Beware Gleichschaltung, Beware Anarchy
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
One day, in a better future, perhaps, the United States of America will be known for its high level of cultivation of historical consciousness.
However, as it stands today, as is well known, many Americans would not be able to tell their own history from a hole in the ground. And though it is tempting to blame this infelicitous ignorance on the people themselves––since it does appear that they are prepared to stumble, Lemming-like, together, into that very hole in the ground that lies directly in the path before them, onto the jagged rocks below––it were wise constantly to bear in mind, from here on out, the fact that We the People of the United States of America, exist in a relatively constant state of terrible confusion, precisely because we lack historical consciousness. Call this confusion the hyper-individualized state of exception in an age of hybrid psychological warfare. Call it the result of the open conspiracy of universal fascism. Call it Trumpian pro-antidisinformationalism. Call it the inevitable schizophrenic break of a dumb-phone culture.
Call it whatever you want. But understand, ours is precisely the confusion of the credulous, the trusting, the faithful, the all-too “democratic”; ours is the confusion of one who has been utterly deceived, but who nevertheless perseveres in that almost good, dog-like, stupid state of trust. America, captured by tyrants? No, no, no… not America!
We’re the free ones! right?
We are confused about who We are, We are confused about what We are, We are confused about why We exist. Hence our susceptibility to contrived narratives promoting hyper-masculine nationalism, hyper-tribal racialism, hyper-stupid (oops, apologies! I meant hyper-fashionable!) ‘gender non-conformism.’ (And yet our real national purpose, written as plain as day in our original documents––the willful resistance to all forms of Tyranny––has never ceased for a single moment throughout our Nation’s relatively brief history; and it hasn’t failed to become a universal standard of human principle. Truly ironically, this principle our rogue government now aggressively combats on multiple fronts across the globe.)
Year after year, through war after war, and racket after racket, the “Lesser of Two Evils” schtick has played out, and gradually built up, like Pus within an infected Cyst, or like Lava beneath the Earth’s crust, into quite the bleeding Boil, quite the spewing Volcano of incorrigible Corruption; and now, sadly, we the people return, in confusion, in awe, again, sixty years after John Kennedy’s assassination, one-hundred and sixty years after the outbreak of Our Deadliest War, like dancers moving in time to the historical tempo of Tragedy, to the words spoken by our first great President-Martyr, Lincoln, who said, with courage masterful enough to face up to the whole rotten lot,
I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption, in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its bosom are riding like demons on the waves of Hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course, with the hopelessness of their effort; and knowing this I cannot deny that all may be swept away.
And who now could possibly deny without bad conscience that the Party System as it currently exists––the “Blue or Red,” the “Black and White,” the “Good versus Evil,” the “Us against Them,” and all the other forms of ancient, backwards tribalism––in short the never-ending God-damned lie of “the Lesser of Two Evils” (which, understand, is absolutely nothing but another way of saying, One Evil)––this Party System currently supposedly “in control” in America is not just corrupt, it’s not just failing, it’s not just a cancer on the legacy of the United States of America’s tradition of political-economic excellence––it is, finally, indisputably, dead, functioning only on the inertia gathered by all lies for fear of the shame of their revelation.
The Party System isn’t dying. It is Dead.
You need look no further for confirmation than the strange clarity surrounding our current farcical “choice” between an inveterate politician and a reality TV host: It is the latter who is infinitely preferable!
Because the unabashed nationalist manages at least to recognize certain basic realities, such as the need to curtail the flood of non-English speaking, desperately impoverished people into our country, or the need for an influx of physical energy into our economy; because he manages, despite being by no means a pacifist, to at least limit his will-to-power to an assassination here, a sly wink of ironic nationalism there; but at least he ultimately refrains from the homocidal-suicidal calls for all-out global war of the style of a “clash of civilizations” currently being pandered to a deluded populace by our current so-called “President.” (Though the only thing the crook could be said actually to preside over is his own pathetically encroaching oblivion.)
