STULTOCRACY

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Paul Edwards

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Looking back from the early mid-20th century on our Presidents, H.L. Mencken, one of the flintier wits ever in American journalism, and never an admirer of our system, said this:

“When the field is nationwide… all odds are on the man who is most devious and mediocre… The Presidency tends to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

The statement is an indictment of the American electorate rather than the elected, but in their defense, under our “democracy”—which has never been one, and was not designed as one—the people have had very little voice in choosing their chief.

Trump meeting and giving his idiotic endorsement to “rehabilitated” al-Qaeda terrorist al-Jolani, currently Syria’s “president”. Neither truth, principles, or morality ever enter the picture when it comes to Trump’s actions or US foreign policy.

From earliest days, candidates were chosen by cliques of rich men, and later by “Bosses” whose machines picked their flacks for office. Teddy Roosevelt bucked them on his second run and lost. FDR outmuscled them only as the country was falling apart.

With Truman and successors, it was back to business as usual, but the power was shifting from Bosses to party apparatchiks, Daley of Chicago being the last private political ganglord. Since JFK, party honchos have run things, but the game is the same.

They have given us a series of false, trained performers, vetted and installed to do just one thing: defend the vicious Capitalist system and the Power Elite who own it, regardless of their open betrayal of our founding national philosophical premises.

The Presidents we have suffered for the last half century, have had a variety of attractive and repulsive elements. I say suffered to counter the baseless notion that voting matters. It doesn’t.

Voting is a kind of burlesque, designed to make you believe it’s critical to our “democracy”. In reality, voting has nothing to do with nomination or election. They are functions of money.

Party capos vet their puppets—rarely women—to shill for the Deep State, and do its bidding, with minor variations. Trivial points of enmity are made central issues for the deluded public. The outcome is always the same: perpetuation of the dictates of the Deep State, no matter the terrible damage to the citizenry.

Among our recent figureheads, there were aged showmen and awkward fudds; sententious stiffs and poseurs of clumsy, brittle urbanity; a folksy hail fellow, and a dour imitation sage. What they all shared was deep dishonesty and total lack of humanity.

Badly needed civic truths for a dumbfounded population.

Though there was nothing in them to admire—all were ethically despicable, and some mentally or psychologically defective—we never had one as stupid, vulgar, and crass as we have now.

The first confirmation of his aggressive vacuity in this term, as in his first, was the quality of subordinates he chose. Among the lot of his cabinet choices most, like him, lack the intelligence, track record, and world wisdom that their intended functions demand.

Democrats pushing the Hong Kong psyop a few years back. They also created and supported the ridiculous Russiagate hoax—another psyop— for several years, poisoning US/Russia relations to this date. The Republicans follow the same cynical political tactics as both parties are simply tools of America’s and global capitalist plutocracy.

Smug Democrats pushing the Hong Kong psyop a few years back. They also created and supported the ridiculous Russiagate hoax—another psyop— for several years, poisoning US/Russia relations to this date, an extremely dangerous development. The Republicans follow the same rotten political tactics, pursuing an anti-Chinese line, as both parties are simply tools of America’s imperialist plutocracy.

They are a set of hacks and mavericks; cronies and sycophants; kooks, wild cards, and bimbos. While no single one is as dangerous and repulsive as Pompeo—a moral Jabba, the Hutt—the whole team is a goat’s nest of jingo wanks and Rambo wannabes.

There are many choices one could make in the list of brainless absurdities Trump has perpetrated already but, as illustrations of his world-class stupidity, tariffs and his Alaska caper will do.

Tariffs are taxes on foreign imports to boost home industry and prevent it being undersold. The U.S. makes little and imports much, so big tariffs will cause home products and import prices both to rise, and the result will be greater cost to Americans. Not something MAGATS had in mind from their ringmaster.

Trump’s Excellent Alaska Adventure, called a “listening session”, given his inability to grasp clear ideas, was an exercise in futility. Putin has long since stated his reasons for the SMO, and his security requirements for Russia, which are not alterable.

Trump is too dense to accept that they are non-negotiable and will be furious that his bargaining is fruitless. Experience has not taught him that bullying only works if you have the whip hand. In Ukraine, Trump, like Zelensky, doesn’t have the cards.

Thinking ahead, toward three more years of this feckless loon, the question must arise whether the nation can survive him.

The One Big Party is useless, impotent and groveling, full of men and women of impaired intellect, moral squalor, and startling personal insignificance. Our civil bulwarks are all trashed and broken. What once were said to be our guiding ideals in this brutal, cruel and racist sink of iniquity and hypocrisy in which we live are not even remembered at this stage.

In the impending wreck of our disastrously captained and crewed ship of state, in the rapid, and now inexorable decline of this “Indispensable Nation”, there will be no safe haven, no means to escape or avoid the universal catastrophe. The knowledge that it is coming, and will shatter and sink our heedless, irresponsible, infantile culture will not compensate for the degradation and dissolution of all we have imagined our own.

A wise man observed that, in life, understanding is the booby prize. There can be no joy in mounting the podium to claim it.

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