Joel Kotkin writes in the Washington Post that DC has finally become the capital of the world; that the “imperial Presidency” has stopped becoming a figure of speech and has now become literal reality. The current economic crisis has given DC the excuse to call the shots, not only in rival domestic centers of power, but in foreign capitals now beset by collapse. It’s growth in power has been evergreen: the one place on earth that prospers both in good times and in bad. But especially in bad.
It would take enormous misfortune — the Depression — to provide Washington with its first great growth spurt. As the business empires of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland buckled and the New Deal took control of the economy, power shifted decisively to the capital. This expansion of influence continued with the onset of World War II and then during the Cold War.
AdvertisementThe ensuing rise of the military and domestic bureaucracies transformed Washington from a small provincial city into a major metropolitan area. The greater economic shift from a predominantly manufacturing to a high-tech, information-centered economy also played to Washington’s strengths. In his groundbreaking 1973 book, “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society,” the sociologist Daniel Bell predicted that the country’s prevailing “business civilization” would inevitably become dominated by the government bureaucracy. Corporations would eventually look to Washington’s lead for regulatory standards, to sponsor research and make critical science-related decisions. …
Even industries that are well plugged in to the new Obama regime — such as venture capital and alternative energy — are facing financial ruin from the downturn in both markets and energy prices. To win new funding and subsidies for their next bubble, they’ll increasingly rely not on their ballyhooed cleverness but on their pull with the White House, Congress and the new science apparat, under the green-oriented Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Obama’s neo-Malthusian pick for White House science adviser, physicist John Holdren. …
Over time, those of us in the provinces may grow to resent all this, seeing in Washington’s ascendancy something obtrusive, oppressive and contrary to the national ethos. But don’t expect Washingtonians to care much. They’ll be too busy running the country, when not chortling all the way to the bank.
But Kotkin’s view may ironically be too provincial. From further afield, the new Washington may more closely resemble a growing parasite on a dying host. Some in Japan are asking whether the United States is still able to perform its role as a security guarantor. The flip-side to Washington’s obsession with itself will be its growing inability to perceive external reality. Obama may give a good speech, but whether his golden voice will stop an inbound North Korean missile or counterbalance China is a question that can only seriously be debated in DC. Everyone else will probably know the answer is “no”.
It is this narcissism which may eventually prove to be the bureaucracy’s undoing. It may know less than it pretends to. Aziz Poonawalla wonders why Obama seems unaware of the genocide in East Timor when he holds up his experience of life in Indonesia as a qualification for office. (Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds)
Gary Farber sounded the alarm last month about President Obama’s nominee for National Intelligence Director, Denis Blair, who was complicit in genocide in East Timor during the Clinton Administration. … If Obama, who has lived in Indonesia (a fact he trumpets), is unaware of the history of the genocide in East Timor, then that’s quite an embarrassment, but it can be fixed, starting with replacing Blair as nominee for top spy.
Now maybe it is unfair to hold Denis Blair responsible for the policies of his boss, Bill Clinton. Or perhaps the question about Timor should more properly be put to Hillary, who will after all become Secretary of State. But Timor is small and far away. Gaza is bigger, isn’t it? Nobody is expected to be aware of its existence in the ultimate center of things. Perhaps even Japan may escape notice for a while. Which highlights the main difficulty with Kotkin’s belief the efficacy of centralization. Maybe the problem with trying to be the Capital of the World with one’s vision circumscribed by the Beltway, or at least by Chicago, is that of sight being exceeded by grasp.
The power of the American consumer once held the world together and fostered decades of peace and prosperity. Now that the Imperial United States is the final authority and no longer represents the people of the United States all the previous agreements and the former status quo are now dissolved. There are no impediments to attacking a state that does not have the authority or the backing of its own people.
Expect global war.
The feedback in the echo-chamber that is bounded by the Beltway is so loud that little, if anything, of the outside world is noticed.
Genocides, tyrants, expanding Putinochracy all cry out for attention but their sound is drown out by the ringing applause for the One.
Heck, he is too busy saving the economy to deal with that foreign stuff anyways.
There are visible and not-so-visible fundamental values in American culture (assuming “American culture is not an oxymoron).
The visible values will be on display prominently in the Super Bowl and popular culture as mediated by the media and the comsumerist culture.
