If Catalans can fancy life without Madrid, Americans can fancy it without Washington

Catalans want to break from Spain, again, and secession is also the buzz in Flanders, Scotland, Texas and Vermont. With the global economy collapsing, people everywhere are becoming fed up with being ruled by distant bureaucrats and bankers hell-bent on destroying local livelihoods. Wages are down, jobs lost and entire countries gone bankrupt thanks to government-enabled banking frauds, a process lubricated by increasing centralization and the intertwining of national finances.

The private banking cartel generates public and private debts, debt slavery and inflation, and with a common currency, it can more readily screw you across borders. A nation can only control its destiny by being firmly in charge of its currency, like China, for example, and for that, it is often singled out for condemnation, but all fiat currencies are manipulated, with us Americans extra cursed with a Federal Reserve that doesn’t work in our interest. Until this globalist banking cartel can be blown up, and its head honchos tossed into a tight dungeon, many people just want to extricate themselves, step by step, from its strangulation.

Forced to dumpster dive, abandon their children or jump out windows, millions of Europeans are also fighting back. Pay attention, Americans, for we can certainly learn from them.

In Spain, the Indignados protests, with tents occupying public spaces, preceded our own Occupy Movement by several months, but the Spanish didn’t stop there. They then mounted a general strike and now, many Catalans are trying to break from their banker-manipulated central government, which has been crippled by these same transnationalists.

Imperial and Colonial ambitions have often assumed a transnationalist mask. Think of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Zone, Russia’s absorption or domination of numerous peoples under Communism, or NATO and the European Union serving American interests. Also, the US has often cited “The Free World” to justify war on another country, with Libya and Syria the latest examples. Beware, then, of the supranationalist’s pitch of mutual peace, security and prosperity, for it often hides an evil reality. “Imagine no countries,” he’ll sing, “and the world will be as one,” before hushing to murmur the refrain, “Imagine no possessions.” The European Union started with such promise, but now nearly all the countries are broke. Imagine.

As the Catalans fancy life without Madrid, Americans can also dream of existence without Washington. Jesus, I feel better already, as well as younger and taller. With a visa, and TSA nutcracking and fingering right after landing at Reagan Airport, we can still visit, of course, to marvel at the charred husk of the Federal Reserve, then see Bush’s Mission Accomplished flight suit and a panorama of Glenn Beck’s rally, complete with a Sarah Palin hologram, at the Smithsonian. At the White House, pensive visitors are welcome to stroke the fabled Lewinsky dress, still unwashed after half a century. Made-in-China Obama nostalgia gimcracks are available in gift kiosks, but sadly, the Jefferson, Lincoln and King statues have all been shipped to various Chinese amusement parks, to pay back debts.

In the here and now, however, DC has become so wealthy on loot of all kinds, above and under the table, its official homicide rate has plummeted. Most nickel and dime (bag) thugs have been shooed from the Beltway, to make room for the three-piece-suited über muggers. The real kill rate has also stayed robust, since decisions made here do pulverize entire neighborhoods worldwide. Enough of DC!

Banksters used to connive and jerk from behind curtains, but now they’re right on stage, with seasoned money manipulators ruling Italy and Greece, and the Spanish Minister of Economy a former employee of Lehman Brothers. The US Treasury has also turned into a Goldman Sachs outhouse, but this doesn’t faze Americans none, since they’re too busy elbowing and jostling each other, shopping, or hypnotized by another leather ball sailing across a wide screen.

Splurging on credit, Americans are grateful to their bankers, and voting for one corrupt war criminal after another, they’re happy to be ladled slogans and reassurances by their president, even as their country is deliberately imploded. Many won’t know what’s what until they’re curled up in a tent city, or extraordinarily renditioned to Kazakhstan, perhaps.

In Egypt, people immediately protested and even clashed with cops after Morsi gave himself dictatorial powers, but here, all was supine, docile and purring even as Obama had assumed the right to arrest or kill anyone, without trial or even charge, and Americans are unperturbed at the possibility of being stopped from flying without explanation or recourse to appeal.

Though we don’t have dictators in the classic sense, we do have a dictatorial executive office that has expanded its power unchecked, with full connivance from Congress, the media and our mostly useless intellectuals. During the last election, our leading “dissidents,” Chomsky, Ellsberg and Solnit, etc., endorsed our current pharaoh. Like millions, Michael Moore has also been mesmerized by Obama’s histrionics, “At your first post-election press conference last Wednesday you were on fire. The way you went all ‘Taxi Driver’ on McCain and company (‘You talkin’ to me?’) was so brilliant and breathtaking I had to play it back a dozen times just to maintain the contact high.”

When one of your celebrated iconoclasts swoons like a drugged teen over a media performance by The Man, you know you’re in septic mess of trouble, so look to Egypt and Catalonia, Americans, to see how ordinary people fight back.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.