Lamentable state of America?

© 2019 Peter Free

 

07 July 2019

 

 

Let's take a brief look at the US state of affairs

 

These being so capably demonstrated by Il Duce Trump's transparently honest display — of the same totalitarian qualities that his predecessors hypocritically concealed, but consistently acted upon.

 

 

How's that post-July Fourth hotdog of yours going down?

 

This week, I read a few unhappy essays about this mess.

 

These are (arguably) worth a read:

 

 

Dave Lindorff, US is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at Home, CounterPunch (05 July 2019)

 

regarding the police state that America has become

 

 

John W. Whitehead, How Evil Wins: the Hypocritical Double Standards of Political Outrage, CounterPunch (01 July 2019)

 

on the parallel between:

 

(a) the lack of opposition to Naziism by "comfortable" people in Germany, during the 1930s and 40s

 

and

 

(b) the rise of an increasingly equivalent, also "comfortably" accepted repression and oppression in the United States today

 

 

Paul Edwards, The Falsity of America, CounterPunch (05 July 2019)

 

a knockout punch synopsis of American government-sponsored evil — and our public's unthinking acceptance of it

 

 

Chris Hedges, The Dilemma of Vladimir Lenin, TruthDig (01 July 2019)

 

with respect to the difficulty of crafting an ethical revolution against tyranny

 

 

John Whitehead's loosely drawn historical parallel . . .

 

. . . between post-Weimar totalitarian Germany — and similar indicators that Lindorff and Edwards observe in the United States — seems reasonably accurate.

 

Hedges, therefore, grapples with the question of forcing change. He correctly observes that doing so usually involves making soul-consuming moral compromises.

 

A dilemma (therefore) arises for activist-minded people.

 

And equally, from my cynical perspective, yet another reason surfaces that rationalizes the Komfortable Klan's rejection of taking action — even as autocracy drowns us all.

 

"We knew but didn't care — until it was all gone."

 

 

The moral? — I suspect that American totalitarianism is only going to be stopped by outside forces

 

We are not an especially virtuous public. And, as we should know by now, power corrupts.

 

Left to its own devices, the United States has proven that it is absolutely uninterested in preserving anything allegedly "just" — except as regards enhancing the already extortionate wellbeing of its multi-national plutocrats.

 

Given that no real opposition has arisen in the United States to this obvious trend, we can suspect that Whitehead is correct.

 

There are way too many materially comfortable-enough and ethically disengaged people among our public.

 

Thus, for example, Donald Trump's current 44 percent approval rating. And the Democratic Party's equally immoral (Pelosi-Schumer-driven) fake dissent.

 

The gist to this is  Pastor Martin Niemöller's (World War II era Germany) observation that:

 

 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Socialist.

 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Jew.

 

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Martin Niemöller, Martin Niemöller : First they came for the socialists . . .”, Holocaust Encyclopedia (11 May 2012) (reformatted)

 

 

The United States' key anti-humanitarian weakness is its near absolute focus on encouraging selfish individualism.

 

With an anti-inclusive aspiration like that, most of us eventually drown. Only a vanishingly small few ever win the laissez-faire lottery.

 

Americans, unintelligently and unisightfully, seem okay with that. Even, while most of the remaining 99 percent are slipping (in one fashion or another) below quicksand's surface.

 

Ironically, those in the process of oozing fluids under the Robber Barons' boots, have no regard for "foreigners" experiencing the same condition. Even (again), when that sad destination is almost exclusively fostered by American policy that we voted for or ignored.

 

Talk about lack of empathy and insight.

 

The Establishment's brainwashing obviously works. We are sheep on parade.

 

Learning to goose step is (one might forecast) the next "leg" of the subjugation process.