The theory of the second best

A couple of commentaries I found on the Web today have me going through a bit of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. One raised the question of whether the current plan of the Bush crime family is to sponsor a Salvador-style death squad campaign to both terrorize the Iraqi people and to foment a civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites. The other described how workers in Communist Vietnam are being oppressed by the government in various sweatshops that make products for McDonalds, Disney, Hallmark, and Starbucks. The author, Chris Floyd, contends that, after 45 years, the U.S. finally "won" the Vietnam war.

When I was studying Economics, one of the heady theories being bandied about was the "Theory of the second best," having to do with adjustments to be made when optimal conditions are not met. It sounds more sophisticated than it is, meaning simply that when you can’t have your first choice, you go to your second choice. One of the foreign students in the department understood it perfectly. He said it is the method employed by the CIA. When they can’t get their first choice, they always go to a second choice, typically to cause mayhem, and “pick the carcass” when the people of a country have been sufficiently brutalized.

This appears to be what is now taking place in Iraq, with death squads being trained by American forces, agents, and private contractors. There has been much speculation about the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines. One hypothesis I remember suggested it was done by the British, hoping to change the subject from the embarrassing publicity about the beatings of teenagers in Basra. No one has taken credit for the bombing, fueling more speculation. Kurt Nimmo raised the question of a "Black Op" in his blog, Another day in the empire.

Of two things we can be certain: One is that the Bush crime family has a lot of evil up its dirty sleeves, and the suffering in Iraq is likely to get worse for a long time to come. If nothing else, the BCF has to work feverishly just to stay out of jail. The more the war stagnates and casualties rise, the more people get angry, and also more likely is damaging "secret" information to surface.

The other thing we can be certain about is that international capital, manifest in the form of corporations, is determined to be the controlling force on this planet, transcending governments, economic systems, the ecosystem, and the great masses of people worldwide. Whether capitalist, communist, socialist, fascist, democracy, social democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, constitutional monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, or anarcho-syndicalist, or any other socio-economic construct – the high priests of international corporatism are hell-bent on being in control, and all other systems are subsumed under their power.

But, as Robert Burns once observed, the best laid schemes o’ mice an' men gang aft a-gley. The best laid schemes of international corporatism include the negation of Mother Nature, a not too wise omission. Or, as the Grateful Dead once put it, a man is just a man, and a conspiracy of men is still just one man in duplicate or multiplicate.

So, as I have said in a number of ways in this blog, the great planners and schemers can plan and scheme all they want, but there’s a slow train comin’. Global Warming, of course, will be the phenomenon that trumps everything else. That is, unless something greater than Global Warming comes around.

It kind of makes you wonder, just for musing’s sake, what might be the CIA’s second best solution to Global Warming? And what would be their first solution? Time to start working, boys. Voyeurism and death merchandising are not exactly skills that are going to be much help.