Elites Versus Plebes

Do you know what the problem with US foreign policy is?

We want to promote capitalism in our various satrapies around the globe, but we don’t want to give the natives a stake in the game.

It’s an impossible objective to achieve.

The people will never defend with any vigor the slave capitalism our elites promote.

Why would any native stand up for slavery?

Why would any native subject himself to being a slave ?

That’s what our elites are asking Third World countries to buy into.

Is this a joke or what?

Let me segue now, into an article in Foreign Affairs, which is the rag that the Death Star (Council on Foreign Relations) puts out.

Generally, the articles that appear in this journal are supportive of the empire. Its authors are often delusional people who have been paid off to support the empire and its Disney-esque goals.

This article appeared in the March/April edition. It was written by Elizabeth N. Saunders of Columbia University; it is entitled: Politics Can’t Stop at the Waters Edge.

One gist of this article is that regular Americans do not (or can not) understand foreign policy issues, and so instead adopt the foreign policy position of the particular political candidate that they like.

So, whatever the candidate believes the people will believe also.

I don’t question that conclusion. I do question that this attitude can be applied to the entire citizenry of the USA.

There are plenty of regular people (plebes) who understand foreign policy issues and who care deeply about foreign policy.

In this article, the author also makes the claim that we need the elites in our country to get involved with foreign policy decisions – because the people don’t know anything about foreign policy and as a result elect equally ignorant leaders like Trump who take crazy positions.

Therefore, she argues, it is essential that elites get involved with foreign policy decisions and take over the whole process.

And she doesn’t care whether they are right or left – as long as they are elite.

She claims that Trump driven by populists has taken counterproductive positions that have driven responsible elites out of the policy making arena.

I’m not sure that the author does an adequate job of defining who the elite people are.

Does she mean the elites at Sullivan and Cromwell who fucked over Guatemalans in the early and mid part of the 20th century?

I will assume that she means billionaires, academics, corporate CEOs and self-styled know it alls.

With that stated Icould not disagree more with her conclusions.

The reason we are in a mess in the world today is because of elites.

And that is because the elites look after the interests of themselves and the well-heeled big boys before the needs of the people – here and abroad.

Nevertheless, the author claims that the elites are more often right than they are wrong.

She points to their mistakes in Vietnam, Iraq, but she doesn’t mention precisely where their successes lie.

I would like to know what successes they have because I do not see any successes at all.

The only thing I have read about over the years are failures. And they are too numerous to list.

We could begin with nearly every nation in Central America going back over a century.

We can also add every nation in Southeast Asia.

Remember Vietnam?

Let’s not forget about the Middle East.

Our Central Intelligence Agency which is more responsive to the ruling class than it is to plebes has made a mess in nearly every region of the world in which it hasintervened.

And the successes?

I’m still waiting for one – just one.

Is she talking about the Marshall Plan? The creation of NATO?

The traditional wisdom is that both the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO and other US led organizations were good for Europe and the world. But were they?

Such plans were certainly fueled by US paranoia about communism and the strength of the Soviet Union? But was the Soviet Union, severely weakened by World War II, in a position to run over Western Europe and take it over?

Unlikely.

More likely is that United States elites used that paranoia as a tool to expand their hegemony over the world.

Such a hegemony has come to cost the American people dearly as now a huge proportion of the American economy and tax revenue is now geared toward maintaining such hegemony.

And who benefits from that hegemony?

The elites who own the corporations who sell all the stuff that’s needed to build and maintain those military bases that enforce that hegemony – that Pax Americana.

Thank you, elites!

***

More often than not the elites represent the interests of Corporate America.

Corporate America’s interest has moved on from Europe,. It is now geared toward promoting a crony capitalism slave state in the Third World.

Presumably NAFTA and CAFTA-DR are also considered successes by Professor Saunders.

They most decidedly are not. Both agreements have contributed to the impoverishment of both the American people and the peoples of Mexico and Central America.

There is a reason we have massive migration on our southern border. These people are coming because these agreements made by the elites have made the local’s lives miserable. These agreements now permit US corporations to sue local governments when they dare to pass environmental regulations prohibiting the dumping of toxic materials like cyanide into the waters and lands of their communities.

I do not see this changing by involving more elites into our foreign policy process. Just because the vast majority of Americans are not into the nitty-gritty of foreign affairs, does it mean that there are not many responsible plebes who are.

I propose therefore that elites be replaced by plebes.

Let the plebes, who have been driven out of the policy making process by Ivy League elites, be given the opportunity to participate.

That will not happen as long as the majority of our leaders, secretaries of state, and high-level people in the state department, the Central Intelligence Agency and other federal agencies come out of the Ivy League.

Only a broad representation of the American public can mitigate the slave state crony capitalism that our country currently imposes upon the world.

Elites are not the answer; elites are the problem.

Regular people who are closer to people of modest means are much more likely to defend the interests of the people who they know and associate with.

Elites too far removed from the lower classes have less sense of responsibility to the people they are entrusted to take care of.

Noblesse oblige left this country a long time ago.

Only with the participation of plebes will we be able to change our foreign policy to the one that John Kennedy envisioned, a foreign policy that encourages America to partner with other people in the world to make their lives better.

Our current methodology, as I mentioned before, imposes a slave state upon the Third World, and then acts genuinely surprised when these people turn to a rebel leader who desires to impose a communist system.

This has happened time and time again to the United States of America.

It is akin to an individual repeatedly performing a head first dive into an empty swimming pool and expecting to come out okay.

It’s not going to come about okay.

Real change is desperately needed.

Without that change America will collapse as more and more debt is heaped upon the American people in order to support a military industrial complex which benefits primarily the wealthy.

***

So what is Professor Saunders beef? What bothers her the most? I think her argument is this:

Regular people who don’t know anything about foreign policy are gravitating toward and electing Trump, who takes crazy positions on foreign policy. This has resulted in a disillusionment in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party amongst elite professionals who have decided to leave government and not getting involved in foreign policy decisions. She sees this is a bad thing. What she desires is for both Republican and Democratic Party elites to involve themselves heavily within the process of making foreign policy. She believes this is the best counterpunch to the ignorant populists who support an equally ignorant Trump.

For the record, I despise Donald Trump with every fiber of my being.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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