Agenda 21 and sympathy for the wingnut

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The slang term wingnut, as I understand it, as I understand it, originally referred to someone who was considered to be deranged or seriously unbalanced. These would be people who expressed fervent belief in highly improbable phenomena such as abduction by aliens, Soviet mind-control infrastructure, or water fluoridation as a government plot to accomplish something other then reduction of toot decay. At some point it began to be associated mostly with right-wing paranoids and political reactionaries. People referred to as "Birthers," "Truthers," and "conspiracy theorists" would fall under the definition of "wingnut."

Liberals and moderates gleefully dismiss the concerns of wingnuts. TPM's new-media mogul Josh Marshall, born in 1969, has written derisively of the idea that any reasonable person could believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. An even more reality-based (and fiercer) commentator, the Jesuit-educated Charlie Pierce, routinely makes fun of wingnuts who fear that the UN's Agenda 21 will steal our golf courses. Even if we agree that Pierce is correct in his explicit critique that paranoia about World Government is a long-established reactionary article of faith and political lever for Republicans---and I do agree---it's still very much worth taking a closer look at possible explanations for that underlying fear.

Have you ever heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Me neither---not until last week:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership isn't getting enough attention (by design, it seems.) The idea is that a supranational body would be empowered to override national regulations if a country had a regulatory regime in, say environmental policy or copyright policy, that was more restrictive than other countries, it would be forced to bring its regime in line with the others.

At this point, 11 nations are participating in negotiations to establish the rules. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that this "partnership" would impose the most restrictive copyright laws, particularly the odious US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, on all member nations, overriding any less-restrictive member-nation laws. The DMCA inserts copyright law into every transaction and purchase that involves computer software, and is responsible for postmodern customs such as electronic automobile keys that cost $300 and the outlawing of hacking consumer products that you have legally purchased.

The broader idea is the elimination of national regulatory authority over production and distribution of manufactured goods, natural resources and "intellectual property."  To be clear, this is not an instance of "free trade." The elimination of the public domain under copyright law is a restriction on trade. A bad one.

For purposes of this presentation, I'll go a step further to say that the "broader idea" is to eliminate the concept of national sovereignty wherever it interferes with the extractive corporate business model, whether the mission is to mine natural resources without restriction, lock up cultural resources permanently, or extort wealth out of a nation.

If you think the Trans-Pacific Partnership sounds like a skunk works for developing the procedural infrastructure for a "world government," you might be a wingnut. You might also be correct. I'm not prepared to say one way or the other at this point. But I am pretty sure that there is something underneath all of it that should be very concerning to everybody, including clear-eyed moderates and liberals.

Could a person be in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership while opposing Agenda 21? I'll bet a Republican could. The point would be to distract The Base (including people I might refer to as "innocent wingnuts") with a terror of the pan-racial "liberal" UN and its black helicopters. Meanwhile, transnational corporations could consolidate their control of the globe using national governments as their agents. But it's interesting to consider what might happen if wingnuts were to gain a clearer view of the real threat to their national sovereignty at the same time polite society tried to appreciate the fears of a wingnut.