When Aspiring Presidents become Stooges for the Oligarchs and a Failing Empire...

Burning down the American presidency is the banal terrorism of elitist despots.

The oligarchs have overplayed their hand and sown the seeds of their demise as all empires inevitably do.

“Oligarchies bear a biological resemblance to cheese. Sooner or later, they turn rancid in the sun. Wealth accumulates, men decay; a band of brothers that once aspired to forming a wise and just government acquires the character of what Aristotle likened to that of “the prosperous fool,” a class of men ravenous in appetite for more—more banquets, more laurel wreaths and naval victories, more summer houses, portrait busts, and dancing girls—and so besotted by their love of money “they therefore imagine there is nothing it cannot buy.”— Lewis H.Lapham, Age of Folly

Last Thursday night’s presidential debate was a stunning coup d’etat for the oligarchs, vested interests and foreign lobbyists who run America to their liking. What better way to drive a stake through the corpse of democracy than to have two derelict refugees from an old folks home making fools of themselves before tens of millions. The US president is touted as the so-called leader of the free world as the disgrace and shamelessness travels well beyond US borders.

America is a fractured country where the government has lost control of competing vested interests and ideologies and is totally subservient to them. As Lapham suggests above it has become the “prosperous fool” destroyed by the reckless pursuit of wealth and power with no regard for costs and consequences( human of fiscal).

The two presidential aspirants inflicted a resounding vote of non-confidence on themselves as they disgraced the office to which they aspire. But that is what politics in the West has become, spastic episodic pathetic self-denigration.

Having politics populated with fools and buffoons leaves the despots free to ruin whole societies and wage endless wars.

Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the role of presidents as leaders of the Republic have become more and more nominal as they are coerced agents of the empire betraying the Republic.

It is an immutable fact of history that where empires prevail democracy is ground into the dirt sacrificed to wars, fascism, megalomania and sociopathy.

Kennedy, even though he was a Democrat, was the last “Republican” president as he refused to cater to the empire’s agenda and paid with his life ( Read more on the Dulles brothers). Kennedy’s assassination was one of many events constituting a rolling insurrection in the post war years. The insurrection has turned “rancid in the sun.”

For the West the road to redemption starts with salvaging our democracies.

When Biden provoked the war in the Ukraine he was acting as an agent of the empire and the unelected neoconservatives who infest the State Department and the war profiteers of the MICC. He delivered his seal of approval on the Gaza Genocide in service to AIPAC which controls US legislatures and foreign policy.

The debate took the measure of how egregiously the Republic has been gutted in service to the empire, and how elections have become sham shows for a pseudo- democracy.

The US is not alone in this deepening crisis. All NATO member states have been following the empire in lock step and compromised our own democracies according to the empire’s dictates and appetites.

Where empires prevail the colonies lose their ability and skill sets required to practice autonomous democracy. We see the end result as western governments only speak the language of war, practice reckless brinkmanship and are incapable of even basic diplomacy.

Who benefits from the debate? The elites and the vested interests controlling the US government. The more thoroughly they can eviscerate and discredit democracy the more power is transferred to them, the more disillusioned and passive voters become. Trump and Biden are stooges for the elites, nominal candidates; bad actors playing their duplicitous role in the class war and serving the neoliberal ideology which has devastated government and democracy in the West.

Burning down the American presidency is the banal terrorism of elitist despots. The challenge for Americans is to take back their republic from the empire that enslaves them. So too does this apply to NATO vassal states bled dry by too many wars and insane militarism.

The “prosperous fools” have been so busy pursuing prosperity for the 1% and empire over the world. They thought they could discard democracy and the wisdom of the true prophets. There was no hesitation in drowning democracy and burning their constitution in spite of the cautionaries of the Founding Fathers. Being drunk on triumphalism and stoned on arrogance is the fool’s paradise.

The true prophets saw this crisis coming decades ago as the “prosperous fools” were allowed to prevail.

Samplings from the writings of the true prophets:

America on the Edge: Henry Giroux on Politics, Culture, and Education 

Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy, Lewis H. Lapham

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic , Chalmers Johnson

In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Wendy Brown

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Chris Hedges

Bush and Cheney: How they Ruined America and the World, David Ray Griffin