Occasionally, not very often these days, Something comes across my desk (yes, I do actually use a desk – it is an early 20th century antique) which I cannot fail to feature in this blog. The article below from Paul Edwards (no relation), reproduced in full and without alteration, is one such item. Please read.
Paradigm Shift: A Time of Universal Lunacy and Deceit
By Paul Edwards
An astonishing thing has happened in America that has never occurred in the lifetime of anyone now living. No, it’s not the crushing win of Trump in Iowa, nor the absurd determination of Democrats to run the senile ninny who has made a joke of our Presidency for another term. These, in their way astonishing, are mere trivialities in this time of universal lunacy and deceit.
I mean an honest to god paradigm shift everyone can see that official wise men with public platforms and megaphones have not announced, or perhaps even noticed. I’m talking about the first clear, undeniable instance of the failure of the American Empire’s Propaganda Machine.
It has been clear for decades, generations, that the American political elite has no regard for, and no sense of responsibility to, the actual needs and desires of the ignorant, disorganized public. It has always dealt with their inchoate hopes by indoctrination, by arousing and enlisting their imbecile enthusiasms in a mythology of tawdry, tribal patriotism based on the premise that they are a glorious, superior people whose leaders courageously embody and implement their magnificence all over the world.
The techniques of propaganda are refined, but their effect is entirely due to grotesque pandering to the worst susceptibilities of the human ego: the desire to assert one’s superlative worth as a member of a powerful, violent, conquering nation. The force of that tactic, endlessly repeated, rendered American citizenry, with rare exceptions, one solid, deluded, unthinking mass, devoted to whatever vicious, imperial ends the political elite intended.
Their trained mass response, sure as that of performing seals, has, for the first time ever, failed in regard to the Gaza genocide.
Both parties in Congress are solidly behind their putative leaders in full support of whatever violence Nazi Zionist Israel inflicts on the Palestinian people. This is true across the spectrum, from the pathetic halfwits and defectives in the MAGA sump to mock-noble, self-declared moral poseurs such as Bernie and AOL. Tlaib is the one outcast who has dared to affirm the humanity of Palestinians, while the rest join solemnly to prevent a ceasefire, which would, they say, balk the Zionist’s “right of self-defence”.
With this level of unanimity, solid from the addled, babbling, derelict President down, presented forcefully, continually, to the nation from every organ in the Propaganda Machine, the certain positive response was confidently awaited. It has not come.
In spite of all our corrupt, Zionist-owned government has done to enlist its support for the wholesale murder of a people, the American public has not bought it, and is not coming around. By an overwhelming majority Americans reject the message of the Machine, and adamantly disapprove of the Israeli genocide.
Try to recall a single moment when the diktat of the Machine was not ingested and regurgitated by the whole American public. It took years and thousands of body bags to sour them on the Viet Nam horror. The whole country was galvanized behind the lies that led to wars on Afghanistan, Iraq and its nonexistent WMDs, and it embraced the obscene “War on Terror” with all its follies.
Recall the wildly dishonest demonization of Qaddafi, Assad and Iran that Americans swallowed. When Putin was Hitlerized for exposing U.S. treachery in expanding NATO to Russia’s borders, and defending ethnic Russian Ukrainians from attacks by rabid Ukronazi Banderites, Americans ate it up and roared approval.
Xi of China is the next candidate for diabolization, but this first failure of the Machine will create doubt as to the ability of our rotten government to manage its victim people. The question now is whether The Empire’s iron grip on their minds has been permanently impaired by its total, and totally despicable, support for the criminal brutality of an evil and illegitimate state.
It will be a delicious irony if the billionaire Zionists who bought our Congress find that the felon state it has supported against American interests has destroyed itself, and broken the death grip its money has exerted in subverting and betraying us all.
Depending on the endgame of the Zionist genocide—chiefly, on whether their murderous barbarity results in a deadly regional war—the effect on The Empire will be either crippling international infamy, or perilous, punishing engagement in a war that has the potential to utterly destroy many nations, including ours.
The American Empire has not represented the interests of its people for decades, if it ever did, and has only kept them in a kind of mental and emotional lockdown through controlling their perception of reality. Nothing has been done for the generality of Americans since the last great threat to Capitalism in the Great Depression, which resulted in Social Security and Medicare.