Not-so-visible values (what Jews might call the mayim hayim, or living waters that flow beneath the holy text) are pretty obvious. You see them in every Norman Rockwell painting, or in every film in which respect for the value of a human being revails. “The Dark Knight” has several moments of heroism that spring from respect for the individual (e.g. the scene on the ferry). Willy Loman is a tragic figure because, as Linda reminds her sons, Willy is a man. Attention must be paid. Mustn’t it?
George Bush always seemed to represent those kinds of values that affirm the individual, not as a member of a class or example of an oppressed group but as an ordinary American, the Joe the Plumber and so on. Government, in this world view, exists to serve the people.
Needless to say, there is another strain of political philosophy that sees government as the means to utilitarian ends, assigning to itself the responsibility of ensuring the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As the current Secretary of State once said, never having an original idea in her public life, it takes a village to raise a child. As P. J. O’Rouke commented, to save people from wasting time in reading the book, “The government is the village. You are the child.”
Wrichard has written often about the hypocrisy of government leaders focusing only on the highly visible (Gaza) at the expense of the nearly invisible (East Timor, etc., ad nauseam). Is this not due in part to the diminishing value that the culture places on life? A rabbi kept a piece of paper in each pocket. One said “Remember that thou art dust.” The other said “God created you only a little lower than the angels,” or something to that effect. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, almost everyone, has a saying that to save the life of one fellow human is as virtuous as to save them all. The angels in heaven rejoice over the repentence of one sinner. Etc.
As usual, the criticisms of the left are best and reliably understood as projection. In criticizing the Bush “imperial presidency,” the left was betraying its own lust for imperium.
It used to be that people had somewhere to flee to when they could no longer stand the tyranny under which they lived. But where can we go? Yes, we can leave the big cities and move to more conservative states – but they are ultimately dependent on sea ports for trade, and AFAIK all seaports exist in areas (large urban centers) which are inevitably dominated by the left.
There is no moon colony or o’neill cylinder to emigrate to. We’re stuck here.
Texas has a very nice sea port, thank you.
The Southwest’s indigenous tribes took to living in cliff-faces.
“The Southwest’s indigenous tribes took to living in cliff-faces.”
Ah. A mystery solved. I once visited Mesa Verde as a child and wondered what would drive someone to live in a place like that. Now, after having paid taxes for a couple of decades plus, I think I understand.
OT: keep an eye on davos
As for the southwest. Up until december Obama was seriously interested in giving Indians sovereignty. Don’t know where he is now–since he made a point to swear the oath on Lincoln’s bible. There was a double meaning there.
This post is spot-on. Kotkin has been often interesting, but this is seriously misguided, an example of blind narcissism. At least some of the arguments behind “the rise of everybody else” thesis are undeniable. A number of countries grew wealthy of late, ironically thanks to American-sponsored globalization and market principles. Now they may decide that based on recent events, the economic arrangement dependent on the continued insatiabilty of the American consumer is unstable. “We did everything right, yet we are being punished” is the refrain you hear from some emerging market countries. Looking for a way to have less to do with the US will come natural to them – you don’t even have to be anti-American for that (which they as often as not, are). I see it coming very clearly and, being a very pro-American European, I am scared of it.
As for Obama and East Timor, it doesn’t surprise me. Remember, the key word of his foreign policy approach is dignity. And dignity shouldn’t be confused with civil rights and democracy. I understand it to mean, roughly “if you don’t produce too many CNN-worthy corpses and will charm Michael Moore by providing your subjects with some drinking water, then we promise we’ll not insult your dignity by criticizing your dictatorship.” Or, authoritatively, “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
“”"”"There is no moon colony or o’neill cylinder to emigrate to. We’re stuck here.”"”"”"
For future generations, maybe. But that does beg an interesting question: The futurist libertarian fantasy of an outer space utopia can only be realized when such colonies are a self-sufficient aggregrate among each other, with the ability to successfully defy and drift away from (perhaps literally!) what is becoming an increasingly pervasive global bureaucracy.
The super bowl does not represent fundamental Americana values, visible or other wise.
It is just a football game. And some poorly miked halftime shows.
Charles: To sacry, Now we are beginning to see what this is all about. I tell you, it looks planned to me, Really scary stuff. The democrats have really gone off the deep end. Just beyond belief. Don’t they think they have to live in the same country with us.
Is that even legal?
#7 Agoraphobic Plumber
I believe archeological evidence shows that the ones that they were fleeing were actually cannibals. The parallels with the new regime of Hussein Pasha are unnerving.
#4 Captain Ramen
It always comes down to the classic trio:
Fight, Flight, or Submit.
