GOOD MORNING AMERICA

A leading economist has made the amazing discovery last week that money determines what the government - in all its forms, including The Supreme Court of the United States. decides is best for the country. How shocking this discovery must have been to his system. What follows here is the Foreword to a my work in progress, "Maximizing Power." It's a bit long for a blog session, but may open the door to understanding how major economist Richard Reich discovered America. Perhaps he discovered how the world works, also.

MAXIMIZING POWER

Understanding History


FOREWORD

George Santayana’s comment that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” makes an assumption that the “past” is not worthy of repetition. It is by remembering the past and learning its lessons well that those who have power and wish to defend, enhance, and pass that power on to designated heirs, will absolutely work to repeat it. Repeating history will reward them hugely. And only those with power are the ones in a position to repeat history.

The search for meaning in current events mandates an understanding of the forces at work that control whatever is controllable that triggers, manipulates, and creates the ever changing landscape of mankind’s history. Just as scientists search for natural forces that lead to earthquakes, floods, landslides and other such phenomena, so too, social scientists, historians, economists, political scientists, and philosophers, search for causation and meaning in the historical events that lead to beneficial change and to upheavals and disasters, whether caused by human good or evil intent, or by humans benignly or unknowingly setting in motion a train of events that spins out of control. The general search in nature and history is motivated ostensibly to understand events, in part to predict them, and in both contexts, to attempt to bring good or to mitigate the impact of disasters on the human condition. The specific goal of power holders in their search of history’s lessons is to contain forces at work to unseat them from their thrones.

Control of humongous historical forces demands humongous power. The creation, the accumulation, the aggrandizement and protection of such power, and the means by which it works its will on the world, is the focus of this book. From the outset, it appears that in every society, at all times in human history, power was a commodity always in demand and the more one had of it, the more one wanted of it. The drive to maximize power by individuals and cabals of individuals seems as prevalent in the psyche and as much a part of evolution as any other element in nature’s drive to assure “survival of the fittest.” And, “the fittest” means the most powerful. Through the ages, violent personalities became magnets to power elites, themselves violent in their drives to maximize power. Their violence, however, was and is now, rarely attributed to them. In their drives to acquire, retain, control, and maximize power, violence through surrogates is a tool well understood and well used by them.

Power, as used herein, is control over assets and lives. “Assets” means wealth of any kind; armies and armaments, cotton and cattle, ships and slaves, olives and oil, diamonds and diamond mines, and money, money, money. “Lives” means workers and soldiers, mothers and their wombs, children’s minds and mob mentalities, votes and vetoes, and the lives and deaths of any number of people – no matter if in the millions - at any time in any place. Slavery throughout history was and in some places today, is, a measure of power. Slavery means ownership of lives in “fee simple absolute,” a term usually applied to an estate in land limited absolutely to a person and his or her heirs and assigns forever and without limitation or condition. Slaves and control of lives translates to “wealth” and the more one has of wealth, the more powerful one is. Until the relatively modern development of substitutes for muscle power by machine power, slaves were an integral component of economic systems. Control over masses of humans with chains and whips has been replaced by AK 47’s and UZI’s, by wages and legal systems, by indoctrination through patriotism and religion, and often by intolerance and hatred of “others.” The doled out benefits by the powerful of the day often buy allegiance of the masses.

Maximizing power was, and is, the driving force of civilization. Power in this context came into being parallel to the time when assets could be accumulated and exchanged for land, the natural resources of the earth, air, and water, goods created and generated by labor expended on natural resources, and services. The concept of “maximizing power” explains the history of mankind as different geographical areas around the globe moved from the nomadic hunter-gatherer stage of human development to a more predictable and controllable settled existence. Sedentary life styles became common in towns and villages and then cities. Only with the development of planned agriculture and animal husbandry, excess production and storage capability made wealth accumulation possible. That in turn enabled the exchange of goods and services for other desirable assets. If the exchange was not fair or freely given, the powerful took by power – through legal chicanery, with lobbyists, by taxation and poll taxes, by imprisonment, by force, or by killing. Specialization and separation into castes, guilds, priesthoods, landholders, warriors, serfs, and myriad creators and producers in any layered landed society, enabled the accumulation of power, enabled control over the powerless by the powerful, enabled the establishment of tribes, fiefdoms, nations and nation states. Identifying the nature and methodologies of those driving forces of civilization at work is necessary to understand how power is obtained, maximized, or lost, and how societies and the mechanics of life were changed as a result of power-aggrandizing conflicts that erupted and were mollified.

