by Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Election after election, Americans sat idly by as decent candidates who challenged the status quo were shunned and dismissed by the media as unelectable. All the while, demagogues on power trips were continually thrust into the limelight as the only viable options. Well, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Exactly how nonsensical the 2016 presidential election could get — and how far mainstream media would go to distort facts and significance — received a resounding answer this week, thanks to Wikileaks first massive disclosure of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s hacked emails and the oh-so-convenient twin reminder from the DNC via the media that Trump said some awfully lewd and disgraceful shit some 12 years ago.
While the two campaigns are now lobbing barbs at one another over the supposed revelations (the sensible among us knew all along to be true), the corporate media presstitutes busied themselves condemning all things Trump — while pretending not to notice the ginormous implications of any number of eye-popping disclosures about Clinton found in the Podesta leak.
Let’s face it, America — we’re doing it wrong.
Perhaps this first installment of Julian Assange’s long-awaited October Surprise should have fallen in our laps in the nascent stages of Clinton’s bid for the White House. Perhaps the Washington Post — in virtual certain coordination with the DNC and/or Clinton campaign — should have let slip the repulsive Trump video when he first began to lead the field of GOP presidential hopefuls.
Perhaps Hillary’s perfect track record of fabrication, mendacity, near — if not outright — criminal behavior, and interminable list of scandals should have nullified any integrity for the presidency in the American public’s collective mind, if not landed her behind bars, years ago.
Perhaps Trump’s laughably false reputation as businessman extraordinaire, despite a history replete with scamming, conning, shortchanging, failing to pay, lawsuits, swindles, bankruptcies, and, oh yeah, those not-at-all worrisome underage rape allegations and the aforementioned statements, from his own mouth, about forcing himself on women against their will, should have prohibited any intimation of hopes for the White House before the thought ever crossed his mind.
Apparently none of these matters occurred to any of the players involved — or, maybe they did — and strategy dictated their timing less than a month prior to the national election because, at this point, it’s too late for America to reverse its idiotic, failed-from-jump-street course toward utter disaster.
We’re not only speeding toward the edge of a perilous cliff, but arguing over who should steer the wheel — leaving no one competent enough available to man the brakes.
It’s additionally entirely possible control of the wheel won’t matter, considering the current driver’s obstinance might first divert us into full-scale world — if not nuclear — war.
War, it should be noted, that will be funded through debt and with our tax dollars.
And several theaters of military operations — as war has not yet been officially and never will be declared in Syria, Yemen, and other sovereign nations — directly fuel this potentially decimating and longer-lasting theoretical World War III.
Wars having nothing to do with the betterment of humanity, the advancing of innovation, the freeing of enslaved peoples, the furthering of liberty, the enriching of anyone but the military-industrial machine, or even, necessarily, with the hegemonic taking of someone else’s natural resources.
Wars the imperialist government of the United States, which has incidentally gone rogue and no longer represents its people, undertook in the name of fighting both the terrorism and terrorists it created and continues to fund — again, with our tax dollars.
Wars which somehow made acceptable the bombing of hospitals and markets and schools and aid convoys and emergency workers and weddings — as well as militaries against which no official declaration of war, again, has ever been made.
And as if these altogether astronomically alarming points weren’t telling enough of 2016’s surreality, there’s actually so much more.
Americans not embroiled in vicious debate over which godawful candidate could be worse for our future posit inane theories about Kim Kardashian’s … whatever … or freak out about a nonexistent clown apocalypse or scold the dead victims of police violence for not being in complete compliance with laws governing nonviolent, noncriminal, victimless acts that should not exist in the first place or lambaste an athlete for protesting the wrong way and showing ostensible disrespect for a piece of cloth and a song symbolic of all of these problems.
Have we lost our fucking minds?
Much of the world seems to think so — and, given the evidence, how far off can they really be?
We’ve become a culture of victim-blamers, censors, politically-correct social justice warriors, hypocrites, race-baiters, xenophobes, instigators, whiners, tattletales, finger-pointers, perpetual victims, hyperbolic crybabies, narcissists — and generally experts in everyone else’s lives but our own.
On the other hand — though you might not realize, since these headlines don’t sell — we’ve also quietly innovated, organized peaceful resistance, come together despite differences, taken successful stands against callous policies and reckless industries, usurped the mainstream media’s forever-faulty narratives, subverted Big Government, spread awareness, helped save our planet’s flora and fauna from near ruin, and generally effected good works.
So, perhaps, hope does indeed spring eternal.
Perhaps someone cagey and powerful or loud enough might yet dive for the brakes. Perhaps absurdity’s epic proportions will prove to the public-at-large that — once and for all — our loyalty to the parcel of land on which we exist should not extend arbitrarily to the ideologues claiming to rule it.
Perhaps elections are distractions, war only lines a few wallets, and the end of the American empire will not only ultimately bring peace — but is far past due.
