As Josh points out on the front page,(http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/if_you_remember_not_long.php) the Chinese, in the usual subtle manner of tyrants and despots throughout history, are reminding us that they have us by the financial balls and are not shy about reminding us of that by giving the American jewels a warning squeeze to let us know who now is boss.  There is, of course, little difference between a capitalist tyrant and a communist one.  Neither has the best interest of the common people at home or abroad at heart.  In this case, the oligarchy of China has been able to maintain and even increase power for itself domestically as it makes the truly great leap from ham-handed communist economics and politics to China, Inc.  For the first time, a ruling oligarchy seems to have successfully and permanently fused capitalist power with self-perpetuating oligarchical power under the banner of communism.  If power corrupts, and I believe it does, then the level of danger the Chinese oligarchy represents is unparalleled and growing both for the Chinese people and the rest of the world because of their success at integrating their system as they have.  Soon, the previously inward looking giant will begin casting it's gaze abroad in a far more active way.  This is so not because the Chinese themselves are evil but because they are human.  We Americans have always held, as our founders did, that the inevitable result of too much power concentrated in the hands of a few will be abused and result in tyranny.  No human being can long resist the temptation of power and the abuse of it. 

Whatever internal democratic reforms may have been made in China in recent times, the basic power equation has not changed one iota.  The largely unknown powerful few in China are not at all shy about asserting their power and dominance and insist on being in charge at all times in internal affairs.  They have been lying in wait for many years to do so on a world scale.  Like some in America, many of them believe it is China's destiny to dominate the world.  I distincly recall seeing an interview with a Chinese President on CSPANN back during the Clinton years when he calmly asserted that it was only a matter of time before China asserted itself as the dominant nation on earth.  He said they had no doubt about it and were in no hurry because it was inevitable.  The idiotic American imperial adventures of the neocons since the installation of the Bush junta did nothing to discourage this tendency among our powerful rivals in China nor in Russia for that matter either.  In fact, one of the most profound and malignant legacies of the Bush tyranny worldwide is the encouragement it gave to the lawless, inhuman, brutal regimes around the globe to do as they please without regard for international law, any sense of morality, ethics or humanity.

Bush and the necons and all those who did not vigorously oppose the shortsighted policies of the Bush administration bear responsibility for taking the United States from a position of strength and full independence at the end of the Clinton adminstration to a position of weakness all around in the aftermath of Bush's profligate, shortsighted, and irresponsible years of misrule.  Democrats in Congress are not at all blameless in this regard, but it was fully the policy of the Republican tyrant and his henchmen that put us in the unenviable position we are in today.

China was happy to lend us all the money in the world and was delighted to trade with us as long as their national interest was the primary beneficiary of the deals being made.  They knew they could rely on the American capitalist class to sell out the interests of their own country in the pursuit of quick and easy profits.  And they did just that. 

With patience and calm did the Chinese outplay and outfox the American dunce in chief and his gang of looters for eight long years.  The trade imbalance went off the scale.  Our debt to the Chinese became astronomical and continues to grow now because we have no other choice but to turn to them. Our currency is teetering on the brink of becoming no more sound than that of any other banana republic.  Our unsustainable binge of militarist adventurism abroad has weakened our military strength.  Though we continue to be in denial about it, any sustainable economic recovery will require that the United States seriously cutback on the obsence, wasteful, and pointless war spending it consistently engages in regardless of whether or not we are actually at war.  All of the worst problems Eisenhower warned us about regarding the Military Industrial Complex have come to full fruition.  If we hope ever to restore our nation we must free ourselves from the stranglehold of that complex.  If we do not, it will metastisize to the point where it will destroy the nation and itself.

