The Collective American Consciousness: America is to be Judged by its Citizens, not its Politicians…
America is to be judged by its
citizens, not its politicians. But if Americans lose contact with one
another; substitute real, tangible realities with virtual ones projected
on internet and television screens; refuse to engage in the democratic
process and choose passivity over involvement, nihilism over hope,
fatalism over self-determination; remain complacent about if not
ignorant of US actions and wars in the world; adopt definitions of
themselves that are crafted by self-serving special interests,
profiteers or merchants of war and hate running now for president from
both political parties, they lose all concepts of who they are, what
they stand for, and what really constitutes American values.
As it stands, Americans are on the
cusp of recognizing that they are losing their historic identity, or the
one they embraced before 9/11.
In the collective American consciousness
questing for material objects, success, fame, wealth, property and
stock equities, together with a megalomaniacal drive for Empire to
dominate a world now splitting itself into East and West, there remains
no public figure speaking for “everyone”; for unity through diversity;
for peace; for the poor, homeless, disabled and elderly; for children
and young people who will inherit a financially bankrupt nation that
cheerleads its populist billionaires who take all, avoid taxes, give
little back, blame the scapegoat, and ignore the plight of others,
particularly the plight of young generations who will inherit it all as
they advance into tomorrow’s leadership positions. Who speaks for them?
Almost unconsciously, Americans salute a
market-centric culture unaware it is controlled by Wall Street, bond
traders, speculators, hedge funds and enormous multinational
corporations and banking hegemons. Silicon Valley young technocratic
tycoons provide proof of American superiority and exceptionalism and the
momentous rewards capitalism bestows. The rewards of capitalism,
however, go to the few and fewer and what are concealed in a sea of
commercials and seamless hype are what many young people should already
know; for during a majority of their years as mature adults America has
been a nation of non-stop endless wars; has become the largest debtor
nation in the world – debt that can’t be repaid and probably won’t be
repaid. It has devolved into waves of police-sanctioned violence and
murders, socially damaging hate-groups and vicious political vitriolic.
When done in the name of competition and profits, it legally sanctions
illegalities.
Young people have learned privacy is
non-existent and social interactions take place using costly digital
devices connected through toll booths owned by corporate networks behind
whose one-way mirror sit both government and mega-corporations amassing
personal information, biometrics, opinions, attitudes, consumer
behavior, political affiliations, friendships, credit and banking
details, and their psychographic profiles for private profit and for
social and government behavior-mod programs and social engineering.
Many have learned a stable job of 40
hours per week with benefits, sick pay and vacation time is a luxury
afforded a few. Some have learned to live at home with mom and dad at
age 25 because they can’t afford high rents at meager wages, let alone
purchase a home. Some will live through decades of paying-off college
loans that delivered greater debt peonage than employment opportunity.
They have seen how credit is mistakenly viewed as an asset and used to
salvage households that have undergone decades of stagnant wages. They
have seen benefits accrue in accumulation of wealth for employers,
corporations and investment banks.
Should they ever run for president, they
know they will have to agree to kill “innocent people and children”,
conduct drone operations on “targeted assassination” lists, approve and
expand America’s seamless dragnet surveillance state, enlist people
their age to die for wars they had no say in and no true understand of.
If young people think the American Dream is over and act apart and
clustered together in a swarm, they do so for good reasons: there are no
public figures offsetting the “post 9/11 normal” with incisive
alternatives, real debate, knowledgeable dissent and penetrative truths
about the causes underlying America’s many imbroglios. It should be no
surprise that most millennials didn’t vote in 2014 (87% stayed home).
But the “9/11 normal” in this country is
not the normal I knew, is not the America that weaned me, is not the
normal I wish to live under or see young people struggle with in order
to survive. If any group is blameless in causing any one problem now
afflicting America, it is they. But they are too young to have known a
better time; some can’t imagine one; many have relegated America before
9/11 to the history books! This is how it seems for a millennial.
My employee was neither normal nor “new
normal”, but an example of what UK economist Guy Standing calls “The
Precariat: The New Dangerous Generation”. [1] This self-defined
uneducated, politically unaware person who worked for me over five years
suddenly presented a dangerous and threatening remark recently. Knowing
she cannot find Chicago on the map; knowing she is encircled by friends
and family with little grasp of government, American history or the
democratic process, she asked me to define a “white supremacist”, which
I did in detail. Knowing she defines African-Americans as “dem people”
and everything she hears about President Obama is that he’s “gonna take
guns away”, I proceeded cautiously. At the finish, she replied to my
explanation with emphatically shocking defiance. She shouted back
ferociously: “Obama should be assassinated!”
