The Senility Of Empire

Empires end. As they approach dissolution, they are described as “senile". Historically, the term was used to describe empire itself, and not the monsters who happen to run it but in this as, sadly, in so many respects, America must rank as exceptional.

Within the last weeks Americans have witnessed a series of disturbing, inadvertent exhibitions of the pathetic debility and lamentable incapacity of some of our putative “leaders”, high-ranking members of the Crone and Geezer Junta that rules us.

Putting aside the fact of the moral and intellectual nullity of the overwhelming majority of cyphers and cretins that infest our Congress, and concentrating on the most piteously afflicted invalids in our superannuated political coven, one must cite first our dithering, blithering President, an excruciating example of hopeless human inadequacy, too afflicted to even recognize its own vacuity. This sad, lost wreck could be regarded with pity as a fuddled, leering simpleton were it not that he is nominally in control of the fate of millions that his loopy, aggravated anoia puts in gravest jeopardy. And his bitter, blind and terrified party, instead of placing him in the care his condition screams for, plans to run him for another term of irrational and perilous lunacy.

Concurrently, in our egregiously degraded Senate, we have been treated to the spectacle of the ancient, dingy, and disoriented Mrs. Feinstein returning, cerebrally disarmed, to the fray, unable to do more than present her physical remnant, unwilling to retire with what grace remains, rather than to muddle on as a baffled, mumbling ego, the butt of embarrassed pathos, a zombie relic.

Turning the other cheek of the One Big Money Party, that artifact Ninja Turtle Warrior for sleazy, unprincipled graft and grift, Mr. McConnell, was seen, during one of his deathly tedious public statements, to freeze and seize up mentally, and to stand staring catatonic, aphasic, utterly separated from his cognitive function, till he was passively led off, one supposes, for resuscitation.

None of these vulnerable souls is to be condemned for the ravages time has inflicted on them. The decrepitude of age is inevitable and sad, and it evokes only sympathy. That these sufferers happen to be among the most contemptible sociopathic human beings alive is a separate issue from their debility, and it does not disqualify them from concern for their afflictions.

What cannot be excused them, though, is the fact that these selfish avatars of solipsistic egomania have continued in their exalted posts long after the capacity to perform any useful function has deserted them; long after the animating Elvis of whatever mojo they may have had has left the building.

It would be an indictment of our “democracy”, if we had one, that it permits, or rather, requires this madness, this pernicious policy of letting the undead rot away in office. Since we haven’t, it’s not even surprising, because vetting by the two cesspit parties is so stringent that no one with the least taint of independent mind or moral courage is ever permitted to run for major political office, hence the decayed remain and decompose, stinking, in place.

None of these vulnerable souls is to be condemned for the ravages time has inflicted on them. The decrepitude of age is inevitable and sad, and it evokes only sympathy. That these sufferers happen to be among the most contemptible sociopathic human beings alive is a separate issue from their debility, and it does not disqualify them from concern for their afflictions.

Blame the voting public? How to justify that? Indoctrination by the vast Capitalist propaganda machine has made its abysmal ignorance all but universal. The failing Empire, run by rapacious Capitalism with its unassuageable lust to steal the world’s wealth by violence, though its military can’t defeat even feeble, destitute tribal states, has convinced Americans this is its right, and they support this evil madness that, as it invites furious blow-back, courts destruction by those mighty powers that can deliver it.

The level of comprehension of world reality, ever dependent on sound information, has been so degraded among Americans— even those of supposedly higher learning—that the electorate, bereft of it, has no capacity to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from deception, or actuality from fantasy. Through the blitz of state propaganda in media, and its incorporation in education, the American mind has been completely infantilized. By the manipulation and exacerbation of its latent and long cherished prejudices, and the strident prominence of cynically promoted official narrative, Americans’ capacity to think and assess with discrimination has been reduced to a proclivity for fierce, jejeune, tribal enmity and mindless, reflex, jingoist hostility.

Be clear: this is not an argument for “civility”, or a plaint that irreconcilables cannot come together and get along: it is a dirge for cogent, responsible intellection; a kadish for the demise of basic cognition. Child mind rules taste and politics. Barbie has whipped Oppenheimer. Americans don’t understand anything but toys and games and don’t want to. How should they begin to resist the chaos and dissolution they are being herded to?

And so it goes, as Vonnegut said. It was he who opined years ago that mankind had been put on earth to fart around, which seems, at this stage, to have been thoroughly demonstrated.

Nothing will change in The Senile Empire. Biden—once semi-coherent—swore it. Change is a function of mature thought, and we’re all out of that. As Carlin cracked, don’t look for it. Those doddering psychopaths who lead us, mentally drooling and incontinent, will drive us on toward our fated end, while we censor, flay, and anathematize each other over whether Russians or Chinese are more Satanic, whether Zelensky is Churchill or Hitler, and whether people should be able to say what gender they really are, and then become it.