By Paul Edwards
“Because that’s what Imperial government is all about: the remorseless extraction of wealth, substance, and self-respect from a whole people mesmerized by relentless, mind-blitzing bullshit…”
The “Red Brand of BS” in action. The Trumpian variant.
The Blue Wave crested the reef but the Red Tide still pollutes the foetid lagoon behind it. Democrats got the House back while Republicans outdid themselves, electing and retaining some of the most astoundingly repulsive Crackers ever to walk on two legs out of Yoknapatawpha County, with the wizened hillbilly, Ma Kettle of Alabama, being perhaps most egregious.
That said, all over the nation the vacuous, credulous naifs who exerted themselves in the putative cause of truth and virtue are now waiting with bated intellects for the Certain Overthrow of Trumpian Diabolism and the dawning era of Grand Regeneration of the democracy they never had.
It is profoundly grim that the great mass of Americans is leash-trained to embrace creeds as hollow, cruel, and false as those of the parties. It’s the Charlie Brown Syndrome raised to the nth power in scope and cynicism. This Bait and Switch is run on both camps–the hostile, alienated, stupidly phobic, untermenschen Trumpetariat, and the credulous, myopic, witlessly hopeful, myth-addled, exceptionalist Democratic cadre–so effectively that both death grip their manky dogmas as they are herded into the abattoir, butchered, and fed to our ravenous Minotaur, the Capitalist War Machine.
Nothing will change this because nothing can; nothing planned, that is, nothing organized. Shades of Viet Nam: it’s become necessary to destroy the country in order to save it. The Empire is too rotten to salvage. As Tom Paine observed, it’s useless giving medicine to the dead. Our national demise will not be sudden, though. Dying, like most processes, takes time. Meanwhile, the same greased pig chases and tent-show monkey fucks will continue to distract us from our collective death rattle.
The Blue Brand of BS: Pelosi and fellow hypocrites. Constant deception and lesser evilism keep the masses in the Dems corral.
The country will obsess on two chimeras: Grand Comeuppance for Trump via Mueller Magic, and the WWE Congressional Clown Brawl. The Sturm und Drang will titillate herkijerk attention spans for much of the next two years until both dogpoop piñatas pop, and Americans find themselves flat on their asses, having, yet again, had the promised football yanked away.
Because that’s what Imperial government is all about: the remorseless extraction of wealth, substance, and self-respect from a whole people mesmerized by relentless, mind-blitzing bullshit. The truly infernal capacity of the owners and operators of Big Bro’s Bullhorn, the MSM–from those sanctified pornographers, the NYT and WaPo, (pornographein in ancient Greek means “whore writing”) to Facebog and the rest of complicit “social media”, to the Vast Human Waste Dump of tv of all sorts–to render a whole nation drooling dim and braindead, is the surpassing wonder of our era.
Item: A united phalanx of red and blue yokels, parochials, and throwbacks ok’d a $700 billion military budget just as the Pentagon admitted it had mislaid $21 trillion it couldn’t account for. A bookkeeping error, no doubt.
Item: The Crone and Geezer Dem Honchos, along with certifiable Snopes-in-a-Suit Lindsay Graham pitched a fit over Jamal Khashoggi’s killing but remained untroubled by the psychotic murder of hundreds of thousands of kids in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, and Palestine they’ve blithely done to death.
Item: Neither party permits consideration of an honest Medicare For All proposal but both enthusiastically gave their owners, the Royals of Corporate Capitalism, the greatest stealth tax break payola in our history.
Item: Neither party considers action on the irrefutable existential threat of human-caused global warming, though its scientific and military elites say that, absent total commitment to check it, human life on earth may cease.
These horrors… these bald-faced, inexcusable crimes against the American people are implemented in the name of the people, with the consent of the people, as marshaled and manipulated by that most evil, twisted gang of liars and villains: the poisonous propaganda system, our MSM “free press”.
It functions as a hermetically sealed entity, as our sick political parties do, so that anyone who dares tell truth about anything is exiled to the far reaches of the internet universe where only star trekkers can find them.
The latest sick joke is the MSM valiantly defending “press freedom” while the whole shameless pack colludes to betray the one man who had the balls and ethical courage to reveal the truth of The Empire: Assange.
Paul Edwards is a genuine Renaissance man, gifted with many talents and participant in many events and struggles of our tormented times. Our colleague Jeff Brown, who did a fine interview with him, sums it up thusly: “Paul’s life story is worthy of a biography: a rebel youth growing up, traveling and working around the world and then a long career as a Hollywood writer. Through it all, he has never lost his lifelong wrath against US imperialism and global capitalism, while seeking social and economic justice for humanity’s 99%…”
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Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—
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–Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Archbishop and liberation theologian
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4 comments
As Zeusse’s article points out, war against Russia with nukes is actively contemplated. And both Russia and China are both fully capable of understanding and preparing for it. Maybe why the US holds the biggest 5G company’s daughter hostage.