Keeping calm, I asked why he should be
assassinated? “Because he’s not good for America,” she quipped. “Why
isn’t he good?” I asked. She looked up and down, rolled her eyes, looked
up and down and with a coy self-effacing smile beamed, “Gee, I don’t
know.”
Her supervisor didn’t find the remark
troublesome but did cite her for talking politics to a client and pulled
her from my account. “You finally got to see who and what she really
is,” stressed the supervisor. Later, in conversation, a police chief
told me her inflammatory statement was to be considered a “form of free
speech”; and I should “consider the source”. I replied that for many
people who lived through three assassinations in the 1960s, a call for
the killing of a president is not to be defended as free speech or
viewed lightly. If a majority of Americans do find it defendable,
America is in far worse shape today than at any other time in my 68
years, I answered. Although this worker is far from committing such an
act, how many people does she represent who might try to commit this
crime? No president need be assassinated when the legal system is
available to remove one from office peacefully.
The worker is a “precariat” and does not
represent America, nor do those who feel as she does. Police-violence
and murders of young blacks by errant and rogue officers do not
represent the standard for law enforcement and are illegal acts in both
character and degree. Wall Street greed and asset-stripping
neoliberalism are byproducts of a capitalism that has been unregulated,
becoming voracious and predatory. America is a nation and capitalism is
an economic and market system adopted by the nation. Capitalism is not a
nation unto itself controlling its host country. Yet, the market system
is striving to gain complete control over this nation at all levels
through powerful economic institutions with support from libertarian
zealots, “small government” conservatives to far-right extremists
hoisting flags, a Constitution and a Bible.
The right-wing presently in control of
the Republican party and exhibiting increasing power over Congress, the
White House and media are not American but anti-American and unAmerican
in my opinion. Indeed, they constitute a “fifth column” undermining
democracy, peace, security, welfare and brotherhood which are the true
historical hallmarks of our secular democracy. What seeds have been
planted during the last decades – from the presidency of Ronald Reagan
to financial capitalism, privatizations, off-shoring of jobs to the
Pacific Rim and China, collapse of the country’s industrial base and
infrastructure, neoliberal restructuring of public finances,
neoconservative Empire building through endless wars of aggression,
decimation of social and welfare programs that were won for all
Americans in the 1930s and 1960s – have borne the bitter herbs today of
hate, violence, religious bigotry, racism, and mounting threats of war
with Russia and China in order to circumvent and abort an inevitable
transition from a U.S. dominated unipolar world to a bipolar one.
Such a bipolar world challenges
America’s “full spectrum dominance” and particularly threatens to
dislodge the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency. The agents of this
“post 9/11 new normal” are leading the nation into the grip of what
Europeans today call by its rightful name: fascism, the merger of state
and corporate power militarily enforced . Will Americans allow it?
European nations are seeing a rise of
neo-Nazis and self-proclaimed fascists. [2] [3] By reflecting popular
discontent over imposed austerity, an influx of immigrants fleeing war
zones in the mid-East, the perceived loss of national sovereignty to
Brussels, the rise of fascistic right-wing parties in many EU nations
are exploiting growing anti-government attitudes and creating political
power formations in scenes highly reminiscent of the 1930s. In some
respects, the propaganda diatribes and appeals by the Tea Party, Faith
and Freedom Coalition and other U.S. “anti-government” groups of
far-right libertarians, survivalists, white supremacists, militias,
sovereign citizens, nativists and Christian theocrats bear comparison to
programs and platforms of Pegida in Germany, National Front in France
and Golden Dawn in Greece. [4]
More importantly, resemblances exist
between the anti-government, anti-immigrant, racist, nativist and
anarchistic rhetoric and appeals of these groups in both Europe and the
United States with positions publicly endorsed and vocalized by
Republican candidates for president, particularly by Donald Trump and
Ted Cruz. [5] In the course of more than a decade, the GOP permitted
itself to be hijacked by right-wing conservatives advancing today’s
extremism in order to win elections and in winning perpetuate the rise
of the corporate, banking and military-industrial state at the expense
of workers and the social safety net. Populist far-right “people”
movements from below and the corporate-military-intel-wealth “power
elite” from above are twin forces undermining what remnants remain of
American democracy. They will call it by many other names, but Europeans
call it fascism.
