Dumber than a sack full of hammers

I've talked about the USA a lot in earlier posts: Amerikaemia, Lessons From Easter Island and Turning Points. Why am I so concerned about one country when there are other places facing threats to democracy or have autocratic rulers or are religiously bigoted? The reason is that, apart from the USA potentially ticking all of those boxes, it has inserted itself into the world as the upholder of certain standards whether the world likes it or not. That combined with its military power and cultural influence means the question is: how can you not be concerned about them? Like it or not, they have created the western power structure that the world lives under. Most of the antagonism in the world is directly attributable to the attitude of the USA towards economic systems (communism), religion (Islam) and the division of the world into have and have nots (first vs third world). If you want to comply with their standards you are welcome into the club, if not they know where you live.

All of this could be acceptable if the USA itself wasn’t such a hypocritical cot case. Consider the war in the Ukraine, and disclaimer before I start I’m not apologising for Putin – he is an evil narcissistic sociopath that has to be stopped – but this is to show that hypocrisy at this level needs to be called out whenever it rears its ugly head. Picture this: specific country has considerable wealth and is strategically important. Greedy larger country wants unlimited access to specific country’s wealth but doesn’t want to worry about negotiating terms and conditions so it invents some disinformation to justify a military invasion so it can steal said wealth and seize the desirable strategic advantage. Sounds like Putin with Ukraine right, but I was actually referring to the US invasion of Iraq in the ‘war against terror’ twenty years earlier. That is all conveniently forgotten in the current climate. We don’t want no arrest warrants for war criminality issued to any former US presidents now do we?

All the buffoonery and toxicity of Trump has brought the role of the US even more into the spotlight. Assuming it is going to be the world’s sheriff (and who is big enough to argue), what laws is it going to be upholding and who is going to make them? If they can’t get their own shit together how can you take them seriously when they come kicking down your door to put your house in order?

This could potentially be a massive post, but in the interest of time I’ll try and summarise the state of America and how it has no right to be talking down to anyone, anywhere at any time.

The USA has a polarized political system that splits the population roughly down the middle so that each time they have an election the winner is determined by a few thousand votes in a handful of states. How that is democratic is anyone’s guess because it puts ultimate power in the hands of a few undecided John and Jane Does that have no mandate or qualification to determine the fate of the world. The rest of them stick to their guns (literally) with no hope of ever sharing common ground.

On the left, in the blue corner, you have the disparate bunch of ‘progressives’ that like to kid themselves that they are outward thinking and leading the rest of the world with their staggering foresight and liberty. In their dreams. They at least walk the talk a little bit when it comes to living up to the American hype, so you can give them points for trying. On the right, in the red corner, you have a brainwashed, backward looking, subservient, gullible bunch of flag waving sheep that will kill to maintain a status quo that doesn’t exist anymore, and who accept the word of their religious and political leaders unconditionally because they are brought up from day one to follow instructions and reject knowledge. Knowledge is for the people they place their faith in. Education is a tool of the devil. Education leads to questions, which leads to change, which is unacceptable when you have a bible that tells you how things have to be now and forever. That’s how Trump can still command about 45% of the vote, even though polling suggests half of them don’t like him, but they still aren’t concerned about the implications of voting for him. My granddaddy was a Republican, my daddy was a Republican, so gosh darn it I’m a Republican no matter what. As one of their favourite movie characters says: stupid is a stupid does.

Then you add in the credulousness when it comes to fairy stories like the American Dream, that tells them that life can be perfect and anyone can make it big if they give it a shot. Living that dream applies to about 0.1% of the population, but it’s constantly reinforced by Hollywood fantasies that also set them up for the dark side of this whole blind acceptance – conspiracy theories that suggest organised dark forces are at work, preying on them and undermining their way of life. So you get millions of people that believe The Matrix was a documentary and Q-Anon is the only source of truth. That’s how someone as shallow, self-centred and dishonest as Trump can be elevated to cult status and be viewed as some kind of messiah in some corners, because those that buy into it are accepting the fantasy, not the reality. Reality doesn’t have a shot in a culture like that. Reality isn’t heroic. It doesn’t have good guys and bad guys. Reality is dull. Reality is also hard to deal with because it ultimately exposes the big lies they are living under.

Sounds mad right, but it doesn’t stop there. The real kicker is the cultural hypocrisy that allows at least half the population to accept mentally deranged teenagers running around with military styled assault rifles shooting school kids as a ‘fact of life’, then at (literally) the same time swallowing and being outraged by a fake story about Haitian immigrants barbequing cats. Hypocrisy is so ingrained it doesn’t even register. So you get politicians that commit egregious acts then project it onto the other side. You get religious leaders that preach hatred and division. You get absurd wealth paying to influence democracy. You get criminal wars masquerading as police actions, and you keep races partitioned off in ingrained poverty in the land of freedom and liberty for all, and NONE OF THIS is questioned in any meaningful way. And if you are brave enough to bring it up, then you must be ONE OF THEM GODDAM (fill in derogatory stereotype of choice from the list: commies, pinkos, fags, muslims, yankees, democrats, etc etc).

The problem is the USA is too big and diverse, and has too much to lose to act as a unified country. It is really 50 different countries all pretending to act as one. Much as I loath her, Marjorie Taylor Greene will probably get her wish of a ‘national divorce’ by the time she shuffles off into the sunset. The madness is just unsustainable.