The Last 4th of July

by Mike Meyer

Predictions, as the old Danish saying goes, are difficult to make, particularly if the future is involved. Often, however, the problem is not predicting what will happen but when and in what form. By destroying standards and shared ideals what is left is has no foundation.

The United States is finished. It cannot survive the rise of fascism in one of its two political parties in conjunction with the imposition of an illegitimate government by, predominantly Russian interests, for the disruption and elimination of democratic principles.

One of these conditions could probably be survived but not two. In fact it is difficult to identify the critical blow to the federal system as the allowance of unlimited gerrymandering to give power to a minority, racist party, court packing, fully supported voter suppression (again racist based), destruction of public services and public education, wealth consolidation into a tiny group, and permanent asset wars to keep a critical mass of people employed and under control are all critical to the collapse of the US as it was.

This did not happen overnight but over forty years of growing minority control that was unquestioned. Many people feel now that it was inevitable as two hundred plus years of racism, lies, and distortions to hide the origins of the US in genocide and slavery would eventually poison the nation so that it could not fight off the inevitable, periodic attacks by the forces of autocracy and authoritarianism. There have been may close calls providing arguments to say that right will, again, overcome the bad.

But nothing stays the same and even the good minded raised in the strange hot house of United States provincialism supported the political and economic system that had steadily grown more corrupt. The good ended up supporting the bad for lack of any alternative. This is the Obama administration’s tragic failure to do what needed to be done to purge the system of the old but growing infections. Assuming that those in positions of elected power would, in the end, act for the common good was a critical component of faith. When that assumption proved to be false and one of the two major political parties shed the last vestiges of pretense and became willing to ignore all laws and principles, there was nothing left to fall back on.

The worn argument that what was happening over the last forty years was simply the same old political games and nothing would come of it culminating in an openly manipulated election and the placement of a mentally crippled criminal as the front, could not hold. Yes, fools as presidents and Congressional corruption have been seen before. Influence by foreign governments is as old as government but not at this level with this level of technical sophistication.

But the difference is not the presence of these elements but their consolidation with the absence of any policy but destruction of national unity for authoritarian control. The disease that kills may start from the common cold but a range of other factors and, specifically, the failure to treat them as they appear can result in death. That is obvious on this July 4, 2019.

The forces of authoritarianism evolved confusion and misinformation to control populations effectively in the 20th century. The crude idols of nationalism designed to worship racist, ethnocentric and xenophobic deities as a distraction from corruption, exploitation, and mindless plundering while expanding an elite’s power to protect them from retribution are the essence of that evolution.

Historical analysis will debate for decades, if humanity survives at that level, what happened to America. The combination of great wealth poorly managed, waste, militaristic expansion for fossil fuel assets, and the failure to refocus economically from uncontrolled materialism with climate destruction are the planetary result. That the production of material wealth was the center of the emerging disaster and prevented even acknowledgment of the consequences of the climate crisis on full display made the fall into authoritarianism inevitable.

The contradiction of knowledge of the causes and consequences of unlimited production made it impossible to support those policies in even a limited representative system. The majority of the population, with growing fear at the planetary climate disasters, increasingly demands change and the return of public services to mitigate the inevitable hardships along with policies of planetary unity.

Having lost the majority, those in power controlled by the radical capitalists, needed to destroy representation and democratic principles in order to maintain policies of national and planetary destruction. The absurdity of that could not risk any kind of rational administration. Insanity was the answer.

So the United States succumbed to insanity despite a large majority struggling against powerlessness in a system that they were always taught answered to them. The wild incompetence of the Trump regime and the outrageous ignoring of all laws that structured the ideals of the nation are as clear a sign of the end as it is possible to have.

The purveyors of insanity and the Typhoid Marys of fascist nationalism need to be sequestered and then formally removed from this system. A new structure needs to be put in place that will face centuries of climate struggle and maintain absolutely sacred rights of all no matter the challenges of population movement and resources loss.

The conversion of the United States’ July 4th summer celebration into a jingoistic nationalist political stunt for the Trump regime is a sad show. The media, as always now, struggles to maintain the facade of normality as the vast majority of the population works to ignore the display.

I’m afraid that July 4th, 2019 is the last 4th of July in American history. It has been removed as an ode to democracy and the future.