Edward J Curtin

ED CURTIN—While the inner workings of the imperial ruling class might not usually involve as much sexual abuse as the Epstein Serial, or what the journalist Pepe Escobar calls “the Epstein Syndicate,” its members have long conspired to control their wealth, power, and political domination of the masses. Waging wars, globalizing their control (started greatly circa 1985), filling the coffers of the military industrial complex that they own, are prime goals. Many of these vile creatures, of course, in their hubris, thinking they are in full control, have entered a trap of international espionage and sexual blackmail, as is evident in the Epstein case, where the presumed controllers are the controlled.

EC—The Carefully Contrived Spontaneity of the “Shocking” Epstein Files Release

ED CURTIN—His renaming of The Kennedy Center to glorify himself, while having led to no deaths, is symbolic of his narcissistic mania. No matter what he says or does – bomb countries, kidnap leaders, lead the world to nuclear war, persecute innocent immigrants, assume domestic powers unheard of heretofore, etc. – not one high official in his administration publicly objects or resigns, as they prefer to kill their consciences for power and gold. For all the macho talk emanating  from the administration, it seems clear that it is staffed with moral cowards.

ED CURTIN—It does not matter which political party is in power in Washington, D.C. Their political platforms are meaningless; they are sops thrown to an electorate desperate for illusions, as anyone with a smidgen of historical knowledge would know. Yet many justify the ruthless war-making of the American empire and how it underlies the entire economy by arguing that the parties differ on domestic policies, which is often true. But the lesser of two evils is still the evil of two lessers and another form of bad faith, for the domestic economy, being dependent on warfare and funded by the politicians of both parties, is an economy of death. Harold Pinter said it truly in his Nobel Award Address:

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

ED CURTIN—It was in 1985, the year of “amusing ourselves to death,” that Donald Trump, a fake-estate developer, acquired the Atlantic City Hilton Hotel and renamed it Trump’s Castle, a sign of his obsessive megalomania. Trump’s homage to himself went into bankruptcy seven years later, forecasting the future fate of the USA. It was the first year of the second term of Ronald Reagan, a former actor who was called the acting President by his critics. But Reagan himself was proud of his acting; he thought it served him well in the White House, as Gary Wills writes in Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home.