Fuck'em, I say

The Dems' victory is no reason to think the problem is over. It's all political theater, warns the author, just business as usual.

By John Steppling

Barack Obama: Another case of misguided

expectations?

"Suffering is apocalyptic. Yet suffering bears within it a power to generate thought and action, an urgency which is a demand of life. To treat suffering as mattering, as the unconditioned within experience, is to adopt a relation to the unconditioned: it is a mode of piety." Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion

There seems little reason to go over the obvious "positions" of the newly elected democrats. Others will do that, and the obvious should be obvious. The Democrats are barely distinguishable from the Republicans. I've used the above quote because I somehow have stopped being able to really analyse the various Democrats and what they want or pretend to think is best. What I do find myself returning to, again and again, is the enormity of the suffering that exists in the shadow of the Imperialist US war machine. Suffering everywhere, and in ever increasing numbers and intensity.

I've grown numb from the sound of Democrat rhetoric. It's often, if not always, more sickeningly fatuous and mealy-mouthed than the Republican psychopaths (and make no mistake....Rumsfeld, Bolton, Kristal, Wolfowitz, Franks, Cheney, and Shrub all are clinically certifiable psychos). But are the Dems an improvement? Take Joe Biden......who thinks we didnt explain the war well enough at home. Thinks the biggest problem ; "we didnt explain in detail" what we were doing in Iraq. Good, Joe. The likely next speaker of the House.....Nancy Pelosi......she of the perpetually surprised expression (and who has paid more bills to her cosmetic surgeon than she introduced on the House floor] and of the $5000 dollar purses has signed Rick "bloodmonger" Santoruim's legislation calling for sanctions on Iran. Never mind there is no reason for such sanctions. But then Pelosi addressed AIPAC recently and reinforced her belief that *the* issue in the middle east is the survival of Israel.....not the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (or the dropping of cluster bombs on Lebanon). Nancy is every bit the ruling class grande dame.......a viscious self[-]mutilated walking nightmare.....but so many of my liberal friends just overlook these facts......and clap, grinning like sheep-killing dogs (per Bill Burroughs). Pelosi supported the invasion of Iraq and every other piece of Republican legislation -- including the Patriot Acts. Why is this an improvement? How can a country find anything to choose between Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi?

Or Barack Obama, the rising *black* democrat. A man who openly supports Joe Lieberman and the nuking of Iran. A man who refused to support Russ Feingold's attempt to censure the President. This guy is such an open and obvious creep that one wonders how anyone can tolerate his presence. And of course there is Hillary. A viler and more loathsome virago would be hard to imagine. A nasty pinched soul --- a reptilian faced opportunist who sniffs out the best position --- per her advisors --- and sticks to it just long enough to sniff out the next best position. Someone told me, well, the Dems are terrible, it's true, but at least we won't be bombing Teheran. Well, maybe, but Israel apparently is going to....and trust me the Dems in congress will co-sign it without missing a beat.

So back to that suffering I mentioned. The fatal sickness that seems to ooze from every pore of nearly all Americans is one of an aborted attention. The media-saturated mind is a mind without focus. Even reasonably smart people I know show signs of mental fatigue if they live in the US. The desperation to believe "we are making inroads" masks the rather apparent fact that Hillary Clinton is not an inroad to anywhere other than the fifth circle of hell. I find myself linking the language of both dem and republican politicians with this suffering I keep bringing up. The language is void of content. It is void of feeling and it coats one like toxic effluvia......a sort of psychic smallpox blanket......and one must work ever more ardously to cleanse oneself of such filth. Democrats condemn Hugo Chavez (even supposed progressives like Charlie Rangel). Why? Because he attacks our criminal and Imperialist collective behaviour. Never mind he is right. Not a single Democrat has come out and supported Chavez and his programs for the poor. Not a single Democrat has said Israel is a criminal and racist country practicing something very close to apartheid if not genocide. None have asked for a serious reduction in the nearly 2 billion dollar a day defense budget. None has suggested private security firms operating in countless foreign sovereign nations should be abolished and none has pointed out the illegal US involvement in the color-coded revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia --- and the failed one in Belarus. They all continue to support the boycott of Cuba and none ask that Israel sign the nuclear proliferation treaty. None ask for a end to the death penalty....at least none of any importance. None denounced the travesty of justice at The Hague.....nor the highly suspicious death of Slobodan Milosevic. All support the expansion of NATO and all supported the new testing of nuclear weapons. And let's not even get into Africa. Ask the victims of Hurricane Katrina if the Dems have stepped up to investigate the racist profiteering of this tragedy.

I could go on...I could. The fact is that the demands of Capital are such that electoral politics are at most a meaningless exercise in political theatre. Nobody who might actually represent my interests has any chance of even getting elected dog catcher. The World Bank, the G8 Summit, the IMF and all the other international financial institutions and gatherings are where the decisions of importance are made. The vast suffering of entire continents is dismissed......usually with the explanation that "we" are trying to help --- and imagine what it would be like if we weren't. Yes, imagine. I wish I could. So do people in all the developing countries of the world. The demonizing of Muslims world wide can be traced back to the propaganda machine of the US state department. The marketing of a virtual reality that sells America as exceptional has pervaded the dominant discourse in most of the West. American exceptionalism, or paternalism, is just the latest incarnation of the same impulse that bred a couple hundred years of Colonialism.

But no matter....history is not important, history is there to be re-written. Or denied. Look at the dropping of the A bomb(s) on Japan. Why was that done again? Obliterating hundreds of thousands of civilians is still celebrated......but the US leads the puppet clown show at the UN in screaming about the immenent threat of Iranian nukes. Who has Iran attacked again? The only country to actually use nukes has been the USA. One in three Ameicans take anti-depressents. What percentage are morbidly obese? And how many hours of TV a day do these zombies watch? There was some good news....the passing of legislation for an increase in minimum wage.....in six states (interestingly all Republican). I guess workers at McDonalds are a tiny bit better off. Some anti-abortion forces were defeated. But equal numbers of bad legislation passed. The Zombies lurch foward anyway. Racism continues to infect American consciousness, as does mysogyny and a pride in ignorance. A country so obsessed with destruction and blood sacrifice.....or maybe just blood waste.....is not to be trusted.

[So..] fuck the democrats. Fuck the Clinton family and the Bush family......and all the rest of the immoral and inbred ruling-class hand puppets that shill for the death merchants of advanced capital.

American expat playwright John Steppling is currently residing somewhere in Europe.