Power began its career rooted in hunger, greed, brute strength and savage cunning, fraud and fakery. Early power creators and their minions sought benefit in stratified societies with themselves on top of the heap. The accumulation of power worked to the benefit of the wielders of power – the “stronger” - to the detriment of those subject to control by the wielders of power – the “weaker.” Not much has changed over the years. Might makes Right. The truism continues to this day. Power elites are strongly hereditary. Families, title-holders, old school ties and old-boy networks, military association, clubs and social registers, old wealth and extreme wealth, all produce members of the elite. The power elite is made up of people who grow into their roles, have doors opened for them, are aware of their power and know how, when, where and with whom to enjoy it and use it. Once in the club, they know it and do not easily allow new people into it.

Control of education systems, communications systems, and political systems, are the main ways that power stays in power. With the elite’s connivance, the overt wielders of power in today’s world work diligently to persuade populations that educated self interest is not beneficial but rather detrimental to themselves, their own interests, and to the societies in which they live.

Power functions like mercury in its liquid form. When relatively small globules of mercury stand alone on a flat level surface, their cohesive nature enables them to retain their shapes. However, when the globule becomes too big, it tends to split into two smaller globules. Or when another globule comes too close, the two globules may join together. Without carrying this analogy too far, power elites rely on each other to reinforce their power within the structures peculiar to that power elite except when one elite attempts to aggrandize its power by taking over the structure of another. As an example, religious power structures within national power structures rely on support from each other. Rarely will a national power structure attempt to subvert or overthrow the existing religious support structure. However, when a conflict arises between the two, as happened in the reign of Henry V in England, the king replaced the religious structure with one more to his liking. His power elite overcame the power hierarchy of England’s Roman Catholic Church. More common conflicts erupt between similar power structures than dissimilar ones. In a bland form, political parties in democratic countries vie for favor from an electorate. However, underpinning for both or all such parties flows from the economic power structures within those countries – often with both sides calling on God for support and claiming God as their supporter – and with both sides calling on all their churches to support their righteous paths. Yet religions do not equate their moralist cries against abortion and stem cell research with a need to cry out against the immorality of war or the monstrous money-producing armaments industries that foment wars to assure continued profits. Such religious moral teaching is inimical to the needs of their power elite back offices.

Communist China, in its march toward a capitalist economy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, has fought vigorously against the establishment of religions in that country. The leadership has recognized that religion, rather than being the opiate of the people as Karl Marx predicated, was an energizer of the people to create and support a competing power structure. Foundational elements of power structures include abhorrence to power sharing. Power, in all its shapes, sizes, and manifestations, jealously guards what it has and works assiduously to expand its borders. In the news of August 7, 2004, lower level officials of the government in some agricultural areas are simply taking away land from peasants for use by the state and imprisoning or shooting protestors. So much for the ideals of communism in what is essentially a fascist, by definition, Chinese state.

A paradigm of the tenet that religion energizes people to create competing power structures, can be derived from the war being conducted primarily by the United States in Iraq. After the initial invasion, all of the power structures of the country – tribal, religious, geographical, ethnic, economic, political – each with their adherents and their history, are now (2004) engaged in a massive power dance with and against each other and with the connivance, assistance, or goals of the mighty power of the United States, to retain, gain, or return to power. With the definition of power clearly in mind, the control over the assets, the goods and services of people, and this includes territorial control, one can understand the indoctrination by Imam’s of the various sects of relatively primitive and under-educated people to give their lives to martyrdom for the power elites’ causes. Land and buildings have been religicized by the Imams. Opposing sects have been demonized by Imams of different sects. The call has become common-place to cleanse the “holy” land of demons, devils, and foreigners, that brings forth the suicide zealots, the knife-wielding beheaders and Kalachnikov-wielding street fighters to commit religicide. This is immoral control by religious power over the minds of masses converted to the service of power elites.

The nature of power elites is varied. The power elite of New Orleans is a fascinating study of intertwining families, political dynasties, geographic heavyweight chunks, historical impediments, and combinations of local small power elites that magnify their power by cooperating with other local small power elites. New York City presents as complex a structure of a totally different nature. Analogies of the lone tree, the wild forest, the cultivated rows of Christmas trees planted yearly for November harvest, the giant redwoods of California, and the yucca trees of desert prominence, all have their hierarchies, their friends and enemies, their turf, and their history as they wield their power. This analogy may help explain the function of power entities. Using trees as an example, when a tree stands alone, it derives nourishment from the surrounding soil, provides shade, fruit, and soil replenishment to the surrounding ambiance, and grows old, fat, gnarled, and widespread over its domain. When other trees/power entities are in the neighborhood, they compete for nourishment, sunlight, and the very air itself, and in that struggle grow tall and lean, and grow faster than the stand-alones of the forest. The struggle leads to an early death for the weaker trees. The forest is not always a live-and-let-live environment. It can be cut-throat in the extreme. Kingdoms isolated by geography become old and fat, dynasties may suffer small scale power squabbles, but the powerful old king or emperor sits on his throne and is replaced by his designated heirs into perpetuity – it would seem to contemporaries. And then, a foreign power interrupts what seems like the natural order of things. Newness and change infect the power holders. Power elites chosen by god suffer transformation and are overthrown, guillotined, exterminated by disease or by technology, or simply by the superior force of a superior invading power elite.

