American Democracy: A Dead Man Walking
by Paul Craig Roberts
Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is instructive. We have now had a Democratic president who sold out the people who elected him and a Republican president who has done the same thing. This is a very interesting point, the meaning of which most people miss.
But not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western democracy, which I paraphrase as follows:
In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent.
People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with propaganda to support more wars.
Obama promised to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq or perhaps it was both. He promised to reverse the police state created by the George W. Bush regime. He promised to focus American resources on American domestic problems, such as health care.
But what did he do? He expanded the wars and launched new ones, destroyed Libya and attempted to destroy Syria, but was stopped by British non-participation and Russian objection. Obama overthrew democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine. He expanded the police state. He began the demonization of Russia and Putin. He betrayed the American people again by allowing the private insurance industry to write his health care plan known as Obamacare. The private interests wrote a plan that diverts public monies from health care to their profits.
All of this is forgotten when the ruling elites and the presstitutes that serve only them refocused the demonization on Trump. Suddenly, it was the president-elect of the United States who was the main danger to the US and the American people. Trump was a Russian agent. He had conspired with Putin to steal the US election from Hillary Clinton and make the White House a partner of Putin’s alleged reconsruction of the Soviet Empire.
The nonsense was hot and furious, and it was effective. Trump succumbed to pressure and sacrificed his National Secuity Advisior, who was supportive of Trump’s promise to normalize relations with Russia. Trump replaced him with a Russophobic idiot who apparantly cannot wait to see mushroom clouds over cities all over the Western world.
Why did two presidents in succession completely sell out the people who voted for them?
The answer is that presidents are not as powerful as the interest groups who make the decisions.
Trump was going to get us out of Syria, so he committed an unambigious war crime by gratuitously attacking Syria with Tomahawk missiles.
Trump was going to normalize relations with Russia, so his Secretary of State announces that US economic sanctions will stay on Russia until Russia hands over to Ukraine the Russian Crimean naval base on the Black Sea.
It is impossible to normalize relations when the cost to the other party of the normalization is national suicide.
Despite Trump’s complete surrender to the powers that be, today (May 2) on NPR I heard raw propaganda dressed up as “expert opinion” that Trump is biased against the media, when what all of us have seen is massive media bias against Trump, including the program to which I was listening.
For example, NPR had accumulated “experts” who said that Trump had slandered Obama by accusing him of intercepting his comunications. NPR said nothing about the Obama regime’s charge that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
If anything was slander, this was, but all the talk was about how Obama could sue Trump.
But, of course, both are public figures, and neither can sue the other.
I wonder why NPR’s “expert” didn’t get around to this point.
Why is the ruling oligarchy still using its presstitutes to campaign against a president who has surrendered to them?
Perhaps the answer is that the real powers that be are going to make an example out of Trump so that never again does a person running for elected office make a populist appeal to the electorate.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
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I don’t mean to be too harsh and judgemental with PCR, because he has been vociferous in the cause of human rights since. Nor am I in any way suggesting complicity (he was occupied ‘fathering’ Reaganomics – the trickle down effect of wealth that has yet to trickle down) – but he must be aware by now that democracy was being eviscerated around him when he was in the Reagan regime?
Did Rex ’84, Iran-Contra, the provision for the suspension of the Constitution, the Federal drug smuggling, the FEMA camps, the erosion of the separation of powers, the compromising of the Executive/ Judiciary and Legislative branches, the Continuity of Government planning, etc. – all pass him by?
His ‘road to Damascus’ conversion may well have been genuine (he stood up for Palestine when few others would) – but it seems to me he still has a blind spot for his former boss. The police state did not start under Bush the Lesser Evil – the foundations were already laid. American democracy has been a dead man walking since Reagan and Bush the Greater Evil dealt the first near fatal blows. There is little point in crying about it now.
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/fema_executive_orders.htm
Isn’t this right out of the (((Protocols)))?
If one operates from a predictive reaction, they can play off one polarity against another to make a 3rd that opens new polarities to feed upon the division and conflict aroused. Being subject and predated upon is the same in whatever guise. This is a ‘negative creation’ or anti life.
I’d say that humanity in the main DOES operate on predictive and thus predictable reaction only some are much quicker and more focused in anticipating, setting up and capitalizing on such changes that don’t really change so much as open new guises for the persistence of hatred in masked agenda.
