Category Archives: Politics

Robocop: Capitalism and the Militarization of the Homeland

Part I: “The Near Future”
 
In 1987, the film “Robocop” was released as a “near-future-dystopian-drama” with little grounding in reality and the politics of the day. The themes however, are pervasive and highly applicable when studying the late stages of capitalism and corporatism as well as a militarized police force at home. [Sorry for the fucked up formatting – word->blogspot->wordpress= ;-;]

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US Security Discourse: Physical and Ontological Implications

 

Part 1: Genealogy of War

            The past 200 years has seen a dramatic shift in the United States, the United States’ supposed “role in the world”, and, contrary to the video game series Fallout’s motto[1], even the very nature of war itself. Over 200 years ago, a group of wealthy white aristocrats decided that they had had enough of England’s “oppression” over them and they decided to revolt and form a new nation built around the pillars of liberty, equality (for some), and for lack of a better word, isolationism. In his farewell address, George Washington is quoted as having said “[i]t is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world” (Fromkin). However, this “true policy” was not to last as demonstrated by World War I wherein the US’ role shifted from stoic observer to what some neoconservatives like to call the “benevolent hegemon” (Dolman). In addition and parallel to this shift in the US’ role in the world, there was a change in the very nature of war itself. Before the 19thcentury, wars were conceived “as battles between sovereigns”, but all that changed with the advent of so called “strategic bombing” commonly credited to the Italian theorist Giulio Douhet (Collier and Lakoff 4). According to Douhet, war was “no longer [a thing] fought between armies but between whole peoples. All the resources of a country…would focus on the war effort” or, as it is commonly called, “total war” (C&L 5). Thus the rise of total war saw with it the rise of a new kind of geopolitical strategy, that of threat calculation in regards to so called “critical infrastructure”.  In addition, total war’s rise created a whole new beast, the unpredictable threat. This new kind of threat, one that “did not fit within the strategic framework” of the time, necessitated a new kind of response, that is to say, a new kind of outlook on threats in general (C&L 3). Everything was perceived as a potential target, from the obvious military bases to the less obvious roads and water towers (the “critical infrastructure”).  Everything was under attack and everyone was a potential combatant and thus the reign of the constant threat began.

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Sovereign Dictator on a Boat: Carl Schmitt and the Dark Knight

The so called “Crown Jurist” and legal philosopher of Nazi Germany, Carl Schmitt, once said, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception”[1]. Not only is this true in the realm of real world politics, but also in the world of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and this essay will reveal the Schmittian nature of a particularly interesting scene in the film wherein we see the rise of a so called “Sovereign Dictator” on boat.

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Capitalism’s Coercive Nature

Abstract

During the course of this paper I will be attempting to prove that the modern day capitalist bourgeois-proletariat contract is just as coercive as the “forced taxation” that modern day Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists complain about. I aim to prove that the “agree to this or die” mentality inherent in any profit driven labor contract is no more “just” than the tax man coming to your door telling you to hand over your money. If one works within the framework of the non-aggression principle* and the moral philosophy of Stefan Molyneux in Universally Preferable Behavior then one ought to reject the capitalist bourgeois-proletariat contract as being “unjust” and “another form of coercion”. At this point it must be noted that I do not intend to prove that coercion is either a moral or immoral thing, I merely am attempting to prove that bourgeois-proletariat contract is coercive and therefore is immoral under the framework laid out by modern Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists. The issue of an apriori ethical framework shall be in a later post, this one is building off existing frameworks.

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.       -Eugene V. Debs[1]

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The American War Machine

Abstract

There are a ton of articles written that purport to explain why the United States and subsequently NATO got involved in specific quagmires around the world. While these articles are wonderful in explaining the United State’s posture on specific countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan, they fail to weave these discrete events into the overall fabric of the United State’s hegemonic role in the world. During the course of this paper I will argue that following World War II the United States’ active role in the world-which manifests itself in the toppling of regimes and the support of apartheid-is not out of a love of “democracy” or “freedom”, but rather is part of the ungodly melding of neo-liberalism and neo-conservationism’s goal for United States hegemonic domination. Throughout this paper I will argue that the major wars of the second half of the 20th century fought by the United States, from the Cold War proxy wars to the Iraq war to the proposed war on Iran to name a few, are not discrete pieces of data. Nay, they are points on a continuous line drawn by the United States government which ends with the permanent imperialistic, hegemonic status of the American empire.

I believe – though I may be wrong, because I’m no expert – that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.                                                                                                      -Dustin Hoffman[1]

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