US Politics Is Just Nonstop Fake Revolutions Now
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
It’s so silly how American politics is just nonstop fake revolutions now.
Millions flooded the US streets for the “No Kings” protests over the weekend to oppose a monarchy which does not exist without making a single tangible demand. Power was not challenged in any meaningful way. The status quo wasn’t disrupted in the slightest. People held up some signs saying the president is orange and that if Kamala were president they would be at brunch, and then went home.
The whole thing was just one big pep rally for the Democratic Party, designed to accomplish nothing beyond getting American liberals excited about the prospect of someday voting for Gavin Newsom. A bunch of boomers showed up to dance around and hold signs and feel as though they are fighting the power in their feely bits, while drumming up support for the same status quo which gave rise to Trump in the first place.
You see the same fake revolutionary astroturf zeitgeist on the Republican side. American rightists are constantly pretending they’re fighting some kind of populist rebellion against an oppressive establishment even while their party controls every branch of the US government. They act like Trump is ending the wars and fighting the Deep State even as he stomps out free speech on behalf of Israel, rolls out a Palantir surveillance system, pours weapons into facilitating Israel’s genocidal atrocities, bombs Iran and Yemen, ramps up for war with Venezuela, and perpetuates the horrific proxy war in Ukraine.
It’s two plutocrat-owned warmongering imperialist parties whipping their respective bases into the mass delusion that they are participating in a heroic act of revolutionary defiance by voting Democrat or Republican. They get everyone fighting a fake revolution so that nobody thinks about fighting a real one.
It didn’t used to be this way, for the record. The US has been a murderous and tyrannical oligarchic bloodbath for its entire existence as a nation, but up until fairly recently its politics looked more or less like the politics of other western nations. Politicians had campaigns where they’d try to argue that they have the best policies, there’d be an election, and then they’d spend their time in office philandering and pretending to make themselves useful. There wasn’t this constant LARPing about how voting for one of the two mainstream parties is participating some kind of a courageous insurgency against monarchy or communism or the Deep State or whatever.
That’s changing because public discontent with the status quo is soaring to all-time highs as Americans get poorer and everything gets shittier. The establishment order is no longer accepted and people are starting to push for real change, so their outrage needs to be harnessed and corralled into politically safe directions.
Donald Trump’s entire political career has been all about this. He introduced a new WWE-style kayfabe theatrics into American politics where both Democrats and Republicans feel as though they are fighting the power in a very important and relevant way — Republicans because they believe Trump is a populist rebel and Democrats because they believe Trump is an unprecedented threat to freedom and democracy. Really his whole thing is about protecting the status quo of the US empire, but both mainstream factions are duped into seeing the exact opposite.
Now you’ve got the two main strands of American political thought falling all over themselves to be the first in line to support the establishment, all while being told that they are fighting the power. They remain mollified because they think they are doing something, and the powerful get to keep everything they’ve stolen.
It’s truly a brilliant scam. Evil, destructive and tyrannical, to be sure, but you’ve got to admire the skill with which this psyop has been pulled off.
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Remember how Team D was against the genocide in Yemen, but only for so long as it could be used as a stick to beat Trump with.
Once Biden presided over that genocide, they suddenly changed sides. Just like that.
I'm glad you wrote about the No Kings rallies, Caitlin. Your "Fake Revolution" description is GOLD!