Polarized Euro-Americans Gasping at the End of History
Barely able to conceptualize the possibility of a beautiful new dawn
May 31, 2021 Perceptual frameworks often come in rather narrow planes. “A” leads inevitably to “Z” and there ain’t no way around it, or so it seems. “Z” is so unfathomably hideous we have to stop everything here and thus most of Europe slept for 900 years after the fall of Classical Antiquity. Then there were those wonderful sparks of life again in the Reformation, quickly doused by the Counter-Reformation followed by the glorious Renaissance paid for in oceans of Native American blood.
Adam Smith in 1776 and Francis Fukuyama in 1992 had a lot in common. Their theories made so much sense and yet time marched on revealing some gaping holes in both. Though Smith saw the weaknesses in slavery and argued against it, he didn’t predict how increasingly polarized capitalist systems riddled with monopolies combined with a corrupted democracy devolved into a plutocracy with the vast majority no freer than slaves, and much worse off in many cases. Ditto for Francis Fukuyama with his theories about the absolute triumph of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism in the West.
Neither extended their thinking forward enough to envision the economically and politically polarized dystopia most people in the world, especially Muslims and people of color now live in. Nor did either suspect that the good ‘ol USA would elect a bunch of rabid interventionists that appear ready to start WWIII to ensure the mega-super-hyper rich can lord over the great unwashed in perpetuity.
Slavery today is an attractive option for many of the world’s poorest people because then at least they can eat, knowing full well they’re going to get screwed either way:
“Even conservative statistics point to a massive proportion of people living in poverty worldwide,” and COVID-19 has radically increased that proportion.
The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction.
Meanwhile COVID-19 made the mega-super-hyper rich capitalists vastly richer.
The racist, nationalist US foreign policy makers, the Murders, Rapists and Thieves-in-Chief, proudly admit to their crimes, and taunt any who challenge their infinite power and might.
And those very same Murders, Rapists and Thieves-in Chief are leveraging increasing numbers of ethnonationalist fascist regimes into power designed to “confront” (isolate and suffocate) Russia and China.
Examples include the UK’s Brexit, the rise of ethnonationalist parties in India, Turkey, Ukraine,Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
The world is being cut in two by the Euro-American rabidly “neoliberal” capitalists, and they do it unabashedly, proudly and defiantly: “Death to all who challenge the great Euro-American slave masters,” they grin with drool dripping from their duplicitous mouths. Civil War II is being fought on a global basis and tragically for the vast majority of the world the Confederates are doing rather well.
On the victims’ and victims’ surviving family members’ side, who do you hate more? The person who sets those crimes in motion or the foot soldiers that carry them out?
Due to the real physical pain, and emotional nature of endless moral outrages and revulsion it’s impossible to answer, for they are the same. “It’s nothing personal,” say the foot soldiers, “just doing my job,” and yet in doing their job many are enjoying salacious pleasures while earning money and status within the perverse sadistic power structures that promote their activities.
Americans really should look at the National Defense Authorization Act 2021, click on “Find” in the browser tool bar (upper right corner) and type in “000,000” to see just what the US government is spending tax payer money on these days.
As Matthew Kimball noted in his December 19, 2019 article titled: “To Corporate Media, an Exercise Bike Ad Is More Newsworthy Than 3/4 of a Trillion for the Pentagon.” Mainstream news doesn’t really tell the people where their hard-earned tax money is going. If people had any idea of the waste and stupidity of it all there would be a revolution. The US government thinks voters are idiots – they are not - but they are tragically, horribly misinformed about just about everything by the US federal government and their lie machine called mainstream “news” media. The results of that are catastrophic for most of the people in the world, especially people of color and Muslims.
What happens when genocides, rapes and thefts become institutionalized and the central policy of the world’s largest economies are masked behind layered veneers of ethnonationalist and/or religious justifications, haughtily riding upon a runaway horse called unrestrained capitalism?
What happens when the organs of justice like the courts, and law enforcement, are nothing more than the tools of those same murderers, rapists and thieves?
What happens when the language itself is weaponized to demean and humiliate the victims and surviving victim family members of those crimes?
What are the victims and surviving victim’s family members to do, given that the resources of the criminals behind those crimes are so powerful any attempts at self defense are painted as “terrorism,” and “challenging” the ordained hierarchy of power in the world?
In history one can find almost all “great civilizations” and “great conquerors’” engaged in such abuses. “That’s the price of civilization” they gleefully exclaim to the cheers of their followers who profit from the agony and eternal loss of others.
During the past 500 years it has been the Europeans followed by the Americans who have been the progenitors of those abuses on a scale of such vast and sweeping nature as to make all former murderers, rapists and thieves in history seem diminished, and yet from the point of view of the victims and surviving victim family members they are all, individually and collectively exactly and precisely the same.
Colonization is nothing more than murder, rape and theft on continental scales regardless as to rationalizations of “security,” perverted religiosity or “humanitarian interventions.”