If Flight is foreclosed, that leaves 2 choices.
A long time ago, I learned the lesson that the most dangerous person in the world is the one who has truly accepted that he or she will not survive the fight. At that point, all their energy is focused on doing as much damage to the enemy as possible. Surprisingly enough, I have seen that focus be enough that they did enough harm to the enemy that they in fact survived.
We will have plenty of opportunities, shortly, to find out if it is indeed a good day to die. May those days be Merriam’s Corner moments rather than Thermopylae, but Thermopylae will serve.
Subotai Bahadur
So, does anyone remember the “Reagan Revolution?”
If you do, then you are deluded. There never was any such thing, nor was there an “earthquake” in 1994 when the Republicans regained Congress.
It would be innacurate to say that those events were only superficial, since they did have their effect, but they were not the seminal, game-changing events that both sides of the ideological divide think they were. They were just a series of speed bumps on collectivism’s road to conquest.
The Reagan Era and its follow-ons remind me of a surface fleet coalesced around old-fashioned battleships: no submarines, no aircraft carriers. The skies above and the oceans below the surface have always been dominated in modern times by the statist left/liberal/progressive movement(s). America is in about its hundredth year of the progressive era. Also, virtually no one is left alive today with an adult memory of a time when the government wasn’t big.
The Buchanans and the Limbaughs may bloviate about fighting a “culture war,” but all this time, only the left has actually been fighting. The “right,” whatever that really is anymore, has just been blabbering on talk radio, blogs, and in a smattering of think tanks.
“”"”"”It used to be that people had somewhere to flee to when they could no longer stand the tyranny under which they lived. But where can we go?”"”"”"”"
What can we learn from the “undocumented workers” about hiding in plain sight, with the acquiescence of a good portion of the powers-that-be?
Is there a way to skirt around excessive, restrictive laws and smothering bureaucracies without being actual criminals? What new expansions of the underground economy are possible? And like the “illegals,” how do fed-up citizens live this underground life with the tacit approval of large segments of the authorities? How do “internal exiles” make themselves indispensable to the greater whole so that persecuting/prosecuting them is an impractical and stupid idea?
The Japanese are quite correct to ask “whether the United States is still able to perform its role as a security guarantor”. I am inclined to think “no”.
With that in mind, a couple points are worth making:
1) Has there been another Western country MORE resistant (up to now) to the socialist siren-call? I can’t think of one. That being the case, has not the US security guarantee as it applies outside the US essentially been the protection of Western socialism? It most certainly has been in the case with NATO. So, being a “security guarantor” under those conditions is not a desirable thing, and the demise of that paradgim might be a welcome thing, economically (to the US) and in other ways, even moral.
2) This “collapse of American power” will be lamented and hand-wrung by much of the left, and blamed on Bush / Republicans of course. The fact that millions of sheep will swallow this in the face of an astonishing obvious makes me fear for the country.
Namely, what has the evil trinity of academia / culture / media been trying to bring about FULL STOP for forty years? At EVERY opportunity they have denigrated US foreign policy, undermined its efforts, maligned its military, castigated its free market system, lamented its barren culture, and on and on and on…. essentially for the entire selfish motive of making themselves feel and look smarter than all the rest of us, apart from us, morally superior to us.
For forty YEARS they have hammered this relentlessly, and now when the desired result actually occurs, they will have the gall to blame those who have opposed them all along.
And will people be unfathomably stupid enough to believe them when they do?
Oh, yes. Yes they will. By the millions.
If a GOP resurgence does occur, it will likely be an isolationist one, more out of necessity than desire, though the desire is a valid one.
Leftist philopsophy (and GOP past failures) will be largely to blame. Leftists will not even BEGIN to acknowledge their role in it.
Someone else’s fault. Always.
Always.
Rod, be The Gray Man.
Are the American members of The Belmont Club aware of H. R. 645?
These National Emergency Centers will be your new home after you are evacuated from your old one and not allowed to return.
“”"”"”17. Cannoneer No. 4:
Rod, be The Gray Man.”"”"”"”
Thanks for the link. It will takes some practice for me to be a true “gray man,” but it’s good to have a “how-to” manual!
C#4 — #18:
Will they use the new domestic security force to bring residents to these locations? I don’t want to go all “Black Helicopter” on you; but, the events of the last 10 or 12 months have made me a little paranoid.
I think they’ll use the same kind of people they used to bring New Orleans residents to all the places they were sent.
