A short history of why we eat oil, can't smoke pot, and why assault weapons are so expensive in our hour of need

More inspired writing from my pal and fellow expat Joe Bageant
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/

July 31, 2009
The Bastards Never Die

A short history of why we eat oil, can't smoke pot, and why assault
weapons are so expensive in our hour of need

(With running commentary by THE SCREAMING MAN)

Well, for starters, the above title is a damned lie, since this little
screed is not a history. It's just rumination on the tilting point at
which Americans started the slide into the deepest sort of cultivated
consumer consciousness -- which is to say our corporate managed
engorgement and swinedom at the service of the rich.

Very rich families and corporatists, to whom, as in earlier articles,
we shall refer to as "the bastards," have always been with us. Even
Tom Jefferson thought periodic revolution against wealth and authority
was desirable to keep these bastards in check. Which implies that he
figured they would inevitably get us by the throat down on the floor
from time to time.

But the bastards scared the hell out of later presidents too. Abe
Lincoln feared the large corporations born of business profiteering
during the U.S. Civil War -- the military industrial complex of the
day -- easily constituted the greatest threat to the American
republic. Being president and all, he couldn't call them what they
were, and settled for the term "money power," and predicted that,
"money power will … work upon the prejudices of the people until all
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

And as everyone knows, Dwight Eisenhower famously feared the same
military-industrial complex was busy taking over the nation. What we
never hear about though, is that Eisenhower's definition of the
complex included among the bastards, not only the military defense
industry corporations, but also right alongside them the news media
and the university and private research establishments.

If nothing else can be said for the bastards, we must admit they do
plan far ahead, (or seemed to anyway, before the latest meltdown) even
if only to screw us blind, which is usually the case. Since the early
robber baron era of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, just after the
turn of the century, the bastards understood that the key to national
domination was oil -- creating an economic culture based on petroleum
-- and planned toward that end. Big corps such as E.I. DuPont had
invested heavily in the oil industry since the turn of the century,
and especially since the 1930s creating synthetic materials such as
plastics, in which the public was decidedly uninterested in buying.
Then World War II came along, creating big demand for synthetics such
as nylon for parachutes, tires, tents, ropes. DuPont and similar
bastards had drawn a royal flush.

SCREAMING MAN HERE!: RIGHT! IT'S THE ONLY SURE RACKET. ASK ICE MAN
CHENEY. YOU MAKE STUFF, SELL IT TO THE PENTAGON MOB AND RAM THE PRICE
CLEAR UP THEIR ASSES. THEN THEY BLOW THE STUFF UP, INCENERATE IT, AND
COME BACK FOR MORE AT DOUBLE THE PRICE BECAUSE NOW THERE'S A SHORTAGE!
FOR A FAST DEPENDABLE BUCK, YOU CAN'T BEAT INDUSTRIAL SCALE WARFARE
WITH A GODDAMNED STICK!

(Ahem!)

Unfortunately all good things end, no matter how bloody profitable.
But those super-expanded wartime corporations that had cranked out
planes and tanks were not going to downsize just because we had run
out of Dresdens to bomb. They intended to remain dominant and even
expand. With the war drawing to a close, and with fewer burning jeep
tires on the battlefields and fewer parachutes left dangling in the
trees of Belgium, American citizens were going to have to eat the
slack. The bastards would have to stuff'em fuller than a Christmas
goose; make them eat petroleum based synthetics, if it came down to
that. Which it eventually did of course, in the form of petrochemical
agriculture, food dyes, etc.

SCREAMING MAN: YOU GOTTA A FUCKING PROBLEM WITH NUMBER TWO RED DYE OR
SOMETHING, ASSHOLE? DON'T BULLSHIT THESE PEOPLE, YOU FLAMING OLD
FRAUD! I'VE SEEN YOU EAT A WHOLE BOX OF PINK HO-HOS BEHIND A BOTTLE OF
JAY DEE AND SOME COLUMBIAN BUD! AM I GONNA HAVE TO TAKE MY NEEDLE
NOSED PLIERS TO YOUR LYING ASS?

