State of the Union Address, Possible Preview

This morning sources close to the Obama White House emailed me rough notes from the President’s State of the Union Address to be delivered this evening. While it is impossible to know which if any of these comments will make it into the final draft, it is comforting to know that he is thinking along these lines. Here is what was sent to me.

My Fellow Americans,

While I understand that many of you who supported my campaign are disappointed by the way I am leading this great nation, I make no apologies for the decisions I have made. On the contrary, if you knew what I know you would make similar choices. So as part of my remarks this evening I would like to share some of the things that I know, the truths that guide my decision making.

First to the war. Americans continue to speak of two wars—Afghanistan and Iraq—but there is only one war—the war against those who would reduce America’s standing in the world. At the moment this means Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and coming to a theater of war not so near you, Yemen, and North Korea. This is an endless war of empire building and maintenance. When we defeat our current enemies we will find others, or if it is cheaper, we will fund our enemies ourselves (as we currently do through the sale of drugs and oil) in order to maintain our endless war status. The reason for this is simple: peace is bad for business. The business of America is war. This is not because we are a warlike people, but because we are an empire, and empires need to grow, and growth means war.

There was a time when we thought we could conquer the world with American know-how and technological ingenuity. But that was before we insisted that Darwin was the Anti-Christ, and realized that we—and by we here I mean giant corporations—could make more money by moving manufacturing overseas, and evading taxes here at home. We don’t make much anymore, and our highest paid people are paid to make money not products. Wall Street bankers who go home with millions in bonuses don’t actually do anything. They don’t teach anyone, or make anything, or paint or act or sculpt or write or compose. They just gamble, and, win or lose, they go home with millions. This is what they are good at. This is what we reward. And to maintain this system we need war.

War is good for our economy. The one thing we do make is munitions, but we would have a glut of bombs if we don’t drop more and more of them. And think of war in terms of employment. Just imagine adding hundreds of thousands of newly released soldiers to our unemployment rolls. We can’t downsize our military; we need to grow it in order to absorb a growing population of the young and unemployed. And we need to keep our warriors sharp and that means we need them deployed and engaged. So don’t expect me to declare peace in one country until I can persuade you to go to war with another. But these small wars are just practice for the big war. Which brings me to global climate change.

As the seas rise and the climate changes billions of people will find themselves starving and landless. Many millions will die where they were born, but millions more will be on the move. And they will be moving into Europe and, yes, the United States of America. A strong military will be needed to keep these millions from reaching our borders. This will be a war of necessity: the survival of the fittest.

This is something many of you do not understand. Climate change is inevitable. No amount of carbon reductions, even if we agreed to any, which we won’t, can change what is coming. As the seas rise and swallow our coastal cities and island nations, as deserts expand and starve tens of millions, the earth will need to shake off approximately five billion of the 7 billion humans who inhabit her. It will be the strongest that survive, and we need to be the strongest.

Be honest with yourselves— who do you wish to inherit the earth: poor, starving, dirt farmers, or people who have iPhones, blu-ray players, and Wii? I think the choice is clear, and to secure the survival of the fittest we will have to defend what is ours and expand it. Despite all the happy talk to the contrary, living the way we want to live on this planet is a zero-sum game; not everyone can have central heating and cooling, indoor plumbing, automobiles, and tanning salons. If we are going to win we have got to insure that five billion of our neighbors lose. Nature will take most of them, but we must be prepared to take care of the rest.

With this in mind I am proud of my success in Copenhagen, insuring that talk and negotiations will continue. By keeping the poorer nations of the world busy talking, by encouraging and providing exotic locations for the distracting street theater than is today’s protest movements, the wealthy nations of the world will exhaust the poor until nature’s havoc is well underway. While it is true that many of you wrongly imagine me to be born in Kenya, you can trust me when I tell you that if the choice is between Kenya and Chicago— and make no mistake, it is—my loyalty is to Chicago.

So much for war and climate change. On to the economy. Let me be clear with you: all I think about are jobs—mine and those of my friends and fellow Democracts. And to keep my job I must find you a job, which is why I am doing my best to expand the war machine. But make no mistake: in this great country of ours politics and the economy are one and the same. And by economy I mean huge corporations: big banks, big pharma, big hospitals, big agriculture, big everything. Sure small business matters, but not to us in Washington. We serve those who provide us with the cash to win elections, and that means Big Business. America is an oligarchy. We are run by the rich for the rich. Your politicians are owned by the rich, and are put in office to do the bidding of the rich. And with the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend without limits on behalf of candidates, we can rest assured that Mr. Smith will never ever come to Washington.

Yes, we will help the little guy if necessary, but never at the expense of our constituents—the bug guys. And don’t blame this on the Republicans who created a Conservative Court. It doesn’t make any difference which side of the isle is in power; the true power is with our corporate sponsors. Vote for whomever you wish, the result is always the same: money wins because money rules. Indeed, as you prepare for mid-term elections I urge you not to vote for this or that candidate, but the companies that sponsor her or him. If you like the company, vote for their candidate. And, if you win, buy stock in the corporation that just got elected.

So the health care reform legislation I hope to sign into law shortly insures billions more dollars will go to insurers, because the real health of this country is in their well being not yours. People die, but some corporations can live forever.

While it is true that millions of Americans have gone bankrupt, lost their homes, their jobs, and any hope of regaining what they lost, none of these losers contribute to our campaigns. But don’t despair. There is hope, if not for you then for your children and grandchildren—join the military!

The biggest growth industry in this country will be private armies. Even today there are more private security forces in the United States than state and local police. These armies will be needed internationally, nationally, and locally. Soon your neighbors will band together to hire their own private security force to defend themselves against neighbors from another block. In Chicago we used to call them gangs, but today they are highly prize professionals who in the not so distant future will be looking for highly trained employees. People like you.

The best way to prepare for a high paying job in the private army business is to volunteer for the US military. We won’t pay you much, and we might get you killed, but we will train you for incredibly high paying jobs in the private army sector. So don’t doubt for a minute that I’m not creating jobs. I am and the growth of the private army industry is where I’m growing it.

I want to thank my fellow Americans for buying the products that allowed so many companies to put myself and others in power. I want to thank the American media for keeping people ignorant of the truth of how this country is run, and for distracting them with the idea that politics is a horserace rather than a con game. I want to thank our educators for keeping our children ignorant of civics, economics, history, and science so that we can easily distract them from real reality with faux reality TV. I want to thank my colleagues in all branches of government, on both sides of the isle, for keeping the con running. And most of all I want to thank God for making people as dumb as the dirt.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.