I believe Trump was selected and backed – whether as an outsider or marketed and sold as such, in part to destabilze the mindset of ‘followers’ and usher in a brash ‘netanyahoo’ style bluster and provocation as the basis of making ‘deals. The velvet glove of the smooth operator with eloquent high speeches about principles that have nothing to do with what is actually being enacted by design – is off – and the unpredictable fist bring in the next act in the dissociation from what is left of true human consciousness.However, even a spark of truth has more power than the illusion of vast and overwhelming power – but not in the framing of the story.
Perhaps power is thus the wrong term for what lies beneath all seeming – without conflict or comparison but the sense of having lost it, is the subjection to lies wished true.
If some now see lies being played out – will they reinforce them by speaking the same language? Or walk out of a false thinking and dissociate by focussing wholly in what truly communicates Life.
Of course the hope in the framing of the world ‘chooses’ what seems the lesser evil – and this can therefore operate a negatively defined sense of self whose mind rules out the real choice by diversion in shifting forms that operate the same rule in a form that induces people to want it or want to hate and fight it – but not to see the ruse and leave the bait untaken. Reality is not a trend. It is a decision – even if it is a decision to align in the trending as if it is or dictates (effective) reality.
The only thing I heard Trump say that stirred in me was regarding the vax industrial agenda. I feel they’ll let him play war with Israel’s enemies rather than allow that to be exposed and acknowledged – though R Kennedy Jr is a valiant man. Generally the Big Story is diversion. And Trump’s personality is diversion. Unless of course that is where your infotainment comes from and then its a page turner of a roller coaster ride. How we see – brings the perspective we can then appreciate – and people who are adrenalin junkies want to keep fixing their habit or they would open a different focus and live that.
The zombie or golem is the idea of the living dead or automata of such limited consciousness as not to know its own consciousness. A ‘mind-capture’ or a successful desire for UN-consciousness?
1000% agreement about the vax agenda – RFK jr seems like an honourable man (he’s been involved with investigating vax damaged children for more than a decade) – but it is hard to believe that the truth will be allowed to be told. Particularly when the CDC pulped its own investigation to cover the dangers of the MMR vax, and it itself owns 50+ patents on various vaxxines. Not so much an independent Gov Org in charge of vax oversight – more an extension of the corporate-fascist-state-pharma-industrial-complex (of which Trump is nominally head.) Del Matthew Bigtree, Andrew Wakefield, JFK jr et al – kudos.
One cannot ‘tell’ anything to another who does not want to listen – and if one forces it – they still hear something else – for now it is framed in coercion.
So the ONLY opportunity available is to hear the truth and align in it – such that our lives become aligned in true witness rather than ‘narrative control’ – which is another way of phrasing war on truth.
I note Kennedy is strongly involved in protection of natural resource such as waterways and is at odds openly with Trump’s disregard of life in favour of corporate plunder.
War on truth is an unnatural contortion – and a war upon our own true nature…
Perhaps the truth is that we hurt our Self until we release attack.
Time and time again we are duped into thinking that it makes any difference who we vote into power. It doesn’t. The system itself is broken and humans as a species also need to mature. We need to evolve beyond the current implementation of “democracy”.
I don’t see more than a farce under the guise of ‘democracy’ – which can mean many things but may lean towards the idea of government by representation and consent.
The system is not different from the mind that made it – hence nothing really ‘evolves’ that comes from the same premises of a split mind. The split mind of dissociated fragmentation under a masking narrative that runs as if power and protection while protecting and giving power to an unconscious insanity or if you prefer, lie.
It may be that – painted in to a corner – with no recourse or resource left – the human being opens to a prior or underlying truth and perspective hitherto denied by its insistence on war as the means to enforce or enslave life to a system of rules, limits and controls – by all of which we teach that life is out of control and must needs be blocked from upsetting our investments and causing pain and loss to what ‘control’ we yet cling to or seek to grow.
Maybe it makes a difference where you come from in yourself when you vote or make any choice. Seeking to change the outside neglects within. But seeking within for how to relate to our world and each other is more a matter of genuine relationship – than the war of seeking to impact upon others – who only grow defences and etc and etc
Trump the reality TV guy, is but a mirror of the “reality TV” WMSM.
