MISERERE FOR THE LAND OF THE FREE

by Paul Edwards

The United States Constitution was based theoretically on three fundamental, long established pillars of European political, religious, and economic thought.  The political element was a synthesis of the core ideals of the Enlightenment, much of it in Locke’s “Second Treatise of Government” and in his “A Letter Concerning Toleration”.  The religious element derived from Protestant Christianity, materially modified by Deist thinking. The economic influence came exclusively from classic Capitalism, then beginning its period of dynamic worldwide expansion.

From amalgamation of these three sources the Constitution drew its theoretical potency and vitality, and each of these doctrines embodied in it took on, with time, the character of holy writ.  The men who crafted it, with meticulous attention to their private and personal interests, presented it to the birthing nation as the summation of the wisdom of the enlightened ages expressed in as compact, practical form as humanly possible. This it was not.

Insofar as it was a gross deception—which it was—this was not  intentional.  The powerful men who produced it had no dark, nefarious design to inflict an oppressive, exploitative system on their country and their people.  They, to a man, it seems, meant well by their lights in the cultural context in which they matured.  The flaws, biases, and gross injustices so obvious in it from a current perspective were, in large measure, the prejudices of all European ruling classes of the time and, indeed, the consensus of the most acute, discriminating philosophical minds of the era.

Behind their sincere conviction in the merit of their creation was the inherent human incapacity to see through and beyond their own zeitgeist; to see past what amounts to a kind of philosophic categorical imperative that prevents men from conceiving ideas that are not implicit in the moral conventions of their time.  It is what makes the egregious ethical failures of past generations so baldly obvious to us, while we remain utterly blind to our own.

Once the Constitution was ratified, a far more insidious and truly damning set of behaviors came into play.  The exalted principles from which it was synthesized left such latitude in their generality that it was susceptible to great abuses and perversions. For its religious, political, and economic bases were never sincerely pursued, rigorously practiced, or honestly implemented.  Once the dead words of the document, themselves so bereft of equity and justice, were given to ordinary men to oversee, deform and exploit, the little that was noble and just in it was largely lost.

The myth postulating an exalted American character was forged and employed from earliest days as a cover for a vicious, elitist program of murder, slavery, and exploitation of man and nature, that has led today to a nation so divided, destabilized, and lost, that our psychopathic monstrosity of a government is no longer safe in its long, evil charade behind its hubris, lies, and violence.

In the back of their minds, in the dim unconscious of the mass of people, there is a nagging sense of unease, a foreboding of unavoidable disaster gathering.  They are not mistaken.  Every faction on the long spectrum of opinion and belief is searching desperately for an answer, hope, a renewal.  There will be none.

The reason a repulsive, vulgar oaf such as Trump, or a corrupt, addled nonentity like Biden can be elected President is that all ethical standards that might prevent it have been eroded by two hundred years of dishonesty and calculated betrayal by the privileged financial elite that owned our nation and plunged it into the dysfunction, disaster, and doom that is now inevitable.

The American people have been victimized, violated, and ruined by psychotic criminals who deceived and enslaved them and trained them to worship their abusers, to embrace their serfdom.  When, for decades, centuries, a people is subjected to endless indoctrination in cruelty and dishonesty, awakening from that propagandized state must be traumatic, if it is even possible.

The mythic “democracy” we were to have was subverted from the beginning by the power of official chicanery, and denied to the poor and ignorant, foreigners, Indians, women, and blacks.  The Christianity solemnly endorsed was always a pious, hollow fraud, chanted as a mantra of the ruling class, never practiced in the violent piracy and murder of our imperial expansion.  And the sanctified economics of Capitalism has always been based on extraction of profit from the sweat and blood of pauperized labor for the aggrandizement of conscienceless plutocrat exploiters.

When a nation is poisoned for its entire history by its ruling elite with toxic propaganda that contradicts the moral, ethical bases it was founded on, its only end is implosion and dissolution.

The impending crash of the American Empire is essential for the survival and health of the natural and political world.  The tragedy is not in what is coming; it is in the astonishing possibility we had that was despised and thrown away and will never be regained.

Associate Editor 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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