The Logic of Capital and the Feminization of the American Right

Londoner

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Jul 17, 2010
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Capitalism is the most productive economic system that mankind has ever created. The speed at which it converts natural resources has allowed it to vastly enrich the material conditions of people -- all people. The only problem is that it tends to exhaust natural resources quicker than they can be replaced. This is why America's pre-war isolationism turned into postwar wanderlust: when the oil runs out in Texas, you gotta hit the road jack.

Specifically, please study the great suburban project that began after WWII. This represents the single most rapid construction of roads and buildings (and the bewilderingly vast supporting infrastructure) the universe has ever seen. The economic activity lifted America's material prosperity to its greatest heights. Please understand: without capitalism's unmatched ability to deploy resources, it would never have happened.

Tragic subtext: The oil required to fuel and sustain the suburban project over the last 70 years meant one thing: America would have to gain influence over the Caspian Basin. [FYI: it's not just the Middle East; the need for minerals leads to Africa; for sugar to South America, for cheap labor > Asia, and on and on and on. Simply protecting the global flow of resources -- securing land-&-maritime trade routes and access to critical raw materials, etc. -- meant that guns would be deployed to unstable regions. FYI: wait until the West starts to run out of fresh water; the consequent resource wars will vastly intensify the cycle of American intervention in economically-poor resource-rich countries followed by terrorist blowback ]

So here is the underlying point: capitalism, ever in need of more resources, is inherently expansionist. Regrettably, this expansion leads to places where capitalism has yet to burn through the natural resources, i.e., the 3rd world. Problem: many 3rd world nations do not share the West's religion, values, or culture. This leads to terrible conflicts, especially with nativists who do not want to see their culture and values obliterated by industrial modernism. [See the German reaction to the French Revolution and you will understand why many traditional cultures feared modernity, which modernity replaced the ancient and living soul of culture with a disenchanted rational grid]

Important point: if you want to understand global conflict, e.g., Cold War, War on Terrorism, you have to understand the underlying geopolitics. You need to understand why superpowers seek control over certain regions. It's not about fighting evil, spreading democracy, or saving the world. No superpower has time for this. Your leaders have an economy to run.

So I ask you: why doesn't the American Right understand the geopolitics or the economic subtext beneath the War on Terrorism? Why don't they understand how the expansionist tendency of capitalism leads to terrorist blowback? Why don't they understand that fake rhetoric about "fighting evil" and "saving the world" (or "spreading democracy") was originally designed for the women and children back on the homeland, who were to be protected from the hard choices men had to make in the outlying colonies. Leaders have always slaughtered the cow so their people could enjoy the steak. Welcome to life on planet earth. It's a jungle, and America is King. The lion has claws for a reason. Own it. [FYI: Every Great Nation does this]

In other words: when did the American Right become so feminized that they had to be protected from the truth? Why don't they understand the logic of capital, and why can't they face the facts about where their material abundance comes from? Why are they so weak that they need to wrap themselves in comforting myths?
 
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