Euro-Americans have brilliantly promoted token members of target groups and programmed them into the ideologies of the murderers, rapists and thieves so they can righteously and hypocritically say: “You see, you target groups, we are not prejudiced,” while those token minority leaders engage in murder, rape, torture and theft right alongside those who coordinate and lead entire nations in those crimes.
The US is now routinely stealing both oil and wheat from Syria and the world ignores it in spite of the fact 12 million Syrians suffer hunger due to American economic sanctions and thefts, and Syrian president Bashar al Assad just won the election by a 95% margin. President Bashar al-Assad addressed the Syrian people in a TV speech broadcast on Friday May 28 2021 on the occasion of winning the May 26th presidential election and among other things noted about the aggressors: “…the deterioration of their principles and ethics, they seemed during the latest years that they were infected with insanity…”
The good President al Assad is being very diplomatic there, as he must know the aggression against his nation isn’t something of just the past few years, but rather derivative of a 926-year-old Crusader Complex cultivated by old fashioned European greed and lust that still rules the world today. The victory of President al Assad is - God Willing - an indicator a new dawn after Fukuyama’s end of time. Still, the oppressed suffer in our billions under the sadistic yoke of Smith’s capitalism and Fukuyama’s “liberalism.” The victory of Syria to even survive against the disinformation, economic and military war against it is still the exception rather than the rule, but still a hopeful sign a vastly cleaner Renaissance may be at hand.
Some among the oppressed masses may voice their discontent and anger, yet the vast majority of them will be quickly imprisoned and/or executed and buried in infamy by the great powers and their loyal token servants and slaves.
Euro-American corporate controlled government and media corporations have brilliantly woven electronic webs of lies and censorship to silence the voices of the victims, the victim’s surviving family members, and anyone else who tries to advocate on their behalf.
AND NOW, in the second decade of the second millennium the “great” Euro-American powers feel threatened by the rise of other powers, principally China and Russia, with their histories of communism and socialism, that have struggled, fought and died in their millions to liberate the colonized from their Euro-American colonizers.
In a Counter-Reformation-like flurry of electronic gagging and media fabrications they have been demonized by the “great” Euro-American powers for their “impudence.” Like “uppity slaves” they must be smacked down quickly and ruthlessly.
A memorial at the Zanzibar Anglican Cathedral depicting slaves to be sold at auction CC 2.0/https://www.flickr.com/photos/missy-and-the-universe/3473371996
The vast western propaganda/media machines have turned on them with swift and ruthless vengeance. “China virus” and “Russian interference” are just two examples of the vast webs of slander and mud heaped upon the disobedient.
The rapidly evolving electronic entertainment and (fake) news media machine have woven chains around the perceptions of Euro-American audiences who in their blind obedience and/or passive acceptance, and/or cowering fear actively support the murderers, rapists and thieves in their endless colonial pursuits.
That corporate controlled electronic entertainment and news media ultimately controls who voters will vote for, thereby usurping any notion of a “free press” and real choices of political candidates, thus negating any semblance of real democracy. Democracy in the world has become a grand illusion, a pathetic joke, nothing more or less than a thinly veiled fascist plutocracy: absolute rulership by weapons and media corporate CEOs and shareholders, the mega-super-hyper rich capitalists under the auspices of ethnonationalism and enslavement of the poor.
The “Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence University Media Complex” is making a killing from killing as noted by Paul Atwood in Counterpunch.org.
Meanwhile the impoverished and humiliated masses must wave their flags and murmur and shout eternal gratitude to their slave masters or suffer the swift vengeance of their unforgiving overlords.
Simultaneously the “great” Euro-American powers have assembled vast armadas of the world’s most sophisticated weaponry and completely surrounded Russia and China, threatening, provoking, stalking, and attempting to “contain” them.
Billions of dollars are being funneled into electronically cutting off China and Russia’s communications and trade precisely the same as has been done to Iran, Syria, 35 other nations, and George Floyd, whose last words where “I can’t breathe.”
What has always happened in history when economic and power polarization gets so extreme, when the humbled masses can tolerate the hunger and degradation no more? What happens when that hypnotic spell breaks, and the chains of terror are smashed by the monstrous intensity of hunger and moral outrage?
They awaken, and in virtually all cases violent implosions or explosions occur.
Those who have never experienced a mob have no idea whatsoever what mindless violence they can do in the blink of an eye. They are like a thousand buzzsaws that will tear, rip, burn and destroy anything and kill anyone, anyone without an instant of hesitation.
I personally wouldn’t want to be sitting in the White House, US Capital Building or Congressional or Senate Chambers when that happens!
This is the cliff to which the corrupted political and intelligence leaders of the USA, France, UK and Israel have brought the world. The remnants of “civilization” and fate of humanity hang by precarious threads.
What can trigger the chain reaction of violent implosions that rip the United States and this planet apart and send us back to the stone ages or even species extinction?
