A DEMON FACING AMERICA

Published June 26, 2014 | By Dr. Jack Wheeler

Etosha Pan, Namibia.

This is the current edition of a Namibian weekly paper distributed throughout Southern Africa. As you can see, the cover story is A Demon Facing Africa. While it is ostensibly about a program of Zero’s called Young Africa Leaders Initiative (YALI), the story makes it clear that the Demon is Zero himself as the chief agent of American imperialism.

This is true cosmic irony, as one of the largest demons inhabiting Zero’s soul is his hatred of America and Britain for White Western Imperialism regarding Kenya.

Yet it is too easy to engage in the obverse opportunity to accuse Barack Obama of being The Demon Facing America. For that is only ostensibly true. He is the apotheosis of the Demon, but not the Demon himself.

The Demon we are talking about has been the curse of most nations throughout history. It is the real Demon facing almost every country in Africa, of which the anti-American idiots of The Southern Times haven’t an inkling. It is the Demon that America’s Founders created America to suppress. It is the Demon that America’s Left is dedicated to unleashing. And today, Barack Hussein Obama is the Demon’s hero.

The Etosha Pan is a wonderful place to forget about all of this. Here is where you witness Africa Primeval. It is simply breathtaking to watch a leopard stalk a wildebeest from yards away:

Everything is hushed, with the only sounds the snorts of the wildebeest and the barks of the zebras. The leopard slowly creeps ever closer hidden in the grass. Suddenly, one wildebeest bolts, the leopard dashes forward, his claws encircle his prey’s neck and his teeth fasten upon its throat. The wildebeest, twice as big as the leopard, thrashes for an instant then goes down to be strangled to death. It happened so fast I only got this one shot:

It was a moment never to be forgotten. All the world’s problems, all the issues we worry about, seemed far, far away. Upon returning to our camp, with the obligatory après-safari gin and tonic in hand and a typically spectacular African sunset in view…

…I curled up with my iPad to resume reading Why Nations Fail by MIT economics professor Daron Acemoglu and Harvard international government professor James Robinson.

It is a tour de force of the economic and political history of the world from the Neolithic through Rome and all of the West, of Africa, Asia, and Latin America up to the present day. Their answer to why nations succeed or fail throughout history is the extent to which they have and maintain either "inclusive" political/economic institutions resulting in widespread prosperity, or "extractive" ones that result in widespread poverty.

I could not encourage you more strongly to read it entire (it’s less than $11 kindle or paper), if only for the fascinating wealth of historical examples. But let’s cut to the chase. What everything boils down to – whether a people, a society, a culture, a nation can become and keep being rich or poor is the extent to which it permits creative destruction.

That’s the immortal concept of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) to encapsulate the essence of capitalism:

"Capitalism […] is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. […] The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates. […]

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation […] that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in."
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

A truly democratic inclusive political system, such as the one America used to have, permits and even celebrates creative destruction. Cassette tapes were replaced by 8-tracks were replaced by CD’s were replaced by MP3’s which will be replaced by…? The dead tree media is being replaced by online news sites. Constant competitive revolutionary innovation defines capitalism.

In all of history, political ruling elites have abhorred this. Their goal is to extract whatever wealth they can from whomever they can by monopolizing political and thus economic power. Their goal is to keep their power and prevent anyone else from taking it away. They claim, in diametrical ( and fanatical, as they view it as life-or-death) opposition to creative destruction what my friend, psychologist Nathaniel Branden calls, the divine right to stagnation.

This is why the entire Political Left, from Commie Marxists to the Fascist goons of the Democrat Party and the vast swarms of moochers they support, to parasitical Crony Capitalists, to the fellow travelers of the Republican RINO Establishment are purveyors of stagnation and the status quo. All the Left’s posturing aside, they are the antithesis of revolutionary. Only capitalism and its essence of creative destruction is truly and continually revolutionary.

Thus the Demon Facing America is: Anti-Capitalism.

Think of what an economy we would have if all the impediments to creative destruction set up by Washington’s ruling elite – now being metastasized by Zero – were swept away. Indeed, the only thing that is currently saving the American economy from true Depression is the capitalist innovation of fracking – which of course is demonized by the Greenie Left.

The Demon is not Zero. He is only it’s principal agent. There are many, many others, and they certainly are not all Democrats. A prime GOP example is Thad Cochran, whose 42 years in Congress has been devoted to stealing money from taxpayers all over the US with which to bribe moochers in Mississippi to vote for him.

So of course, Cochran and the RINO elite did whatever was necessary to cheat to win on Tuesday (6/24). Exactly like the Dems do.

And the Demon is not just a political goblin. Corporations, unions, guilds and groups of all kinds want to maintain their divine right to stagnation, demanding that government protect their monopolies, subsidies, and barriers-to-entry.

Yesterday (6/25) in Washington DC, taxicab drivers blocked up blocks of streets protesting the competition of upstart "rideshare" companies providing better service at lower cost. Oh, no, we can’t have that – not competition! We demand our government-created and enforced monopoly be preserved!

Just five years ago in 2009, two kids in California developed a mobile app enabling an on-demand car service that bypassed taxis. Anybody could give anybody a ride via Uber. It now operates in cities all over the US plus throughout the world, and has a current valuation of $17 billion. Uber – along with new competitors like Lyft ("Your Friend With A Car!") are eating the taxi monopolies alive.

So of course there are lawsuits and protests and bribed municipalities banning the competition – all a losing battle as taxis become obsolete. Just how obsolete was made wonderfully clear by a huge coordinated strike by tens of thousands of cabbies in cities across Europe on June 11.

All the strike accomplished was infuriating millions of customers and resulting in a gigantic gift of free marketing for Uber. Uber and Lyft are doing more business than ever over the last two weeks. Creative destruction at work!

Another marvelous example is Airbnb. In 2008, a 27 year-old kid named Brian Chesky and his roommate in a San Francisco loft were so broke they rented out their living room with air mattresses to sleep on. They created an app and website so folks with other apartments could rent them out as an alternative to expensive hotels with all their taxes and fees.

Airbnb today rents out entire homes and apartments, private rooms, castles, boats, manors, tree houses, tipis, igloos, and private islands all over the world – and has a current valuation of $10 billion. Chesky is a billionaire. The entire worldwide hotel industry is, of course, infuriated – and striking back.

The hoteliers, together with their workers’ union, got the fascisti bureaucrats in New York City to fine a guy $40K for renting his bedroom when he was out of town. New York’s fascist attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, is doing all he can to put Airbnb out of business in his state, claiming that two-thirds of its rentals were "illegal."

In SanFran, they are paying for "housing activists" to demand all manner of hamstringing rules and regulations to prevent Airbnb competition. Just today (6/26) in Portland, Oregon, they got the City Council to ban Airbnb rentals of apartments and condos.

But as Chesky’s co-founder, Nathan Blecharczyk (himself a billionaire at age 30), explains, the creatively destructive "genie is out of the bottle… Airbnb is a disruptive but nevertheless welcome new technology that’s here to stay." Tough luck, hotel corporations, hotel unions, and governments ripping off hotel guests with outrageous taxes and fees – you’re being creatively destroyed.

So – want to get rid of Zero’s minions, RINO elitists, and the fascisti on your local city council? Be on the lookout for their every effort to stymie capitalist competition, and scream like hell against it. Ask every candidate for office if they understand the concept of creative destruction and advocate it. Tell them you’ll only vote for them if you are sure they do.

We have to get the capitalist genie out of the bottle and the demon of anti-capitalism back in.

… And if you’d like a few more of my pics of Namibia, here they are:

The world’s largest dunes at Sossusvlei…