part of globalization
and new competitors coming up in the world. That has been a major impetus for social change as American middle class
families attempt to hold their positions with incomes from two careers and lower costs in a seemingly infinite sprawl of
cheap hinterland suburbs. And for years now, the American establishment has made the keenest political issue of taxes,
but an issue only in the sense of by just how much to lower them, most particularly those affecting the wealthy.
To some extent a fortress-like mentality had taken hold of the middle class for years as they saw themselves on their
way to work passing parts of rotting cities - doors always locked on their tank-like SUVs and vans - struggling to raise
their position in the world by fending off taxes as much as possible, and, even, in a growing number of instances,
living in “gated communities” out of fear of crime spreading from rotted cities. I think that kind of prevailing
mentality helps greatly for accepting America’s new, more oppressive measures.
One might think the United States would have learned from the country it now copies closely: Israel has had a paralyzing
web of secret police, border restrictions, secret prisons, and a massive military establishment for 65 years, yet it has
never enjoyed genuine peace and lives in a chilling, unpleasant relationship with all of its neighbors. The average
Israeli too does not enjoy a great life in an economically-inefficient society (whose interests, moreover, are heavily
tilted towards those of its privileged groups), and then there’s that “great mob of Arabs out there” regarded in much
the same way America regards its poor blacks. And were it not for immense subsidies and special favors keeping Israel
afloat, that security state likely would collapse under the weight of its economic inefficiency. When any state puts
absolute security above everything else, much of what it achieves is not worth having. Stalin perhaps provides history’s
bleakest, most extreme example of running an absolute security state.
Of course, security, as understood by what Stalin called “wreckers of the revolution” and what Israel and the United
States call “terrorism,” is not the complete reason for secret prisons and building walls and networks and police forces
and spy systems. Those with great power and wealth and special interests have always had an instinctive impulse to
control their environment, including the other people who inhabit it. Vast guarded estates and fences and bodyguards and
summary justice for those trespassing have always been features of life for the great and powerful, and the same
impulses exist for powerful organizations within a state, especially militarized states. Close control over behavior
unacceptable to an establishment - including behavior that is merely different or dissident or embarrassing or slightly
shady or emotionally off-balance or politically threatening - is at the heart of the matter. A gigantic network has been
created in the United States which will detect, track, and file away information on these behaviors in perpetuity. The
potential for blackmail and intimidation of political opponents or NGO leaders or writers or the press is enormous.
While this may not be the case at first, over time, can you think of any apparatus that has gone unused by those with
power, any apparatus which has not been abused? We should not forget that as recently as the 1960s, the FBI was actively
trying to get Martin Luther King to commit suicide with anonymous letters threatening to reveal what secret recordings
revealed. America is, after all, a country that has used atomic weapons, twice, and both times on civilian targets.
America is now also doing something no other country is in a position to do: it is exploiting the dollar’s privileged
position as the world’s reserve currency to pay for much of its gigantic waste through massive future devaluation of an
asset held by millions around the world. Unconscionable? Arrogant? Bullying? Those words I think are fairly applied to
the changes. It may be no consolation for those being steamrolled by America that its behavior is unavoidably weakening
its position in the world, but that is a fact. The bullying will prevail for a time, but it does speed the day when
world leadership shifts to new hands, not necessarily to any single country like China but possibly to a consortium of
rapidly-growing large states – India, Russia, Brazil, and China - with interests of their own.
It is no wonder that the conspiracy-oriented regard 9/11 as some kind of black operation used to shift the direction of
the country towards a brave new world. The only conspiracy I see in the events around 9/11, though, are the American
government’s refusal to explain to its own people what happened while exploiting events to its benefit, doing things it
likely long has wanted to do. It is covering up both the incompetence and destructiveness of the operations of its own
intelligence and military establishments as well as the deadly stupidity of some of its foreign policies, policies which
seem fixed in amber through the tireless work of special interests. Dishonesty now has become a hallmark of American
government. Those with power feel no obligation to explain to the people they nominally serve what happened in almost
any event of genuine importance, and a long-term practice has only become more intense and pervasive.
America’s press, still sometimes is heard patting itself on the back as the “fourth estate” protecting peoples’
interests and handing out meaningless journalism awards to itself, actually works as a silent partner with government,
never once investigating the genuinely important stuff. A merged, corporate press has no interest in investigating a
corporate government, indeed it depends on government agencies for the leaks and interviews and data access which make
it appear as though it is investigating and reporting day-in, day-out. It often provides the security agencies with
cover for their overseas operations, it frequently has hired them, sometimes unwittingly, onto its staff, and it
provides an outlet for the agencies’ disinformation, again sometimes unwittingly. And of course the corporate
advertising which sustains the press puts the scrutiny of many corporate matters out of bounds, including many cozy and
anti-democratic relationships with government and its major agencies.
Just as there is a natural cycle in the life of great industries – the scores of early American car manufacturers are
now reduced to a few functioning as an oligopoly, an historical pattern repeated in industry after industry – there
appears to be a life cycle for a government organized like that of the United States. The duopoly which runs the
American government consists of two parties which differ in almost no particulars except some social issues, but even
that difference is rather a sham because the American government no longer has any interest in social issues. It is
concerned overwhelmingly with representing and furthering the interests of the nation’s three great power centers of the
military-industrial-intelligence complex. Social issues now are soap-box stuff for street-corner politicians and members
of NGOs.
But in any case, all players in this political duopoly, no matter to which office they may be elected, know they can
never challenge the immense authority and virtual omnipresence of America’s military, intelligence, corporate
hierarchies and special interests like the Israel Lobby, powerful anti-democratic institutions which literally shape the
space America’s politicians must inhabit.
Americans today quite simply could not vote in an informed manner if they wanted to do so (and many are not interested
in voting at all, as we shall see): they are completely in the dark as to what happens inside their government, both its
operations within the country and in international affairs. No one knows the full extent of spending on intelligence,
nor do they know what dark programs are underway. No one knows the full extent of spending on the military, nor do they
know to what questionable tasks it is being put around the world. No one knows the immense extent and complexity of
lobbying and special interests in the American government. And of course no one is privy to the planning and operations
of the great corporations, nor do they know anything of the dealings and financing arrangements between those
corporations (or the wealthy individuals who own and run them) and the people’s supposed representatives, who all must
spend a substantial part of their time just raising money for the next election (the average American Senator is said to
spend two-thirds of his or her time doing just that).
Americans’ votes in elections have become to a remarkable extent meaningless, although an elaborate political stage play
keeps the appearance of meaning and keeps those interested in politics involved and entertained. Almost certainly as a
result of sensing how little their votes count, Americans often simply do not vote and do so in increasing numbers. The
further down the political totem pole you go from the presidential elections which generate the most noise owing to the
obscene amounts of money spent on marketing and advertising, the greater is this truth. Maybe 60% vote for president, a
minority vote in other national elections, and a tiny fraction vote in state and local elections.
For those who cherish rights and values won since the Enlightenment, it is a disheartening prospect we face. A nasty
bully, armed to the teeth and endowed with a profound sense of entitlement and scant regard for the other 95% of
humanity, casts a long shadow over the entire planet. Not so terrifying a figure as a Stalin or a Hitler, he is
frightening enough, and his insincere words about rights and values and fairness fool many as he proceeds to do just as
he pleases, including killing any individual on the planet he decides in secret to be an opponent. It is indeed a brave
new world, not Shakespeare’s and something far grimmer than Huxley’s.
ENDS