American Exceptionalism: symptoms and causes of a failed state.

Hubris

Now Corona Virus has exposed the Elite Economic Exploitation (40 million Unemployed) and the Health Care Failure (100,000 dead). Compounded by Global Warming and Globalism, the threat to life expectancy, due to the Nuclear Arms Race (See LANL), we also see how Historic Race Relations have been exposed as a “Divide and Conquer Technique,” which pits white against black and brown (Civil War and The Wall).

In my own lifetime, the South Central L.A. “Watts Riots” of 1965, big city riots in the sixties and the anti-war protests seem present as does the March on the Pentagon, 1967: see Mailer’s “Armies of the Night,” and the Kent State National Guard hysteria of 1970. The Rodney King/L.A. riots book-ended race riots in the 90s.

In “Where have all the flowers gone,” Pete Seeger wrote, and Peter, Paul, and Mary sang: “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.”

Bush I’s Iraq war followed by the 9/11 attacks caught Bush II unprepared, reading children’s stories, despite warnings by the Intelligence Agencies. The “fake” news (also promoted by the NY Times) used non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction as an excuse for destabilizing the Middle East. That policy also turned American Leaders, turned into “war criminals,” (one of whom lives part-time in Taos).

Even today America’s longest war in Afghanistan continues as the American military suffers the fate of prior empires, who invaded but couldn’t hold that country, whether from Alexander the Great in 330 BCE,. followed by the Brits, who got massacred in 1842. Surely, we who survived the Vietnam era, thought, surely, we would not make the same mistake again. But Americans attacked an indigenous population, who beat the Soviets with a stick, and would defend their homeland against invaders because Afghanis would rather fight than eat.

The Bush-Obama band-aids for Bankers (not for mortgage holders) in 2008-09, followed by Obama police- state imprisonment of “whistle blowers” under the “Espionage Act,” underscored the liberal deporter-in-chief’s assassination of American citizens: Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki and son (the former born in Las Cruces, NM), also contributed to the decline of the rule of law at home and the rise of the surveillance state re: terrorism. In systemic failure, nobody is innocent.

Trillions for the Military, little for Social Justice but debt for students.

Now as the Trump team dismantles regulatory agencies and “loots” the federal government, destroying the legacy of FDR’s new deal, so he violates sacrosanct Constitutional prohibitions, profiting from foreign interference in elections. Though caught red-handed, Senators ignored the law and turned Trump loose. Now El Viro turns the “Virus” loose on American citizens.

“Trump will do it again if not removed,” said Adam Schiff of the House Impeachment Committee.

This lawless administration seems intent on letting the Corona Virus “die-off” continue, perhaps believing it will kill more democrats than republicans. Mesmerized by the power that runs amok in D.C., Trump and AG Barr threaten us with the “law and order” of fascism.

During the democratic campaign, the media said “pooh pooh” to Bernie’s visionary solution: “realistic” proposals to adjust inequities in America; bring righteousness to race relations, economic equity, and promote health care for all, while recognizing the scourge of human-caused climate change, which relates directly to globalism and the rise of the pandemic. Too expensive they said, as they gave away trillions to the rich and more trillions to save the economic system from the Virus.

How many studies of social ills in response to riots, the breakdown of civil society, have been shelved?

When President Lyndon Johnson failed the American people in Vietnam he withdrew from politics. Robert MacNamara, JFK-LBJ Secretary of Defense, said about the Vietnam debacle, he was “terribly sorry.” (Too late, buddy, said SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen). When President Richard Nixon lost support, he resigned. Trump plays golf.

The media on left and right continue to glorify Celebrity Trump by displaying his image and quoting him as if…which can be translated as “The horror, the horror,” said Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, transformed into Brando-Kurtz’s valediction in “Apocalypse Now.”

How many more times must Congress bailout exemplars of failure, like Boeing, whose planes fall out of the sky, while they take government bail-outs but lay-off 12,000 workers?

Where’s the money for testing and tracking El Viro? Here at home in the Southwest, Navajo die in Dine land, the descendants of those who survived the 19th century Manifest Destiny/genocide, including survivors of the search and destroy/scorched earth mission led by Kit Carson (a 19th Century part-time Taos resident).

Bernie has a vision of justice. Biden trades in the “Happy Talk.” Trump tweets. The young people riot.

“When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.”

“Resist in Peace,” said Patrick Larkin”(1956-2019)
(A peaceful full-time Taos resident)