{"id":271264,"date":"2024-08-12T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=271264"},"modified":"2024-08-10T06:38:05","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T05:38:05","slug":"the-ardent-pipe-dreams-of-u-s-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/the-ardent-pipe-dreams-of-u-s-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ardent Pipe Dreams of U.S. Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTo hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It\u2019s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

—\u00a0 Eugene O\u2019Neill, The Iceman Cometh<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Aug 2024 – <\/em>Voters in the U.S.A. live in fantasy and probably always will.\u00a0 No matter how obvious it is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, the ardent pipe dreams of a new face in the White House go to their heads every four years.\u00a0 It can only be explained by a combination of intellectual ignorance, the acceptance of propaganda, and the embrace of illusions.<\/p>\n

An analogy is apropos.\u00a0 In the small town and vicinity where I live, there are about 10 pot shops where pipe dreams are dispensed.\u00a0 As The Platters sang long ago, \u201cwhen your heart\u2019s on fire, you must realize smoke gets in your eyes.\u201d\u00a0 But few realize it.<\/p>\n

Smoke?\u00a0 What smoke?<\/p>\n

Quadrennially, this love affair with the presidential candidates burns hot and heavy despite their records, as if they were heart throbs of stage and screen, straight from Broadway or Hollywood deeply concerned for the public\u2019s welfare.<\/p>\n

Americans love actors, and the presidential candidates are of course actors, following the directions of the fat cats who produce their shows.\u00a0 As the grand opening of election day approaches, the supine public is aroused to a fanatical frenzy of excitement from its years\u2019-long sleep by a mass media that spews out drivel to deceive.\u00a0 It could be said that what the media propagandists digest, the public eats.<\/p>\n

Smoke and mirrors never fail as the electorate\u2019s favorite billionaire-backed candidates \u2013 at this point in 2024 Trump and Kamala Harris (but don\u2019t count on it) \u2013 spew lie after lie and the mass media faithfully promote the show as if it were an actual contest between good and evil, a grand movie.\u00a0 The acting is terrible, but the audience is so inflamed they can\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are unconscious actors among them and involuntary actors; the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors,\u201d Friedrich Nietzsche told us long ago, alluding to far more than this crude political masquerade \u2013 to life itself \u2013 urging us to take a deep look at the games we play and love in our politicians because they confirm our illusions.<\/p>\n

In the 2020 election between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, more than 158 million ballots were cast, a record number that was two-thirds of estimated eligible voters.\u00a0 That was about seven percentage points higher than in 2016 when Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off.\u00a0 \u00a0Each election was supposed to be the most important in \u201cyour lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as everyone knows, the country has gotten more prosperous, healthier and happier, and the world more peaceful, in those eight years of Republican and Democratic rule.<\/p>\n

One can expect more of the same smoke this year as the excitement, titillation, and political lies build to a November 4th<\/sup> crescendo.\u00a0 Illusions die hard, or to be more accurate \u2013 they do not die.<\/p>\n

The Spectacle rolls on.<\/p>\n

Although it might sound uppity, unless people read books that explain how the political and economic system is constructed and how it operates, they have no hope of understanding why the presidential elections are musical chairs played to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy. \u00a0Podcasts and talks can be instructive when true, but they don\u2019t stick like words on a page in a book that you have noted and can refer back to.<\/p>\n

But the vast majority of people will not read such books because many can\u2019t read or are too lazy or distracted to take the time to switch off digital media and the mainstream corporate press.\u00a0 It is only through slow meditative reading and study of the great analytic books about social structure, propaganda, history, capitalism, and political economy that a person can truly grasp the nature of the power elite\u2019s domination of the U.S. government, the mass media, and the White House.\u00a0 A soup\u00e7on of differences between contestants for the presidency \u2013 superficial makeup \u2013 is enough to have those caught in the spectacle get worked up into a hot lather of excitement for candidates chosen by the billionaires. \u00a0It is an aspect of the mania for celebrity culture.<\/p>\n

One cannot simply imbibe the daily mass media, listen to talking heads, or read books recommended and promoted by The New York Times<\/em> or some prize committee such as the Booker or Pulitzer prizes. (see the NYT\u2019s Best Sellers here<\/a> \u2013 as if #5 could be as \u201cbest\u201d as #1). \u00a0It is no secret that the reading public has been shrinking for years as literacy has waned dramatically.\u00a0 This is not an accident as the internet, cell phones, and the online life have been pushed by the authorities at every level, including throughout the school system.\u00a0 (I am not arguing that the voters saw through the electoral charade in the past because the level of cultural literacy was higher.)<\/p>\n

