Donald Trump, in a speech given in Charlotte on Thursday, August 18, cast himself as the truth teller for forgotten Americans and a champion of those who feel that the best is behind them. He was clearly presenting himself as a guy who fundamentally calls it as he sees it…in contrast to Clinton’s politically correct doublespeak. “I am running to be the vote for every forgotten part of this country that has been waiting and hoping for a better future” he said. “The insiders fighting for the insiders…I am fighting for you” was his pitch.
Putting the cat among the pigeons — or the Donald among the ducks — was the surest way to ignite the stink-bomb that signalled the commencement of the shit-stirring reality-tele fiasco that subsequently enveloped Washington D.C. 2016 had suddenly become the year that closed ranks against the prying eyes of those who would dare to question institutional insider-corruption — only God could help those who dared question the conventional wisdom of the insiders. Assailing our collective nostrils was the stench of the Pentagon’s army-pit body-odour brought on by unregulated warfare and unaccountability.
The truth about America’s murderous Foreign Policy debacle is rendered mute within the current ‘duopoly’ seeking the leadership position because both sides need to defend the might-is-right posturing practices that keeps the $$ faucet open. Self-criticism is verboten because it might appear to rain on the parade of the exceptional people, and besides, everybody loves a circus. To question what is happening in the Middle East would entail ruffling the feathers of the insider-elite who hide behind a strain of propaganda that truly represents the literature of the Moneyed, Military and Media classes, there to silence doubters and dissidents. Yes, those forces that had gotten together in order to cower the mug punter into submission with tales of Armageddon and end-of-history shit, were more than successful in scaring the citizens of the free world to piss their pants in fear of phantom catastrophes.
But the Government, with the connivance of the media, lied about the location of the fetid smell of corruption that engulfs the nation — if not the world — in attributing the source of the stale crotch smell now permeating our democracy to the barbarian-at-the-gate. They who have so successfully turned the media into a laundry for airbrushing the unwanted aromas emanating from all things covert, are not about to allow an outsider, a trumped-up crusader, to marshal the disenfranchised, the alienated, the Waiting-for-Godos of the world to redefine the political map.
If the media is capable of having Henry Kissinger, Robert Kagan or Victoria Nuland over for a civilised chat and a quiet cup of tea without nostril-twitching, it proves that stage-managing shit is no big deal in America. The media has become so efficient in commodifying the good-guy, bad-guy image of insider versus outsider to consumers, that it frequently uses its power to shape the public ‘discourse’ in ways that are nothing short of medieval. The trick to aligning the policy of Constant Warfare with the public mood is to create the threat of a constant enemy. It works every time; the public have become pathologically unaware of the consequences of America’s Foreign Policy, oblivious to the horrors that are perpetrated in their name. Homeland Security hype was introduced to interpose a sense of fear in the public mind against the enemy in order to conceal the fact that Foreign Policy is merely a cover for pursuing wars for profit. Manipulating the truth became the premier art form disseminating shit on-line, on-cue, on-record and en masse, since technology produced the means to reduce a healthy degree of paranoia to a mere pusillanimous twitch.
If the resolution of the 2008 financial collapse was to keep insiders inside the game — and outsiders (the rest of us) outside of the game — it worked. It was because the insiders enjoyed the privilege of occupying a profitable and protected place within the system that enabled them to act exclusively and separately from regulation and oversights that would have curbed their greed. The fat-cats of Wall Street, Post Code $$$$ were purring over their ill-gotten gains as the sky was falling on Main Street. Those obese felines who pussy-footed between Sorcery Finance, Kitty-Litter-Squats and back again to rort us over and over again were ghetto-masters from the unregulated underworld. We, the ‘suckers’ exposed to the villainy they so specialised in, could only experience what it was like to not be an insider. And when the house of cards crashed down, these thieves within the system were the first to front up at Noah’s Welfare Ark for protection against the shit-fest they had unleashed on an unsuspecting world — thus did the literature of democracy commence to lose its meaning.
So instead of fixing the banking system, the literature of privatization has lifted the grammar of consumerism to a new level of profit-from-purchase as a panacea for every conceivable transaction known to human kind. The consequences of separating those who remain inside the system from those outside of it– those who cannot afford to consume — is not an issue that can be resolved by capitalism, however. Hence, the existence of the Western ghetto style of communities. The literature of Capitalism has become king, because it is the kingmaker of consumer products that furnishes the Extreme Centre with material meaning for those capable of surviving within the system. Industrial Finance, Military Hardware, branded transportation, gadgets to fiddle with, gazebos to gawk out of, gear to flatter the ego with, artificial grass to lie upon, or simply everything and anything to project ones desires onto, are engineered for us 24/7.