Rather than going out slowly, the Nibelunglied scenario is all too possible, the German epic tale of mass war of all against all, where all die in the end in one glorious bloodbath. The rulers apparently are living in an unconscious Universal Death Wish…perhaps they see themselves as the Goddess Kali, ready to destroy the world and themselves.
And the Christian Right all gets beamed up to live happily ever after with Jesus. In other words, as more and more can see, totally crazy.
Indeed. And —we must always remember this— when evaluating the threats to this world presented by this deranged global ruling class spawned by feudo/capitalism…all roads lead to the abject mass media as the chief obstacle to salvation. That’s why I often say we are in a critical, terminal and total battle of communications with the engines of sheer evil. Every ounce of energy we can spare must be dedicated to demolishing this infamous corporate media power that holds the world hostage.
“The Assassination of Caesar”, the auto-da-fe of Trump and a heretical hypothesis.
Michael Parenti has written an interesting book on the assassination of Julius Caesar (2013) by completely turning around the accepted notion that Caesar was an ambitious man wanting to become king or in the modern sense dictator of the Roman Republic. Instead of the Roman senate being a guardian of republican virtues and laws, Parenti shows how they were in fact a reactionary set of landowners and a wealthy cabal (the optimates) that set itself apart from a majority of Roman citizens by exploiting their status and resisting any advance in popular reforms. Caesar who Parenti calls a populist (popularis), i.e someone who was concerned about the welfare of the general public (populus) did indeed assume kingly fashions in dress and behavior, but which was done as Parenti explains to gain as much power against the senators as he could aspire to further his protection of the poorer classes. Anyone who has studied the classics knows indeed that Caesar was an extravagant and eccentric figure but also fearless and greatly talented in asserting himself in politics and in Roman life. The resistance against Caesar’s rule was extreme and vicious, blaming him personally for characteristics that he did not possess and publicly deriding him for mostly innocent and rather common vices. It ultimately drove the senate to assassinate him in order to falsely claim to salvage the Republic, which in fact started the subsequent series of the reigns by emperors. One finds later the same history with the European kings who were thought to be a bulwark against the avaricious aristocracy and protectors of the common folk. And to come to contemporary history, one could almost see the Kennedy brothers as failed populares, traitors to their class and like the Gracchi brothers to be eliminated for their efforts.
The US Republic set up theoretically along Roman laws and customs has many safe guards against an attack by vested interests, something that is being bypassed by the several Constitutional amendments, the legal professions and revised tax laws, so that instead of safeguarding the res publica it serves to maintain the power of a large cabal of wealthy power holders. Like Caesar but equally if no more flawed appears Donald Trump, an unabashed capitalist but not accepted by his upper-class peers, chosen by a large section of the less advantaged populace. He is thus furiously attacked by the status quo ante profiteers, followed by those who are brainwashed into believing whatever they read or hear from the media. And remarkably so by women who see him as representative of former male prerogatives and misbehavior. Though he is a prophet for free enterprise i.e. free plunder without restraint or borders while protected by a large military, he also professes to have concerns about the general population and in fact he achieved a small reduction in taxes and a one-time bonus for the working men and women. His persona is that of a wealthy proletarian with all the manners and beliefs of that class with the self-indulgence of his sudden riches (achieved by the general proletariat only in winning in lotto gambling). As a symbol of populism Trump fulfills the same function as once assumed by Julius Caesar, a protector of common humans. One may believe that or not, but it explains fully the almost irrational hatred Trump provokes and there is no doubt in my mind that his condemnation is engineered by the establishment of the too wealthy classes, who will fight to the end for keeping their loot and who see Trump as a greater threat to their interests than either FDR or JFK and that despite his pandering to them. Like with the former Roman senate the media lies are now so prodigious that a public not trained to see through these indeed believes that Trump is the devil out to shackle them and destroy their valued but fallacious democracy like the once accursed Caesar. If we stay inside this Möbius band of the recurring deep untruths and repeated irrational thinking about him there can be no insight nor liberation from our bondage cemented by the powers-that-be. The persona of Trump is that of an iconoclast destroyer which is important to counter the spiral of sinking aspirations with larger and wider lateral hostilities that arises as an outlet for frustration and which is now slowly engulfing the nation. If a real chance on the contrary is not grasped to use this period with the Caesar-like Trump as a catalyst and as a tough lever for reformers to rip open these prevailing obfuscations, any sense of freedom will forever be lost and then we will be burdened once more by an oppressive status quo.
Some very interesting parallels there. Caesar’s efforts on behalf of the lower orders must, however, be qualified – his concern (if such it was) was confined to his fellow Romans while Gauls were there to be slaughtered and their land confiscated, all for the glory of Caesar and Rome. Which also has echoes in the US empire, as with all empires.