Copyright 2012, John Manimas Medeiros

This is a new perception of recent world history.

The development of a democratic republic in North America at the end of the 18th century was a quirk of history, due to unique historical circumstances that had not occurred before and may never occur again: the technology accessible to the people was the same as that available to the ruling class.

Unique conditions regarding the technology of war enabled an army of citizens to defeat a trained military force, because the technology of war was available to the public: rifles, cannons and ships. That level playing field, or equal access to military technology passed away gradually during the 19th century, such as during the American Civil War and the Spanish American War. During the 20th century, the equality of technology was replaced with vastly more powerful technology being in the hands of rulers compared to what the public could obtain -- refer to World War II.

Now, in the 21st century, high technology in the hands of the government places the mass of citizens in the same situation as tenant farmers or serfs in ancient cultures as compared to the technological power available to the ruling class. The return of extremely unequal technology is the true and very great threat to human freedom in the future. Note that foreign policy advisors discuss the conditions of "asymmetrical warfare." The fear of authoritarianism depicted in George Orwell's 1984 came twenty years early in 1944. This allegedly fiction novel was published in 1949, as a projection of a grim future, but the authoritarianism depicted had already occurred in both Germany and Russia, and unknown to the populace, in the United States of America, but in a less oppressive form. The technology of social control is based not only on the science in the service of war but also science in the service of controlling communications and thereby controlling society. The greatest threats to freedom in the twenty-first century arise from the common practice, in particular in the United States of America, of directing military science toward the purpose of disinformation, information management, and social control. In other words, the work of government -- in the United States of America -- is making a transition from serving the people to controlling the people.

Everyone will soon be noticing what I have noticed, namely, that the people are helpless to resist the technological power of government. Hollywood movies, made to entertain us but also educate, have repeatedly illustrated that the government possesses the technology to locate any citizen and kill them, or make their life miserable. Using the manipulation of money, such as through loans, credit and debt, an alliance between government and financial institutions can enslave the populace as effectively, if not more effectively, than the medieval manor. The cosmic question is this: If it is technologically possible to control the masses even while they suffer poverty and deprivation, what force is there, if any, or what human motivation, to cause the ruling classes to maintain democracy? Is a moral commitment to democracy enough to prevent those with superior technological power from using it to control people? The people have nothing to fight with when the police and the army have tasers, sound canons, water canons, tanks, drones and complete control over all communications. It is not 1780. We cannot fight a tyrant's guns with our own guns. It is 2012, and the tyrant has social control technology that makes it unnecessary to enable citizen participation in government. Decisions can be made by governments to oppressively manage the people, and the people cannot do anything about it. The people cannot fight back with a matching technology. What power is there, in human society and human nature, that will compel those with power to be democratic when the support of the people is not required in order to maintain social control?

We are about to witness the replacement of democracy with "homeland security." The objections will be met by arguments of necessity -- we must have public order and "civil society." And civil society means cooperation and compliance, with developing conditions of scarcity and pervasive crime. Note that the explosion of crime was not begun by drug dealers, but rather by money dealers, because money is the drug of choice for the majority of Americans.

While unique historical conditions brought about political democracy in America, they also brought about a unique economic situation where the extreme reliance on private capital to exploit a fresh continent appeared more practical and more efficient than older communal economics such as the missionary plantation or the medieval manor. In North and South America, the rise of technology met with an abundance of raw materials, and a European culture that possessed an enormous capacity to reproduce and migrate.

The historical period just prior to the transition from colonies to new nations is referred to as "the age of exploration." This is a very interesting phrase, because it is formulated strictly from the viewpoint of the Europeans who rapidly advanced their technology in all areas, including sailing and warfare, while at the same time multiplying their population far more rapidly than any other cultures on the planet. In the film story titled "Dances With Wolves," when the American soldier befriending the plains Indians is asked how many white men will come, he tells the Indian chief, "like the stars." But what if we use our imaginations and ask a creative question: Why is it that Europeans multiplied like rabbits and advanced their technology and seized land by the continent instead of the tribal peoples of Asia, Africa and the Amazon? The answer to that question may seem either obvious or complex, but in any case the question points to the unique period of human history that is described euphemistically as the age of exploration, when I once heard a more honest and objective historian refer to this period as "the age of invasion." There is a great deal of validity in describing the period from 1500 to 2000 as the phase of human evolution in which the Europeans invaded the Earth. The last continent to be seized was Antarctica, and still these same people talk about how they will invade the Moon. That plan will be harder to implement than the invasion of "the West." The Moon is not already occupied as the West was, but when the crazies attempt to take possession, they will learn why it is not occupied.