Today, a walk into any local library throughout the country will confirm the sad state of what even those who read books are reading.\u00a0 The new fiction shelves are filled with books with candy-colored sensationalized covers that evoke bodice-ripping books of old now updated to sound more serious by telling stories of orphans on European trains during WW II, mysterious murders, separated twins, equally evil Nazis and Russians on the prowl, childhood trauma, unfaithful men, etc. \u00a0All seemingly NY Times<\/em> bestsellers, together with the \u201cnon-fiction\u201d books within which you would search a long time on the shelves to find a radical critique of the American political system and its propaganda arms.<\/p>\n

This issue of voting and literacy is connected to another key matter.\u00a0 The American public as a whole does not much care to follow foreign policy and military issues.\u00a0 That is an understatement.\u00a0 Once the military draft was ended in January 1973, the public lost interest in who was being killed in America\u2019s wars.\u00a0 Let foreigners be damned was the unspoken assumption.\u00a0 It was a stroke of genius by the military-industrial-political complex, for politics has always been about what\u2019s in it for us, and when the military is voluntary and Americans are dying in smaller numbers, people are indifferent to the killing.<\/p>\n

When it comes to politics, the public\u2019s focus is primarily on domestic issues, the economy, health care, taxes, etc., despite the fact that the entire economy is dependent on war and preparations for war and the U.S. has been at war continually for decades<\/a>.\u00a0 The U.S spends nearly $900 billion dollars annually on \u201cdefense\u201d<\/a> spending; this is more than<\/a> China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan combined<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As everyone knows:<\/p>\n

The U.S. is defending<\/strong> itself in Syria where its troops illegally occupy the oilfields in the northeast.<\/p>\n

It is defending<\/strong> itself helping Israel slaughter Palestinians and supporting an expanded Middle Eastern war.<\/p>\n

It is defending<\/strong> itself by attacking Russia via Ukraine and leading the world to nuclear war.<\/p>\n

It is defending<\/strong> itself by provoking China in the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

It is defending<\/strong> itself all over the world with special forces and military bases everywhere because everyone is out to get us.<\/p>\n

It is defending<\/strong> itself always far, far away from its own shores.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that\u2019s how it goes.<\/p>\n

But facetiousness aside, the voting public either doesn\u2019t know or doesn\u2019t care that the U.S.A. is a warfare state; it\u2019s as simple as that.\u00a0 Without waging wars, the U.S. economy, as presently constituted, would collapse.\u00a0 It is an economy based on fantasy and fake money with a national debt over 35 trillion dollars that will never be repaid.\u00a0 That\u2019s another illusion.\u00a0 But I am speaking of pipe dreams, am I not?\u00a0 \u00a0 And whether they choose to be aware of it or not, the vast majority of Americans support this killing machine by their indifference and ignorance of its ramifications throughout the society and more importantly, its effects in death and destruction on the rest of the world. \u00a0But that\u2019s how it goes as their focus is on the masked faces that face each other on the stage of the masquerade ball every four years.<\/p>\n

This charade is comical but accepted by so many, and as the Halloween season in a presidential election year in the U.S.A. approaches, it becomes most clear.\u00a0 It\u2019s always a trick until four years elapses and the next poisoned candy treat is offered.<\/p>\n

Get to the polls.\u00a0 Your life depends on it!<\/p>\n

But there is a big price to be paid \u2013 a lesson always too late for the learning \u2013 for going to the masquerade ball.\u00a0 Yet when smoke gets in your eyes . . . ah, such an exciting time it is!<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you not know there comes a midnight hour when everyone has to throw off his mask?<\/em>\u201d warned S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you believe that life will always let itself be mocked?
\nDo you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this?
\nOr are you not terrified by it?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Edward J. Curtin, Jr., Ph.D. is a widely published author and a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/em><\/a> – email: <\/em>edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Aug 2024 – No matter how obvious it is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, not a democracy, the ardent pipe dreams of a new face in the White House go to their heads every four years.\u00a0 It can only be explained by a combination of intellectual ignorance, the acceptance of propaganda, and the embrace of illusions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[276,392,555,546,70],"class_list":["post-271264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-democracy","tag-elections","tag-elites","tag-oligarchy","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271267,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271264\/revisions\/271267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}