Americans resist the label “fascism”
because, as Sinclair Lewis observed eighty-one years ago, Americans are
convinced “it can’t happen here”. [6] They are wrong. It can happen
here, is happening here and the question becomes how far will it
metastasize within the body politic? The frightening degree of popular
interest measured by TV ratings of recent political debates where
collective hate and war-mongering are staged as positive and
constructive solutions to America’s imbroglios of crises further
demoralizes the population and weakens the national immune system
against this cancer metastasizing.
What is America, its people, culture and
set of values? By mid-century, it was the leader of the world
politically and economically. By the mid-60s, it boasted a “mixed
economy” balancing the needs of profit with social welfare. It once
fostered peace at home and in the world; it co-existed with its main
rival, the Soviet Union, in a balance of power arrangement and in so
doing avoided war. Two nuclear powers can only assure each other peace
through sanity lest mutual destruction be the result if one or the other
starts war – a fact obfuscated by today’s war mongers in Congress and
on the presidential campaign platforms; their sociopathic threats are
echoed without challenge in American mass-media, the very vehicles used
to successfully engineer war-fever and hysteria on the basis of few
facts, some lies, and reams of accusations lacking evidence. Americans
fail to know the extent of its bombing campaigns, its coups, the number
of dead innocents labeled “collateral damage” by the Pentagon, its
purposeful destabilization of nations to secure resources and install
puppet governments subservient to Washington. Few Americans suspect that
the deaths of almost a million and injuries to millions more in the
middle-east caused by American-NATO bombings might someday return in
kind. Americans are fearful of terrorist acts within their country but
fail to understand how we have sponsored, trained and financed
terrorists to fight our “dirty wars” from the 1980s in Afghanistan to
today in Syria and Iraq. Americans are fearful and thus paralyzed. What a
perfect opportunity for a dictator and fascist to exploit.
“America is a moderate country with a
slight tilt to the right,” claimed a friend in the mid-West. On the
other hand, activist-historian William Blum claims America is not a
force for good in the world but a rogue state that is the greatest
threat to humanity. [7] [8] People that largely ignore the rise of
police powers, the surveillance state, the cost of endless wars, and the
decline of civil liberties are called “sheeple” by critics. Members of
the press and media who have abandoned their role as objective
journalists and become public relations spokespeople for the State
Dept., Pentagon, Wall Street and CIA are known as “presstitutes”. Taken
together, democracy is replaced with mindless consumption of media
propaganda leaving authorities and power-centers freedom of movement to
act and control without constraint or opposition.
World leaders are tentatively
understanding the need to act together to resolve global crises that are
infecting all layers within societies. The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock to three minutes to
minute citing nuclear wars and ecological cataclysms ahead given the
current projectory. [9] Pope Francis in his highly secular
eco-enclyclical Laudato Si! outlines a basal text for a
concerted trans-national approach to solve climate change, economic
disparities and mushrooming military build-ups in nations. [10] Francis
spoke frankly and truthfully when he bravely confessed to an unbelieving
and disoriented world that World War III has already begun fought
piecemeal. [11] The Dalai Lama also spoke frankly when he said God
wasn’t going to solve our problems. We created them and we need to fix
them. God’s not going to do it for us. [12]
America is at war and is planning for
greater ones, but its greatest war is the battle within itself. Who is
America? What is America? What does America stand for? These questions
will be answered but not without conflict, social disruption, acts of
civil disobedience, emerging whistleblowers risking careers and
livelihoods to speak truth in a sea of disinformation and eroding
morality. Campaign officials expect the cost for this year’s
presidential campaign to reach $5 billion, most of that money going into
the coffers of network and cable TV which, in turn, will please their
sponsors – political parties, power brokers and wealth sectors – and
media will remain a house of presstitution. [13] [14]
Democracy needs an informed electorate
but Americans have been “dumbed down” enough to believe they have no
power over government decisions and economic policies. They are
paralyzed by it. In a relatively short span of time, beginning from
September 11, 2001, democracy has been under attack by forces from
within rather than from without. It has been stolen by hidden unelected
financial, corporate and military-industrial cartels that have
inculcated fear and exploited it as a pretext for citizens to relinquish
liberties. By their own narrow vision induced by rampant consumerism,
poor knowledge about government and economics, Americans have endorsed
politicians who make wars, relegate human beings secondary to private
profit and markets, who conquer dissent, diversity and
strength-in-numbers using the mechanism of “identity politics”, who turn
morality on its head by taking from the poor and giving to the rich,
who call the peaceful weak and the warrior strong, who enshrine our
Empire as “exceptional” and “indispensable” on the basis of myths that
no longer exist and that fewer and fewer nations believe, including
so-called “allies”.
