Presidential
Catastrophe
Jim Kavanagh
The United States of America is on the verge of World War III in three different theaters. Its social economy and infrastructure are in tatters. It’s actively engaged in genocidal ethnic cleansing—killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of mainly children and women and spitting on every precept of humanitarian and international law—on behalf of an atavistic settler-colonial project. It is more than ever despised and less than ever feared in a world escaping its control. And in this catastrophic conjuncture, our political and media culture throws up two of the most ridiculous and incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading us into the abyss.
Our electoral system is insultingly anti-democratic. Built
around donor control, a pastiche of opaque voting and tabulating systems
including black-box proprietary electronic machines that allow (and therefore
make inevitable) undetectable fraud, and, topping it all off, the Electoral
College, it is designed to evade the popular will and enable fraud. Donald
Trump and Kamala Harris are the two most perfectly clownish figures to lead this
election circus, which is guaranteed, on purpose, to end up in a fight over the
result.
As far as I’m concerned, as I’ve argued before, the
proper response to this is an organized public political boycott. A smart left
political movement would lead the fight, uniting all dissident factions, to
make the electoral system transparent, honest, fair, and democratic as a condition
of participating in it. No voting in a rigged system. The ruling class doesn’t
care too much about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the
people not voting, not giving legitimacy to the system,
is what the ruling class fears the most.
But no one seems interested in exiting the Big Top, so let’s
bring in the clowns.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better, more radical, exposition of who runs the country than this gem:
Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don't. Trump said this week that he "gave" the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House "almost more than anybody." Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 22, 2024
Just as I promised I recognized Israel's eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after... And as soon as I'd give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I'd give them something, they'd want something else. I said, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?
But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it. You know, for 72 years, they've been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn't have the nerve. But I said: You know what? I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less. on the Golan Heights. And he did. And I said: Let's do it. We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?
Yup. Even more radical than his notorious answer as a candidate at the Republican debate in 2015: