Since last weekend and F.B.I. director James Comey's decision to intervene in the presidential election, I've been depressed. It struck me as yet another coup by the powerful to nullify democracy. It's like the Supreme Court's selection of George W. Bush back in 2000. This time the F.B.I. is the intervening agency. Its maneuver, like what happened 16 years ago, embodies the corruption of a system that needs to come down.
After all, American imperialism is responsible for most of the world's problems: unending wars, oppression of poor people everywhere, planetary destruction by way of human-induced global warming, and reversion to pre-Magna Carta torture and imprisonment without charge or trial. The U.S. system has the world controlled by a relative handful of the obscenely rich capitalists whose economic theories and practice provide no hope of alleviating the poverty afflicting most of the planet.
All of that demands that in the name of humanity, in the name of Mother Earth, the system just described must be destroyed.
But how would such destruction occur? It all seems so entrenched and is controlled by overwhelming military and law-enforcement powers -- not to mention a network of propaganda and miseducation that keeps citizens asleep and rebellion at bay.
It's like the Soviet Union before 1989. Ours is a weary, completely dysfunctional Old Order supported by politicians such as Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and yes, by Hillary Clinton and her husband. All of them (and especially the Clintons in today's electoral context) represent the very embodiment of the ancien regime. They all endorse unending war, restrictions on human rights at home and abroad, constant surveillance of our communications and persons, low wages and cut-backs on the government services previously funded by taxing the rich. None of our politicians is willing to address criminal wealth disparities, climate change, the threat of nuclear war, falling living standards prohibitive health-care costs or student debt.
In such dire straits, and as Michael Moore has suggested, most of us intuitively see that the system just described needs to be blown up. It needs someone to throw a Molotov cocktail at the whole thing. But who?
Enter Donald Trump! Enter the U.S. electorate!
Voting for Trump represents the bomb the desperate subconsciously require to destroy arrangements that no longer serve. It's like the Brits and Brexit. There ordinary people refused to be led by the "experts." They knew the system had to be destroyed. So they gave the middle finger to their "betters."
Yes, Trump's an absolute lout, and a know-nothing. He's a climate-change denying sexist and racist xenophobe. But as such he makes clear to the entire world what "America" has become -- what it in fact is -- a country controlled by the greedy, uneducated, anti-scientific, religiously fundamentalist, racist, sexist, domineering, undemocratic, and xenophobic. With his election, it will no longer be possible to pretend otherwise.
In other words, Donald Trump represents what's needed to spark the revolution against everything he and our country has come to embody. His election may be what's required to destroy the system as we know it and to catalyze the rebellion roiling just below the surface of contemporary American life.
So following his election just watch the agents of revolution come together. I'm talking about:
- The civilized world
- Women tired of being objectified and harassed and underpaid
- Environmentalists
- Black Lives Matter activists
- "Fight for Fifteen" workers
- The New American Indian Movement resisting installations like the Dakota Access Pipeline
- Prison strikers
- Immigrants
- Indebted students
- Other people energized by Bernie Sanders
- Muslims at home and abroad
- Religious leaders like Pope Francis
- And Mother Earth Herself
But, be forewarned: there will be a rough ride ahead of us. Should Trump win, we will experience all the troubles connected with a genuine revolution.
God help us!
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