Well, here we are:
at the bottom of the barrel under forty feet of slag. In a few days’ time,
we’ll know our fate: the five-alarm fire of Trump Rule (oh, how those police
unions are chomping at the bit!) or the Clinton Age of Hyper-War (oh, how
those neocons are chomping at the bit!). In either case, the entrenched
coagulation of corporate interests and war profiteers that have strangled the
peace, prosperity and prospects of the American people will not be budged an
inch. The change that people are so desperately hungry for — so hungry that
that some of them might well elect an Establishment insider whose sinister
clowning makes him appear to be a ‘rebel’ — will not come. Thus their
bitterness will grow deeper, more sour, erupting more and more often in
physical violence: from militarized police against protestors, from
Trump-empowered racists (if he wins or loses), from extremist militias, from
angry, maddened people on every side. And of course there will be more — much
more — of the horrific, never-ending, globe-spanning violence of the
bipartisan Terror War that churns on and on, no matter who is sitting
temporarily in the White House.
There’s no use in
pretending that’s not what we face. But there’s also no use in pretending that
this situation is somehow sui generis, some terribly unlucky conflation
of unforeseen circumstances coming together at this particular time. It is in
fact the culmination and embodiment of the deliberate choices of the most
powerful forces in society: the choices to enrich themselves beyond all reason
and extend their military and economic dominance over the earth.
It doesn’t matter
that many if not most of the practitioners and functionaries of this system
“believe” in its rightness. It doesn’t matter that brutal neoliberal nostrums
and extremist imperial notions have become religious dogmas for those who see
themselves as the “meritocracy.” It doesn’t matter if the leaders and
factotums genuinely believe in the “exceptionalism” they preach or if they are
cynical power-seekers. It doesn’t matter if they actually believe their
rapacious financial machinations are reflections of the “natural law” of the
“the market” that will eventually benefit all, or if they know themselves to
be what they really are: ugly souls disfigured by greed. The end result has
been the same: a long series of deliberate choices by a bipartisan elite that
have hollowed out the lives and communities and futures of millions of
Americans, and created a living hell of war, ruin and hatred over much of the
earth.
This is a system
that has delegitimized itself, a system that has undermined its own
institutions. Through its own actions, it has rotted out the foundations of
trust and reason which once upheld it. Some might say, “Oh, but there’s been a
decades-long, concentrated effort by right-wing billionaires and corporate
forces to foment ideological and religious extremism to undermine the
legitimacy of secular government, which might restrict their profiteering or
let more people have a share in power.” And that’s true. But it’s been
accompanied at every step by the collusion and cowardice of the putative
opposition. The so-called New Democrats, exemplified by the Clintons,
jettisoned concern for the common good to embrace “centrist” and
“technocratic” policies: i.e., to adopt the neoliberal dogma that unbridled
pursuit of private profit by a connected elites will somehow, someday, lead to
general prosperity. The idea that the party should fight to improve the lives
of ordinary people in the here and now, to fight for their quality of life in
a genuine, substantive way, came to be seen as old-hat, a quaint and fusty
notion of has-beens and dreamers who didn’t understand the way the world
really worked. A true, savvy “moderate” knows you must compromise every ideal,
show yourself to be a willing and avid servant of the monied interests and the
militarists, in order to gain power so you can … make a few cosmetic changes
around the edges, a few little social improvements here and there (but only —
of course! — in “partnership” with private interests), but never, ever
challenge the system at its core.
This is the only
deal in town: outright, unvarnished right-wing rule, or simpering, cowardly
“moderate” management of a violent, rapacious system. That’s been the choice
on offer since 1976. That’s the choice on offer today. The only difference is
that the system has metastasized to a monstrous degree over the years: lacking
any genuine opposition, the system has grown more violent, more rapacious.
