The Most Important Thing About The 'Debates'

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Liz Burbank

The most important thing about the elections/"debates” is this: they expose the REAL purpose of electoral charades as major political WMDs of deception, delusion, distraction and a draft into a deadly trap. Deadly not because the future hangs on which imperialist executioner wins, but because the future depends on what we the people of this world do and we, here in the belly of the beast, have surrendered our responsibility & right to exercising our potential power to actually change the world that this system has devastated, and sucked in to a deadly trap of capitulation to imperialism.

Electoral politics are a deadly serious battle for ‘hearts and minds’. These grotesque performances are designed to whip up patriotic public opinion, enthusiasm and endorsement, not only for the crimes already committed, but especially for the even greater crimes on the agenda for an unobstructed all-amerikan world.

Regardless of the election outcome, the powers that be have won a crucial psychological battle by convincing people to support Pax Americana’s war for the world by joining their game, “exercising democratic freedom to choose” the next political administrator. Surrendering our agency and ability to opposing these murdering gangsters, we lose our power and our humanity. On top of that, the terms of this “debate” are to ‘choose’ the man who vows to move the country in the most fascist direction. Why have we let ourselves to be duped into supporting the enemy and betraying the peoples of the world, including ourselves? Why are so many activists, who should know better, willing to validate by vote the unforgivable horrors of this imperial white supremacy hell-bent on destroying the world in order to own it? Because we’re told it’s all about us and our “security”? So we go along with the program to protect the class and race privilege that amerika the beautiful has beaten, bled, and burned, from nations and peoples of color here and worldwide?

Of course good liberals like to believe they can have it all without worrying about how they get it - democrats have always promised to let them have it both ways. But these are different, desperate times for an empire in crisis. Having maintained a populist mask for so long, democrats suddenly have to appear even more ruthlessly imperialist than their so-called opposition! Quite a trick.

But they are pulling it off - to our disgrace. Big Lies are a part, not the basic reason for the success of their psy-ops/propaganda war. It goes like this: After your 9/11 green light, the US becomes the victim rather than the worst perpetrator of terror, with its zionist partner, in world history. Remember if you aren’t with US you are with the terrorists. Christian-zionist patriotism is the new state religion and your new rules - the god-given ‘natural’ law which cannot be violated . Declare a police state to save the “homeland” from its imaginary ‘enemies’ - those with dark skin, who aren’t christian, and who dare to question or oppose god & amerikan ‘democracy’. Remember if you aren’t with US you’re with the terrorists—in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo or any one of our global gulag prisons. Trust US - forget about those “democratic’ rights if you love freedom & all amerika stands for. All obstacles to the empire’s rampaging expansion will be crushed or killed - for your own safety of course. What’s required is proof of your patriotic cooperation and compliance: validate this patriotic juggernaut with your vote to disappear all those brown skinned “suspected terrorists” plotting to kill your amerikan dream because they are jealous, not because of the tyranny of amerikan “manifest destiny”, with its incalculable human and environmental devastation.

These psy-war fear & threat tactics, with their calculated racial-sexual theme are basic to amerikan white supremacist capitalism—founded and propagated on genocide and slavery, and dependent on creating hatred and fear of the “other” [itself a racist, white-centric concept] to ‘justify’ its racist crimes, nurture racist ideology and to create divisions among the peoples, the majority, the exploited and oppressed. The racist sexual theme serves the real minority, the masters in unleashing and ‘justifying’ barbaric crusades like the anti Arab-Muslim-immigrant pogrom set in motion by their oh-so- convenient 9/11 ‘pearl harbor’.

This is part of why uber-patriotic, war-mongering terror-tactics have been able to seduce otherwise wise folks into the Anyone-But-Bush scheme [ABB], diverting us with a simple but false target - the singularly repulsive but basically symptomatic figurehead of the ruling class. Bush takes the heat off the system that spawns monsters like himself & his thugs, off the system which always has and always will be the source of the horrors we have been herded into demoralization & submission by. So, what do we do? Just as we’re told—jump on the electoral bandwagon again for another round, insisting that we really are different than all those reactionary racist republican patriots. But 9/11 changed everything and the easiest way to act like we’re doing something decisive, even if its worthless, is to just change the imperial guard.

Of course we liberals hate those unjust, undeclared wars without end, those fascist attacks on our multicultural values and also on our sisters and brothers, the ‘right-wing’ suppression of ‘civil rights’ - all that nasty shit those republicans do - but what else can we do but elect a democrat, even if he’s saying the same things as all those fascist republicans, we’ll go along with the program just til we get rid of Bush then we can get back to capitalist ‘business as usual’. We can make Kerry keep his promises. Oops. Well, we’ll do something later-- so let’s just not talk about it, OK?

Ever wonder “how could they let german fascism happen”? We better look hard in the mirror. It ain’t pretty.

