JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ARTICLE ON AMERICAN PATRIOTS NOT EVEN KNOWING WHO THE REAL ENEMIES ARE - AMERICA'S STAGE-SHOW NATIONAL POLITICS WITH TWO PARTIES CAPABLE OF DOING NOTHING - THE REALITIES OF THE AMERICAN-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP AND INHERENT INSTABILITIES LIKE THE EMBRACE OF SAUDI ARABIA AND ITS BUTCHER CROWN PRINCE

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHUCK BALDWIN IN RUSSIA INSIDER



“Most Conservative Americans Who Identify as 'Patriots' Have No Idea Who the Real Enemy Is”



I find much of this surprisingly refreshing and genuinely insightful.

Not every point here is like that, but enough are to make this piece a worthwhile read. It is very clearly written, too.

I tend to avoid any pastor or religious figure dabbling in politics or world affairs, and there is so much of that in America, but Mr. Baldwin makes many sound points that have nothing to do with religious affiliation or ideology.

His views on the phony Republican-Democrat divide are mine precisely, and I call them mine because I regard them as fundamental truth to be embraced by all concerned about truth in public affairs.

I would only add that this silly political dumb-show gives Americans a constant public spectacle with which to become emotionally involved, thus avoiding hard realities that really matter. Almost all of it is on the same superficial and meaningless level as America’s ongoing ridiculous controversy over football players kneeling in protest, something small which nevertheless makes millions of American hearts pump faster and the veins on their foreheads and neck bulge.

America's culture was aptly described by the brilliant Robert Hughes as the "culture of complaint," and this artificial political division exactly meets the needs of people who like to scream at each other, attack each other, and really achieve very little but their own notoriety and sense of being "leaders" of often meaningless factions.

No matter which party you vote for, you get war, insider privilege, money-saturated politics, and the dominance of gigantic corporations and well-funded lobbies.

Nothing of substance ever changes. The political parties are only separated by rhetoric about social and domestic affairs, and it is very much just "rhetoric" because with the empire there are simply no resources left for such things. And would-be career politicians know where the future money and opportunities are, and they vey much are not in social or domestic affairs.

That's part of why slogans are so popular in American national politics. You don't have to think to embrace a slogan, and people are conditioned from the sphere of corporate advertising to understand that, “well, that's how it is with slogans, often empty promises that just fade away.”

But still, come election time, everyone wants to put on some warpaint for a while. I think Trump understands this reality instinctively, having lived an entire life of bamboozling people and separating them from their money.

He is a genuine con-artist, a P. T. Barnum type, or a smaller-scale Bernie Madoff, the kind who somehow actually believes what he says for just so long as it takes to say it and fleece people. The “belief” of such people adds a soupcon of “je ne sais quoi” to make them more convincing in their raging enthusiasms. They are the types who always make the best con-artists. They have a form of mild psychopathy and, while they might not murder people, they will do almost any underhanded or manipulative thing with a big smile.

Apart from no resources, there is no political will either, because politicians of both American parties know where and how you build careers and power, and it certainly is not in the sphere of domestic and social programs.

Both parties are united with the other elements of the establishment in keeping the system we see, by and large.

Until you see a national candidate talking about axing great parts of the Pentagon and CIA and about serious measures to get rid of the corrupting flood of money in American politics and about halting interference in the internal affairs of other nations, there is no such thing as "change" in America politics. It's all as illusory as the inflated advertising promises of detergent and shampoo manufacturers.

And the author’s point about Trump not fighting the Deep State is one I own too. It's remarkable how people delude themselves about that.

Here I would only add, Trump actually represents a new layer of danger from the Deep State. He will literally do anything if he can stay in power, continue as their servant, giving them anything they want and more. His really is that kind of character.

He is essentially a coward in nature, and that is how cowards behave in high office. Extremely dangerous.

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Response to another comment:

Israel is effectively an American colony in the Middle East.

It serves virtually all the purposes of a colony, and it is heavily subsidized as are most colonies.

It truly has very little meaning as an independent state because it really is not one.

That, too, is an illusion, just like the Republican-Democrat divide inside America.

Note that both those parties embrace Israel as if it were a region of the United States.

All while claiming some kind of humanitarian credit for helping Jewish people who have been so abused in the past.

Of course, few remember that America was no help at all to the people abused by Hitler and indeed shared, to a considerable extent, his views, albeit in somewhat attenuated terms.

And the politicians who do this, all while collecting substantial political benefits in terms of campaign funds and press support, offer a kind of reimbursed humanitarianism, you might cynically say.

The Israel Lobby in America, many members of it I think, secretly do remember what America was really like and that is part of why they work so hard to maintain the present set of arrangements which benefit Israel.

So, we have a kind of secret political pact in which Israel gets to continue with its show of being a strong independent state so long as it serves American imperial interests. American politicians, individually and not by party, support the arrangement so long as it assists their careers, as it currently very much does.

Groups and lobbies inside the United States do their best to keep the arrangement going.

Every once in a while, the arrangements are threatened by events, as when Israel attacked the USS Liberty in the Six Day War or today, in a more peripheral fashion, when Saudi Arabia’s blood-drenched Crown Prince - a much-beloved figure in both Israel and establishment Washington - was caught, more or less red-handed, having a prominent journalist cut into pieces while still alive.

When these kinds of events happen, every covert effort is made to restore arrangements and pretend nothing untoward has happened. But it may not always work out that way, as we have yet to see in the case of the Crown Prince. There is fragility in arrangements involving so many differing objectives.