The friends and associates of power elites change as they grow – out of everyone’s need to grow their power over their world. In an agrarian society, a successful farmer becomes a strong friend of the local banker, the mayor of the town, the business members of Rotary International and other so-called “service” clubs. His wife comes off the front porch of her early struggling years and joins the Ladies Auxiliaries, the tea clubs, and they both become golfers and members of the country club. In a capitalist society, a small business establishment grows into a mighty conglomerate and then into a multi-national company. In the initial stages, the entrepreneur who has discovered a process or product that fills a broad need, manufactures and grows and provides for that need while employing workers who in turn grow the economies of their particular locations. This is a generally positive evolution whose major negative may be the exploitation of employees whose share of the growing profit stream that results from their efforts is disproportionately small. That company exerts power commensurate to its size – first within the confines of the walls of the business, then within the town or locality, then within the county or State, and finally, within the country, and then internationally. All this while, the nature of the power changes from simple limited monetary control in a small geographic area, to political and economic control over larger populations and political forces that affect the lives of ever larger numbers of people. The friends and associates of the founding entrepreneur and his upper echelon employees and Board members tend to be similar in social, political, economic, and philosophical views and functions. They all need each other and support each other and keep tabs on each other. They may join forces when they deem it appropriate or cut each others’ throats when they deem it appropriate. Power aggrandizement is the determinant of what and when such changes are appropriate. Power elites are like chameleons. They freeze into position to blend in and disappear to an aggressor’s eye or they change their coloration from true blue to red, white, and blue, to green, or Nazi grey to protect their lives. They will adopt the dominant religion of the environment and wave the flag of their environment, no matter the change in national loyalty so long as they prosper and grow. They will go to war or sue for peace if they believe that move will enhance or protect their power no matter what other forces or isms are at work. They give up when they have lost the battle and then join the victor to grow again. And to refer to Karl Marx, it is important to understand the dynamics controlling these changes; that every power configuration contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

Looking back, it is somewhat possible to see the future. The undulating history of conflict between materialist driven power elites and religiously driven power elites appears to be a human syndrome. And just as materialists use the tools of religion in their strategic and tactical planning, religionists will use the tools of materialism. The great equalizer in the future battles of the worlds will be weapons of mass destruction. Iran in 2004 seems to be in the forefront of melding fundamental religious power with the latest nuclear weapon technology. Will morality and ethics sway these battles? Will mutual assured destruction hold sway? Will martyrdom be so attractive to religionists as to become their secret weapon? Will science in the hands of the materialists give them the edge to survive?

Terrorism as a means of acquiring power seeks to achieve maximum impact on the affairs of society using minimum, narrowly focused destructive power. With murderous attacks on populations and institutions, terror-based power elites appear to believe they can effect major change in the way the world is run. The sad truth is that such attacks only benefit and strengthen existing power elites by providing cover for their own depredations on society’s resources. It is reasonable to assume that power elites support terror to accomplish just that. This kind of pact with the devil was made by the ruling family in Saudi Arabia to hold them safe and harmless from the extremism of Wahabism. However many decades this kept the family safe, the respite could have been predicted to come to an end with attempts to replace or destroy the power structure of that kingdom’s elites. Terrorism against the State of Israel, supported and condoned by ruling oligarchs, has kept the power elites of the twenty-two countries in the Arab world sitting on their thrones by inhibiting competing home-grown power elites from gaining traction through popular support. And, however simplistic it may appear, support for terror against that small nation garnered and continues to garner support among all but a few secure countries at the United Nations General Assembly – believably for the same underlying reason; stability at home, and of course, abroad in the Arab world through oil production stability. The cost of terrorism to the existing power elites is meaningless simply because any destruction, human and institutional, is profitable. The danger to existing elites lies in the potential loss or diminution of power. When terror organizations figure out how to take over power elites, as Hitler and his cadres did in Germany and Stalin and his supporters did in Russia, then the elites will maneuver to join them or embrace them and enter into profitable partnerships with them until the next seismic event occurs. Iran today, in control of religious power elites, is not sharing their goodies with outside power elites any more than Kim Il Sung of Korea is sharing his power cookies. Therefore, they have been ostracized and branded as part of the “Axis of Evil.” That portends poorly for the elites in those countries and explains political decisions taken by outside forces whenever exchanges occur with those two “pariahs” who don’t want to share. If this sounds like school-yard squabbling, it is. But it is high stakes squabbling and it often leads to heavy gunfire and loss of life and, more to the point, a shift in power.

