Can an anti-government group founded on principals of anti-corporate thought, individual liberty and skepticism of government power survive in the wake of an electoral victory?  What if the movement is supported by members of the establishment who go on to win elections; does the pressure that got them there remain?  Put simply, can that movement survive it’s own success?

According to a recent study by the University of Michigan and the University of Indiana, the anti-war movement has largely collapsed since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.   Immediately before the presidential election of 2004, anti-war protesters numbered approximately 500,000 during the Republican National Convention in New York.  By October 2009, anti-war protest in Chicago produced only 100 protesters.

Since then little has changed with regard to the nation’s security apparatus. Guantanamo Bay has remained open, the Patriot Act has been extended with no revisions, warrantless wiretaps are still used and the nation remains engaged in two major wars.  The war in Afghanistan has escalated significantly, with monthly death tolls looking more like Iraq’s, increasing more than 240 percent since the end of 2008.

The study’s authors, sociologists  Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas, attribute the collapse and current irrelevancy of the anti-war movement to the mass departure of committed Democrats, many of whom viewed the protests as a primarily anti-Republican movement.  According to the study, the a drop in Democratic participation aligned with Democratic electoral victories in 2006 and 2008.

Studies done by The Gallup Organization confirm that voters tend to have greater fears about security and personal liberty when it’s not their guy in the Oval Office.   In late 2006 immediately after Hurricane Katrina, 57 percent of Democrats viewed the government as an imminent threat to its citizens.  Only 21 percent of Republicans felt that way then.  Now, the image has almost completely reversed itself.

Now lets examine today’s hot new movement concerned about individual liberty, debt, and government surveillance — The Tea Party.  Despite popular belief, the Tea Party originally formed in 2007 by Ron Paul supporters who oppose imperialism through war and manipulative monetary policy through the Federal Reserve.

(Click here for a history of the Tea Party, from its beginning to the present).

Like the anti-war movement after 9-11, it began fairly small, but still made fund-raising records, but beginning in 2009, the Tea Party was re-branded by GOP politicians as a more traditional anti-Democratic movement.

Karl Denninger, an organizer of the early Tea Party said, “Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party’s own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the fucking money!”  Later Denninger said, “I saw everybody fawning over Obama with the inauguration and yet here he was appointing people like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner to his team who were all part of creating the problem.”

Now that the reformed Tea Party has achieved success at the ballot box, will it survive Washington’s culture or will it dissolve like the anit-war movement?  I suspect it will survive in some respect, because unlike the anti-war movement, the Tea Party can still be used by the partisan establishment to drum up future votes, where as the anti-war movement can no longer provide energy for the Democratic base raging against a machine which they now control. However, it won’t have any similarities to its anti-establishment roots.

In addition, Rojas said in the comments section of his website that new studies about the Tea Party and its views are currently being studied at the University of Indiana.

In almost all societies, the military has a high level of prestige and influence. In healthy democracies, the civilian leadership has ultimate control, but under the pressures of war time conditions, militaries have a tendency to become more engaged in the decision making process, often with unpleasant results.

According to Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings, high ranking members of the US Army repeatedly ordered personnel to use psychological pressure on US Senators so they would support additional war funding. Documents obtained by Rolling Stone indicate that lawmakers weren’t the only targets of propaganda. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, influential think tanks and foreign dignitaries were also among the individuals targeted by the Army. The action is illegal under the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948; psychological operations such as these are only for use against “hostile foreign groups,” said Rolling Stone.

Read the report from Rolling Stone here

While the report may seem stunning and unprecedented, pressure tactics, misleading reports and lies through omission have often been employed by the military during wartime to secure support for military action.

These are not historical abnormalities; they occur often, but tend to leak to the press after the political tensions have been resolved.

Early in President Obama’s first year, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel complained generals were boxing the president in with public statements about how many additional troops should be sent to fight in Afghanistan before the president had even committed to sending any additional troops. It’s widely accepted that the statements were intentionally made to put Obama in a position where he would have to send large numbers of troops to avoid being perceived as soft.

According to Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, when the administration was attempting to assess how many troops to commit to Afghanistan in late 2009, General David Petraeus and General Michael Mullen “misled” the president on whether an option to provide fewer additional troops could be successful. To make the case for larger troop increases, the generals citied a war game which never actually took place.

