The US empire and the death of democracy

I couldn't think of a better title than the one found on SOTT. A concise history of the US' methodical tactics of corruption in the name of world domination. These criminal actions at home and abroad span the last century. Read it and weep for your children.

Blue Ibis
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The US empire and the death of democracy

John Gerassi
The International Endowment for Democracy
Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:23 EDT

Throughout history, no empire has survived if it tolerated dissent. It was just as true in Ancient Rome as it is in Modern America. From the day that US policy makers, representing big business and finance capital, decided to control world trade, that is, to become the empire of the world, it has had to eliminate dissent, and therefore genuine democracy. But it did so slowly, within its potential, and always when the pliant media was willing to tout its lies as facts.

Thus in 1825, when President James Monroe proclaimed his famous doctrine of freedom for the Americas, by which he meant, and every Latin American well understood, that the Americas would hereafter be colonies of the US, the media hailed the declaration as a stoic anti-imperialist doctrine. But then there never was an established free press in America; it was always a free-enterprise press, owned mostly by the same business and finance capitalists who controlled the government. Which explains why every newspaper and journal of the times heralded "Manifest Destiny" by which god himself had proclaimed that the Caribbean must become "an American lake."

And so it almost unanimously applauded when the US went to war against Spain to "help" the Cuban revolutionaries when they had already defeated Spain. Nor did the establishment object when the US imposed on Cuba total tutelage through the Platt Amendment, took over the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and various other Spanish colonies which lusted for independence. When it came to Europe, it had to act more slowly, less belligerently, always within its strength and potential. During World War I for example it had to be certain that the European powers were too exhausted to object, and hence waited until 1917 to enter the war. And when it did, it claimed to side with the democracies, forcing the press to mimic its pronouncements that England and France were the good guys and Germany the bully, when in fact it was the allies who started the war to stop Germany's rapidly expanding industrialization. Nor did our media tell Americans that there was much more democracy in Germany than in the so-called allies. In fact Germany then, with its legal Socialist parties, its massive union movement and its workingmen's bill of rights (including three weeks paid yearly holidays), was much freer in 1914 than England is today.

After the war, the US ruling class frightened dissenters by launching nation-wide witch-hunts, first against anarchists by tossing their leader Salcedo out the window of police headquarters, then framing two rank-and-filers, Sacco and Vanzetti, to their death. It jailed Socialists and framed the Wobblies, executing some of its leaders, for opposing entry into World War I. To make sure Americans did not realize the truth, the US elites next went after public universities, the only bastion of academic freedom. One of the worst such witch-hunts was in New York, the Coudert-Rapp Committee, which "investigated" public schools and universities for "subversive" teachers, and arranged to have them drummed out of their schools. For all the talk about democracy, it was little by little disappearing.

The US constitution correctly defines the fundamental prerequisite for democracy: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But no country can be democratic if all of its people do not have access to life, that is health. Nor can a country be free if its citizens do not have easy access to choices, the result of free, equal education. And no people can pursue happiness, unless they are healthy and educated.

But the US, while proclaiming itself the bastion of freedom, quickly made sure that the poor, the worker, the sharecropper, the non-white, the immigrant would not have access to either prerequisite; it made health private and expensive and education financed by local taxes. The result of course was that the rich went to the good schools, the poor to the mediocre ones. Today in Westchester County, where the rich pay the local taxes, every student is allotted a yearly $17,520; in Bayou, Mississippi, where folks are so poor they own nothing and survive by catching cat-fish, as the CBS "Sixty Minutes" program documented, each student must do with $60, a State subsidy at that. The last science book purchased by the high school's library is dated 1961.

Though many of the idiotic Republicans never understood that Franklin Roosevelt was saving their capitalism for them, it was he who decided to make the US a two-ocean power, by turning Japan into an enemy to stop its industrialization. FDR imposed boycotts on Japan of steel, manganese, oil, bauxite, thus forcing the mineral-void island to invade other countries for its needed minerals. And it was FDR who set up the machinery of state to crush serious dissent in America, which his heirs employed to the fullest. The arbitrary arrest and incarceration of Japanese Americans, even if they were born in the US, would later give impetus to Colonel North and his NSA henchmen to set up concentration camps all over the West, and frighten the Latino population into submissiveness when his boss, President Reagan, and the fascist team working for him (Poindexter, McFarland, Weinburger, Perle, Abrams, et al) decided to crush a legally and very fairly elected Nicaraguan government, calling it Marxist-Leninists, because it had the gall to institute the first minimum wage law of Central America ($1.27). The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) which FDR allowed to operate all over the world without oversight, stimulated President Truman to enact the National Security Act 1968 (that's just a number, the date was 1946), creating the CIA and the various loyalty boards under which 1.2 million people lost their jobs without being able to confront their accusers.