Plastics, heralded as durable and everlasting (and today lamented for
the same reason) eventually gobbled up nearly every other material
market, in the from of jewelry, dashboards, dishes, clothing, napkin
rings, perfume bottles, knickknacks, flooring and carpeting, resin
building materials, vinyl raincoats and boots, molded furniture, radio
sets … America was remade in the image of open chain hydrocarbons.
That nine tenths of what was produced and marketed was unnecessary,
and downright shitty did not go unnoticed by the American public,
which had been deeply distrustful of plastics and synthetics from the
time they were first ballyhooed at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.
People were just not buying the sales job. But the combination of
wartime shortage frustrations and massive industrial public relations
delivered the one-two punch, and the consumer knuckled under. Or
perhaps they were just worn down by industry PR, which enlisted the
help of trusted figures such as Frank Capra and Walt Disney, among
others, along with in-school industry propaganda for the next
generation: "Our story of the miracle of plastics starts with an oil
well in a faraway place by the Persian Gulf … "

AND IT GODDAMNED WELL IS GONNA END THERE TOO! IN ABOUT 15 MINUTES, IF
IT HASN'T ALREADY! DOES ANYBODY REALIZE THE NUMBER OF SARAH PALIN
BLOW-UP DOLLS SHIPPED TO THE TROOPS IN IRAQ? IF THAT'S THE KIND OF
ARMY WE'RE SENDING TO KILL OFF THE PALM VERMIN, THEN WE'RE GONERS
ALREADY!

As I was saying, the bastards not only created an economy by and for
themselves, based on the black sticky stuff, they also built a
civilization. From the tallest building right down to the
petrochemical soaked dirt in which the food supply is grown, and all
along the chain through processing and plastic packaging and
distribution, The black stuff was cheap and it was plentiful, so long
as the bastards were willing to buy off the top dog sheiks like ibn
Saud, who would in turn keep the dusky peasantry in line through good
old perennials such as beheadings and public stonings.

SCREAMING MAN MISSES THOSE POST 9/11 BEHEADING VIDEOS, DON'T YOU? IT
WAS SO EASY TO TELL WHO AMERICA'S ENEMIES WERE THEN. BUT AT LEAST
WE'VE STILL GOT BEN BERNANKE AND BILL GATES.

During the 1940s AND '50S while ibn Saud was fathering some 60
children by 22 wives in Arabia and dishing out corporeal punishment to
the far flung wretches of his kingdom, here at home the corporations
were doing their own hit jobs on the this nation's peasantry -- the
farmers. Petroleum based synthetics, with legislative help, wiped out
one quarter of the domestic cotton market in the first few years
following the war, along with flax for linen, and hemp fiber,
replacing them with ugly but profitable synthetic nylon and polymer
textiles. Not to mention replacement of literally hundreds of farm
produced natural organic materials for medicines, cosmetics, milk by
products such as casein for glues and paints, with synthetic
petro-based commodities, all of which were mercilessly hammered into
the populace as "miracles of modern science."

Kings may croak, but cash lives forever

The fact that the bastards were corporate entities made them more
powerful than any robber baron's best wet dream, because their power
and reach extended beyond human mortality. Deathless corporations and
trusts replaced the mortal thieves such as Rockefeller and Morgan; and
despite the advent of income taxes, capital continued to aggregate in
the bastards' coffers, particularly financial bastards, at what was
seen then as an unimaginable scale. "Money for nothin' and chicks for
free ..."

Powered entirely by balance sheets, and existing for the sole le
purpose of wealth accumulation, parting with any assets was
antithetical to their very purpose. Not to mention the logic of the
wealth based stockholders. The majority of assets were held by elite,
whose main accomplishment was then and still is coming from families
that commandeered some substantial portion of the public medium of
exchange in order to derive more wealth.

