The 4th of July is upon us. We will hear all sorts of patriotic BS about how wonderful we are and how thankful we are to our brave military which defends our liberty.
Not a word will be said about the destruction by the Bush and Obama regimes of the US Constitution, which once protected our liberty far better than any military action.
Not a word will be said about Washington’s 16 years of purely gratuitous war in the Middle East and North Africa that has destroyed in whole or part seven countries, sending millions of war refugees to overrun the Western World and change the quality of life for Western peoples.
Not a word will be said about Washington’s ongoing insane provocations of Russia and China and Iran and Syria and North Korea that are likely to end in nuclear Armageddon.
Speeches will celebrate “the exceptional, indispensable USA,” and fireworks will go off, preludes to the onrushing nuclear Armageddon.
While we listen to speeches of our wonderful fairy tale life, how lucky we are to be so beloved by our Great Democratic Government, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has issued an all points bulletin urging its members to wake up and to urge their US Senators “to oppose the American Health Care Act passed by the House. This harmful bill gives billions of dollars to special interests while sticking ordinary Americans with huge premium hikes. It includes an age tax that would force older Americans to pay thousands of dollars more for their health insurance. it weakens Medicare and removes protections for people with pre-existing conditions. I urge you to represent my interests—not those of the drug and insurance companies.”
The last sentence astounded me. How is it possible that a lobby group for retired people can possibly believe that the House and Senate have any interest in serving the American people?
The House and Senate serve the people who have money, and those people are not the elderly. Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the elderly have not had any interest income on their savings for a decade.
Moreover, thanks to jobs offshoring, the middle class is shrinking, and grandparents are having to support out of their savings both children and grandchildren. Savings are being drawn down and used up. Retired Americans simply do not have the resources to compete in Washington with the pharmaceutical and insurance corporations who are determined to pillage the elderly.
In the USA money resides in the hands of the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby (US taxpayers give the money to them), Wall Street and the Banks Too Big To Fail, real estate and insurance, and environmental polluters such as energy, mining, electricity production, and agribusiness. No one else has any money. Therefore, these interest groups determine US domestic and foreign policy.
The policy of the US government is easy to sum up. It consists of driving the American population into the ground and fomenting war abroad. This is what serves the money interests that control the government.
Democracy does not exist in America. All the bombast you will hear on the 4th is designed to keep you locked in The Matrix.
The talk about “taking back your government” is nonsense. The government doesn’t belong to you. You can’t take it back.
Chris Hedges says that your only alternatives are to overthrow the criminal class in Washington or to accept your slavery.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/07/02/blacks-enslaved-now/
Is Paul Craig Roberts anti American or is the Americangovernment anti the American people? And is Paul Craig Roberts anti capitalism?
5 comments:
Wow, I remember a time when the AARP actually had some clout.
PCR is no sugar-coater, lets be thankful for that.
Yeah, he can be hard to read at times.
To answer your question, PCR has been trending anti-capitalism, though he hasn't endorsed an alternative system as far as I've noticed. "Anti-American" is a McCarthyesque term intended to shut down criticism.
We are living in an age of decline, or at best stagnation. The post WWII welfare state is being dismantled. Climate change looms. There is nothing on the horizon, politically speaking, to look forward to. PCR's whining is a symptom of all that.
The world has lived through bad times before. Slavery, wars (here, not "over there"), genocide, depressions, mass die offs due to disease, plagues, Jim Crow, etc.. Even in the bad times, some good things happened here and there. We cannot fix all the problems in the world, but we can make our own surroundings a little nicer, and we can be the change that we want to see.
I used to despise PCR but he's gone in a direction I really like with his content and I'm pretty much on much of the same page as he is.
PCR endorses Stephen Lendman who is very left and he is also friends with Micheal Hudson. PCR puts out articles by Eric Zuesse who is also very left. I find no difference in PCR's views and my own. Stephen Lendman ran his own business for years and when he retired he started his blog. So despite being left, he's hardly anti capitalist, nor is PCR or Michael Hudson. They just believe capitalism has its limits and faults and that the government can some supply some essential services, like health care, better than the private sector.
What I don't get is PCR's admiration and fondness for Reagan. Well, Reagan did work with Gorbachev which brought about disarmament which was a good thing(and Reagan even wanted to remove all nuclear weapons), but Reagan was friends with Thatcher. PCR says Reagan didn't know what the deep State was doing so he blames all the terrible central American wars on them, but I'm sure Reagan was behind a lot of it.
Also, PCR was the co-founder of Reaganomics, the start of the rot. Still, he's a great guy now.
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