it's bigger than this, host.
i have been thinking--and have argued here, but in fragmented form from time to time--that we are careening toward the end of neoliberalism and will confront a situation which that ideology has wrought that provides few easy responses. the leading edge of what's coming is probably the growing international food crisis.
this working paper from the council of foreign affairs gives a good cliff-notes summary of the current problems, their causes and possible ways to address them:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16289/
check it out.
i say cliff-notes because the paper does not adequately focus on the extent to which this problem is a direct result of patterns of american policy, particularly if you assume that the imf has been an extension of it and that structural adjustment (the most visible and often brutal edge of that policy) has been a principal wedge forcing countries into dependence on dumped american over-production---but it does point out very clearly that (a) the present system is a neo-colonial order that operates primarily to the benefit of american corporate agriculture; (b) that these same corporate interests (think monsanto, cargill, etc) are also the primary beneficiaries of massive amerian subsidies of farm production (c) that american transportation companies benefit significantly from the present system of "food charity"--which is (d) a system that allows for food aid to be delivered in the form of crops and not funds so that (e) it is about maintaining dependence and not breaking it---about 20 pages into the white paper, you find the example of malawi this past year, which is a good little summary of the problem.
what the paper recommends is a shift away from agricultural aid in foodstuffs alone as part of a broader proposal that food production be decentralized, that food autonomy be made a fundamental political goal around the world.
this is the beginning of the end of the neo-liberal colonial order.
most folk don't even know that this order exists.
to connect it back to problems of american press infotainment---the conclusion is pretty obvious: we are not being informed.
we are not informed.
informing the people is unnecessary.
we are being managed.
the remedies for the food crisis involve breaking with the entire logic of neoliberalism--which has always been about two things: the rhetoric of free trade and the reality of american economies of scale. "free trade" has meant american domination. it worked for a little while, but now it doesn't. it was a short-sighted, ridiculous policy to begin with.
but the other level of problem--to stick with food, though one could go elsewhere--has to do with regulation of transnational capital flows, who is to do it, how it is to happen.
personally, i would like to see a move to being dismantling the american national-security state. what we are seeing across the pathetic legacy of george w bush (which is a gift that keeps on giving) is the result of a choice: to use "the war on terror" as a device to prop up the national security state as a patronage network and to reconfigure power relations between the branches of government on a nat-sec state basis. the problems are the national-security state itself--at the level of doctrine, you have a theory of dictatorship--at the level of resource allocation, you have levels of military spending that are unbelievably bloated, a wholesale waste or resources, a grotesque misallocation of priorities.
i would like to see the next president and next congress connect the dots--the bush administration as an expression of the logic of adaptation particular to the dying national-security state as bureaucratic apparatus and as patronage network--and move to drastically cut it back--take that money which is currently wasted on military contractors and begin plowing it into institution building and infrastructure building that will re-diversify the american socio-economic landscape, decentralize it. encourage parallel moves in the southern hemisphere by providing cash food aid. (there is obviously much that could be said to link these logical steps)...
this is a bit disjointed, but the point i think is clear: we are not simpyl facing the consequences of the actions of the bush people about iraq, the undermining of the press, etc, but a much larger set of problems--that collectively we *could* address---but they'll require breaking things that no republican will imagine breaking. and i have my doubts that obama will be able to think far enough "outside the tiny box" to address these matters rationally.
and they are a problem even at the level of making a single post--they're big. bigger than scott mclellan, bigger than iraq--but not separate from them.