Later, Vice President Biden informed the president that the general’s report was “bullshit,” but the president insist his decision to send additional troops was based on other factors.

While these examples are rarely discussed and often overlooked, situations involving military hubris over a freshman administration abound throughout the history of American warfare.

Colonel H. R. McMaster’s 1998 book Dereliction of Duty documents the intentional lies delivered from numerous parties involved, most notable however was the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s willingness to mislead the president about the war in Vietnam, mentioning only once that it would take 500,000 troops and a five year long commitment to achieve victory.

President Kennedy was repeatedly mislead about the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and numerous covert operations coming from the military and quazi-military organizations like the CIA.

Often, when not explicitly instructed the military will do what it wants, especially in war time. In light of recent developments, perhaps it’s time the president make his position on covert operations involving American citizens more clear.

The Wall Street Journal recently called the current 111th Congress, “the worst congress in modern history” and although I fully admit that I lack the historical context to declare it the worst congress in all of American history, you’d be hard pressed to find a congress that has done more to damage the nation’s fiscal situation, undermine confidence and sell out to corporate influence.

A recent Gallup Poll has congressional approval at 13 percent, the lowest in it’s history. I would ask, “why is it even that high?” The Journal charges congress with complete contempt for the American people, a claim hard to ignore when you consider it nearly passed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill after that same congress took a “shellacking” at the ballot box only a month ago largely because it can’t control its spending. Congress’s most recent offensive was thwarted after the press began covering it and Republican senators suddenly remembered their campaign promises. This didn’t stop many of them them from including billions for their own earmarks, just in case it did pass. The phoneys had to be shamed into intellectual honesty.

As troubling as our fiscal situation is, it’s only icing on a giant cake of government corruption this congress has baked. The congressional record over the last two years has been worse than abysmal.

How so? First you need to understand what Congress really is. In today’s America, Congress is Wall Street. The vast majority of special interest contributions doesn’t come from labor unions, lawyers, oil companies, pharmaceuticals or multimedia conglomerates; it comes from the financial industry, mostly banks, but also real estate and insurance companies. Congress will wag it’s finger at the monolithic entity in the same way it will criticize itself from time to time, but as we’ve seen with the earmarks, its all rhetoric.

For example, consider the Cap and Trade bill passed by the House of Representatives last year. The plan is deceptively called a “market-based solution” to offset global climate change. It puts a cap on the amount of emissions power plants produce and then creates a new commodities market for carbon-credits, which allow certain plants to produce more emissions. Investment banks collect carbon credits at low cost when they are first introduced and wait for the government to lower the cap (subsequently raising the price of carbon credits). It’s a new artificial commodities market that is guaranteed to increase in value as the government gradually lowers the cap. It’s a completely artificial market bubble controlled by the government (which in turn is controlled by Wall Street).

Meet your new master.

Of course, none of this is happening without consequence for the American people. Then Senator Obama admitted during his presidential run in 2008 that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his cap and trade plan. And who was candidate Obama’s single largest donor? Goldman Sachs. Employees of Wall Street giants had given Obama $9.5 million and four out of his top five contributors are financial firms.

Were not finished; not only would the bill have enriched bankers at the expense of the American public, but according to the EPA, cap and trade wouldn’t have even worked as a climate change solution. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said, “I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels,” and that cooperation with other nations such as China and India would be required to pass similar laws to have an appreciable effect on the environment.

Finally, if cap and trade had passed, it would make us more dependent on foreign oil. The cap would most significantly harm high emission coal plants, which make up the largest part of America’s energy production capability. Artificially increasing the cost of coal production would necessitate a need to switch to other forms of energy like oil. Since we’re not likely to drill for more, additional imports from middle eastern nations, Venezuela and Russia would be required.

The harm that was nearly done to America’s economy would have been immeasurable. Only partisanship and a desire to move ahead on health care reform prevented the bill from passing, but Wall Street has succeeded in other ways since the failure to pass cap and trade, most recently in the form of “financial regulation reform.”