Any number of things. At any time,
- another murder of another black man, woman or child by another policeman in the USA can set off the Second Civil War in the USA.
At any time,
- an “incident” in the South China Sea, by accident or by intent. The US is swarming that tiny sea with three aircraft carrier groups, and where exactly are those 18 Ohio-class submarines, of which 14 are Trident II SSBNs (Ship, Submersible, Ballistic, Nuclear), each capable of carrying 24 SLBMs, at this time,
- another slaughter of Palestinians by Israelis, or
…can occur, triggering WWIII and the thermonuclear winter that will follow.
Any of these flashpoints can so easily be ignited by the Great Hegemon the USA, or even another nation whose leadership requires the continued hegemonic power of the USA to survive, e.g., Israel, India, or any of 100 other dictatorships, flying under the banners of fake democracies, just like the USA.
It can happen so easily and so quickly, and nobody can predict when or where it will occur, but if history is any teacher, and history is the best teacher, it is inevitable. Worse still, President Biden loaded his Cabinet with all known “foreign interventionists,” which in the vernacular means: “vicious war mongers.”
Herein lies a flaw in “liberal democracy” even the wise Plato didn’t envision: In their efforts to win the macho pissing contest between political parties, either party can extinguish all life on earth via thermonuclear war – a rather significant issue I might add.
This is the situation to which the infinite greed of the Euro-American murderers, rapists and thieves have brought the world in the second decade of the second millennium.
The one and only non-violent alternative is a massive paradigm shift in American governance, perhaps election of a real socialist leader who will close the 800 American overseas military bases, start to rebuild the nations and lives they have so ruthlessly and greedily destroyed, invest something in the US for a change, reinvent the mutilated corpse of diplomacy, clean up the cesspool of political campaign finance, order the Legislature to close all loopholes in regards to “conflicts of interest”between the defense industry and the politicians they own, break up the news and internet monopolies, locate and reclaim the trillions of dollars hidden in off-shore accounts, and do a much better job of evaluating the mental health of political candidates before they assume power.
In 2020 Transparency International reported that the:
“U.S. hits new low in global corruption index - 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index shows anti-corruption efforts stagnating in G7 countries.”
Still the USA is ranked – as being perceived to be - the 23rd cleanest country in the world. What a fabulous joke! The US legalized corruption, has the world’s largest most predatory and murderous economy (ever in history and today), yet somehow has the world’s largest debts, and therefor most probably is, by far the most corrupt nation on earth. Perceptions are so malleable that index is worthless except to the extent it measures how well the corporate owned media can twist and distort people’s perceptions.
The narrow planes of corporate engineered perceptions permitted American voters blind them to the multiverses of agony and death they perpetuate around the world and the very real possibility they are going to cause not just the end of history, but the end of all life on earth. (See Article 2, Social Justice/Anti-Empire News – Suppression of alt-news in the US in my 2021 article series: Alt-News During the 3rd Red Scare, for more details.) Suppression of views diverging from corporate-manufactured propaganda – which is all American voters are permitted these days - has inherent “risks.”
Racism and religious bigotry have been maintained as essential support systems for unrestrained murderous, rapacious unrestrained “neoliberal” capitalism, and the only way to cure all three diseases is to put a leash on the capitalists. Adam Smith in 1776 and Francis Fukuyama in 1992 seemed like bright enough people at the time but those times have passed and its now time to elect some socially egalitarian, peace-oriented socialists with basic common sense to all posts in government.
This no doubt sounds blasphemous to those who suckled on the teats of American pseudo-liberalism and the upside of unrestrained capitalism, but if COVID-19 proved anything, it was that neoliberalism, unrestrained capitalism and the structural inequalities in democratic societies leads to more deaths than any other form of government.
“Liberal” means freedom and that includes the freedom to live. Clearly western concepts of “liberalism” need reexamination. Furthermore, the US needs to get its knee off the necks of the 39 countries its suffocating because they reject American concepts of the very things that are killing vast numbers of Americans: neoliberal economic principals and unrestrained capitalism.
What a refreshing change that would be, opening the horizons to a healthier, happier and blessedly peaceful Renaissance; the beautiful dawn to an enlightenment shared by all, without murdering, raping and robbing anyone!
About the author
Gregory Brundage started reading alt-news in 1969, writing book reviews for “Current Geographic Publications” of the American Geographical Society in 1980, and full-time reporting for the Black press in 1988. In 1992 he moved to Malaysia working first as a stringer for the national newspaper New Straits Times, and later for numerous other newspapers and magazines. After a stint in Sri Lanka during the war he returned to the US in 1996 before moving to South Korea in 2001 publishing in national newspapers and sports magazines. In 2009 he moved to Beijing where he has continued his freelance career. He has worked in three conflict zones, done series of interviews with ambassadors in three countries and is the author of “The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour,” available on amazon.com.
For his publication bibliography and downloads of most recent work see:
https://www.silkroadvirtualuniversity.org/publications-by-gcb.html
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