November, 2002

These are the Robert Ludlum days, the Net is full of sites calling attention to one conspiracy theory after another. Scores of ambiguous and inherently evil powers are proposed to be behind the current administration and its war and foreign policies. Big Business, Big Oil, Big Whatever is the real force behind what's going on.

But when has it ever been different?

Was not economic control behind the Roman Empire? Did the Portugese or Spanish enjoy their brief time of domination for reasons of altruism or for the domination of commerce? Was the British Empire a rather soft-spoken group of cricket aficionados, or a well oiled and triumphant military/political machine designed for commercial purpose?

Great fleets and massive armies once carried the day, but the technological war machine is today's instrument and no force on earth can match by fractions the U.S. dominance.

If the political use of this undeniable advantage is fostered by private wealth and private gain, with little consideration for those who would oppose, what's new in that? We are not faced with massive 'conspiracy, but with business as usual, as it was played out since the times of Medici. It may not play out well against our image of America, may not square up with our uniquely American vision of fair play and equal opportunity, but a fact is no less a fact because of our discomfort.

And precious few of us seem to be uncomfortable. Our President enjoys nearly unprecedented support. Nations today have no meaning but in American terms. Those of us who thought and wrote and cautioned otherwise have been repudiated in the recent elections and George Bush sits deep in the saddle with no meaningful opposition.

If one accepts that there is no conspiracy afoot, merely a meshing of ageless industrial, economic and philosophical gears, the fog lifts and we are able (perhaps) to look differently at our times.

The United States is, for better or worse, the sole power in the world today. There are many who would posit that, if a world power must evolve, better American than otherwise. Perhaps they are right. History will show a cause and an effect and the judgment is for the future. I am reminded of the Roosevelt administration of my youth and the intense hatred his policies made among the conservatives of his day, reminded again of history's proof that they pretty much saved a financially wounded America. Who is to say what the historic worldview of these, our present times, will be?

There are those, and I am among them, who think we Americans are on a wrong course, philosophically unsuited to world domination, perhaps too naive and insufficiently ruthless to stand and hold what our President has set out to dominate.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps we are the last best chance in a world gone awry, at a time when, left to their own devices any terrorist can wreak unacceptable havoc. America has not made the Middle East poor. America has made the Middle East rich and it is the shortsighted greed of the Sheiks, Kings and dictatorial presidents that has made their citizens poor. Perhaps that has to change.

I am skeptical, but the possibility is there.

That money, and the power that money buys, shapes American politics today is no conspiracy. It isn't even a kept secret. Money and power and law are what has built America from its earliest history. Of the three, law is the most cherished legacy and it remains to be seen if law, in the constitutional sense, will survive intact.

But a conspiracy? Hardly.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today