The power of the privileged elite, like capitalism itself, is predicated upon lies and delusion. Their power appears formidable and insurmountable. In reality, it is as tenuous and ethereal as a wisp of smoke. A virtuous man or woman causes them to quake in their shoes and wet their pants. The nation’s rulers are not like ordinary Americans; they are psychopaths. I cannot confirm if they actually believe the lies they have planted in the public mind, but I do know that they have a preternatural fear of truth and mass revolt. They loathe Democracy and Socialism like the plague.
Nothing exemplifies the elite’s fear of truth more than the absurdities circulating in the corporate media. Because capitalism is in terminal decline and the economic, political and social institutions of the US are corrupted and undemocratic, emancipatory journalism is under assault, as is reality itself. Truth must be denied and kept from public view at all cost. If the masses move from false consciousness to true consciousness, there will be trouble.
Owing to feckless politicians, many of them democrats, and fearing mass dissent resulting from developing class consciousness, Russia Today (RT) is being forced to register with the US Department of Justice as a foreign agent. When will the journalists that criticize capitalism and expose the corruption of the US political system be required to do the same? When will people of conscience begin to disappear?
It is the power elite and the institutions they have corrupted, including the corporate media, not Russian agents, that are sowing dissent. It is growing class consciousness among American workers that is producing discord. Foreign agents have nothing to do with it, but grotesque inequality, opulent wealth, and its counterpart—destitution, killer cops and injustice does.
Capitalism is predicated upon the exploitation of workers—an awareness that is gestating in the minds of workers like a developing fetus. Higher consciousness inevitably leads to resistance. The growing realization that “at will” workers are expendable wage slaves causes internal conflict. When that conflict does not find a healthy outlet, it can lead to pathology — mass shootings and other acts of systemic self-mutilation.
The two major political parties, both of which represent capitalists and the militarized corporate state, are complicit in perpetuating an elaborate hoax on America’s working class and her poor. When the truth is finally revealed, some heads are going to roll. The ruling class knows that: hence the evolving militarized surveillance/police state.
During America’s reprehensible episode of chattel slavery, the slave owners’ worst nightmare was slave rebellion. Nat Turner and his men transformed that trepidation into reality, and so did the Russians in 1917. The fires of revolution are still smoldering underground. The fundamental conflicts inherent to capitalism remain unresolved. When these fires break through the surface, as they inevitably will, the established order will be burned to the ground.
What, if anything, arises from the ashes cannot be known, until it happens. Clouds of entropy and chaos are gathering. Vultures are circling overhead.
Even with advancing age, a conscientious man need not mellow or moderate his radical leftist ideology, much less apologize for it. If that man is awaking and if he is socially and politically astute, his consciousness will grow as he ages, and it will hasten the ripening of the fruit of wisdom and dissent. His outrage will mature, not shrink. He will see things as they really are, and he will be able to connect the dots in order to discern the bigger picture and comprehend the political motivation behind events. He will identify all things in their appropriate relation to other facts and interpret them in their proper historical context. He will speak inconvenient truths, and he will make people uncomfortable. He will run risks. Like Socrates, he will be a gadfly.
But a conscientious man is not easily deceived. He holds onto his truth with the tenacity of a pit bull. Principled people cannot be dissuaded or thrown off the scent of truth; they have a functioning shit detector. Neither can they be bribed. They never back down or seek to avoid conflict; they embrace struggle because they know it is the only vector to justice.
Flag worship, nationalism, reverence for the national anthem and the military, and what is commonly called patriotism, are right-wing ideologies. Their purpose is to promote obedience and respect for authority. Patriotism is a tool of oppression that is used to prevent dissent. It serves the interests of the oppressor, not the oppressed. Organized religion serves a similar purpose: to keep the rabble in line and to preserve the power and privilege of the ruling elite.
While there is no indisputable absolute truth: there is ordinary truth, the kind that is simply demonstrably true; it is supported by credible, verifiable peer-reviewed evidence that makes sense of everything. It meets the smell test of dialectics. Reality revolves around truth like the Earth revolves around the sun. A nation of people that are incapable of grasping truth are delusional; they lack the character and fortitude to grapple with reality and its inconvenient truths. They cannot see what is in plain sight. Fear blinds them.
The power elite and their minions have retreated into realms of fantasy and magical thinking—a parallel universe of alternative facts and fakery. The corporate media is one of these alternative universes; it is saturated with unsubstantiated conspiracy theory: anti-Russian hysteria, the Kennedy and King assassinations, 9-11 and the myth of American democracy. It reeks of the CIA, FBI and the deep state.
A republic that loses its orientation to reality is hopelessly confounded and lost. It flounders and thrashes without a functioning moral compass. It becomes a nation of dead men walking, destined to cannibalize itself and everything pure, good and decent. Such a republic will not long survive.
• Author’s Addendum: These observations and statements should in no way be interpreted as an endorsement of violence; that is not the author’s intention. All forms of violence, whether committed by the state or by desperate individuals, must be renounced. Violence begets violence. The underlying cause of mass shootings and other acts of desperation are, I believe, related to inequality and oppression. I am advocating that root causes be examined and addressed non-violently. Inequality is a form of economic violence. My concern is that America’s ruling class will make the words of John F. Kennedy come true: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” That is what we are trying to avoid.