Everybody Knows: Do They?
“Everybody knows the boat is leaking/Everybody knows the captain lied”
– Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”
When the polls closed on Tuesday, November 5th, I was sound asleep, like a baby rocking gently in his cradle, lost to the frenzied rants or joyful shouting of the different political claques. Even though I missed the results of what the mass media had been telling us was the most important election in our lifetimes, I was happily oblivious to their cant. I remember hearing that nonsense many times before.
I gave up on my country’s electoral system more than fifty years ago. Every presidential election is a contest between two sides of the ruling monied elite, chosen to represent their interests. It is corrupt beyond repair and was so even then. Do most people have a clue that their country is owned and run by a small group of the super-rich and ten or so financial institutions, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, etc., the big banks and financial interests that in 1947 formed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to spearhead the U.S. warfare state around the world in support of its economy that is reliant on endless war?
The electorate continually puts its hope in the performers that the spectacle’s producers put up to front for their interests, failing to grasp that the rulers’ interests are not theirs. Arguing and anguishing over certain policy differences between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, they fail to see that both exist to serve global capital, not regular people, that exchanging presidents is a counterfeiter’s con-game with the voters the scammers’ marks.
Trump’s current victory is an example of that, as was Biden’s in 2020. If Harris had won, it would have proven the same. They are two sides of one coin. That the system is rigged by the oligarchs should be obvious but isn’t. Or maybe it is obvious but people secretly harbor a perverse liking for it. Stranger things are true, as on personal levels people embrace the symptoms of their neuroses because the symptoms are their disguised solutions, their ways of staying stuck because change is hard and frightening and requires admitting repressed realities.
The cliché that all politics is local has a certain appeal and a trace of veracity, but 99 + % of the truth lies elsewhere. Apprimately 145 + million Americans just lined up to vote like puppies looking for a bone to be thrown their way by the people who own the country. They do get a bone here and there, which keeps them looking for the meat, but that is reserved for the fat cats, as always.
I understand why people prefer upbeat words, but very often the upbeat is really the downbeat of hopelessness in disguise. A coverup. And seemingly hopeless words, such as that our presidents are the public personae of the rapacious oligarchy, are actually far more hopeful, even though they reveal long-held assumptions to be delusional.
Imagine what might happen if a great portion of people refused to vote for the charlatans chosen to run for president.
The fear that there was even a slight chance that this might happen lies behind all the pep talks and moralizing about doing your civic duty, which is such “a privilege.” Vote, even if it’s f
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