WHOA THERE FATSO! WHOSE FAMILY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE? PARIS
HILTON'S? OR MAYBE ALICE WALTON'S? PARIS HILTON HAS EARNED EVERY JEWEL
ENCRUSTED THONG IN HER CLOSET! FROM TUSH TO TITTIES, WE'VE SEEN
EVERYTHING PARIS HILTON HAS TO OFFER. AND IT'S WORTH A FEW BILLION TO
KEEP HER IN CIRCULATION. GIVES THE MEN OF THIS MISERABLE WORKHOUSE
NATION SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN. SOMETHING TANGIBLE. SOMETHING THEY CAN
ACTUALLY SEE AND WHACK OFF TO. HER DIRTY FLICK, "1 NIGHT IN PARIS" WAS
A GIFT TO ALL MANKIND. LET THE LESBIANS FIND THEIR OWN PARIS HILTON …
BUT ALICE WALTON? SCREAMING MAN WOULDN'T FUCK HER WITH YOUR WHANG,
BUSTER! THAT MISERABLE DRUNKEN BITCH RAN DOWN AND KILLED A FIFTY YEAR
OLD WOMAN IN TEXAS. WHAT'D SHE GET? A $925 FINE! SHE HAS 20 BILLION
DOLLARS AND GETS OFF FOR LESS THAN A THOU. AND WHAT DOES ALICE GIVE
US? CHINK MADE FLIPFLOPS AND GODDAMNED PLASTIC PATIO CHAIRS THAT
BUCKLE LIKE OBAMA AT A BAILOUT PARTY! GIVE THE SCREAMING MAN PARIS
HILTON ANY DAY. NOW, FATSO … YOU WERE SAYING?

Hell, I can't remember. Oh yes, the bastards. Once you are born into
the Royal Court of the Kingdom of Bastardy and are issued your caviar
spoon, no further effort is required to amass capital. You simply keep
on withholding capital from those who had create it -- the working
masses -- keep captive the economic lifeblood upon which all others
depend. Observe, for instance, the banking industry's present refusal
to unass any money for credit, despite the hundreds of billions handed
to them as a taxpayers' gift, a bailout AFTER they'd ripped off their
shareholders and customers, and looted their own institutions from the
inside.

UPSET ARE YOU, FATSO? LET THE SCREAMER TELL YOU HOW IT REALLY IS. IT
WAS ALL AN ACT. THE FED WAS JUST PRINTING AND HANDING OUT WORTHLESS
WALLPAPER -- WHICH THE BANKING BASTARDS, WITH ALL DUE APLOMB, WILL PAY
BACK IN KIND. THEN THE BASTARDS WILL BE DECLARED SOLVENT, FAT AND
HEALTHY AS A BUNCH OF PARK BEARS. MEANWHILE, YOU GODDAMNED PEASANTS
WILL CONTINUE TO ANGUISH OVER THE BAILOUTS LONG AFTER THE REAL RIP-OFF
IS IN. THE ONE YOU NEVER SAW AND CAN'T EVEN WRAP YOUR SORRY POINTED
FUCKING HEADS AROUND. THE REAL DOUGH IS SPREAD ACROSS DUBAI, MONACO,
LONDON, AND FOR SAFETY'S SAKE, BEIJING. WHILE YOU ANGUISH, PATE OF
UNBORN VEAL CALF IS BEING SERVED TO THE REAL BASTARDS UP ON THE 50th
FLOOR. THEY POUR ANOTHER GLASS OF 1999 PERRIER-JOUET, AND CHORTLE AT
THE DISMEMBERMENT OF A NO-TALENT HACK LIKE BERNIE MADOFF. THAT HAPLESS
SMALLTIME JEW GREASEBALL WHO CAME INTO THE GAME WITH $5,000 IN PENNY
STOCKS THAT HE BOUGHT WITH MONEY HE MADE INSTALLING SPRINKLERS. NEVER
A REAL PLAYER LIKE US, EVEN WITH HIS BULLSHIT WALL STREET TITLES. JUST
A DUMB FUCK FROM QUEENS WHO DIDN'T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT A SCAM. LET THE
SERFS GNAW AT HIM. KEEPS 'EM BUSY AND OUT OF OUR HAIR. LOOK, THEY'VE
PULLED ONE OF HIS ARMS OUT OF ITS SOCKET. CHRIST, NOW THEY'VE RUINED
LUNCH."