Both are corrupted. As all leaders and their attendants are by big business and big finance. The Clinton’s, Obama and Blair for example, to name but a few.
There are very few who are not corrupted and those that are not are vilified if they are vociferous and have a high profile.
Then there are those who oppose the unilateralism of globalist Neo-liberal economics, they also have to be vilified as we see with Putin and Xi, those who would advocate for a multi-polar economic world.
Unfortunately they all subscribe to the same school of economics, even PCR.
Capitalism cannot be reformed, god knows it’s been tried. Wealth, greed and power are psychologically destructive. A psychosis.
A psychosis which can now destroy the planet.
We are better than that, surely? A break from incessant materialism is needed.
Otherwise incessant materialism will kill us.
Oh, and of course capitalism, the source of incessant profit and consumption feeding that materialism.
So true! Now can that “incessant materialism” be sold in the Jumbo Size to maximize our saving? Or maybe, a buy one get a second “free” concept. No Tubularsock has it, an economy size “incessant materialism”! Yeah, that’s it ……….. there is something to be said for the minimal approach to psychosis!
You’re thinking of the BOGOF psychosis….buy one get one free
You can also look at the roles that everyone and everything is playing in your script.
The economics of unlawful possession are those of fear of loss as a result of stealing. Once you steal your life – the world becomes a thief that will take it back. A false reality defends against true in fear of loss and the false mind that contests and upholds it is not the tool by which to restore or discover a genuine relationship of shared worth, communication and exchange.
Perhaps everyone is already operating out of a sense of separation and loss – but as if in full possession of their senses! Engaged in vendetta or atonement via martyrdom.
The false sense of self-gratification doesn’t actually profit – but evaporates wealth in the illusion of profit. The materialism operates those images and symbols of power and status that ‘validate’ the wish to possess them (and within which is the fear of dispossession, denial or deprivation).
I don’t see why capitalism is exclusively assigned psychotic status? Corporate monopolies usurping the freedom to live as we feel moved are variants on the idea of tyranny. Need being met operates a fulfilment of living – but false appetites make a false economy.
Perhaps what truly matters to us is what we need give focus to and align in – and that will embody a world we are truly engaged in – regardless the outcomes. Collective focus can set a framework within which individual explorations expand – but likewise individual focus serves more than its own local or private sphere – whether positive or negative in its integrative or segregative intent.
There are many who operate a clear signpost for who I am not – and do not choose to align with by giving focus to in their own terms. But rather I see in the terms that serve my willingness to reintegrate to a presence that is an unfolding of need met – but not at all in the framing of who I used to think I was. Demands unmet bring on tantrums. I see that wanting to force an outcome only reflected experiences of fear and division as if from Outside. That’s the cast out or projected personae of masked separation issues.
The thing with fear is that it runs a self-fulfilling prophecy unless truly owned – and yet the demand to get rid of it was very primal and forceful at the pre-mind stage of my coming into this life-focus – and so I don’t recognize what I swore to never meet again ever again in those who reflect my shadow self… until it dawns on me that I need to release what I do not prefer or resonate within rather than demonize and charge them up with a negative attachment. And no one can release or change what they are not first willing to own in themselves.
Have I ever disregarded the experience and needs of another in blindly pursuing what I took to be my own needs? The answer is more that such a mind is become second nature at expense of first – and passes off as my own unless I stay present in willingness for a true movement of being. No system ‘works’ when there is not a shared culture of self-honesty – excepting to re-educate its adherents to the true cost of pretence and deceit.
If I am better than the lie would assert – then that is what I must learn to see in others – in place of the ability to see what is wrong with everyone… else. I don’t see that appealing to a ‘better nature’ with anything other than its demonstration, has power – and that power is always an invitation or offering without strings attached – otherwise its ‘more of the same’. Split-mindedness is normal for humans at this time – but is not our true nature – or it wouldn’t take such a contest of narrative control to hold it in place!
I think perhaps it is better to bend then to break. Obama on the other hand, made lots of gains monetarily when he was in office, and still is, so it might be apt to say he sold out. I wonder how long you or Ron Paul, or anybody else, would last before they bent of broke?
Tubularsock says, “send cash NOW, Goat Moag” and we’ll discuss it!