It is intriguing to wonder what grand advancements might come for The People if the state were to be run for their benefit. That, of course, will never happen under Imperial Capitalism which will fight to the end for its absolute rule by any means possible until it self destructs from massive and insoluble financial fraud, or is hammered and obliterated in an intentionally provoked war.
T.S. Elliot predicted long ago that the world would not end “in a bang, but a whimper”. This seems unlikely now when the likely ends are implosion or explosion. How profoundly sad it will be if the American people have thrown off the terrible strait jacket of imperial mind control just when it doesn’t matter any more.
Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: hgmnude@bresnan.net
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
My View
I have a decision to make now. Do I leave this here and walk away, or do I say what I feel I should say. That being things which may upset a lot of people. It is all about the concept of ‘America’.
I will go ahead, and say what I know I must say, whatever may result.
Firstly let me say that this is a magnificent depiction of the state of the US in the 21st century, particularly focused on the events unfolding in 2024. There is much with which I can heartily concur and little, if anything, to argue against. But it is written by an ‘American’* and, of course, as such, is a very ‘America-centric’ formulation. What do I mean by that?
* I think, although he is quite an elusive character to track down.
If we take this paragraph, quoted from the article…
It has been clear for decades, generations, that the American political elite has no regard for, and no sense of responsibility to, the actual needs and desires of the ignorant, disorganized public. It has always dealt with their inchoate hopes by indoctrination, by arousing and enlisting their imbecile enthusiasms in a mythology of tawdry, tribal patriotism based on the premise that they are a glorious, superior people whose leaders courageously embody and implement their magnificence all over the world.
…what it speaks of is the ‘America’ the world has had to live with for most of its less than 250 year history. Whether that ‘America’ will make it to a 250 year birthday (there seems to be no consensus as to exactly when that might be) appears to be dubious at this point. But it does seem to be the case that both the ‘American political elite’ and their ‘ignorant disorganised public’ are at one – if only through ‘indoctrination’ – that they are a ‘glorious, superior people whose leaders courageously embody and implement their magnificence all over the world’. The ‘world’ they always speak of, being all that is not their ‘America’. While, at the same time, the illusion is presented that there is now recognition that the exceptionalness ‘Americans’ have for so long cherished is now realised (by some and perhaps a growing number) to have been merely imbecilic indoctrination and delusion. I referred to this new self-view as being ‘illusion’ because I am not sure they really believe or actually think that way.
Do they think the current ‘America’ will be able to crawl out of whatever hole it finds itself in, whether occasioned by self-destruction or being ‘hammered and obliterated in an intentionally provoked war’, and start again or continue from where it left off? Apparently so.
Do they really conceive of a state of affairs where there will simply be no more ‘America’? No more Stars and Stripes? No more House and Senate? No more ‘Union’? No more East Coast, West Coast, Deep South, Pacific North West, Fly-over Country (except perhaps as separate entities)? Apparently not. Such thoughts have never entered their mind. No, I do not think any ‘American’ can possibly entertain such an idea, except perhaps in the voluminous ethos of US Post Apocalyptic Fiction (much of which I have read) where, battered and beaten, ‘Americans’ somehow always manage to resume to build their place in a shattered world.
And yet, that is exactly what must happen if the world is to ever know peace, and justice, and any form of security.
This is exemplified in Edwards’ use of the T.S. Elliot phrase of the ‘world’ not ending “in a bang, but a whimper” as a contrast to his anticipated likely ending through “implosion or explosion”. But again it is not the ‘world’ he is talking about, but ‘America’, with a lament to his country’s supposed liberation from itself, as being all too late.
Let me make clear. It is not the world which will implode or explode and be gone, having largely isolated itself from such contingencies, but ‘America’ – unable to separate itself from its own grand delusion and destiny. The truly sad thing about all this being that it appears there is not a single person in that country who can make that separation – though some have already jumped ship and others who appear to have resigned themselves to share its fate.
May there be a remnant who can, with a fresh vision, and casting aside delusional memories of prior times, eventually rejoin the world.
Not Something Else 
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