americas

If one ventures into the vast wasteland of American television it is possible to miss the truly ridiculous content that is promoted as news by the major networks. One particular feature of media-speak in the United States is the tendency of the professional reporting punditry to go seeking for someone to blame every time some development rattles the National Security plus Wall Street bubble that we all unfortunately live in.

“Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.” So declared Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But he was wrong. The gods don’t make them mad – they make them stupid.

History has always treated harshly those tyrants and strongmen who have been gratuitously violent toward their subjects and citizens and believed in purposely creating misery for their charge. Donald John Trump, the third impeached president of the United States, decided to clear peaceful protesters gathered a full block from the White House, so he could have his photograph taken standing in front of a church. It was not any church, but St. John’s Episcopal Church, dubbed the “Church of the Presidents,” owing to the several chief executives who have worshiped there over the decades.

A hot humid day, but a gentle, warm breeze is blowing. The smoke and tear gas swirl gently to and fro, hanging in the dense, sweaty air, as shafts of dazzling sunlight scythe through the smokiness at sharp angles. A mass protest is forming. Youths are chattering; people moving aimlessly. It still has not solidified into purpose, yet the raw tenseness of the coming conflict hangs, as palpably as does the smoke in the air. It is evident – there will be violence today.

The racist summary execution of Citizen Floyd has created an historic moment of truth for America and the new populism. The social violence we are starting to see in response to the twin-evils of the police state, whether by public executions by the police or COVID-lockdown and, is what we forecasted starting with pre-COVID analytic pieces like ‘Rage and Bloodshed Ahead’ and several essays afterward on that theme in March 2020.

Right now, across the USA there are either mass protests or mass riots depending on whom you ask and as usual the Punditry and Mainstream Media are doing their best to make this seem like an isolated, never before seen event on American soil. But, it seems like it was only yesterday when the Ferguson Riots/Unrest were going to be doomsday for the USA. And before that the LA riots were the sign of the Apocalypse, and so on. No matter what the talking heads tell you, the United States has seen this type of chaos many times.

When Gil Scott-Heron released the iconic song it was a cry for racial justice. But it was far deeper than that. Because Scott-Heron spoke the truth that media was subordinate to power.
That’s why he knew the revolution he spoke of would never be on television, the most powerful form of media in the world at the time. Controlled by very few because technology had not transformed communication, corporate media crafted whatever narratives it and those it was subordinate to wanted.
And those narratives are always sick, divisive and foremost fake.

Today’s fires which have spread across America in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the knee of Minnesota police officer Derick Chauvin has presented America with the chance to do some serious soul searching. It has also presented certain Deep State opportunists, color revolutionaries and anarchism-financing billionaires a chance to unleash what some are calling an “America’s Maidan” in the hopes of accomplishing what four years of Russiagate failed to do.

As I predicted some months ago, President Donald Trump’s failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic will likely doom him to being a one-term president. As I write, the official death toll from the pandemic is well over 98,000. My approximation figure was always that keeping the death toll below 50,000 would ensure Trump’s reelection. U.S. national deaths between 50,000 and 100,000 in number would put his re-election in the Twilight Zone. Figures soaring above 100,000 would lead inexorably to defeat in November.

There have been U.S. presidential candidates in our lifetimes that seemed like really pathetic offerings such as the soulless human business suit that is Mitt Romney. There have been some that could have competed. had they gotten the big nomination, if not for one big mistake like Howard Dean. And there are some that just had really tough incumbent competition that they had no hope of defeating like Walter Mondale. However, as it stands today there is no (serious) candidate in the past few generations of American society worse than today’s Joe Biden.