U.S. Empire Saber Rattling - Will The U.S. Default On China’s Treasuries?

The jaw-dropping lunacy of this world is staggering. I really want to talk about Trump’s forced death march decree for unsafe meat processing corporations.  This latest government decree is just the latest in a progression of greater and greater corporate violence within that industry.  And, the fact that OSHA has stated it will essentially absolve these corporations of liability for forcing people back to work shows the dystopian horror of what is happening.  The insidious elements of this have staggering implications.  By the way, I propose politicians, celebrities and American CEOs “do their own laundry”.  They can take their place on these meat processing lines.  Can you imagine that?  Trump or Pelosi processing meat?  Or, Kim Kardashian or Bob Eiger?  On second thought, we'd all die relying on them. Front line workers, white or blue collar, provide privilege to people of class and institutionalized entitlement. People who are generally useless. We need to de-institutionalize power and privilege to have an egalitarian society where talent rises to the top.  And, that talent isn’t for purposes of control.  It’s for an enriching society for all of its participants.  Not those most willing to stomp on the face of their fellow man.  It’s the talent of art, literature, science, philosophy, love, compassion, justice, ethics, community, dignity and the like.  Maybe I’ll post more on the meat mess next week.  But what we need in this world is a little bit of anarchy principles to nonviolently remove concentrated power and resultant entitlement from our existence.  We need to remove the rule of man of institutionalization and return to the rule of law based on natural rights and human dignity.

A couple of links before I continue with the post.

U.S. Officials Crafting Retaliatory Actions Against China Over Coronavirus

Exclusive: White House Told Federal Officials To Classify Coronavirus Deliberations (And completely disregarded within the media.)

America’s National Security Machine Stares Down A Viral Threat

There’s a reason I have been fixated on U.S. government jingoism regarding China over the last few months. Because the U.S. is seemingly laying the propaganda groundwork for a political response to this pandemic.  China is in the crosshairs of the United States and let’s be honest, this crisis is convenient for that.  It’s not the root cause of it.  Or, as has become popular to say, politicians never miss an opportunity created by crisis.  Free speech is already under attack on the Internet, the last bastion of freedom in this nation.

Make no mistake, as I noted on here many times over the years, the U.S. holds all of the cards with China. China is a vassal state of U.S. empire and it’s growth in economic and political strength has become a threat to modern-day Rome.  Don’t kid yourself regarding China dumping Treasuries or China not selling the U.S. this or that as you see written regularly over the years.  These show a lack of understanding of how the world works.  The Federal Reserve bought more Treasuries in the last month than China has probably bought in the last twenty years.  If China dumped all of their Treasuries, which first of all would be suicidal, the Federal Reserve could sweep them up in an afternoon and not miss a beat.  The U.S. may endure temporary hardship in any divorce but China will collapse.  Will. Not Maybe. 

For some reason people don’t seem to understand the China economic miracle isn’t a miracle at all.  The miracle is the power of U.S. empire to create China’s miracle. China’s belligerence is growing and citizens of the U.S. are becoming restless due to globalization.  U.S. politicians are beginning to understand that they’ve created a mess.  I’m not sure they have any desire to clean up that mess on behalf of democracy but they almost certainly are willing to give China a lesson for getting too big for its britches and causing the empire undue distress.

I wrote on here ages ago that the Federal Reserve could mop up Treasuries dumped by China with the flick of the wrist.  I wrote that the U.S. could default on China’s Treasury holdings as an act of belligerence.  Strikingly, that is exactly what the Trump administration has posed as a possibility in the Washington Post article link above.  Economic warfare is a weapon regularly used by empire. Currency war is an integral part of corporate capitalism and exists every day by every major economic nation state on earth.  It’s no coincidence that Britain defaulted on US debt at the start of the Great Depression.  That was almost certainly a belligerent act to destroy US economic threat to British Empire. History rhymes.

The United States has more options against China beyond defaulting on China’s Treasury holdings but they all have the same impact.  That is, reassert control over its empire and any threats to it.  By the way, this would almost certainly not impact U.S. reserve currency status.  The U.S. has a lot of friends in this world.  Relationships may be strained but the world would line up behind us.  That includes the majority of the world’s dictatorial countries who get massive dollar handouts from Washington.  And, who would collapse without that payoff.

What makes this even more interesting is that the United States classified its coronavirus response early on in this crisis.  See the above link.  That means the National Security Council recommended it per the Reuters’ exclusive above that was announced nearly two months ago.  And, that likely means the U.S. government, and specifically the military-security wing of the empire, was almost certainly considering weaponizing their response to this pandemic from the very beginning.  Don’t kid yourself that this rhetoric is Trump unhinged.  He may be unhinged but the security and military apparatus are providing guidance given this crisis has been classified.  This is shaping up to be just like 9/11 and the empire’s response.  Not that we are going to literal war with China. But, some major actions are almost certain.