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
These locations will become recruiting centers for the Civilian National Security Force, who will also serve as Sonderkommando should the need arise.
@ 10. Roderick Reilly:
…successfully defy and drift away from (perhaps literally!) what is becoming an increasingly pervasive global bureaucracy.
How about an inversion? Why do we have to leave, why not they? Them are far less than us!
@ 21. Cannoneer No. 4
I’ve kicked that theme around quite a few times. The thing is, this may be harder to pull off than it seems. Look at our indulgent young (those that do not volunteer for military service) and imagine them being regimented and part of a military-like structure, and actually get off their butts. Maybe for a week, before the novelty wears off.
Hate too say it but BF, TJ and many other founding fathers knew these days were coming, I think the quote was “tree of Liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots” something like that, it is time for America to be knocked on its butt and regain the liberties its people have lost since 1920′s.
2 x 4, you’re looking at the pallid middle class Xboxers with Cheeto-stained fingers. Look at these guys.
“Is there a way to skirt around excessive, restrictive laws and smothering bureaucracies without being actual criminals? What new expansions of the underground economy are possible?”
Morally speaking, no. But what has the law to do with morality, without a meaningful constitution? That is where we are headed… a collective morality that has nothing to do with truth, but rather whatever can be enforced with a gun. Ultimately they will criminalize excellence itself.
“The U.S. Code, which contains all federal statutes, occupies 56,009 single-spaced pages. Its 47 volumes take up nine feet of shelf space. An annotated version, which attempts to bring order out of chaos, is three feet long and has 230 hardcover volumes and 36 paperback supplements. Administrative lawmaking under statutes fill up the 207-volume Code of Federal Regulations, which spans 21 feet of shelf space and contains more than 134,488 pages of regulatory law. … Federal law is further augmented by more than 2,756 volumes of judicial precedent, taking up 160 yards of law library shelving.”
And you’re certain you’re not breaking one of those laws? — Claire Wolfe
Those of you unfamiliar with the writings of Claire Wolfe are encouraged to educate yourselves.
Kotkin must be high on some drug. The DC Metro often breaks. I once waited at the Rosyln stop while a fire in the tube under the river almost destroy part of the tunnel.
I have been stuck in Alexandria twice from snow storms where the snow in NY and Boston was worse but those cities coped. Yes DC has ice in winter storms but so does Pittsburgh.
Parts of DC are very dangerous.
The public schools are no good.
The corruption in the Federal government has before almost as bad as Chicago but takes more loot from the taxpayers.
At least Vienna before WW1 had great opera houses and lots of culture. The Shakespeare theater in DC is 3rd rate. But then the Salvadornicks bring their own “culture” to DC.
@ 25. Cannoneer No. 4
Oh, NOI goons. They are busy breaking wine bottles.
They’re the prototype for the CNSF, 2 x 4. The Waffen-SS started out absurd and ridiculous, too.
Re Hawkins & East Timor, urge search [ holbrooke east timor ]. Richard Holbrooke, inside player in Dem foreign policy command, putative kerry sec state, salvor of Annan from Oil-for-Food via installing on staff Soros protege Mark Malloch Brown, fifth-amendment invoker in Credit Suisse scandal, shower-up in Tbilisi upon first provisional truce with Red Army last August, and now old boss Clinton’s wife’s special envoy to Pakistan (that’s Pakistan), in 1975 carried Carter’s portfilio to East Timor and made quite an impression.
As folks keep saying, God help us.
clear, concise, dated “Foreign Policy in Focus” January 29, 2009.
@ 30. Cannoneer No. 4
Actually, if I were to make parallels, FOI would be more like Sturmabteilung (SA, e.g. the stormtroopers). No one considered Schutzstafel (SS), absurd and ridiculous in any way from their beginning, except SA. That really peeved the SS one night, and after some long knives deployment (Thusly The Night of Long Knives), SA was no more. No one dared to have any hint of considering SS absurd and ridiculous in any way shape or form since the next morning, if they ever had an inclination. BTW Waffen-SS were the “military wing”, literaly weapons-SS–the elite combat units and they came later.
C4:
The HR 645 you refer to also includes $360 Million over two years to fund the development of these centers.. More borrowed money.
HR 645 is probably a little more benign than what is being forecast.
Think of it like this. If the gov’t has these camps set up around the country. Then the gov’t can’t be accused of a slow or no response.
But as with all things man made it can be perverted.
As for NOI. They are the ones who couldn’t hack it in a real gang. NOT a worry.
Jim