| Question Everything! |
By Jonathan Cook
November 06, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - At birth, all of us begin a journey that offers opportunities either to grow – not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually – or to stagnate. The journey we undertake lasts a lifetime, but there are dozens of moments each day when we have a choice to make tiny incremental gains in experience, wisdom and compassion or to calcify through inertia, complacency and selfishness.
No one can be engaged and receptive all the time. But it is important to recognise these small opportunities for growth when they present themselves, even if at any particular moment we may decide to avoid grasping them.
When we shut ourselves into the car on the commute to work, do we use it as a moment to be alone with our thoughts or to silence them with the radio or music? When we sit with friends, do we choose to be fully present with them or scroll through the news feed on our phones? When we return from a difficult day at work, do we talk the issues through with family or reach for a glass of wine, or maybe binge watch something on TV?
Everyone needs downtime, but if every opportunity for reflection becomes downtime then we are stagnating, not growing. We are moving away from life, from being human.
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Dried-out husk Caitlin Johnstone: 'By telling yourself you voted out fascism, you are lying yourself into a state of future complacency.. If you voted for Biden, fine. Now do what you know is right and start throwing haymakers at the new head of the fascist empire' https://t.co/MoH6sJg9OW
This week liberal Americans reached for that
glass of wine and voted Joe Biden. Others did so
much more reluctantly, spurred on by the fear of
giving his opponent another four years.
Biden isn’t over the finishing line quite yet,
and there are likely to be recounts, court
challenges and possibly violence over the
result, but he seems all but certain to be
crowned the next US president. Not that that
should provoke any kind of celebration. The rest
of the world’s population, future generations,
the planet itself – none of us had a vote – were
always going to be the losers whichever
candidate won.
The incumbent, Donald Trump, miscalculated, it
seems, if he thought dismissing his opponent as
“Sleepy Joe” would be enough to damage Biden’s
electoral fortunes. True, Trump was referring to
the fact that Biden is a dried-out husk of the
machine politician he once was. But after four
years of Trump and in the midst of a pandemic,
the idea of sleeping through the next
presidential term probably sounded pretty
appealing to liberals. Most of them have spent
their whole political lives asleep.
Four years ago, however, they were forcibly
roused from their languor to protest against
Donald Trump. They grew enraged by the symptom
of their corrupt political system rather than by
the corrupt system itself. For them, “Sleepy
Joe” was just what the doctor ordered.
But it won’t be Biden doing the sleeping. It
will be the liberals who cheerlead him. Biden –
or perhaps Kamala Harris – will be busy making
sure his corporate donors get exactly what they
paid for, whatever the cost to the rest of us.
Anger and blame
In this analogy, Trump is not the opposite of
Biden, of course. He represents stagnation too,
if of a different kind.
Trump channels Americans’ frustration and anger
at a political and economic system they rightly
see as failing them. He articulates who should
be falsely blamed for their woes: be it
immigrants, minorities, socialists, or the New
World Order. He offers justified, if
misdirected, rage in contrast to Biden’s
dangerous complacency.
But however awful Trump may be, at least some of
those voting for him are grappling, if mostly
unconsciously, with the tension between
stagnation and growth – and not of the economic
kind. Unlike most liberals, who dismiss this
simplistically as “populism”, some of Trump’s
supporters do at least seem to recognise that
the tension exists. They simply haven’t been
offered a constructive alternative to anger and
blame.
Ritually disappointed
Unlike the liberals and the Trumpists, many in
the US have come to understand that their
political system offers nothing but stultifying
stagnation for ordinary Americans by design,
even if it comes in two, smartly attired
flavours.
They see that the Trump camp rages ineffectually
against the corporate elite, deluded into
believing that a member of that very same elite
will serve as their saviour. And they see that
the Biden camp represents an ineffectual rainbow
coalition of competing social identities,
deluded into believing that those divisions will
make them stronger, not weaker, in the fight for
economic justice. Both of these camps appear
resigned to being serially – maybe ritually –
disappointed.
Failure does not inspire these camps to seek
change, it makes them cling all the more
desperately to their failed strategies, to
attach themselves even more frantically and
fervently to their perceived tribe.
That is why this US election – at a moment when
the need for real, systemic change is more
urgent, more evident than ever before – produced
not just one but two of the worst presidential
candidates of all time. We are looking at
exactly what happens when a whole society not
only stops growing but begins to putrefy.
Enervating divisions
Not everyone in the US is so addicted to these
patterns of self-delusion and self-harm.
Large swaths of the population don’t bother to
vote out of hard-borne experience. The system is
so rigged against them that they don’t think it
matters much which corporate party is in power.
The outcome will be the same for them either
way.
Others vote third party, or consciously abstain
in protest at big money’s vice-like grip on the
two-party system. Others, appalled at the
prospect of Trump – and before him the two
Bushes, and before that Ronald Reagan – were
forced once again to vote for the Democratic
ticket with a heavy heart. They know all too
well who Biden is (a creature of his corporate
donors) and what he stands for (whatever his
corporate donors want). But he is slightly less
monstrous than his rival, and in the US system
those are the meaningful electoral options.
And among Trump’s supporters too, there are many
desperate for wholesale change. They voted for
Trump because at least he paid lip service to
change.
These groups – most likely a clear electoral
majority – could redirect the US towards
political, social, even spiritual growth, if
they could find a way to come together. They
suffer from their own enervating divisions.
How should they best use their numerical
strength? Should they struggle to win the
presidency, and if so should it be a third-party
candidate or should they work within the
existing party structures? What lesson should
they draw from the Democratic leadership’s
sabotaging – twice over – of Bernie Sanders, a
candidate offering meaningful change? Is it time
to adopt an entirely different strategy,
rejecting traditional politics? And if so, can
it be made to work when all the major
institutions – from the politicians and courts,
to the police, intelligence services and media –
are firmly in the hands of the corporate enemy?
Terrible reckoning
There is no real way to sleep through life, or
politics, and not wake up one day – usually when
it is too late – realising catastrophic mistakes
were made.
As individuals, we may face that terrible
reckoning on our death-beds. Empires rarely go
so quietly. They fall when it is time for their
citizens to learn a painful lesson about hubris.
Their technological innovations come back to
haunt them, as ancient Rome’s lead water-pipes
supposedly once did. Or they over-extend with
ambitious wars that drain the coffers of gold,
as warrior-kings have discovered to their cost
through the ages. Or, when the guardians of
empire least expect it, “barbarians” – the
victims of their crimes – storm the city gates.
The globe-spanning US empire faces the rapid
emergence of all these threats on a planetary
scale. Its endless wars against phantom enemies
have left the US burdened with astounding debt.
Its technologies, from nuclear weapons to AI,
mean there can be no possible escape from a
major miscalculation. And the US empire’s
insatiable greed and determination to colonise
every last inch of the planet, if only with our
waste products, is gradually killing the
life-systems we depend on.
If Biden becomes president, his victory will be
a temporary win for torpor, for complacency. But
a new Trump will emerge soon enough to potentise
– and misdirect – the fury steadily building
beneath the surface. If we let it, the pendulum
will swing back and forth, between ineffectual
lethargy and ineffectual rage, until it is too
late. Unless we actively fight back, the
stagnation will suffocate us all.
This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s
blog:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special
Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and
the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto
Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s
Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His
website is www.jonathan-cook.net.