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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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!