Inscribed in the DNA of America is a
deep-seated belief in “destiny”. America had it, lost it, and will
someday regain it. It is not found in profits, property, gold, markets
or Empire building. The work of ascertaining, identifying and
perpetuating this destiny will fall upon tomorrow’s leaders selected
from the ranks of millennials and those younger, Generation Z. It will
live or die according to their wisdom or their folly. They will build
upon a new paradigm or fail trying to resuscitate the old. They will be
Lot of the Bible and move forward knowing only one step ahead, or be
Sara who turned to salt by fixing her stare upon what was crumbling
behind her. The first question to answer must be: What is the ideal
world you wish for yourself, family, friends, community and nation? Once
realized and empowered by sincere intent and motivation, it will
materialize. The world of tomorrow begins in concept today. To more
forward, don’t look back. Build it, and if it is for the common good of
all Americans and all people of the world, “they will come”.
Others who staunchly support peace,
world-wide harmony, justice, non-violence, democracy and the safety of
mother earth are good people whose intentions, influence and silent acts
now hold hope for our nation and world.
But many more good people must do something. And the time for doing it is now.
Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations
executive currently living in New England. He has authored nine books on
practical spirituality collectively titled The Cerithous Material.Notes:
[1] Standing, Guy (2014). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Generation. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781472536167.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-precariat-9781472536167/
[2] “Fear, Anger and Hatred: The Rise of Germany’s New Right“, Spiegel Online, December 11, 2015.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/refugee-crisis-drives-rise-of-new-right-wing-in-germany-a-1067384.html
[3] “WELCOME TO THE ‘RECHTSRUTSCH’: The far right is quietly making massive gains in Europe“, Business Insider, October 19, 2015.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-far-right-is-quietly-making-massive-gains-in-europe-2015-10?r=UK&IR=T
[4] “How does the Tea Party compare with European far right movements?”, Baker Institute for Public Policy.
https://bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/f6f08c52/IFRI-pub-SirkesTeaParty-2012-1-.pdf
[5] Cas Mudde, “The Trump phenomenon and the European populist radical right”, Washington Post, August 26, 2015.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/
[6] Lewis, Sinclair (1935). It Can’t Happen Here. New York: Signet ISBN 9780451465641
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/293163/it-cant-happen-here-by-sinclair-lewis/9780451465641/
[7] Blum, William (2013). America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy. London: Zed Books ISBN-13: 978-1780324456
http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/americas-deadliest-export
[8] Kevin Zeese, “US Empire Reaches Breaking Point. Greatest Threat to Humanity. Time To End It, Global Research, July 20, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-empire-reaches-breaking-point-greatest-threat-to-humanity-time-to-end-it/5392310
[9] “It is Three Minutes to Midnight”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Janaury 19, 2015
http://thebulletin.org/clock/2015
[10] Pope Francis (2015). Encyclical Letter Laudato Si!, On Care for Our Common Home. Full text at Vatican web site.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
[11] Athena Yenko, “World War 3 Has Begun – Pope Francis”, Morning News USA, June 9, 2015.
http://www.morningnewsusa.com/world-war-3-has-begun-pope-francis-2323017.html
[12] Michael McLaughlin, “Dalai Lama: Humans Created Terrorism, So Stop Praying To God For A Solution”, Huffington Post, November 17, 2015.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dalai-lama-terrorism_564b8975e4b045bf3df16e75
[13] Amie Parnes and Kevin Cirilli, “The $5 billion presidential campaign?” The Hill, January 21, 2016
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/230318-the-5-billion-campaign
[14] Julie Bykowicz, “Campaign ads are a feast for TV stations and they’re out to guard it from online competition”, Associated Press, December 9, 2015
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/12/09/tv-broadcasters-try-to-drum-up-more-campaign-ads
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Michael T. Bucci, Global Research, 2016
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