By Paul Edwards
August 07, 2023:
Information Clearing House
-- Empires end. As
they approach dissolution, they are described as
“senile". Historically, the term was used to
describe empire itself, and not the monsters who
happen to run it but in this as, sadly, in so
many respects, America must rank as exceptional.
Within the last weeks Americans have witnessed a
series of disturbing, inadvertent exhibitions of
the pathetic debility and lamentable incapacity
of some of our putative “leaders”, high-ranking
members of the Crone and Geezer Junta that rules
us.
Putting aside the fact of the moral and
intellectual nullity of the overwhelming
majority of cyphers and cretins that infest our
Congress, and concentrating on the most
piteously afflicted invalids in our
superannuated political coven, one must cite
first our dithering, blithering President, an
excruciating example of hopeless human
inadequacy, too afflicted to even recognize its
own vacuity. This sad, lost wreck could be
regarded with pity as a fuddled, leering
simpleton were it not that he is nominally in
control of the fate of millions that his loopy,
aggravated anoia puts in gravest jeopardy. And
his bitter, blind and terrified party, instead
of placing him in the care his condition screams
for, plans to run him for another term of
irrational and perilous lunacy.
Concurrently, in our egregiously degraded
Senate, we have been treated to the spectacle of
the ancient, dingy, and disoriented Mrs.
Feinstein returning, cerebrally disarmed, to the
fray, unable to do more than present her
physical remnant, unwilling to retire with what
grace remains, rather than to muddle on as a
baffled, mumbling ego, the butt of embarrassed
pathos, a zombie relic.
Turning the other cheek of the One Big Money
Party, that artifact Ninja Turtle Warrior for
sleazy, unprincipled graft and grift, Mr.
McConnell, was seen, during one of his deathly
tedious public statements, to freeze and seize
up mentally, and to stand staring catatonic,
aphasic, utterly separated from his cognitive
function, till he was passively led off, one
supposes, for resuscitation.
None of these vulnerable souls is to be
condemned for the ravages time has inflicted on
them. The decrepitude of age is inevitable and
sad, and it evokes only sympathy. That these
sufferers happen to be among the most
contemptible sociopathic human beings alive is a
separate issue from their debility, and it does
not disqualify them from concern for their
afflictions.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
What cannot be excused them, though, is the
fact that these selfish avatars of solipsistic
egomania have continued in their exalted posts
long after the capacity to perform any useful
function has deserted them; long after the
animating Elvis of whatever mojo they may have
had has left the building.
It would be an indictment of our “democracy”, if
we had one, that it permits, or rather, requires
this madness, this pernicious policy of letting
the undead rot away in office. Since we haven’t,
it’s not even surprising, because vetting by the
two cesspit parties is so stringent that no one
with the least taint of independent mind or
moral courage is ever permitted to run for major
political office, hence the decayed remain and
decompose, stinking, in place.
Blame the voting public? How to justify that?
Indoctrination by the vast Capitalist propaganda
machine has made its abysmal ignorance all but
universal. The failing Empire, run by rapacious
Capitalism with its unassuageable lust to steal
the world’s wealth by violence, though its
military can’t defeat even feeble, destitute
tribal states, has convinced Americans this is
its right, and they support this evil madness
that, as it invites furious blowback, courts
destruction by those mighty powers that can
deliver it.
The level of comprehension of world reality,
ever dependent on sound information, has been so
degraded among Americans— even those of
supposedly higher learning—that the electorate,
bereft of it, has no capacity to distinguish
fact from fiction, truth from deception, or
actuality from fantasy. Through the blitz of
state propaganda in media, and its incorporation
in education, the American mind has been
completely infantilized. By the manipulation and
exacerbation of its latent and long cherished
prejudices, and the strident prominence of
cynically promoted official narrative,
Americans’ capacity to think and assess with
discrimination has been reduced to a proclivity
for fierce, jejeune, tribal enmity and mindless,
reflex, jingoist hostility.
Be clear: this is not an argument for
“civility”, or a plaint that irreconcilables
cannot come together and get along: it is a
dirge for cogent, responsible intellection; a
kadish for the demise of basic cognition. Child
mind rules taste and politics. Barbie has
whipped Oppenheimer. Americans don’t understand
anything but toys and games and don’t want to.
How should they begin to resist the chaos and
dissolution they are being herded to?
And so it goes, as Vonnegut said. It was he who
opined years ago that mankind had been put on
earth to fart around, which seems, at this
stage, to have been thoroughly demonstrated.
Nothing will change in The Senile Empire. Biden—once
semi-coherent—swore it. Change is a function of
mature thought, and we’re all out of that. As
Carlin cracked, don’t look for it. Those
doddering psychopaths who lead us, mentally
drooling and incontinent, will drive us on
toward our fated end, while we censor, flay, and
anathematize each other over whether Russians or
Chinese are more Satanic, whether Zelensky is
Churchill or Hitler, and whether people should
be able to say what gender they really are, and
then become it.
Paul Edwards is a writer
and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached
at: hgmnude@bresnan.net
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