THAT'S WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON, FATSO.

The bastards. Why have they lasted this long? Purely on their own
merits, most American corporations probably would not have survived
the 1930s. By then our wildly fluctuating economy was already
demonstrating the folly of overly concentrated capital and power. What
was needed, said the big players who'd wrecked the economy with their
uncontrolled speculation and greed, was, lo and beshit, a controlled
economy! One even more controlled by corporations. Problem was, the
only entity capable of such control was the government. And
unfortunately, the Constitution of the United States was founded on a
separation of business and state to the same degree as that of church
and state.

If the bastards were to run the economy, if Americans were going to be
pistol whipped down the road to "prosperity through unprecedented
consumption," then government authority by Constitutional law would be
necessary. As a 1937 shareholder's report of the E.I. DuPont Company
"the revenue-raising power of government [taxation] must be converted
into "an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas" and a
"social reorganization." Uh oh! Just whose sudden new ideas? And what
kind of social reorganization?

The report stated bluntly that to realize further extensive profit
from its wartime investments, the U.S. government "must be the primary
tool." While their plans to use the government were put into the
shareholder's report, they were never publicly discussed.

FDR saves the bastards' bacon

The chance to pull it off came ironically or maybe not so ironically,
with Roosevelt's New Deal. FDR was, contrary to the subsequent
hagiography that has grown up around his grave, was first and foremost
a capitalist and was determined to save capitalism. Given his affluent
background and times, he, like everyone else, could not imagine
anything but capitalism as the nation's economic system. Yet nowhere
in the Constitution is capitalism specified as America's preferred
economic system. His lifelong circle of friends and associates
consisted entirely of the elites of family and corporate wealth, which
meant that it also included some of his enemies. But together they
created a host of "emergency legislation," in much the same fashion as
911 let George W. Bush get away with so much under the excuse of a
national threat. Even allowing for the resistance of some wealthy
elites, FDR favored the bastards' plans toward a thoroughly
corporatized national economy.

The Supreme Court, however, a stickler for details such as the U.S.
Constitution, did not see things Roosy's way. It would take a
rewriting of the U.S. Constitution for the government to crawl into
bed with the corporations. So every piece of legislation FDR and his
cohorts created got snagged in Supreme Court and just kept piling up.

The key for FDR and the Princes of Bastardy turned out to be taxation.
To control society means to control individual behavior. The
Constitution prohibits that, except for those few powers granted in
the Constitution, such as the coinage of money or declaring war.
Throughout the 1930s the public watched FDR and the corporatists duke
it out with the Supreme Court. While the public was engaged in the
debate over FDR's threatened stacking of the court, FDR and the
bastards managed to accomplish their agenda in controlling opposing
social behavior -- taxing it to death. The government is granted the
power to tax by god! And the Roosevelt era saw the art of behavior
modification through taxation perfected.

Now in changing American social behavior through taxation there are
two rules. The first tax must be a very logical one. And the second
must be one created of whole cloth, a manufactured one to counter a
manufactured threat. So after the Supreme Court knuckled under to
FDR's threat to divide up the judicial limelight by appointing more
justices, a more compliant court happily passed a $200 tax on machine
guns -- the equivalent of $3,000 today -- the same tax, incidentally,
that allowed the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division) and the
FBI to invade the Branch Davidians at Waco. It was unconstitutional as
hell. But the court understood public relations. What kind of deranged
fucker needed a machine gun anyway? Well, there was There was John
Dillinger (whose penis was 14 inches long, according to folk legend of
the day, which was either threatening, or vastly intriguing, depending
upon one's sex or moral perspective on life). There was Seymour "Blue
Jaws" Magoon, Bonnie and Clyde, Pittsburg Phil, Baby Face Nelson, Al
Capone, Bummy Davis. And if there was any further doubt, there was
also the fact that the members of Murder Incorporated were Jewish,
Italian or Irish. Ah ha! More proof to the then-majority Anglo
Americans of naked immigrant depravity. So two hundred bucks per tommy
gun it would be under the 1937 Machine Gun Tax Act.