Will the United States ever be able to get itself out of debt to the Chinese so that our governments and people in the future are not beholden to the Chinese oligarchs as we are today?  The true answer is that we don't know, but we must hope so.  It will take discipline and it will mean we can never again let the kind of criminal tyrants who ran roughshod over our government and our national interest in pursuit of private gain return to power.  In my opinion, there are dozens of matters upon which Bush and his gang of thugs should be put up on charges and tried beginning with war crimes and crimes against humanity.  But among the crimes of the Bush years was weakening our nation to the point of handing a significant portion of our economic future over to an udemocratic, foreign oligarchy.  Bush may well turn out to be the great American Judas who sold out his country for thirty peices of Chinese silver.

The only card the US really has to play at this point, as Josh points out, is that if the oligarchs of China have us by the balls, well, it is a mutually threatening dillema in that we have theirs in our hands too.  While the Chinese remain in a far more powerful position, being the creditor, we too have a firm grip on the Chinese family jewels because we owe them so much.  What the US owes China could well represent the sort of unmanageable toxic debt to China that the mortgage crisis represents to US financial institutions. 

In the end, I hope and pray the US disentangles itself from this very poor position because of the threat it represents to the long term health and prosperity of our people.  But it will be important for the preservation of liberty here at home that Americans understand and remember exactly what it was that put us in this position and who is respnsible.  The tyrant Bush put us in this position.  He was the leader of the many criminal enterprises that laid America so low.  Bush's henchmen and his party served as accomplices.  The silence of many Democrats and in the media also aided and abetted these efforts.  The nuances of why those who knew better did not raise the alarm and put a stop to it all matters little at this point.  They failed to protect our country and their failure now leaves us prostrate and weakened in the face of all manner of danger at home and abroad.

If we are, in the future, to restore America's moral authority in the world which many of us believe has always been our national mission and destiny ("novus ordo seclorum"), then all of us must make sure the bumbling foolishness that got us in this position is never repeated. 

LIke, I think, everyone else, I was delighted to see John Stewart put the screws to Jim Cramer as he did last night.  He was reasonable, prepared, made his points clearly and without the use of any ad hominem attacks.  He understood what he was talking about.  Stewart now has now been elevated almost to the level of folk hero for his refusal to simply roll over and accept the absolutely bullshit lies that our establishment/status quo spits out on a daily basis.  Every accoloade he receives is deserved.  Our collective hats are off to him for publicly calling the hypocrisy and lies of the powerful on the carpet for all to see.

We can revel in Stewart's laudable feats, but when we look just a tiny bit deeper our jubilation is really because we are in a "better laugh than cry sittuation," aren't we?

I think Stewart himself has made this point in the past but last night's performance really spotlights it: if John Stewart who is a professional comedian with a show on a network dedicated to comedy is the best, hardest hitting and most fearless "journalist" in America what does that say about our media and the alleged "journalists" who are in it?  Last night Stewart pointed out that CNBC had not done it's journalisitic job regarding the rampant fraud and ponzi schemes of Wall Street and he was correct to do so.  But what about the New York Times?  What about the Wapo, the Boston Globe and on and on and on?  What about the NBV Nightly News?  How about ABC or CBS?  CNN?  Where have all these wealthy millionaire journalists as the Daily Howler likes to point out been?  They sure as hell weren't being watchdogs for the people.  They sure as hell weren't playing their role as the 4th estate.

The corruption of the powerful elites in our society is widespread and malignant.  We cannot expect the people who worship and promote the thieves who run Wall Street to look out for the interests of the public as many so naively have assumed they would.  They have failed utterly in their primary public obligation.  All of them.  And they have failed because they share the same warped values and the same aspirations of the wealthy criminals who drove our economy into the ground for their own personal gain.

And what of government?  Where were our regulators, legislators, etc...?  They too were completely asleep at the wheel.  Government was negligent at best and complicit in much of what has gone on and now our Treasury Secretary spends his days trying to figure out not how to save the people of the United States, but how to save the very criminal businessmen from the consequences of their immoral and unethical and probably illegal activities.

I am glad we have John Stewart, but it is a sad, sad commentary on our nation and our society and particularly our alleged elite classes when he is the number one defender of truth, honesty, ethics and decency in the United States.