The events of Tuesday have forced me to change my views about history, my country, and mankind’s future.
It’s better to be honest than to pass around fairy stories. This is my effort, at the end of my career, to adjust you to reality.
I Was Wrong
I was wrong concerning America, its history, and its system of government.
I was taught that America was special, that Americans were special, that our better angels would always come to save us.
None of that is true.
America’s success is an accident created by ruthless, racist men from the Great Nations of Europe, starting in the 15th century. They were helped in their genocidal way by viral diseases, which exterminated an entire race and left a clear field on which to work. They brought with them slaves to work those fields. The Constitution I once revered was just their effort to protect slavery. After slavery was found uneconomic the Constitution was adjusted, this time to protect money, a financial order without moral compass.
What Americans believe in is comfort. Our own comfort. We’re no different than anyone else. I think this is a uniform desire, and that the definition of comfort rises as you get more of it.
Some of us try to look out for the other guy, but most of us don’t give a shit. That means democracy is bollocks. It’s a delusion to think any government based on ideals can maintain itself against the greed of men seeking comfort for themselves and their chattel.
That’s what families are, or so most Americans believe. Families are chattel. Women are servants, children created to maintain the system of comfort for the master in his lounge chair and shiny pick-up.
Our delusions about democracy helped create the greatest level of mass comfort the world has ever seen. We have used that comfort only to sustain itself. The “American Century,” which ended this week, was based entirely on force of arms. Ideals had nothing to do with it. We have the weapons needed to destroy the world so we’re just going to do it until our comforts are gone.
Ever since World War II, great men have argued that America had a unique role to play in the world, that we were its savior, its repository of high ideals. That’s how I was taught, and I believed it. But my fellow Americans have now tossed all that away. We’ve ripped the mask off to reveal fat, lazy, air-conditioned assholes who are indeed willing to be conned, again and again, by anyone with the confidence to do it.
The world sees that. The mask is now gone. It can’t be remade. It lies at our feet, revealing the monster beneath. That monster has control over great wealth and great machines, but without wisdom, without some sense of right and wrong, its reign is destined to be briefer than that of any Chinese dynasty.
That’s where I want to start this story.
If most of us really didn’t care, Biden wouldn’t have won.
There’s reason to believe that the electoral system in this country really is slightly rigged toward the Republicans (partly on purpose and partly as a result of the way history worked out), but since modern voting is a black box, there’s really no way to tell. If that’s true, yes, our system is “bollocks”, but that’s because it’s a democracy reserved only for some. Thomas Jefferson, of course, warned that democracy needs an educated populace, and when it comes to politics, that’s a whole bunch of what we don’t have now.
The Constitution does enshrine slavery, but AFAICT, most of the men who wrote it didn’t want it to–they thought they had to do so in order to get the South on board. But they didn’t try to lay down a “road to abolition” that the South could live with.
When 1820 came, the North probably should’ve told the South to stuff it, but they wanted to avoid the Civil War that eventually came forty years later. This, ironically, may be part of what caused America to have such a paranoid mindset when it comes to war. Just as going to war in 1938 might’ve meant a smaller war in Europe (but no one knows), an American Civil War in 1821 probably would’ve been a much smaller affair, with less death and destruction.
The lesson America has learned from these things, I suspect, is that if war is inevitable, it’s best to have it sooner rather than later, when it will supposedly be worse. That kind of paranoia can screw up a lot of things, but I suspect it also makes the War Party’s positions on any given foreign policy more understandable.
If most of us really didn’t care, Biden wouldn’t have won.
There’s reason to believe that the electoral system in this country really is slightly rigged toward the Republicans (partly on purpose and partly as a result of the way history worked out), but since modern voting is a black box, there’s really no way to tell. If that’s true, yes, our system is “bollocks”, but that’s because it’s a democracy reserved only for some. Thomas Jefferson, of course, warned that democracy needs an educated populace, and when it comes to politics, that’s a whole bunch of what we don’t have now.
The Constitution does enshrine slavery, but AFAICT, most of the men who wrote it didn’t want it to–they thought they had to do so in order to get the South on board. But they didn’t try to lay down a “road to abolition” that the South could live with.
When 1820 came, the North probably should’ve told the South to stuff it, but they wanted to avoid the Civil War that eventually came forty years later. This, ironically, may be part of what caused America to have such a paranoid mindset when it comes to war. Just as going to war in 1938 might’ve meant a smaller war in Europe (but no one knows), an American Civil War in 1821 probably would’ve been a much smaller affair, with less death and destruction.
The lesson America has learned from these things, I suspect, is that if war is inevitable, it’s best to have it sooner rather than later, when it will supposedly be worse. That kind of paranoia can screw up a lot of things, but I suspect it also makes the War Party’s positions on any given foreign policy more understandable.
P.S. Slavery was legal throughout the British Empire in 1776, except in the mother country itself. Without the Revolution, the Northern states might never have been able to abolish slavery; they would’ve had to wait until the British Empire abolished it in the 1830’s. I once read that Benjamin Franklin’s last public act was to sign a petition calling for the abolition of slavery.
P.S. Slavery was legal throughout the British Empire in 1776, except in the mother country itself. Without the Revolution, the Northern states might never have been able to abolish slavery; they would’ve had to wait until the British Empire abolished it in the 1830’s. I once read that Benjamin Franklin’s last public act was to sign a petition calling for the abolition of slavery.
P.P.S. Part of the problem of our time is that too many of us no longer understand that it’s smart and wise to look out for the other guy. We’re led to think of the other guy as a competitor in a Darwinin struggle for survival, when instead we should realize that a society where everyone is happy and secure is the best kind of stable society.
P.P.S. Part of the problem of our time is that too many of us no longer understand that it’s smart and wise to look out for the other guy. We’re led to think of the other guy as a competitor in a Darwinin struggle for survival, when instead we should realize that a society where everyone is happy and secure is the best kind of stable society.
P.P.P.S. Four columns and not one mention of Joe Biden, but plenty of mentions of Donald Trump. Did you write these in advance figuring that Trump would win?
P.P.P.S. Four columns and not one mention of Joe Biden, but plenty of mentions of Donald Trump. Did you write these in advance figuring that Trump would win?