Senator Joseph McCarthy's "anti-Communist" crusades did the US ruling class a disservice for a while by overdoing it, causing some newsmen (Edward R. Murrow) and academics (Harvard President Pusey) to fight back, especially after two more rank-and-filer dissidents, in this case the Communists Rosenbergs, were executed. But the US ruling class never lost track of its main goal: pervert, intimidate, or force all other countries to accept the US 's criteria for world trade.

Bush II's infamous "if you're not with us you're against us" is not new to US policy. Nor was it new with President Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Forster Dulles, who was the first to affirm categorically that the US had a right to demolish any country opposed to "our new order". No, even before him, that great statesman whom every liberal adores, General George Marshall, made it quite clear in testifying before the House Foreign Relations Committee that his objective (known since as "The Marshall Plan") was to rekindle Europe as a market for US goods, and any neutralist opposed to it was "as dangerous as any communist."

No poor country can develop its infrastructure, build low-cost housing, hospitals, universities, self-defense forces without capital accumulation. No poor country can achieve such accumulation by allowing foreign companies to run its utilities, its banks, its mines. Latin America has 75% of the goodies the US needs to maintain its industrial might, under its ground. The US does not have enough iron (steel), cobalt, bauxite (aluminum), manganese, diamonds (industrial), to keep its imperial machinery running. Hence it wants what Latin America has. To get it, it supports every dictator it can bribe, and it opposes every independent government which dares to try to develop its own country's economy. So the US plotted against Argentina's Peron (a "Nazi" it said), Frondizi (a "Communist)", Brazil's Vargas (another Nazi), Quadros (too conservative to be a red so a "nut"), Goulart (another communist), etc., and of course Allende, and supported all the petty dictators in Central America and the Caribbean, from Somoza to Trujillo. To succeed, the US had to create death squads, organize Operation Condor assassination teams, plan dirty wars, foster vicious military coups and, as NYTimesman Langguth so eloquently described in his book, teach all the two-bit gangsters corralled into the local police force, how to torture. Always to support US corporations exploiting Latin lands. With what results? Every year, 5 million kids under the age of 14 die in Latin America alone from lack of potable water where that water is used and polluted by American mining (especially nitrate) corporations. Hitler may have killed over 50 million people with his drive to create a thousand-year Reich, Stalin 20 or 30 million to cater to his paranoia, but the US has murdered more than 100 million people in the last century alone just to satisfy the greed of its corporate executives. It can do all that because it is not a democracy, its elected officials are whores, embedded to whatever corporations which give them the biggest re-election booty.

Does the average American know any of this? Does the mainstream media report any of these facts? No wonder then that when a Latino rebels or an Arab blows himself up with a few US soldiers, the average American thinks the Latino is an ingrate, the Moslem a fanatic. What paper tells him that only 14 percent of suicide bombers are religious? What TV anchorman tells him that the CIA murdered every decent leader the Third World ever had, incorruptible leaders who wanted to better the lot of their people? Egypt's Nasser (heart attack by poison), Iraq's Kassem (shot by CIA employee Saddam Hussein), Algeria's Frantz Fanon (leukemia by poison in a US hospital), Guyana's Cheddi Jagan (heart attack by poison), Congo's Lumumba (by CIA and Belgian local gunmen), Che Guevara (by Cuban CIA employees), Indonesia's Sukarno (by Japanese World War II collaborator Gen. Suharto under CIA orders), the Cameroon's Felix Moumie, Um Nyobe and Osende Afana (by French CIA thugs), Guinea's Amilcar Cabral (shot in the back by a local CIA operative), ad infinitum.

