EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY STEVE ROSE IN
THE GUARDIAN
"Could a George
Clooney presidency save America?"
Why would anyone think Clooney is, in any respect, qualified
for high office?
The guy acts in Hollywood movies and makes tuxedo appearances
at cocktail parties.
He has absolutely no experience leading anything.
He has absolutely no experience in real politics.
He has absolutely no experience in working hard and
seriously towards solving any problems.
He has never even held a real job.
He dabbles in causes.
Save America?
Good God, that sounds silly.
I'm afraid too many of the writers at The Guardian have
little understanding of what America is today.
It is not the dear old sentimental place from Jimmy Stewart
movies being temporarily held prisoner by a barbarian. That is a child’s image.
No, America is, in the words of Tennessee Williams’
character Big Daddy, "a pounding fist."
It is a vast brutal world empire with a monstrous military
and equally monstrous security services who prowl the planet to keep folks in
line and eliminate those who do not fall into line.
When it does manage to elect someone to office who appears
to have even some potential to change anything - Obama, for example with his
sandals and Peace Prize and daring to originally campaign without a ridiculous
American flag pin always stuck on his lapel - that person is quickly and
quietly turned around and made to appreciate what his real options are.
Obama went on to bomb every day of his administration,
create a massive extra-judicial killing machine, and foment coups and troubles
in many places. Talk about interfering in elections, the guy with the big
boyish smile left at least half a million dead.
And the same is true for Trump. An unpleasant man in many
ways, but one who offered what seemed a strong man's maverick promise for some
real changes in America's deliberately-created hell abroad. Instead, he behaves
indistinguishably from what Hillary's behavior would have been. Interfering in
people's affairs all over the planet, threatening nations, bombing, fomenting
coups.
Do we see a pattern here?
Who is elected in America's political system today can make
little if any change, just tweaking this or that, just adjusting this or that
domestic program that the establishment has no interest in anyway. The
unjustified wars, the coups, the assassinations, the trillions of dollars
squandered on the military and the security state, the corruption – none of
that can be adjusted anywhere but upward.
Not only is the election system pretty well stacked to start
with – two official parties with similar tight hierarchies, big money
everywhere, and all kinds of anti-democratic practices: there’s absolutely no
room ever for a Mr. Smith goes to Washington – but should anyone unexpected and
unwanted somehow squeak through the layers of filters and barriers set by the
establishment, he will immediately face the kind of reception experienced by
Obama and Trump.
And anyone who really tried to make serious changes has the chilling
reminder of John Kennedy's head smashed like a pumpkin on the streets of Dallas.
As I’ve said a number of times, you can have either a world
empire or a decent country, but you cannot have both. America’s establishment
made its choice long ago, and it wasn’t for a decent country. Given how
pervasive the state apparatchiks now are and how unbelievably well-funded they
are and given the immensely wealthy and privileged establishment they serve, an
establishment just as lopsided as the Dukes and Bishops of France in the mid-18th
century, it is hard to imagine that anything short of catastrophe, either an
economic collapse or something similar to what overtook the old Soviet empire,
can alter what America has become.
