I jist finished watching Ukraine on Fire.
If the USA would do that… Then I cant even say in good confidence that the USA is even a republic.
If the USA would do that shit anywhere; then how can any of us trust the results of any American election?
I jist finished watching Ukraine on Fire.
If the USA would do that… Then I cant even say in good confidence that the USA is even a republic.
If the USA would do that shit anywhere; then how can any of us trust the results of any American election?
You probably shouldn’t. There’s a series of biographies on LBJ that have no political aim one way or another. They’re just biographies. The first one in the series “Means of Ascent”, by Grover Gardner goes over a lot of really dirty and obviously falsifying election tactics. All of these things used to be well acknowledged facts of political corruption like stuffing the ballot boxes, paying people to deliver votes, falsifying the regional tallies. I just happened to read this Biography while trying to read biographies on all the presidents from FDR up. It just came out and said completely undisputed historical facts.
Even when George Bush Jr won the election everybody knew the election was stolen. Al Gore was just sufficiently bribed to accept it. Actual electoral integrity has never been the issue. It’s the peaceful transition of power that the political class is concerned with. The parties are supposed to accept whoever steals the election fair and square.
If you haven’t watched JFK by Oliver Stone then you probably should watch it right away.
When Malcolm X said that the Chickens come home to Roost he meant exactly what you’re suggesting. It wasn’t just JFK. Nixon was surprising progressive for being Nixon, even though that side of him isn’t remember. He wasn’t impeached for being too corrupt. That’s a joke. He got impeached for going up against the deep state. Jimmy Carter was gotten rid for being too much of an internationalist. Everybody knows about the Iran hostage situation and how the hostages were held until after the election in order to ensure his defeat.
When Trump was elected the CIA literally said they had “six ways til Sunday to screw the president.” They said that right on the news for everyone to hear. The next thing you know they’ve got cartoonish allegations of Russian Piss tapes. Then they attempted to impeach him after he threatened to withhold arms to Ukraine and investigate corruption.
Each of these events should be viewed as a deep-state coup of the official government, but especially the assassination of JFK and the subsequent assassination of his brother Bobby Kennedy. That represented a straight up military coup.
What I mean to say is that you’re too late. What you’re talking about already happened a long time ago. Don’t ever forget JFK or his brother Bobby Kennedy. JFK was the last president this nation has seen.
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The positive is that competent statesmen and bureaucrats either resign or get purged in such a dishonest and hostile environment. Intelligent and capable people have principles and ethical standards. Even if they’re not mass aligned, they’re aligned with some higher virtue than ‘to the strong go the spoils.’ Capable men are men of their craft. That’s what you saw over the last couple years; a flood of high ranking bureaucrats resigning over official policies. Before that we have the Doulma investigators denouncing the OPCW. Even today Scott Ritter has made a name for himself.
It’s gotten so far that the whole Western Establishment is run by blind fools in a panicked frenzy. It’s what you might call a natural contradiction of fascism. There just aren’t enough Obamas in the world to keep the whole thing running.
Within the imperial core, it’s not just the US, either. What happened to Corbyn in the UK and Syriza in Greece§ gives a glimpse into how all the state apparatuses will come together to neutralise change.
It’s quite scary, but I still tend to see these actors as paper tigers. They only succeed because there’s very little organised resistance (Corbyn, it seems, assumed he could just walk in with enough votes, for example). It’s like you point out, with the removed US presidents – they tend to be lone voices doing one or two good things, but without organised mass support (except FDR, maybe, who had the unions, socialists, and communists on board, and it took three terms and saw a whole lot of reform before be could be dealt with).
I’ve not read many biographies because I was unsure if I could stomach them, but you’ve persuaded me… maybe it’s time to start.
§ hmm… Can Greece be said to be in the imperial core, considering how badly it has been treated in/by the EU?
I would actually not recommend reading presidential biographies if you have better things to read. It was just something that I did while I was trying to understand the last century better. There’s a lot of fluff and caricature.
If you want to read an interesting book that not enough people have heard of I’d read “Inside Hitler’s Greece” https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Hitlers-Greece-Experience-Occupation/dp/0300089236
Considering your question I’d turn toward Yanis Varafankus “Adults in the Room”
I’m tempting to think Greece is a thoroughly colonized nation. During the 2010 crisis they attempted to redress their debts in an amiable way but were hostilely prevented by the IMF and EU.
I don’t know how we should view the imperial core though. Should we view it as entire groups of people or should we view it as similar to the American Empire, as a serious of bases spread out but capable of exerting it’s will. Certainly there are Greek collaborators who facilitate the colonization of Greece and they should be considered as members of the imperial administration. Then segments of Greece would and segments of Greece wouldn’t.
You could view the “Imperial Core” as a more super-structuralist aspect. Even this breaks down slightly. Certain classes among Greek Society would feel tightly aligned with the “imperial Core” while others would feel alienated by it.
I think the most useful way of understand the Imperial Core is in opposition to the Periphery of Empire. Some regions the Capitalist empire has a very strong hold while others the empire has a very tentative hold. Even in the US, at the very heart of the empire we are a colonized people. Materially, only a small segment of the population plays a role in managing the occupation of the US territory for the administration of the empire. Super-Structurally, many of us are completely brainwashed by the empire’s culture, media, and identities, but what really makes us the Heart of the Empire is the firmness by which the Empire holds us and their use of our political structures in their operations.
This is true for all European countries within the EU and all NATO Members. It’s also true for nations like South Korea, Japan, and Australia. These nations are under the firm grasp of the empire and their political structures are used in the operation, administration, and coordination of the empire.
There is always you know… Knowing this is true as an axiom; but to REALIZE just how true it is is really something else.
I think you’ve got a point here. A lot of people know all this at some ironic distance, but they haven’t come to terms with the reality of it. Everybody at least passingly knows the details of the things which deeply concern us. The difference between us and them is that we saw them for the REAL. There definitely is a difference between knowing and KNOWING. It the difference between knowing there’s a hungry bear in the woods you’re camping and KNOWING. There is a much more eminent reality to actually getting it.
Another way to put it. Knowing, realizing, and FINDING OUT.
And now I sit here… Slightly creeped out about the fact that some of these QAnon wackos have a point.
And I just had this creeping question in the back of my head when watching this documentary. If the US would do that to a people; then what EXACTLY prevents the US from doing it to their own? Where is the guard rails on this behavior?
The tail is wagging us.
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