Most of the people of the world (not in the US) know that it was the US which started the Cold War in 1946, by violating the Berlin treaty whereby each of the victorious powers would rule the city together, backed by a currency defended by the four. But the US decided to issue a mark backed by the dollar. So the English did the same, and so too the French. When the Russians decided to follow suit, the West cried foul. Why did the US want the war? Because it could then launch an arms race and have its citizens pay for it, by frightening them with the coming nuclear war. Those of you old enough will remember all those alarms and tests, where we had to scamper under the nearest table to "protect" ourselves against the A-bomb dropping on our heads. Fear! That was the object, and it made the industrial-military complex rich. Nothing better than weapons: once one is built it is obsolete, so let's build another. And another. And another. Who is going to object to paying taxes for our defense? Building hospitals is profitable to the builder, but it can't be rebuilt every year. But weapon systems can, and do. And just to make sure we stayed in fear, the CIA lied to us; for 20 years, it claimed that Russia was way ahead of the US in arms build-up. For 20 years it lied, so the complex could keep making money -- on average-Joe's taxes.

To get the American public to buy US intervention in the Middle East, the Russians gave us Afghanistan. The co-called Communist regime which came to power during Breshnev's reign was quite good, better than Afghanistan ever had. It built schools, hospitals, roads. It allowed women to work, to walk the streets without shadors or burkas if they wanted, to demand that their husbands have only one wife. The fanatic tribesmen were outraged and launched a counter war against Kabul. Their operations were on the border with Soviet Russia, which was worried that fundamentalist Moslems would sweep into Russia as well. So Moscow intervened, and our ruling class warmongers immediately called the Kabul regime "Marxist-Leninist." The only Marx its leaders had ever heard of was probably Groucho. President Carter surely knew that, since all he did was condemn the Soviet intervention by boycotting the Olympics scheduled for Moscow that year. But Reagan and his cohorts jubilantly saw their chance to start dominating the whole area. The CIA poured weapons and money ($44 million to what was to be Taliban) to the worst fanatics in the whole Middle East. And the Pentagon set up the most advanced base it could build in Saudi Arabia.

How would Americans react if, on the guise of helping the US stop Cuban exile terrorism, Fidel built a huge modern military base in North Carolina? As President de Gaulle told a worried British Prime Minister Macmillan on his way to meet JFK and hoping to resist US domination: "Too late. England is now nothing more than an aircraft carrier for US goods and policies. No country can be free if it has a foreign base on its territory." The effect of the US base in Saudi Arabia was immediate. Every Moslem whose creed opposes foreigners stationed on their land and every Saudi who hopes one day to be genuinely independent rallied to those who denounced it. But don't castigate the Reagan administration for that. On the contrary, that's what the US ruling class wanted: a "war of religion". If only the Moslems got really angry, maybe they might resort to a bit of terrorism. And then the politics of fear would continue. Instead of a Cold War, the US would now fight the War on Terror. And once again, taxes would go for weapons, military bases, cops, agents, torturers, assassins, with no money left for hospitals, schools, entitlements, invalid children, AIDS, for anything human. Thanks to "Terror", taxes would continue to go for death. Because death makes more money for the rich. And to "defend ourselves," the ruling class could tighten its repression.

Anyone who looks Moslem could now be jailed. And any foreigner the US didn't like could become an "enemy combatant." The US could now torture anyone it wanted to at home or, if some lawyers objected, send them to Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan or some other dictatorship-run friend of the US, where they might be tortured without interference, secretly. It is called "rendition". How many of the 1500 American Moslems whom the ACLU has identified as "disappeared" are being rendered abroad? Every day we learn of a new case. The Canadian citizen taken off a plane at JFK airport, sent to his native Syria, tortured there for three years. The German Moslem, "not tortured only severely beaten" for nine months and held long enough to force his family back to Lebanon. The American Lebanese picked up in the street by FBI goons who refused to notify his family and held him incomunicado for three years, compelling his wife and two kids to abandon their lives in Queens, New York. Not to mention systematic torture in Guantanamo, Abu Graib, US detention camps in Afghanistan and, we now are told, in US prisons as well. Amnesty International defines the US camp at Guantanamo as a "Gulag." Logic and careful analysis of the facts tell us that the US runs Gulags wherever it dominates a country.

Some of that information is now known to the average American. But not all. Not enough, thanks to a pliable media, for average-Joe to understand that the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, and most local US police corps are today no better than the Gestapo or the KGB goons. And to make sure that average Joe does not get to know the extent of US atrocities, the government is now trying to silence even defense lawyers.

