{"id":280098,"date":"2024-11-11T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=280098"},"modified":"2024-11-10T05:47:12","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T05:47:12","slug":"everybody-knows-do-they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/11\/everybody-knows-do-they\/","title":{"rendered":"Everybody Knows: Do They?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEverybody knows the boat is leaking\/Everybody knows the captain lied\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2013 Leonard Cohen, \u201cEverybody Knows\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8 Nov 2024 –<\/em> When the polls closed on Tue 5 Nov, I was sound asleep, like a baby rocking gently in his cradle, lost to the frenzied rants or joyful shouting of the different political claques.\u00a0 Even though I missed the results of what the mass media had been telling us was the most important election in our lifetimes, I was happily oblivious to their cant.\u00a0 I remember hearing that nonsense many times before.<\/p>\n

I gave up on my country\u2019s electoral system more than fifty years ago.\u00a0 Every presidential election is a contest between two sides of the ruling monied elite, chosen to represent their interests.\u00a0 It is corrupt beyond repair and was so even then.\u00a0 Do most people have a clue that their country is owned and run by a small group of the super-rich and ten or so financial institutions, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, etc.<\/a>, the big banks and financial interests that in 1947 formed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to spearhead the U.S. warfare state around the world in support of its economy that is reliant on endless war?<\/p>\n

The electorate continually puts its hope in the performers that the spectacle\u2019s producers put up to front for their interests, failing to grasp that the rulers\u2019 interests are not theirs.\u00a0 Arguing and anguishing over certain policy differences between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, they fail to see that both exist to serve global capital, not regular people, that exchanging presidents is a counterfeiter\u2019s con-game with the voters the scammers\u2019 marks.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s current victory is an example of that, as was Biden\u2019s in 2020.\u00a0 If Harris had won, it would have proven the same.\u00a0 They are two sides of one coin.\u00a0 That the system is rigged by the oligarchs should be obvious but isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Or maybe it is obvious but people secretly harbor a perverse liking for it.\u00a0 Stranger things are true, as on personal levels people embrace the symptoms of their neuroses because the symptoms are their disguised solutions, their ways of staying stuck because change is hard and frightening and requires admitting repressed realities.<\/p>\n

The clich\u00e9 that all politics is local has a certain appeal and a trace of veracity, but 99 + % of the truth lies elsewhere.\u00a0 Apprimately 145 + million Americans just lined up to vote like puppies looking for a bone to be thrown their way by the people who own the country.\u00a0 They do get a bone here and there, which keeps them looking for the meat, but that is reserved for the fat cats, as always.<\/p>\n

I understand why people prefer upbeat words, but very often the upbeat is really the downbeat of hopelessness in disguise.\u00a0 A coverup.\u00a0 And seemingly hopeless words, such as that our presidents are the public personae of the rapacious oligarchy, are actually far more hopeful, even though they reveal long-held assumptions to be delusional.<\/p>\n

Imagine what might happen if a great portion of people refused to vote for the charlatans chosen to run for president.<\/p>\n

The fear that there was even a slight chance that this might happen lies behind all the pep talks and moralizing about doing your civic duty, which is such \u201ca privilege.\u201d\u00a0 Vote, even if it\u2019s for the \u201clesser of two evils.\u201d<\/p>\n

But please, let us not mention the great evil that lies behind these lessers.\u00a0 Vote and we\u2019ll give you a sticker. A sticker that signifies your gullibility.<\/p>\n

There is a \u201csystem,\u201d as young radicals referred to the U.S.\u2019s political-economic structure back in the 1960s.\u00a0 I was one of them, a conscientious objector from the Marine Corps and a graduate student studying sociology, deeply influenced by the work and moral voice of C. Wright Mills and his powerful books, The Power<\/a> Elite<\/a><\/em>, The Causes of World War III<\/em><\/a>, and Listen, Yankee<\/em><\/a>, and William Domhoff\u2019s Who Rules America<\/a>,<\/em> a work that has gone through seven updated editions.<\/p>\n

There were (and are) many other books that told the story truly, but even reading them won\u2019t help unless you are willing to dispense with the obvious illusions and face the bleakness of a corrupt system.\u00a0 Willing to take it personally.\u00a0 Willing to recognize the systemic evil that under-girds the System.\u00a0 Willing to accept the void that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton termed the Unspeakable:<\/p>\n

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This void is the fact that the U.S. political economy is controlled by a small group of the wealthiest nihilists and is maintained through lies, a military-industrial economy, and perpetual wars around the world to maintain and increase their wealth.\u00a0 It is a death cult that people worship by their participation.<\/p>\n

Although in subsequent years it became fashionable to decry the use of the term \u201cthe system,\u201d there was a system then and there is one now, run by the upper class elite whose wealth has increased exponentially over the years throughout Democratic and Republican administrations.\u00a0 This system is tightly entwined throughout the social structure of the country, part of the everyday fabric of American life.\u00a0 It is fueled by the corporate mass media of all political persuasions.\u00a0 Understanding it helps to explain most of what is going on today, including the farcical election just concluded.\u00a0 A battle between two candidates who represent the forces that oppress the common people, support the genocide of the Palestinians, and are figureheads for the warfare state.<\/p>\n

The system has evolved its methods of control since the 1950s but is essentially unchanged.\u00a0 It is now monopoly global capitalism joined with the steroidal injection of digital technology and the Internet to create a seamless marriage of economic exploitation and non-stop propaganda that has coopted and controlled the working classes and leftist intellectuals alike. Those middle to upper middle classes who like to consider themselves liberal or progressive accept the status quo because it rewards them at the expense of struggling peoples at home and abroad.\u00a0 They can afford to play along and look away, being typical Babbitts.\u00a0 And the right-wing was always in the pocket of the power elites.<\/p>\n