Capitalism has become the most successful game in town (if you are moneyed) proving the point that there is nothing sacred in the world anymore. There is no longer any clear-cut distinction between left and right in politics…only a centre…only an Extreme Centre that has come into existence to define status in this unsavoury world of profit taking, warfare and alienation. Everything from sexual orientation, diet, body shape is measured by responses to the gravitational-pull of money. If you have what it takes to be taken — sexually or professionally — a two-dimensional life is yours for a price. But life became bigger than life itself when Wall Street was allowed to take charge of the money, which begs the question, what does this say about American awareness? Inflating appetite for profit-taking that casino-capitalism’s voodoo schemes offer is to expose one to a system wherein indifference to the consequences of corrupt practices are of slight matter. To understand the effect that exclusivity plays in the scheme of things, it is necessary to step outside the gated-community to discover what ‘fixing’ the system means.
Consequences test the viability of an economic system. China, a Communist State running an economy capitalising on capitalism, has chosen a unique path into the future based on inclusiveness. Having grafted elements of Marxism and Confucianism to a programme that is putatively a long march towards including all in the economic system, the test now is to manage issues affecting the polity as a whole. Frequent regulation to fine-tune the transition to include ever more of the rural population into the grand-plan would appear to be the first line of defence. That China’s extreme centre — consumerist et al — can function without inflicting constant warfare on its neighbours, suggests that it has a historic perspective within its core that contains the capacity to mollify extremes of power.
While America continues with its insidious Empire creep to devastate one country after another, China, on the other hand, appears to have a different awareness regarding the potential to cultivate non-aggressive means to grow its industrial might, without resorting to crushing its competitors. America, on the other hand, seems to lack basic decency at the level of its social stem cells. Its bloody colonial past is a history of violence that keeps on giving. In your face celebrity culture, secret bank accounts, ghetto creation, the-biggest-this-the-biggest-that, the postal service that can deliver death and destruction by air to any part of the globe — and does — describe a nation that has devolved into a parliament of vanities. Whilst there are esteemed people in hallowed halls distilling the essence of Gabriel’s trumpeting of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, there is nigh total absence of any evidence showing awareness or respect for human values in America’s social stock. The greatest show on earth turned out to be a David and Goliath struggle between the founding Fathers and the egomaniacal materialists for pride of place…what ensued was a vainglories stampede into debauchery…with the help of firearms aplenty.
The spectacle of carnage that American Military might has wrought on the Muslim World in recent decades is gruesomely evil and fully exposed to everyone, yet no amount of violence perpetrated in the name of America is too much for a public that seems to lack any awareness of what it means to possess decency. The hot favourite to wear the mantle of President in the upcoming election is none other than Hillary Clinton, a representative of the aforesaid …one of the destroyers of Libya…go figure…see the blood on her hands?
So the American avatar has feet of clay and blood drips from its hands. It is now high time for the so-called West to divest itself of this leadership model that is only capable of germinating inept seed that breeds standover tacticians ad nauseam: American democracy is a misnomer, a hideous mask. Its extreme centre is dead weight in the purifying waters of hope without an ethical code. Text can produce the two-dimensional man or woman, but leadership requires a three-dimensional grasp of reality that includes all its subjects in a code of conduct that represents some form of justice for all. Confucius was understood in a very real and three-dimensional way because his thinking was concerned with consequences, per se. Similarly, Marx’s insightful economic thinking was universal in the breath of its inclusiveness. But the American avatar, more demon than divine teacher, can do no better than denigrate its competitors for the purpose of ravishing them — its ‘war-on-terror’ a schizophrenic HOWL that would have made Alan Ginsberg cringe.
So if per chance Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or wishy-washy Sanders got in the way of a giant wayward intergalactic gum-boot and were erased from reality in one foul swoop, what would the consequences be? Maybe sweet bugger all! American patriotism has been bursting the seams of its Military attire since day one and the consequences have been awful. Where are the quality leaders needed to address this problem? Believing that their own brand of patriotism to be God-given, Americans set about laying country after country to waste in the name of democracy. Along the way, the vulgarity of their loud militaristic façade unleashed a very nasty version of exceptionalism into the world.
Patriotism in Moscow, Ankara, Brussels, Sydney, New Delhi, Mogadishu or Havana has no place in America’s New Global Order. That is why the Hegemonic Extreme Centre has so many ballistic missiles pointed outwardly in all directions. The Empire had demonstrated its taste for dominance at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to install fear as the central plank of its agenda. To mark the arrival of the Brave New Extreme Centre era, nuclear fireworks were the instruments of choice. Expect the patriots who come out to vote in November to squabble over which insider they should support to make their War Brand great again and enjoy the privilege of fingering the nuclear triggers.
Written by Denis A. Conroy
Ballarat, Australia
This article originally appeared on Dissident Voice: http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/08/the-excesses-of-the-extreme-centre/