So for you and me, who don't look Moslem or Latino or Hindu or Apache, beware: one wrong word and, under the US Patriot ACT, we will face the charge of aiding and abetting the terrorists. And we will find it harder and harder to find a lawyer willing to defend us, that is if we are not simply "disappeared" to Tashkent or Ryad. Under the War on Terror, nothing can stop the empire. Years ago, the State Department hawk who invented the rational for the Cold War, the former ambassador to Moscow who invented "containment," euphemistically meant to give an acceptable term to the US policy of surrounding Soviet Russia (and making the Russians so scared of our first strike policy that the US, in effect, created and is responsible for post-war Stalin), the great statesman George Kennan said:

We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should cease the talk about vague, unreal objectives, such as human rights, raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

In other words, said this great American statesman, forget democracy. We don't have it, we don't want it. And let's stop pushing it on our totalitarian friends.

Being Outsourced by the Man? Read This.

If you are one of the millions living in quiet terror for your livelihood and by extension, your life, there is is more bad news for you. This is not, despite "Cinderalla Man", just the "way things are". Things in fact, are arranged and most decidedly not for the benefit of the majority. This is common and yet not common knowledge. We all talk about the "Man". Well the Man is a psychopath. Knowledge is the means to protect yourself and your loved ones. Do everything you can to get it.

Blue Ibis
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Insiders and Outsiders in Everyday Life

Henry See
Signs of the Times
Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:04 EDT

We all know stories of qualified and skilled people who can't find work or who are passed over for promotion when someone who specializes in office politics gets the nod. This situation is another example of the insider/outsider dichotomy I discussed in my last article. It not only applies to Washington, it also applies to the facts and events of our daily lives. How many Americans are working for companies that are "offshoring" jobs to India and China? Ordinary people are on tenterhooks with the announcement of each round of layoffs while management have that glassy-eyed glare of bigger stock options and pay-offs when the year's profit margins improve and stock prices soar.

One of the consequences of such policies is that society loses the input and skills of its most gifted members. Positions that could be filled with people capable of bringing creative and thoughtful solutions to problems are instead filled with individuals whose only skill is the ability to play the game. They are often mediocre or incompetent and get others to do their work for them, while they, of course, claim the credit. Society as a whole loses as this great wealth of creativity is wasted.

But the losses are not only seen on the larger scale; they hit home more directly in the lives of those laid off or who live in a permanent state of fear.

Here are some quotes from email I have received recently describing just this. One correspondent wrote:

Some life, being on the treadmill constantly trying to outrun 'redundancy'. I do not like where the 'new world order' has been herding us. A century ago I would have lived my entire life doing what I spent years training for in the first place.

Think about that. Think about what an important shift such a change is in our lives and how it affects all of us, how it puts us in a permanent state of anxiety over the future. We can spend thousands of dollars on an education and have no assurance whatsoever that we will even be able to find employment in our chosen field. Think about your fathers or grandfathers who may have had a job doing the same work throughout their careers and who believed that their children would have the same choice.

If the shift just described isn't enough to leave us anxious and insecure, what about the nefarious policy called by that whitewashed label "outsourcing" and "offshoring" of jobs?

Another correspondent writes:

I mentioned impending layoffs at my software-corp employer recently. I survived, but some good performers were let go. "5% company-wide" translated into more in some areas and less in others, up to 25% in some. People in my office are shaken. Others remind me that layoffs always result in additional staff leaving and that management often actually intends and wants this.

Disturbingly, it was let out in advance, in confidence to some people, some of the names of those to be laid off. I wonder if it was to see if secrets could be kept.

Then, a few weeks later he wrote back to fill me in.

.. ah, but it's not over. The cuts made up the dollar shortfall last quarter, but the execs dropped new bombshells last week. First, they laid off a couple of VPs unexpectedly. Next day, they told to the company they *must* raise profit margin to avoid hostile takeover attempts, so they'll begin "aggressively offshoring" as many positions as possible, and that "some people will lose their jobs."

The company's offices in India and especially China will grow. The CEO said he should have done it long ago. This is risky because it puts a pall over everyone for months to come. Multiple people I know resigned in the wake of this announcement.

You have to wonder whether or not this permanent state of anxiety is one of the goals of these policies and these announcements. Read through this explanation of Transmarginal Inhibition and see if it doesn't describe what is happening to the work force in the United States and elsewhere. Pavlovian shock methods are being used to soften us up and prepare us for the next blow. The regular "terrorist" alerts issued following 911 serve the same purpose.

