Donald Trump has been made the central character in U.S. politics around whom everything revolves. But whether he wins or loses, the imperial status quo will be unchanged, says Caitlin Johnstone.
Rightists who are discontented with the American political status quo have been herded into supporting a politician who embodies that status quo as much as any other president, wrongly thinking they are waging a battle against the establishment by doing so.
And this is mirrored on the other side of the imaginary partisan divide in U.S. politics, with people making entire identities out of despising Donald Trump and acting like this makes them brave revolutionaries.
When Trump was first elected I had hope that the Democrats who’d fallen asleep at the wheel under Barack Obama’s administration would become politically engaged again and start criticizing the evils of the U.S. empire like they did during the Bush years.
But what actually happened was that while Democrats did start paying attention to politics again, they were corralled like livestock by the mass media into opposing things that had no relation to the actual realities of the U.S. empire and how it functions in the world.
Instead of focusing on Trump’s many depravities listed above, Democrats wound up spending years shrieking about a completely fake conspiracy theory that the executive branch of the U.S. government had been taken over by the Kremlin, only to lose interest and pretend nothing happened after the Mueller investigation failed to indict a single American over any involvement with Russia.
They spent all their political energy freaking out about Trump’s mean tweets and how rude he was to members of the press, while ignoring or even praising his administration’s reckless warmongering and tyranny around the world.
So Trump has been made the central figure in U.S. politics around whom everything revolves, and whether the election is won by those who support him or those who oppose him, the imperial status quo is guaranteed to remain unchanged.
As Americans become more and more discontented with the abusive nature of their nation’s government, a man has shown up who leads both Democrats and Republicans to believe that the best way to stick it to the man is to take a highly emotional position either for him or against him.
When really whether he wins or loses couldn’t matter less to those with real power.
Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room for real discourse about real things. Under President Joe Biden at least we’ve been seeing some real opposition to real things like the U.S.-backed atrocities in Gaza, but under Trump it was four years of both mainstream political factions screaming about made-up nonsense under the delusion that they were fighting the power.
The Fake Decoy Revolution
And that’s all mainstream electoral politics ever is in the U.S. empire: a fake, decoy revolution staged for the public every few years so that they don’t have a real one. A symbolic ceremony where the public pretends to cast the abusive status quo into the sea so they feel like the battle against their oppressors has been won.
And then their oppressors just keep right on oppressing them.
Every few years the public gets to choose between two reliable lackeys of the oligarchic empire, and then all of the evils of that empire get pinned upon the winner. The public then directs their rage at the lackey rather than the actual power structure which has been oppressing them, after which they have another election to rid themselves of the scoundrel once and for all.
They hug, they cry, they celebrate, and the oppression machine continues completely uninterrupted.
As Gore Vidal once said:
“It doesn’t actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they’ve had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run. A very small group controls just about everything.”
The Oligarchic Power Structure
That small group is the plutocratic class whose legalized bribery and propaganda machine has immense influence over U.S. politics, as well as the imperial war machine and special interest groups with whom the plutocratic class is allied.
From this point of view, the oligarchic power cluster is essentially running its own employees against each other and having them promise to end the injustices which are inextricably baked into the oligarchic empire.
Americans live in a totalitarian state whose most important elections are rigged from top to bottom, and they’re fed news stories about Evil Dictators in other countries rigging their elections to remain in power.
Politicians cannot change the status quo to one which benefits ordinary people instead of their oligarchic owners, because the oligarchic empire is built upon the need for endless war, poverty and oppression.
You cannot have a unipolar global empire without using violent force (and the threat of it) to uphold that world order, and you cannot have a plutocracy without ensuring that a few rulers have far more wealth control than the rank-and-file citizenry.
For this reason, even politicians who run on relatively progressive-sounding platforms are themselves a part of the fake decoy revolution unless they demand a complete dismantling of oligarchy and empire.
The Illusion of Progress
The politicians who present themselves as progressives in America today offer only light opposition to some aspects of empire and oligarchy, in effect merely supporting an oligarchic empire that gives Americans healthcare.
Since keeping Americans poor, busy and propagandized is an essential dynamic in the hub of a globe-spanning oligarchic empire, this is a nonsensical position; the oligarchs don’t want ordinary Americans to have money to burn on campaign donations and free time to research what’s really going on in their world, because then they might meddle in the gears of empire.
The Need for Direct Action
A power structure built upon economic injustice will never permit economic justice.
The door to meaningful change in America via electoral politics has been closed, locked, bolted, welded shut, and barricaded with a metric ton of solid steel.
The problem is that this will never happen as long as Americans are being successfully propagandized into being content with their fake decoy revolutions. There is a zero percent chance of electoral politics leading to an end of the empire, but a concerted effort to spread awareness by those who understand what’s going on just might.
The Power of Awareness
All positive changes in human behavior are always preceded by an expansion of awareness, whether you’re talking about awareness of the consequences of one’s addiction leading to their getting sober or an expansion of awareness of the injustices of racism leading to racial justice laws.
Making people aware that the mass media are lying to us about what’s real, aware of the horrors of war, aware of the underlying dynamics of the economic injustice which is grinding Americans into the dirt, that can lead to a chain reaction which sees the collective using the power of its numbers to shrug off the chains of oppression as easily as you remove a heavy coat on a warm day.
What’s needed is for the people to awaken to the truth. An entire empire is built upon a pair of closed eyelids.