In the midst of this comtempible situation, there is the limited hope offered by the historic development of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s optimistic September 21st appeal to the ounce of humanity remaining in the Democratic Party, and his Monday announcement that he “declares Independence” from the whole two-party charade. Unfortunately, Kennedy’s position on Israel is still implicitly pro-war, as it is fully involved in the geopolitical mode of thought which only perceives the Win-Win model of economic cooperation being offered in China’s Community of Shared Future For Humankind “through a glass darkly,” as nothing other than a sinister ploy.
And that is by no means an inconsequential caveat for the potential hope of a Kennedy Independent bid, since, just as the war in Ukraine was reaching the denouement of its many-times-over-forecasted reductio ad absurdum, i.e., just as a peace proposal sought through diplomatic channels was once again arising as the only sane, the only possible conclusion to this wholly unnecessary conflict, (short of an open hot war between NATO and Russia), a severe ratcheting up of violence between opportunistic Palestinian Hamas forces and the overtly genocidal regime of Netanyahu in Israel led, in a matter of days, to the United States news-cycle being once again sputteringly restarted, like an engine burning fumes, to parade the calamitous send off of the USS Gerald Ford into the Mediterranean in ‘defense’ of Israel.
And in the meanwhile, the rhetoric at home slides towards more and more openly blood-thirsty war-mongering, as in Biden’s remarks to Netanyahu, (intentionally or otherwise calling the events of Sept. 11th, 2001 to mind), that “if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming.”
As though a continuation of the policy of converting the miserable open air prison of Gaza into an outright concentration camp or mass grave will do anything other than plunge the world into ever-heightended states of intractable misery and conflict. (We must bear in mind the new inclusion of Iran, Saudia Arabia, UAE, and Ethiopia into the BRICS+, and the general atmosphere of an unwillingness to any longer accept the neo-colonial, neo-imperial international arrangements which were the result of devious attempts on the part of the “winners” of WWII to retain economic and geopolitical ascendancy for the NATO-aligned West.)
Now we see our current skeletal “President” at his absolute worst, telling his most British-Nazi-like lie of all so far, lying as poorly as a dim-witted child, feigning disbelief at having seen actual videos of children who were beheaded, when in fact no such thing was in evidence. Of course, such unconscionable manipulation of the people’s emotional, implicit faith in the authority of the office of the presidency is now “run of the mill,” “business as usual” politics. This, a “President” who is not only non compus mentus, but who is clearly quite nearly nothing other than a willing puppet, an able mouth-piece for the narratives of the racketeers of war, inextricably obligated to the aggressive push by a relative minority of war-crazed “state of exception”-style tyrants within Israel and their policy of starving, and otherwise genociding, the Palestinians, whose God looks down, the same as Israel’s God, the same as our God, weeping unimaginable, triune tears.
And of course those Americans who look with an unflinching gaze at this global scandal and consider how it pertains to our upcoming election cycle understand all too well how all of this portends for their ever-dwindling domestic tranquility and general welfare. Again, Lincoln is helpful to orient us in discovering the necessary and sufficient reason to retain an otherwise-impossible optimism:
Words he spoke about the preservation of the American Union, which address all the struggles for self-preservation in justice and national sovereignty erupting around our One world:
Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand those dimenions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before High Heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty and my love. And who, that thinks with me, will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take. Let none faulter, who thinks he is right, and so we may succeed. But, if after all, we shall fail, let it be so.
We shall still have the consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgement, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we NEVER faultered in defending.
The country to which Lincoln refers is emphatically not the country currently ‘going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.’ It is precisely the very anti-imperial strain in American history, the genuinely committed citizenry working in support of a government adhering to the supreme principle of the consent of the governed, which Lincoln considered the cause capable of elevating him to be “not wholly unworthy” of the “Almighty Architect.”
What Young Americans must come to understand is that the American dream did not merely turn out to be a joke or a lie or a nightmare––as perpetual adolescents enjoy remarking––but the decision continues to rest, crucially, in their very hands, as it always has throughout American history.
One positive from Kennedy’s announcement of his Independent campaign run is that he centered his speech on Washington’s Farewell Address, a piece of writing that has been on my mind ever since I returned to the US from a diplomatic visit to China. In that address, Washington wrote the following:
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
If ever there were a time for us each, individually and collectively, to heed this warning and take up this cause, it is this very moment in American history.