The correspondent continues:

One woman who identified herself as working in Accounts noted that every department was cutting costs to the bone, but wanted to know why the execs didn't -- she asked them why they constantly put in for approval of "budget exceptions" on their expense accounts that were approved without question, even though she felt they were unnecessary. Their answer was simply that, "we try to stick to budget, but sometimes exceptions are necessary."

Ah, yes, "sometimes exceptions are necessary". And we know where these exceptions are always found: benefiting the insiders. Which reminds me of a story told to me by an Irish friend a few years ago. The day after the same type of "out-sourcing" layoffs were announced at a company in Dublin, the CEO drove up to the office in his brand new BMW 500 series car, expensive enough to pay the salary of several employees. Back then the process was called down-sizing.

So "exceptions are necessary", even in other countries. The infection crosses national boundaries, and the woman who had the courage to speak up very likely will lose her job. But isn't it better to take a stand?

The problem is, these kinds of schemes are inherent in the logic of a system that values economic results over the lives of those doing the work. The faulty premise is that the good of the people is taken care of by the "invisible hand" of the marketplace, which boils down to, somehow, things will just take care of themselves, with the caveat: as long as you are industrious and are willing to work. You all know the great American myth that anyone can be a success, that anyone can be president.(1) This great American myth about individual success puts the burden of failure squarely on the individual. Failure is never the fault of the system or the people who benefit from the system. It is always your fault.

Convenient, isn't it? Do you think it is only a coincidence?

So how does one learn to benefit from the system, or, in other words, to succeed? By mimicking those who have already attained some success. And how does one do that? By becoming ruthless, back-stabbing, and only looking out for one's own interests. In other words, one must become sick to survive. One must encourage the propagation of the virus of pathological thought processes within oneself by killing any manifestation of consideration of others that might prevent you from getting what you want or what you have convinced yourself you deserve. Once the values of the insiders become the values of society as a whole, once their distorted and inhuman way of seeing the world becomes the accepted way of seeing and understanding the world, the only way to succeed is to become like them. You could call it the Stockholm Syndrome on a societal level.

An important element in this pathological way of viewing the world that one must internalize in order to succeed is the acceptance of the various false divisions that the insiders promote in order to hide the fundamental insider/outsider divide. Think of how race, nationality, language, and religion are all used to sow dissension and discord among outsiders. Do you think this process just happens by chance? An example that is prominent now is the question of illegal immigration and what to do with the long border joining the United States and Mexico. We see a vehement discussion on the need to close off America's borders.

But, really, what group is the problem here? Is it the Mexican workers who come to the United States, or is it the insiders who claim the vast majority of the wealth and resources for themselves? And to what extent are the insiders responsible for the large migration of workers into the US through decades of injustice and exploitation of Mexico by US corporations in collaboration with corrupt Mexican politicians and officials? And that holds for other countries in Latin America and the world. Do you think that these people would leave their homes and families if they could make a living where they were? Would you?

Which raises another question: What do you want out of life?

Probably security, as in having a home and enough money to get by, is high on the list. A safe place to raise your kids and a satisfying job that leaves you time to do other things than work and pay the bills would likely also have a place. Those are the needs and desires of normal people everywhere. Someone with a healthy psychological profile doesn't need large sums of money that he or she will never spend. He or she doesn't need multiple houses. He or she wants a job that is rewarding and satisfying and that provides enough income to pay his or her way and provide for his or her family. He or she wants to live in peace and security and not see a son or daughter go off to fight in a war overseas. He or she doesn't want to see a home-grown, para-military police force patrol the streets of their hometown, such as we saw used against the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, much less the thousands of foreign troops.

The Mexicans that come to the US want the same thing. Their goals are the goals of normal Americans. They share the goals of ordinary people everywhere. The ordinary Muslims, who we are told are the source of all of the problems in the Middle East, also want the same thing. So if this world of peace and security is what we want, why are we so far from achieving it?

We are told that it is because we all have a dark side, the animal part of our nature that breaks out every so often and wreaks havoc and destruction. In response to that, I would ask each of you, do you not see a difference between a violent act that comes out of the heat of emotion and a violent act that is coldly planned in advance? Would you be capable of planning the destruction of another country, including the deaths of over 1 million people, in a cold and rational manner, with the same emotional detachment that you would draw up the plans for the construction of a house? If you were running a profitable company, would you be capable of eliminating the jobs of thousands of workers, creating anxiety, suffering, and distress, simply to increase your profit margin by a few percentage points?