Because the U.S. is still a democracy in name and in institutions, our government and corporations must rely on brainwashing and propaganda to create citizen support for endless war, dehumanization of U.S. and immigrant workers, massive poverty in the U.S., slave labor camps in China and the like. If that ability to achieve citizen support through propaganda ends, then we have a whole new dynamic.  Which has been starting to happen over the last few decades as the world, including Americans, wakes up to the plutocratic, institutionalized rot in their respective economies and governments. The question is will the propaganda machine be able to gin up support for any potential actions against China.

Or, would the U.S. publicly destroy its democratic institutions to maintain its empire and control over its citizens?  I would argue they have been destroying them continually for nearly 200 years.  Although it’s insidiously accomplished through the corruption of our court systems with legal decisions and through corrupt legislation that is often more of a back door destruction by empowering corporations.  In past times, the U.S. frontier allowed people to continually push west to escape the tentacles of our repressive corporate and economic elite-owned government.  Then in the twentieth century, there was no more frontier.  No place to run.  So, now we are all forced into the cauldron of what has always been a rotten, economic elite-driven plutocracy that coalesced soon after our founding. Jefferson noted this in his writings. The true leader of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, was abandoned by his country soon after the Revolution because his principles of human dignity, anti-slavery, women’s rights and social programs to empower all Americans was a threat to our new establishment aristocracy.  People who believe the U.S. has just recently become corrupt are romanticizing a past that never existed.  Our ideals are noble but the reality is brutal, violent and cruel with the hope of a minority of always being more than that. Americans have experienced at least seven periods in our history where human progress has fought against the establishment for greater freedom and dignity.  This time is different given the Internet.  It’s no surprise that the new “frontier” of the Internet is now under attack by the U.S. corporate state.  Just as our western frontier was continually under attack by an ever-expanding and encroaching plutocracy until the entire nation was under its grips.  (By the way, plutocracy is a 19th century term used to describe America. It’s time we wake up from the dream. This isn’t because of Obama or Trump as so many ideologues wish to see it.)

The free exchange of ideas that the Internet provides is the greatest threat to institutionalized entitlement and the plutocracy that the world has ever seen. We see unsavory elements all over the world attempting to shut it down to maintain the grip of illegitimacy of a ruling class of political and economic parasites.  And, the U.S. is no exception with government cooperation with Google, Facebook and others to stifle freedoms.  In other words, through fascism.

Americans today already hide in the shadows out of fear of retaliation from the state.  Just like they do in China and did in the Soviet Union.  And, when we dare speak the unthinkable, the possibility is more than likely that we will be destroyed or imprisoned economically and socially.  What am I talking about?  Corporations monitor employee free speech and actions on the Internet.  Any Internet manifestations of free speech written by a corporate employee that threatens corporation-enforced political-correctness or could possibly damage a corporation’s reputation almost certainly means its author faces dismissal, financial ruin and economic isolation.  And, as a result, difficulty finding a few position as a corporate slave and being forced into what is essentially a social prison.  This didn’t start with the advent of the Internet.  Any threats to corporate power and the state have always been met with this.  Examples after examples of people who have been targeted and destroyed over the centuries. 

The flip side of this is the most successful in society are those that are willing to conform and do the bidding of our masters.  To sell our souls.  To remain silent in the face of loss of liberty, exploitation and Godlessness.  All for our own selfish benefit.  Or, as emotionally-stunted Ayn Rand titled her book, “The Virtues of Selfishness”.  Again, no surprise.   It is this dynamic that fuels support for endless U.S. wars, unconstitutional policies, unconstitutional court decisions, corporate exploitation of the poor, immigration slave labor and the like.  It’s also why successful corporate donkeys continue to prop up the rotten two-party political system. Because that system supports our own soul-less, unethical careers that have been perpetuated by turning a blind eye to injustices we’ve helped create in our country or elsewhere. The cult of self society.

The government doesn’t have to take away our constitutional freedoms.  It lets corporations do it for them under the propaganda of corporate capitalism, economic freedom and “free” markets.  And, successful workers who focus on their corporate careers enable their own tyranny and those around the world.  They do so by being silent in the face of the horrors and injustices they help perpetuate.  Furthering their own careers by being a silent, obedient, good corporate slave is more important than the truth.  This happens all while the government continues to provide the illusion of maintaining your constitutional freedoms.   And, it has been doing so for most of our country’s existence.

One of my favorite quotes is from Henry David Thoreau and has been written on here many times-

"Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few--as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men--serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. ........  Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

And, we can’t imagine how anyone can be so brainwashed as the Nazis or communists.