Keeping Up Appearances
In an article I read recently that was written by Arthur Schlesinger in 1947, he quoted D. W. Brogan:
"change anything except the appearance of things"
In the decade preceding the New Millennium, with the "redesign" of our government by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the signing of the NAFTA agreement in 1993 and the Marrakesh Agreement in 1994 to create the WTO, everything changed except for the appearance of things.
The United Nations likes to name decades by the mission they intend to focus on. If we were to do that, we would call the decade before the 2001, the decade of globalization. The globalization itself is a perfect illustration of "keeping up appearances". The word says everything and nothing. So what is globalization? The Merriam-Webster online Dictionary defines it this way:
: the act or process of globalizing : the state of being globalized; especially : the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets
Here is how I define GLOBALIZATION:
By all appearances, not much has changed in
our government except for the Department of Homescam Security.
But the way the laws are really being crafted are through this hidden
organizational arrangement:
On May 2, 1990, Senator David L. Boren published an article in the Washington Post calling for a new role for America in the world. The article was placed into the Congressional Record by Senator Claiborne Pell. Boren was worried that America's leadership in the world would diminish as the threat from the Soviet Union subsided. The title of the article was . . . For a Model Nation.
His plan was ostensibly to retain leadership through economic power - turning the State Department into a commercial marketing agent. This concept of corporate and government power combined for commercial purposes of control is the system that created the Economic Hitmen. The following are excerpts:
...Second, change the perspective of American embassies and missions to give greater emphasis to supporting our economic interests. We must recruit more people into the Foreign Service and intelligence agencies with economic skills and training. Right now, two-thirds of our embassies do not even have a commercial officer in the embassy to assist our businesses. When we do have a commercial officer, it is three times as likely that the official is a foreign national.
Embassies must be regarded as outposts to further our economic interests. We must put behind us the attitude that commercial sections of diplomatic missions are nuisances best relegated to basements or annexes. If we don't restore our economic influence we will soon be without political influence....Of course, a comprehensive plan to rebuild our economy should include many other initiatives. Repairing the entire education system, planning for the transition from a military economy to a civilian economy and developing an international partnership to share the cost of improving the environment must all be part of the plan. It is essential to overhaul tax policy to match the tax incentives for saving and investment given by other nations so that our cost of capital can compete with theirs.
In the article mentioned previously by Arthur Schlesinger, he quotes a descriptive phrase from the work of Henry David Thoreau. The quote is from A Plea for Captain John Brown written in 1853 describing representative government:
"A semi-human tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away."
That description better fits the unelected, unrepresentative plutocracy being run out of the U.S. State Department than it did representative government but because the image of the State Department is one of diplomacy, it isn't recognized as the monster it's become. Keeping up appearances is a simple strategy that works brilliantly.
Vicky Davis
August 24, 2013