So, during this rather odd phase of human history, capitalism worked well, but it normally does not. People do not like their land and crops and water and money and economic systems to be controlled by their most greedy neighbors. It is actually more normal, and more common, for the basic economic resources of a society to be public capital rather than private capital. That is why Americans today look and sound like lunatics when an entrenched economic nobility, or plutocracy, calling themselves "conservatives" cry out for private ownership of bridges, bodies of water and national parks. They are crazy. They are blindly stupid. They do not see that the success of "capitalism" in the Americas was and is a quirk, a brief period of unique circumstances when the politics of invasion, acquisition and exploitation was best served by the selfish, greedy and voracious types of personalities that we now call "investors." But now we are faced with a big problem. The exploitation of the world has reached the point where it causes more harm than profit, and what do we do with the sharks when the fish are all gone and the people cannot get out of the water?

The economic history of America includes the myths of "snake oil" and the scam artist who sells the Brooklyn Bridge to an immigrant for a hundred dollars. We are not only a nation of inventors and technological artists, but also a nation of confidence artists. Propaganda stands out in other cultures because it is amateur. In the United States, propaganda is so effective it passes for "art." The stock market crash of 1929 and the evaporation of bundles of mortgage "derivatives" in 2007 were both the outcomes of con artists and gambling addicts performing their tricks inside banks and Wall Street. One needs to ask why "conservative" Americans believe strongly in the regulation of hunters, doctors, dentists, athletes and nurses, but not investors. This is so because capitalism is not a method in America, it is a religion. The Con Artist is a sacred institution, and it will not be busted except by a revolution. It is usually argued that a revolution occurs only under extreme conditions. Look around you. What's not extreme?

After everything and everyone has been exploited, and the people are sinking in a swamp of human overproduction and toxic wastes, one should see that it is time to return to a sane policy of social responsibility and economic stability and strive for a permanently ethical and egalitarian society. That is the oldest and most traditional moral dream. But that transition will be hard to execute after selfishness has been the dominant social policy for 500 years. Even the pioneers got sucked into the con of capitalism: go west, pound a stake into the ground, and the land is yours. Does that look to you like the usual process of human history? No. The age of exploration and theft and exploitation was a phase, something like early adolescent juvenile delinquency. But now we are adults, and we are expected to really obey real laws, or go to jail. Will we grow up successfully without tragic mishaps, or will the Asians and Africans and Mediterraneans say "Now it's our turn to explore and take and exploit."? When the shoe of history is on the other foot, when non-Europeans want to expand and invade and exploit, we call it "terrorism." That is why the infantile minds of American "neo-conservatives" have tried to invent a "new American century." They are terrified that the example set by the age of European invasion will be imitated by non-Europeans. The pastries of history look different when you are on the outside of the bakery window looking in.

The American Revolution as well as the French Revolution were both won by guerrilla warfare, where the masses possessed the same weapons technology as the governments in power. The social, political and economic changes fostered then occurred under those unique circumstances of "equal technology." Those unique conditions were a temporary product of the unleashed march of science. Those conditions of technological equality will most likely never occur again. Therefore, we are faced with the question as to what force or motivation, if any, will compel those with power to use it benevolently. Cynicism now has a more profound effect.

I must not end without mentioning the infantile minds that call themselves the "Tea Party." That is an appropriate name because having a tea party is all they will accomplish. They are empty headed but full of bluster and they, including some uneducated elected officers, like to say that if the government is oppressive we should "resort to second amendment remedies." This is a ridiculous reference to the idea that a group of citizens armed with rifles could overthrow the United States Government. Give it a try. An equipped battalion of the United States Army (National Guard) could take control of any American city or expanse of countryside, in full insurgency, within a day. The kill ratio for the United States Armed Forces, established in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq, is at least 50 to 1, and can be as high as 200 to 1. That means that after 2000 rioters are killed, and only 10 soldiers, the people will review the situation, and discern a more realistic understanding of their "second amendment remedies." Something like this already occurred at Kent State University in 1970. The Tea Party people are frauds. There is no comparison between shooting at a bear and shooting at a human. The humans shoot back. When the Tea Party infants face the overwhelming technology in the hands of the government, and find themselves on the low end of "asymmetrical warfare," they will see themselves more clearly. The Tea Party is so 1773.

John Manimas Medeiros, July 2012