U.S. POLITICS IS NOT WORKING

It’s obvious, isn’t it?

The thing that’s supposed to monitor and adjust the underlying processes of everyday life for Americans is failing them.

Look at the current situation. Americans have no idea how to get out of the various impasses they find themselves in.

And the politicians only make it worse.

The deep-rooted causes lie in the supremely arrogant and individualistic historical memes of the country, its semi-fascistic lauding of independent, muscular strongmen who stole land from the native inhabitants killing them without mercy.

The seeds of self-awarded privilege and disregard for the rights and humanity of others began there. There too were the seeds of the racism that spawned slavery.

The idea of the self-made man and the inferiority of woman made by God as an afterthought to care for men and have babies enough to take control of the entire land of America.

Without slavery at the outset of the nation those early Americans knew the task would be too hard. America was therefore built on genocide and robbery, slavery and racism.

The legacy of this attitude of independent arrogance and selfish greed is seen today on the health service of the USA, though a more accurate description would be the health scam of the USA. Prices are kept far higher than elsewhere in the world and people are regularly reduced to bankruptcy for getting sick.

For all the arrogant boasting of America’s ‘Great Society’ and great this, that and many another it can’t seem to find a way to provide decent health care to its citizens. That would be socialism you see.

The general attitude to social responsibility, to caring for others just as you might members of your own family is directly related to the meme above of independent and atomized power. The concept is that you don’t need anyone else. You are strong and above the need for any sentimental attachment or need for either solidarity of mutual self-help. You fix your attention on creating wealth for yourself and your family and expect everyone else to do the same. You are an island of strength in a weak world.

This is the kind of narrow attitude of arrogant self-belief that breeds the ethos of ultra-competition, of red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism whereby you do the dirty things you must to survive and prosper.

This is the genesis of thugs like Donald Trump.

The outcry against Trump ignores the fact that he epitomises the ethos that was the real underpinning to The American Dream. The myth of the men and women who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps had its origin in a shallow understanding of what went on in reality to build whatever businesses rose based on their activity. Business is usually dirty. Watch the film ‘The Founder’ sometime to see the realities behind the story of McDonalds. The so-called founder royally shafted the two McDonald brothers who devised the new way to deliver fast food. They were in fact the originators of almost all fast food to come with their hard work devising their floor plan. The spiv who took it all away from them with his dirty dealing is revealed in the film.

It will be much the same in every U.S. enterprise... though a few will indeed be inspiring stories of creative imagination, sheer guts and risk-taking where few if any were treated seriously badly on the way up.

But in general the wolves of Wall Street prevail. The corporate killing machines of the military industrial complex prevail. And the politicians of both parties suckle at the teats of these golden cows and do their bidding.

What part doe the average American voter play? He or she is expecting to turn up at the voting booths and place their vote for one of the two equally corporation-indebted major parties with his/her disbelief in their promises suspended. The democratic dictators expect blind obedience to their cause, to maintain their power, their class status and their ability to manipulate their populations to gain consent for their misdeeds.

There is no perceptible way out of this failed system of despair, or at least most Americans seem to think not. The vast majority appear relatively docile even as they get shafted time and time again. No amount of punishment and failed promises by their political betters seems to dissuade them from standing in line wasting part of their day to vote.

Perhaps they get some masochistic joy out of the process as if it is one of the schlocky game show trivia series they see on their mind-numbing TV.

But surely... surely by now they see this isn’t working out.

Life expectancy is reducing in the USA. The Covid-19 pandemic is cycling round looking as if it will account for over 200,000 dead Americans ultimately. Jobs have been lost at an unprecedented rate. Health insurance is therefore being lost at an unprecedented rate also. But more Americans than ever are getting sick and the bankruptcies will escalate ever further.

George Carlin said it all so well long before he died. He held up a mirror to Americans and encouraged them to look at themselves and the elites who ruled over them.

He called their cabal of class entitled elites a big club. “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!”

And on The American Dream George was similarly acerbic and astute.

“It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”