The Dodd-Frank act, written by two representatives directly responsible for the lack of financial oversight that led to the 2008 banking failure, was touted as a bipartisan step to solve the problem of “too big to fail” banks, heighten scrutiny over their dealings and prevent future bailouts. In reality, the bill does little of the above.

The bill doesn’t prevent future bailouts. It actually includes an automatic mechanism for the government to allocate funds directly to failing banks. No need for future votes. Furthermore, it indirectly consolidates more power in large financial institutions. Banks that don’t qualify for bailouts will be dissolved with their remains ending up in the hands of government run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or other institutions that will buy their assets, making them bigger and even more indispensable. There is no trigger that would allow or cause these monopolies to be broken up.

According to the Financial Times, community banks that provide a large amount of loans to small businesses will struggle under this bill and are likely to reduce lending since much of the act’s new regulations are easily handled by large institutions like Goldman Sachs.

“Growth in financial concentration via these paths will reduce competition enormously. Fees for all sorts of activities and financing costs will increase. One-stop shopping will become the hidden prerequisite for many demanders of credit. The large, dominant institution will, among other things, press also to be the investment banker, lender, pension portfolio fund manager, and deposit provider.”

Small banks will find it difficult or unprofitable to lend to start-up or growing businesses. Small businesses (those with fewer than 500 employees) hire the vast majority of Americans. The long term consequences of this bill will result in slower economic growth.

How was this allowed to happen? Of course nothing like this happens in a vacuum. According to a report by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Goldman Sachs lobbied heavily during the bill’s creation and debate. Did it help? Well a Goldman Sachs top executive says it might not be hurt at all by the new regulations. Some market analyst predict the bill will actually benefit their bottom line.

Right before the financial crisis began in 2008, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “Over the past few years, people from Goldman Sachs have assumed control over large parts of the federal government. Over the next few they might just take over the whole darn thing.” Well, they seem to be on their way. The only way to slow the advance of special interest who want to enslave us is to invest in closely divided government. It stopped Cap and Trade after all. Think about that next time you feel the urge to kick that other party out of Washington.

For most people in the modern world, science is the cornerstone of our society and our growing economy, even if we don’t fully realize it. You could argue that its influence on our society is as great or greater than that of Christianity, with technological advancements being the most visible representation of the study. Less visible, but equally important are the scientific studies which guide our public policy and heal the sick.

Science dominates our lives, but do reason and logic? You might think they go hand in hand, but there’s an important distinction. Consider that in the past, theocrats had largely controlled European societies. They were deemed the source of truth and knowledge.

After all, they were often the chief financiers of all study, they were backed up by the rule of law as well as a relatively uneducated population, so it’s easy to understand why people agreed that Earth was the center of the universe* and that the sun revolved around it.

Now we have a strong adherence to science, based in quantifiable data, it caries with it a lot of credibility and Americans by and large accept its decrees as fact. Scientists tell us a traditional televisions work with a cathode ray tube. Most of us have probably never attempted to open our TVs to confirm this, but we accept it because of its wide use and because the alternative would require a massive conspiracy.

But what about less verifiable declarations made by companies in the name of science? Do we treat them with additional skepticism? When government agencies tell us that one in five Americans has suffered with mental illness in the last year, do we challenge the study or attempt to understand how they define the “mentally ill?” Some do, but many of us simply accept the study’s premise and its legitimacy.

Governments and companies constantly fund studies with predetermined results in mind to further their economic, political, or ideological agendas. The result is government waste, pork-barrel projects and occasionally, even death due to hyped up pharmaceuticals that over promise and under deliver. We have a society that praises the virtues of logic and reason rhetorically, but in truth we have ceded the thought process to our new leader, science, whose title can be claimed by anyone smart enough to put out a press release.

It’s never healthy for a society to embrace one source for all of its information, especially when that source is so easily manipulated and criticism of it is so widely derided. Yet that is what we risk when we embrace the title of science without understanding the facts behind it.

Understand, this is not a criticism of reason in the philosophical sense, but when we accept the title of science without a sufficient skepticism, we are little better than peasants, expecting the sun to revolve around the Earth.

Further reading: Why Scientific Studies Are So Often Wrong – Discover Magazine

* Technically, every point is the center of the universe.