| Allan Siegel via nettime-l on Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:35:55 +0200 (CEST) |
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| Re: <nettime> Ocular facts |
As Seymour Hersh described, post-debate: not only does the emperor have no clothes but he hasn't been in charge for quite a while; this simply calls further attention to the fact that the hands on the levers of power of the U.S. government have hardly ever been transparent and when people, like Ellsberg or Assange, shine light on who is REALLY calling the shots we can see not only the consequences but the institutional structures that buttress U.S. foreign policy, for example.
What Trump and his financial backers reveal is the mordant layers of 'AmericaniZed fascism' that has been rotting away the remaining vestiges of democracy in the U.S.. The global implications of this once hidden coup are dire and frightening. Many eloquent and courageous voices have been calling our attention to this dangerous inward spiral on the political horizon and the consolidation of a neo-fascist plutocracy at the helm of the U.S. government. Voices labelled hysterical or extremist by newspapers like the New York Times.
Obama and Biden fed the American people (and global citizens) crumbs of optimism while being unable to reign in the Military Industrial Complex that has been central to U.S. since the end of World War Two. Sadly, mainstream media (and its financial supply chain) in the U.S. has aided and abetted this plutocracy. The CNN orchestrated debate (minus other presidential contenders) illustrates the dried out streams of discourse that are central to any democracy.
best allan On 28/06/2024 21:15, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
When we turned on the TV last night, I did not expect to witness the president of the United States physically losing power before my eyes. But he did. Barring the ardently desired possibility that Biden should stand down, Donald Trump's second term began last night. Pundits say that Biden can do the job of president - he just can't perform it. That's right, but the failed performance arises from the specific nature of the job being done. Mainstream Democrats cannot span the contradiction between globalist imperialism abroad and brutal class war at home. They have burnt the earth's climate on the altar of war. They have thrown the progressives and the black, brown and red minorities to the batons of the police, after lionizing them during the George Floyd protests. They are unable to stake out an arena where they can express both a vision, and the means to achieve it. Society stands at a turning point and they are tongue-tied with fractional numbers. Sure, the Republicans have solved this contradiction through the creation of pure fantasies based on outright lies. No doubt about it, and that, too, was flagrantly visible last night. But with their fantasies and despicable lies, the Republicans are winning and the Dems are sputtering and drowning in plain sight of the shore. What we saw last night was far more than the end of the era that began in the 1990s, with the Internet and Clintonian globalism. We saw the end of Franklin Roosevelt's liberal compromise, which offered social democracy at home in exchange for militarist imperialism abroad. This sense of an ending was driven home by the two Supreme Court decisions that came down as we opened the papers this morning: the abrogation of the EPA's power to effectively regulate corporate activity (the repeal of the Chevron decision) and the exculpation of the January 6 rioters, who can no longer be called insurrectionists. The dam has broken. The flood is rushing down the valley. It takes incredible courage to stand up and say, "I can stop it. By main force I can turn the course of this river. I can save your world from being swept away - by changing that world for the better, and making it unrecognizable to your former selves." Without another fact-in-the-eyeballs - the unlikely spectacle of a new and decisive Democratic candidacy - we have just crossed a threshold in history. Despise it as you may, a new world is being born. It's all about nativism, nationalism and religion. It's driven by a raging bull. It's headed hell-bent for war. And it has been enabled by the pathetic cowards who made Joe Biden president, then allowed him to run again toward certain disaster. A curse on their house and its rotten foundations. Their walls have no windows. They can't even see what everyone else just took full in the face. The end of the former world, with no replacement - only the return of the unspeakable horrors that marred the twentieth century. Democrats, dump Joe Biden now. Stand up and make a stab at the future. You have nothing to lose but your hypocritical illusions.
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