Elections are said to be about pocket-book issues, which is largely true, but the oligarchic control of the nation\u2019s pocketbook is not the focus.\u00a0 Small stuff is.<\/p>\n

Listen to Peter Philips, a sociologist in Mills\u2019s tradition, who tells the truth that most can\u2019t bear to hear and will never accept. His latest book is, Titans of Capital.<\/a>\u00a0 Here he is being interviewed by Robert Scheer, These Ten Companies Run Our \u201cDemocracy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s nothing new, but to accept it would require an American revolution, which isn\u2019t coming.\u00a0 No, it\u2019s not coming when so many people \u201cdo their civic duty\u201d and vote for presidential candidates fronting for the upper class\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

As I am finishing writing these words, a headline appears at The New York Times<\/em> Corporation to make me laugh and give me that all-over happy tingle.\u00a0 It reads: \u201cPopularist Revolt Against Elite\u2019s Vision of the U.S.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Subheaded with these introductory words: \u201cIn the end, Donald Trump is not the historical aberration some thought he was, but a force reshaping the modern U.S., writes Peter Baker in an analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not an historical aberration!\u00a0 Then he must not be a deviation from the normal type of American president.\u00a0 Trump is a good old normal American president, claims the Times<\/em>.\u00a0 Is this a Freudian slip?<\/p>\n

The \u201celite\u2019s vision?\u201d\u00a0 So the Times<\/em> is also admitting that there is an elite and they have a vision for the common people?\u00a0 I wondered what kind of confession was to follow?\u00a0 So I followed.<\/p>\n

The article by Baker has a strangely punctuated title with an ambiguous meaning that its text contradicts: \u2018Trump\u2019s America\u2019: Comeback Victory Signals a Different Kind of Country.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 It opens with the introductory words I quoted above, as if to reinforce the point.\u00a0 Not an historical aberration, which for anyone who understands the English language means he is normal.\u00a0 But then Baker mixes his illogical word salad with dressing.<\/p>\n

He writes, as if there were some logical connection between his sentences:<\/p>\n

Populist disenchantment with the nation\u2019s direction and resentment against elites proved to be deeper and more profound than many in both parties had recognized. Mr. Trump\u2019s testosterone-driven campaign capitalized on resistance to electing the first woman president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is he not saying that there is an elite that the common people are rebelling against by voting for Trump and that Harris has been chosen by this same elite and as a woman she is the focus of the fat, seventy-eight year-old Trump\u2019s massive testosterone drive because she is a woman?<\/p>\n

But if Trump is not an historical aberration and therefore has also been chosen by the elite, then the \u201cpopularist revolt\u201d is no revolt at all but a con job played out by the billionaire elite who support Trump.\u00a0 Baker and all the \u201cexperts\u201d he quotes are loathe to admit openly that the ruling oligarchy is split; that both Harris and Trump are candidates of the elite who war among themselves but who in the end reap the spoils of the system.\u00a0 That they are allied in an overall goal.<\/p>\n

Baker tells us about Kamala Harris, who was not chosen by the people but by the elite who control the Democratic party, that \u201cOnce she took the torch from Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris initially emphasized a positive, joy-filled mission to the future, consolidating excited Democrats behind her, but it was not enough to win over uncommitted voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joy didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 Well what the heck!<\/p>\n

Baker also tells us that trashing Trump and emphasizing unity didn\u2019t either because the American people want a strongman.<\/p>\n

What? a non-aberrational strong man?<\/p>\n

But Baker goes on to castigate Trump as a criminal, a liar, a fraud, a conspiracy theorist, etc. while the joyful Harris just miscalculated and underestimated popular discontent.\u00a0 This is the usual Times<\/em>\u2019 schtick.\u00a0 Turn to the New York Post<\/em> for the obverse and have a chuckle at the absurd game the media play on the public.<\/p>\n

Baker\u2019s headline tells us that Trump\u2019s win signals that the U.S. is now a different kind of country because so many people are fed up with how it\u2019s being run.\u00a0 Different from 2016 when Trump won?<\/p>\n

If only it were a different country, but it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 The same elite money forces run the show.\u00a0 Elections don\u2019t change that.\u00a0 People continue to be suckers.<\/p>\n

Baker lets it slip again with these words:<\/p>\n

The assumption that Mr. Trump represented an anomaly who would at last be consigned to the ash heap of history was washed away on Tuesday night by a red current that swept through battleground states \u2013 and swept away the understanding of USA long nurtured by its ruling elite of both parties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the \u201cruling elite.\u201d\u00a0 One elite.\u00a0 Both parties.\u00a0 And nothing was swept away.\u00a0 This ruling elite is just laughing and no doubt secretly applauding the stenographers who serve their interests, such as Peter Baker, who portrays them in typically deceptive Times\u2019<\/em> gobbledygook fashion as \u201cperplexed.\u201d\u00a0 Have a laugh!<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows the fight was fixed
\nThe poor stay poor, the rich stay rich
\nThat\u2019s how it goes
\nEverybody knows\u201d<\/p>\n

Do they?<\/p>\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

 <\/p>\n

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

8 Nov 2024 – When the polls closed on Tue 5 Nov, I was sound asleep. Every presidential election is a contest between two sides of the ruling monied elite, chosen to represent their interests. It is corrupt beyond repair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[133,550,392,555,70,1594],"class_list":["post-280098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-cia","tag-corruption","tag-elections","tag-elites","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280098","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=280098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280100,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280098\/revisions\/280100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}