The second tax the court upheld was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. Most
Americans had never heard the word marijuana. The tax act had adopted
a little known Mexican street term as a name in order to demonize it,
and differentiate it from the thousands of acres of government hemp
being grown for naval ropes, etc. Never mind that in the entire
previous year only a couple of pounds of the stuff were seized by
border police. A $200 an ounce tax had worked on machine guns, so a
$200 tax per ounce was placed on hemp cultivation without permit, and
no permits were issued. And so as an added bonus -- or maybe
intentionally -- the synthetic fiber industry and the plastics
industry saw its most threatening long term competitor, hemp,
eliminated.

And for the first time in the history of the United States the
bastards could use the government to tell farmers what seeds they
could put into the earth. In short order by way of the New Deal,
through various agricultural acts, corporatists, through government
policy, had control over the land even though they did not own it. The
chief competitors to industrial food giants and synthetics industry,
the small farmer producers of thousands of natural goods and raw
materials, were eventually taxed or regulated out of existence. At the
same time, subsidies for big-time agri-biz producers started
snowballing. A nation of consumers of synthetics was cultivated in the
next generation. The result we see around us, obese Americans
willingly wearing the bastards' brands on acrylic clothing … and
guzzling synthetic soft drinks, Americans who've never once considered
that the pizza crusts they gnaw at start out with a grain crop called
wheat.

Ten thousand years of agriculture was synthesized into money. The
soil-to-city chain of small farms, villages, and towns to the great
city markets was destroyed. Those ever more profitable compressed gobs
of humanity in the cities and suburbs could be cultivated for maximum
productivity and profit as the bastards increased their domination of
the needs hierarchy. If you made a movie of this, swapping out the
humans for some sort of large intelligent rodent or insect, and left
everything else as it really is in American life, people would call it
chilling science fiction.

Long story short: The bastards won.

This distillation of how they won, this little piece of feral
scholarship, is sure to be disputed by hairsplitting pinheads in
political science and history departments. The "Oh but …" crowd. Which
is OK with me. Everybody needs a job, I suppose. But that's the view
from here in the cheap seats among the non-players, the fuckees in the
great fuck-the-proles game of bastard politics and ever bigger money.
Call this a pulp comic summary of post war history. It's not a very
damned funny history. Maybe that's why we choose not to remember it.
Here in the United States of Amnesia. We cannot retain what happened
last week, much less history. But I'm trying here folks. I really am.

SCREAMING MAN: BULLSHIT FOLKS! DON'T BELIEVE A WORD FROM THIS
GODDAMNED BEER SOAKED, REDNECK WHO CAN'T SPELL AND THINKS HE'S A
GENIUS BECAUSE HE KNOWS HOW TO BRING UP WIKIPEDIA ON HIS BROWSER. IF
AND WHEN HE'S SOBER ENOUGH. THE SCREAMING MAN HAS BEEN TRAPPED INSIDE
BAGEANT'S BLOATED, DISEASED CARCASS FOR SIXTY TWO YEARS, AND THE
SCREAMER CAN TELL YA THIS: IF BRAINS WERE DYNAMITE BAGEANT WOULDN'T
HAVE ENOUGH POWER TO BLOW OFF A GOOD FART. YOU'VE JUST WASTED TWENTY
FUCKING MINUTES OF COMPANY TIME. NOW GO TAKE UP SOMETHING USEFUL, LIKE
NARCOTICS. FOR CHRISSAKE GET A LIFE!