The outstanding “pariah” entity through the ages is the Jewish People. The Jews and Jewish power elites have never wanted to share their power. Indeed, if Jews are true to their religion and to their identity, it would seem they cannot share power. This “stiff-necked” people has been used and abused by power elites from their earliest identifiable manifestation as believers in “One God.” This identification set them apart and at odds with every other tribe, kingdom, oligarchy, dynasty, political and economic grouping in existence at their date of birth on Mount Moriah and continuously and subsequently into modern times. Being “separate” became part of their core identity. The Ten Commandments, the “Laws of God,” handed down by their God on Mount Sinai made murderers, adulterers, thieves, and immoral creatures out of all the then existing rulers and their power elites. Is it any wonder they were delegated to be hated and reviled by every people in every place they sojourned. If they were “right,” about one God and the morality of the commandments, then everyone else was wrong. More important, if their God was all-powerful, what happens to the power of the power elites. As is the nature of power elites, they work at absorbing power wherever and however it exists. The creation of other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam being the most successful, and the isolation of the Jews from all other power elites was the counter-attack. The Jews became the piñata of the world, being struck, pierced, and after raining intellectual, scientific, medical, artistic, and materialist goodies of many varieties down on ungrateful masses of people, ripped apart and destroyed. Power elites and their front rulers offered the Jews the choice of assimilation, expulsion, or death. The attractiveness of assimilation to the upper classes of the Jews, the power elites of the Jews, often believing and hoping their status would be improved by joining the dominant culture as much as they were allowed, led to significant cleavages among the Jews. Strong religionists became the torch bearers that maintained the group’s identity over millennia as richer more connected brethren divorced themselves from Judaism and its traditionalism and age-old ritual observances. So, while the Jews were a landless powerless identifiable scapegoat group, at the same time, the Jews were and are fully appreciated by the power elites for the benefits that their scapegoat status brings those ruling entities. Every misery known to mankind is attributed to the Jews by power elites to deflect the pain and outrage of oppressed and poor populations in even the most affluent and democratic countries regardless of whether a Jewish population even exists in that country. The Bible as history and subsequent reasonably verifiable accounts provide sufficient documentation to support the conclusion that the Jews have been subjected to the vilest forms of bestiality for the millennia of their existence because of their refusal to subjugate themselves to the power elites in the communities in which they lived and because they are readily identifiable. In the year 2004, the nations of the world appear about to embark on yet another monstrous anti-Semitic crusade against the State of Israel to create once again the landless uprooted indefensible Jewish condition that allows persecution and scapegoatism to rear its ugly head. While genocide of millions of blacks takes place in Africa, the 150 nations of the world led by Arab oligarchies condemn Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, for building a fence against terrorism to protect its population.

Power elites in democratic societies must function in surreptitious ways. A subset of this maxim is that when autocratic societies evolve or revolutionize into democratic societies, the elites take care to protect their power without appearing to be anti-democratic. Protective coloration, found in the animal world to provide cover for predators as well as victims, enables fascistic functioning to appear democratic. Hitler was voted into office.

It may appear odd and even antithetical, that power elites function at the highest levels of government in democracies. However, the very first democracy was founded by power elites. The United States was established by the new power elites of colonial America to replace those centuries-old elites of England. The wealthy colonists believed they could safeguard their status and impose their control over the territory and treasure of America. Those huge assets merited revolution and overthrow of the royal system of governance. A new untried system of governance was established by the power elites whereby the owners of property could exert their collective will over the wealth of the united colonies. The unique nature of this new system was that it enabled all free men to participate in governing the country. That freedom was an outgrowth of the suspicious nature of the Founders and their concern that the variety and number of new power elites extant in the late 1700’s somehow balance themselves so as not to enable one or a grouping of any of them, to wrest power from the others. Thus were born political parties, a new concept that allowed competing interests to present their interests to the voting public, to compete for power. Thus, “Democracy.” George Washington was concerned about how power was to be controlled by the people. He thought that political parties were “potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Washington’s concerns were justified by the reality of the system. President Dwight. D. Eisenhower, chosen by the elite of his day, warned the American people of the dangerous power of “The Military-Industrial Complex.” It is reasonable to assume that he was removed from his pedestal by that same cabal and placed in a grey area of history books.


Looking forward without reference to past events – which is patently impossible but worthy of contemplation - one can conjure up a future completely different from what we see around us today. Futurists can project visions that appear to have no reference points in the present. Even predicting human evolution through the thousands of years of mutations creating the fittest forms to survive the depredations of time, can be an exercise worthy of effort regardless of believability.

If I were a futurist, I would predict the continued existence of viruses, cockroaches and power elites surrounded by a grey human existence.


Copyright by Norman/Nachum Meyers 2004