Well-trained, well-fed animals salivating salaciously at the sound of a rabid, racist, jingoist buzzer. But “it’s about OUR own back yards, OUR babies, nothing racist, nothing permanent”. All the psychological, political or cultural repression [including those ‘peaceful’ white folks with anti-Bush T-Shirts] proves that Bush is the real problem!

Did the democrat “opposition” say even one critical word about the “war on terrorism”, the unjust & illegal ‘war’ against Afghanistan & Iraq, the US kidnapping of Aristide & take-over of Haiti by US trained & financed death squads, the torture of prisoners, the “patriot acts”—or the already mapped-out itinerary to achieve the US global goal as spelled out in the National Security Strategy of the USA which they support? Yes, matter of fact they did indeed...they attacked those wimpy republicans for being soft on “terror”, for not planning the war well & getting bogged down in Iraq instead of “real terrorist” states like Iran, North Korea, Syria and the other “axes of evil” on their “opposition’s” list of things to do for a Pax/Pox Americana. Just let ‘them in there, they’ll do the job right. Ain’t capitalist democracy grand?

The campaign actually makes the hypocrisy, and the next few years transparent as they say. But, not enough to deter the willingly sucked in by the fallout from the 9/11 show & its sequel the “war on terror”: no, it’s too overwhelming, see the progressive sheep collapse. “OK, we give up, ABB, at least he won’t be so unbearable to look at & listen to.”

Liberal [as in liberal/traditional “imperialist vs.” neocon imperialist] has been made synonymous with ‘liberal-left-progressive”, so now all, including most of the ‘left’, go along with the program: the criteria for “our guy” is: who pledges to be most fascist in the name of “democracy, freedom and homeland security”; which one promises to run the deadliest gang in the world, takes his orders from god, swears by every putrid, reactionary idea that millions of good liberals have battled for years, makes it ‘OK’ to be a right-wing hawk gung-ho to kill “suspected terrorists” - as long as they aren’t ‘real’ ‘muricans, and have brown skin - or any color if they are Muslim or dare resist amerika’s world takeover security-racket-- which makes them a terrorist right there cuz remember if you aren’t with US...

Both parties have always been committed to the US imperial agenda, to the imperialist wetdream of global domination, but have pretended substantive differences in order to seduce different sections of the people. Democrats are for the ‘working man’, for the good domestic stuff. One sleight-of-hand trick liberals use is to pretend that global, monopoly capitalism is a different beast than imperialism—pretend imperialism is just about “foreign policy” but capitalism, even globalized, is OK and somehow separate. which means that a democrat could actually change everything just by writing new policies! That’s a lie. Imperialism IS the political-economic-military system of US finance capital which dominates the world. It is not a few “policies” that can be voted or whitewashed from the agenda. It’s a political system whose life-support is destroying the world —whose plug must be pulled.

Now, at this most critical historical conjuncture, with rare, world-shaking possibilities as well as dangers, the capitalist rulers have had to drop most of the pretenses to go for broke - as their neocon PNAC strategists spelled out in detail a decade ago. At this rare moment, will we surrender our critical thinking, our putative ‘progressive’ values, our independent, radical political initiative, and our basic human decency to protect our class and racial privilege by supporting the enemies of all humanity? Will future generations have to ask in horror, as we do about Germany, “how could they let it happen?”

What do we believe in and stand for? What will we fight for and against? What do we really want our lives to be about? We can and must still turn the nightmare around! We need to learn to distinguish friends from enemies, truth from tricks: a major factor contributing to this ignominious capitulation is the democrat “opposition’s” deadly campaign to save global capitalism, bankrolled big-time by billionaire imperialist George Soros and others who have much to lose - or gain . They have spent a fortune to save this system, to mislead white “progressive” lemmings with an Anyone-But-Bush deus ex machina strategem, that paints Bush personally as the source of all evil to get people to"forget” that it’s the system stupid, convince them to believe the problem IS the solution, just replace the face but keep the same system that has made the lives, and deaths, of most people on the planet indescribably and unnecessarily horrific.

It is a crime against humanity to validate & support patriotic imperialist illusions and allegiance to this criminal system. The nature of imperialism can never be reformed. no amount of state propaganda called ‘news’ can change its reality or the profound hatred of the millions forced to live under its ‘humanitarian’ guns & boots. But wherever there’s oppression there will be courageous resistance. There’s always been a world of difference between capitalist reform and revolution. Now maybe more than ever when ‘reform’ has become capitulation and surrender, the very future of the planet hangs on that difference. If we are genuinely committed to justice and peace, we have one real choice: As Mumia Abu Jamal & Arundhati Roy have powerfully taught, to be anti-war means being anti-imperialist. So, we either stick with the PNAC program, or resist, join with the oppressed everywhere to fight US imperialism, join our real allies, whose dreams, whose lives, loves and lands, are annihilated by the ‘amerikan dream’, to build a revolutionary international movement for a hopeful, just, peaceful future and world. That’s worth living for.

Published Saturday, October 9th, 2004 - 01:35am GMT

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