The insiders can and do make their plans in this way. They have no qualms about it. Their violence, be it physical or psychological, is not born of stress or overworked emotions. It is emotionless and calculated. They then invent slogans, theories, and excuses to justify their deviant plans, convincing us that it is done in the name of freedom and democracy or because there is a threat to our security.

The real threat to our security comes from those who can calmly make plans for war.

If normal people, ordinary people, were able to get beyond the divisions sown by the insiders and unite to claim what is rightfully ours, power and control over our own lives, the insiders would be where they belong: on the outside. Why should a small percentage of the population control the vast majority of the wealth? Why should they have the control over life and death decisions that concern the majority? Why should they impose their cold and calculated view of the world on those of us who value human contact, experience, and intimacy over money and power?

Whatever justification or rationalization springs to mind as you read these words has been implanted within you by people who do not have your best interests at heart. It is not their sons and daughters who are in Iraq. It is not their future that is put into jeopardy through downsizing, offshoring, and outsourcing. Using the media, these justifications and rationalizations are repeated over and over again until we accept them at face value, until we begin to think like them.

Certainly, groups subjected to injustice have tried to unite in the past. The problem was they were uniting over the wrong rallying point. Class, religion, nationality, none of these strike at the root of the problem, and therefore they can only go so far in achieving a working unity. The one issue that touches the root is that of conscience. How do you treat your neighbor? How do you treat your family? Moreover, without an understanding of psychopathy and other pathologies, it was easy for these types to join such movements and eventually turn them away from their original aims. People who are incapable of putting themselves in another's shoes, of genuinely feeling what it is like to be in another's position, are incapable of forming any lasting unity because they can never place the interests of someone else before their own. They are never capable of true compromise, that is, compromise that doesn't come with the baggage of self-righteous sacrifice or deep-seated and hidden resentment and their subsequent plans for revenge or retribution.

The fact of the matter is that our lives are controlled in almost every aspect by decisions over which we have no say, be it political decisions by the insiders in Washington or other centers of power, economic decisions by our bosses whose goal is to maximize profits at the expense of providing secure working environments for their employees, or decisions over what it is permissible to think and what ideas will be drummed into our heads through the media, to name but a few. Normal people, ordinary people, people of conscience live in an environment that does not express our inner nature, that is not the manifestation of our ability to empathize and care for others, and until we become aware of this fact, we, too, are infected. How will we ever be able to create a different world if we do not root out the insider virus that has taken root in us?

(1) Well, looking at Bush, that second phrase is true in a certain sense. Even someone completely unqualified to lead the US can become president, but you know that is not what I mean.

Wanna Buy a Bridge?

The next installment in Allen Branson's series on recognizing a pyschopath's mind games. Find the first part here. Again, the deceptions are so simple we tend to think we are immune to them.. Think again.

Blue Ibis
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The Art of the Con
A Branson

Psychopaths, Psyops and COINTELPRO Blog
Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:38 EDT

©Sekretagent Productions

Spell Game of Confidence

Not one of the people getting on the I-35W Bridge on August 1st had any reason to suspect what was going to happen that night. The day before, and the day before that, the bridge had held just as much traffic as it did on the 1st. The bridge had help up just fine since its opening in 1967. It had a history of holding the weight of vehicles traveling across the Mississippi River without any problems.

If someone with knowledge of the bridge's lack of structural integrity stood at one end of the bridge trying to warn commuters of their imminent demise, he would've been laughed off as a nut case. Political cartoonists would have, if they had the time, probably drawn him as a long-haired, bearded, sandal-wearing lunatic carrying a sign reading "THE END IS NEAR!"

And yet, at 6:05pm on August 1st, the I-35W Bridge did collapse. The collapse was so sudden and catastrophic that some thought explosives had gone off. Cars plummeted into the water, below. A school bus full of children just managed to stop before going over the edge. Panic ensued.

Everyone on the bridge would've sworn it couldn't happen, yet it did. Even the engineers in charge of inspecting the bridge didn't see it coming. According to a report from WISN in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

"During all of my time on the I-35W Bridge, I did not notice any unusual or unexpected swaying or rumbling," said Steve Weston, a project manager with Progressive Contractors of St. Michael, Minn. "No one in my crew made any such report to me. Right up to the collapse, I had no reason to believe that my crew and I were in danger."

