[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rom inception, democracy in America was pure fantasy. No rule of the people ever existed – governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others. American exceptionalism and moral superiority don’t exist. The state of the nation is deplorable – more an obscenity than a responsible sovereign state. Count the ways.
Hypocrisy, not democracy, defines how America is governed – an increasingly totalitarian plutocracy, oligarchy and kleptocracy.
Elections when held are farcical. Dirty business as usual always wins. Republicans and undemocratic Dems represent two sides of the same coin on issues mattering most – differences between them largely rhetorical.
Corporate predators and high-net worth households never had things better. Protracted main street depression conditions affect most others – social justice fast eroding, heading for elimination altogether.
The world’s richest nation doesn’t give a damn about its most disadvantaged people.
Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile reveals a reality check. Countless numbers of homeless, hungry, desperate people line both sides of the avenue, hoping passers-by will offer loose change to help them make it through another day.
Many are combat veterans, treated with disdain by the nation they served. Others have families with children. Some have part-time work when able to find it – paying poverty or sub-poverty wages and no benefits.
On Chicago’s mean winter streets, they’re in doorways, on benches, or wherever they can huddle from winter cold – at times extreme. An uncaring nation treats them like nonpersons.
It’s permanently at war on humanity against invented enemies. No real ones exist. Peace, equity and justice are anathema notions – rule of law principles consistently breached. America’s rage for dominance is humanity’s greatest threat. Homeland police state rule targets nonbelievers.
It’s just a matter of time before full-blown tyranny emerges, martial law replacing rule of law entirely – on the phony pretext of protecting national security at a time the nation’s only threats are invented ones.
Bipartisan neocons infesting Washington threaten everyone everywhere. Increasing online censorship is the mortal enemy of speech, media and academic freedoms.
Social and other media scoundrels are gatekeepers for wealth, power, and privileged interests – at war on dissent, making censorship the new normal, aiming to banish views contrary to the official narrative.
Truth-telling is increasingly equated with terrorism, incitement, hate speech, and harassment, considered anti-American instead of praised.
During the late 1930s and 40s, hundreds of Hollywood actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, musicians, songwriters, and other artists were accused of communist sympathies.
They were blacklisted, notable ones called the Hollywood Ten, including author/screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
His classic novel titled “Johnny Got His Gun” was a stunning anti-war polemic, one of the most powerfully moving ones ever written, a chilling account of the barbarity of war. Few soldiers in combat escape its horrors, the human cost ignored in the mainstream.
Trumbo and many others were victims of baseless slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, and political lynchings – blacklisted for their beliefs, not for any crimes committed.
What goes around, comes around – today more malicious and dangerous than earlier. Censorship is the new normal in America, blacklisting in new form.
Dark forces running things want views opposed to the official narrative suppressed.
They want digital democracy undermined, thought control becoming the law of the land, social and other media giants serving as gatekeepers, sanitizing news, information and opinions, suppressing what’s most important for everyone to know – the hallmark of totalitarian rule.
America is unfit and unsafe to live in, fundamental freedoms eroding in plain sight, police state rule replacing it.
US imperial madness, its rage for endless wars, is worst of all – threatening humanity like never before.
STEPHEN LENDMAN was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient. His new site is at http://stephenlendman.org
The Russian Peace Threat examines Russophobia, American Exceptionalism and other urgent topics
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And not to forget “MKultra”!
“Mkultra Alive? An Alarm Call”:
https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2018/01/10/mkultra-alive-an-alarm-call-mkultra-lebt-ein-alarmruf/
I think all we’re seeing right now is the rich stepping up to essentially do to the middle class what the middle class already did to the poor. There’s really nothing we can do about it now — except blame Russia, of course.