Meditations On Bono Receiving The Presidential Medal Of Freedom From Joe Biden
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Hague fugitive Joe Biden has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to U2 singer Bono, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in a society where everything is fake and we are led by the least among us. Other recipients of the medal this year include Hillary Rodham Clinton and George Soros.
At the ceremony, Bono was introduced with the words, “The Presidential Medal of Freedom is awarded to Bono. As the lead singer of U2, one of the most successful rock bands in history, Bono changes the world through his art and activism. In an Irish tradition of poetry and protest, rebellion and rejoicing, he has composed anthems to peace and civil rights. As a humanitarian, he lifts up causes from ending poverty and disease, to calling for debt relief for developing nations. The common beat of his life’s work is the power of freedom, a tie that also binds Ireland and America as beloved friends.”
Which is absolutely hilarious.
Alan MacLeod wrote a great piece for Mintpress News a couple years ago documenting Bono’s associations with damn near every major western empire manager you can think of, from George W Bush to Barack Obama to Henry Kissinger to Emmanuel Macron to Laurence Summers to the World Economic Forum. He has dedicated a song to former Israeli president Shimon Peres, and written poetry about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky — calling him a saint. He has sung the virtues of capitalism at the WEF, saying that it “has lifted more people out of poverty than any other ism,” and he is the co-founder of an NGO called “the ONE Campaign” which is intimately intertwined with the DC swamp. He has run apologia for the Iraq invasion and US interventionism in Syria.
If neoliberalism was a person, that person would be Bono — one of the wealthiest musicians alive. It just says so much about how gross things are in this warped and twisted civilization that such a creature is viewed as an artist and beloved by millions throughout the western world, and is being presented with an award by a president who is currently facilitating a genocide.
Speaking of the Gaza genocide, to this date the only thing Bono has had to say publicly about the current spate of violence in the middle east was to mourn the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack who were killed whilst raving outside a concentration camp, changing the lyrics of the song “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
“Early morning, October 7, as the sun is rising in the desert sky, Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your pride,” the singer crooned emotionally.
Whenever I’m sad about a musician I like having died before their time, I comfort myself with the thought at least they didn’t live long enough to become another Bono.
This is what western civilization does to art. It perverts it. It makes it corrupt and fraudulent. It turns humanity’s most beautiful and healthy impulse into something with which to sell genocide, capitalism and imperialism. It poisons that creative spark within us and twists it into a tool for normalizing planetary depravity.
The empire attacks something sacred within us all. We are so much less than we could be as a species, because so much of our creative and innovative energy is going into competing and lying and manipulating all the time. The arts. The sciences. They’ve all been strangled to a pitiful trickle of their true potential which would be achieved if humanity were allowed to freely collaborate toward the good of everyone without all our ugliest impulses being elevated.
Our society elevates the worst among us. The artists who are willing to sell their souls to the empire. The scientists who are willing to design killing machines for the military or invent some piece of future landfill manufactured by the toil and resources of the global south. The politicians who are willing to subvert the interests of ordinary people to the interests of plutocrats and power structures. The pundits, reporters and filmmakers who are willing to sell propaganda to deceive us into thinking this is all healthy and normal.
These are the people who are determining the future of our species. These are the people who are making the decisions which drive us further and further in the direction of annihilation and dystopia. We must find a way to free humanity from their grasp before the horrors they are steering us toward arrive at our doorstep.
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If the establishment is good at nothing else, it is very good at determining whom to co-opt, whom to buy off, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
In the case of "Bono", a few tchotchkes and a ceremony was more than enough and he rolled over like an economy-priced sex worker.
As an Irishwoman I can assure you all that Bono is detested in Ireland. He is called a WestBrit by most people, i.e. a person who is more British than Irish. A most derogatory term.
The person embodying the Irish tradition of anti-colonialism, rebelliion and rejoicing is not Bono, who doesn't pay his taxes in Ireland and doesn't speak our native language, but our President, Michae D. Higgins, poet, intellecdtual, linguist and humanitarian.
As for Biden, his Irish heritage has been greatly exaggerated. He is more English than Irish, but then he has always modelled himself on the Kennedys.
Bono is also a mediocre singer. Take a listen to the duets with Frank Sinatra to see how pathetic he is.