That is, of course, exactly the way we like to see the world. We need stability. Without stability, adrenaline pumps into our blood stream and our heart rates stay dangerously high. The stress of prolonged lack of stability has a detrimental effect on our health. So, if we don't find stability in reality, we make it up in our own heads. Lack of stability is just too much for most of us to handle.

In order to create this make-believe stability in our minds, we call on our recollection of history as justification of our fantasies. The bridge has never collapsed before. The country has always weathered the storm of hard times in the past. The system will correct itself and everything will soon go back to normal. Everything is under control, just as it has always been.

We, in the U.S., live in an empire, though some refuse to acknowledge it for what it really is. Being an empire means having control. Control equals stability, or, at least, it feels that way. Empires provide a special form of history that makes believing in their stability easy for anyone calming themselves with such a fantasy. They can point to the rise of the country from humble, agrarian roots and a bold political experiment in democracy to the economic and military superpower of the world.

How can anyone doubt, with a history like that, that the empire will continue to grow? It has always grown. Anyone who doubts its continued growth and prosperity is a long-haired, bearded, sandal-wearing lunatic carrying a sign that reads, "THE END IS NEAR!" And, no one in their right mind listens to such lunatics, do they?

It is easy to forget just how many empires have come and gone during the known history of humanity. They all end. That is the history we need to keep in our minds. Every empire that has ever existed has come to an end. But this empire has not ended yet, you might argue. The keyword is "yet." Every empire, up to its last day, could say the same thing.

The desire to believe that a history of success and growth means a future of the same is so strong that nearly every peddler of financial investments covers its legal butt with the disclaimer, "Past performance is not guarantee of future results." Without that disclaimer, you leave yourself wide open to being charged with running a confidence game.

We seem to love stories about confidence games, yet seem to learn nothing from them. The Sting won seven Oscars, The Usual Suspects won two and The Grifters was nominated for four. Ocean's Eleven (the original Rat Pack version) spawned an extremely popular remake which then spawned two popular sequels. The TV show Mission: Impossible spawned a movie franchise that was successful despite a growing dislike of its star, Tom Cruise. The list goes on and on. We go to the movies to watch them in droves, then rent the DVD's to watch them again, none the wiser two hours later.

The essence of a confidence game or, as it is usually called, the con, is exactly what the name implies: confidence. A con artist would convince their "mark" that a tremendous profit was to be made for very little effort. The success of the con is dependent on the ability of the con man to convince the mark that the proposition can't possibly lose and the desire of the mark to make the profit. Often, the proposition, or setup, is something illegal. For example, in the movie The Sting, the setup used is one called "the wire."

In the wire con the mark was made to believe that the con artist had someone on the inside at the telegraph office who was working the "gold wire." The gold wire was the telegraph wire that delivered the results of horse races. The alleged inside man would delay delivery of the results of one of the late races by a couple of minutes in order to get the con artist the results in time to place a bet at a local pool hall and make a killing.

Of course, the con man does not have anyone on the inside at the telegraph office. Instead, he sets up a phony pool hall, complete with actors, to simulate the event. In order to really suck the mark into the proposition, he is not allowed to make any large bets for a few days. Instead, he is cautioned to go easy for a few days and just make a few bucks on races that don't carry long odds so that suspicions are not raised. In one version of this con, carried out by the infamous con artist Joseph "The Yellow Kid" Wiel, the mark is actually lead to lose money on his first few bets.

For the first race he bets on, the results are delivered by phone. The "inside man" quickly blurts out twenty one then hangs up. The mark eagerly places his bet on the horse with the number twenty one to win and, lo and behold, horse twenty wins. When the mark later meets the "inside man" he is informed that he is an idiot for not being able to follow simple instructions. He was clearly told that horse twenty won.

A few more similar "miscommunications" and the mark is convinced there is a lot of money to be made and desperate to recoup his loses and make a profit. It is at that point that the sting happens. He places a ridiculously high bet that goes far beyond the house limits - not knowing, of course, that the "house" is phony and has no limits whatsoever. A show is put on for his benefit in which the bookie acts as if he simply cannot accept such a high bet. Finally, the "owner" of the operation steps in and, having seen the man consistently lose, tells the bookie to take the money.