Establishment
collusion — and Democratic cowardice — finally and completely degraded and
delegitimized the American electoral process 16 years ago, when the Supreme
Court — with two members who had direct family ties to the Bush campaign —
stopped a recount that would have resulted in the actual winner of the
election to take office. This outrageous action was accepted by every single
organ and institution of the American system. (With the momentary exception of
the Black Congressional Caucus, whose members tried, in vain, to get a single
Democratic senator to challenge the result.) Instead, Americans were
encouraged to applaud the fact that power had changed hands “without tanks in
the street.” That is, we were to celebrate that an actual coup d’etat had
taken place before our eyes without the slightest show of resistance.
Once in place, the
coup regime — staffed at the highest levels by extremists who a year before
had publicly called for a vast militarization of American policy and society,
even if the public had to be “galvanized” by “a new Pearl Harbor” — led the
nation into a disastrous war based on false pretenses, a vast crime that not
only killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people but has led directly to
unbridled turmoil, extremism, conflict and corruption around the world. The
elite-supported coup regime instituted torture programs and death squads, and
launched an orgy of war profiteering unprecedented in world history. The
regime then presided over the worst economic collapse in generations.
Not a single member
of the regime was ever tried — or even investigated, at even the most
preliminary level — for a single crime committed during its time in power.
There were no high-profile Congressional investigations into the hideous
carnage and ruin and instability they wrought; not even a “Chilcot Commission”
into the origins of the war, as the UK belatedly launched. Instead the
regime’s leaders and top factotums were heaped with honors and wealth. Today
their endorsement is eagerly sought — and gained — by the “progressive”
Democratic candidate for president.
In 2008, the
desperate electorate turned to a figure presented to them as an outsider who
would at last bring real change. He had the trappings of difference — a black
man with a Muslim name, who spoke eloquently of peace and social justice, who
most people thought was far to the left but voted for him anyway. But Barack
Obama was of course a meritocratic “centrist” to his core. Riding an enormous
wave of popularity, and a strong Congressional majority, he proceeded to …
bail out Wall Street fraudsters and finaglers with tax money and create a
health care system based on the plan of a rightwing think-tank that
prioritized corporate profit — and probably killed the chance for a genuinely
public health care system for generations, if not for good. He also doubled
down on the Terror War, expanding it to more countries, extended Bush’s death
squads, helped destroy nations like Libya and Yemen (thus spawning more chaos
and terror), expanded illegal surveillance of the populace (and the world) to
an extent beyond the wildest dreams of the Stasi or KGB. And after saving Big
Money from itself and securing the guaranteed profits of the
healthcare-insurance corporate complex, he spent most of his time on the
domestic front trying to strike a “grand bargain” with Republicans to cut
Social Security and Medicare.
Again, all hopes of
any real change were thwarted. So now the nation swings from being ready to
embrace a perceived leftist to the brink of voting in a bellicose rightist as
it seeks the genuine change no one will give them. Of course, after the
scorched-earth tactics of bipartisan neoliberalism and the inevitable moral
degradation and brutalization that comes from year after year after year of
vicious aggressive war, the choice for Trump is more nihilistic. It’s as if
people believe positive change is no longer possible — so let’s tear
everything down and see what happens. (This is the actual, open philosophy of
the Breitbart gang, who are now directing Trump’s campaign.)
Even if Clinton
wins, this nihilism will still be rampant. And given that she happily embodies
the bipartisan Establishment now roundly despised on all sides for its many
depredations, the nihilism will grow even worse — especially as she has given
no indication whatsoever that she will even try to make substantive changes in
the neoliberal-militarist system that is strangling us. Quite the contrary.
So yes, this has
been a campaign like no other — but mostly because it has brought the
systematic decay of the Republic into the sharpest possible relief, and has
shown, more clearly than before, that the neoliberal-militarist ascendency
offers no hope for a better life, a better world; indeed, that it offers
nothing at all — except more violence, more bitterness, more ruin, more
degradation for us all.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for CounterPunch
Magazine. His blog, Empire Burlesque, can be found at www.chris-floyd.com.
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Thanks for your comment. Peace, NB