Just as in the movie The Sting, the con might end with a faked raid by the police that sends everyone scrambling, including the mark who is forced to leave his large bet behind in order to escape jail. The con artists are safe from retribution because the mark can't openly admit that he was willingly taking part in illegal activities.

The con does not have to involve illegal activities, of course...at least on the part of the mark. The con artist might claim to be the owner of a sizable chunk of land, even producing convincing documentation to prove it. George C. Parker made a living selling famous New York landmarks to tourists. His favorite was selling the Brooklyn Bridge. These types of cons went so far as to open offices that the mark could visit in order to instill confidence in their legitimacy. In the end, the mark engages in what he considers to be a perfectly legal and upfront business transaction that amounts to nothing but loss of their money.

These cons make for great movies because they seem so unbelievable. The wire is so involved, requiring the setup of a fake pool hall, the hiring of lots of actors and several days of manipulation, we can't believe anyone could actually pull it off. Only in the movies, we tell ourselves. However, the wire was a real con, used many times in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Cons could be incredibly elaborate affairs that spanned weeks or months of setup.

In any type of con, confidence is the key. As every con man knows, confidence is one of the easiest things to instill in another person. They understand that confidence and stability are necessary to the human mind. Rather than look with suspicion on the man who presents a deal that is too good to be true, most people will welcome him with open arms and count their blessings.

So it was with the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis. Everyone had confidence in that bridge right up to the moment it collapsed. And, so it is with our little empire. We have confidence. We need to have confidence. It has built that confidence in us slowly and surely. Anything less and we might see the sting coming and bolt for the door. It has built that confidence through indoctrination in its history - it's rise from a lowly rebel nation to a global superpower.

But, past performance does not guarantee future results.

The stock market of the 1920's was making a lot of people rich. The easy money to be made there drew virtually everyone in. If you had money, you put some of it in stocks. It was just the prudent thing to do. Even if you didn't have money, you could buy into the game. The "beauty" of that market was that you could buy on margin.

You borrow some money to buy the stocks then put the stocks up as collateral for the loan. Since stocks were going up and up, it was a great deal. As a matter of fact, it was such a great deal that by 1929 the total debt on margin buying was six billion dollars. Yeah, that really is billion with a "b".

In early September of that year, the market took a bit of a tumble by dropping, then rising, then dropping again. No need to worry. The market fluctuates. It had dropped like that before, but it had a history - a history of rising up stronger after the dip. Investors had confidence in the stock market.

This time, however, the market didn't rebound as everyone thought it should. On October 24th, Black Thursday, investors began to panic. Selling orders overwhelmed the stock exchange's ability to process the transactions. Financiers attempt to rebuild confidence in the market by buying as much of the stock as they could. It didn't work. On October 29th, Black Tuesday, the floor of the stock exchange went chaotic. Traders on the floor (those guys you think of as staid and sober businessmen handling enormous sums of other people's money) were actually tearing at each other's throats like crazed animals. In the end, thirty billion dollars - more than twice the national debt - had been lost.

It happens just that fast. One day, you have confidence, the next day...nothing. You've been taken for a ride and you have no means of regaining what you have lost. It is simply gone. We don't want to believe that it happens, but it does happen, it has happened and it will happen again. Perhaps it will happen again very soon.

The warning signs are there. We are near the end of a very elaborate con game and we are the mark. But, we don't want to see the signs. We have been promised a payoff at the end and we are too heavily invested in the game to quit now. We've lost some in the past, so we are putting it all behind the game, now. We are going to recoup our losses and then some!

Except, we aren't. The mark never does. The only hope the mark has is to wake up to the fact of the con and end the game before it is too late. Letting the game play to its end is all the con artist wants. After that, you can have your regret for what could have been, what you should have done or what a fool you had been. The con artist has your valuables. That's all that matters.

Still, here we are at the end of the game. We've seen the movies. We should know the game by now, but our confidence holds firm. We tell ourselves this con is too big and elaborate. No one could carry it off. Only in the movies. Instead, we blindly place our bets, mortgage our future and the future of our children, all for the big payoff we've been promised. It will come. It must come, dammit! The stock market will continue to rise, democracy will spread across the face of the planet and we will be welcomed as liberators.

And that bridge...the bridge to our future...we have confidence in it. It got us to where we are today, so it will get us to where we have been promised for tomorrow.

If you believe that, I have another bridge I'd like to sell you.