The U.S. has evolved to “Inverted Totalitarianism”

By Martin Love

NORTH CAROLINA - Mike Pompeo continues to write and speak garbage about Iran. His obvious aim: turn the person in the U.S. street against Iran, or at least, spew enough propaganda over and over so that no one of weak mind, a majority, is going to object to the Trump gang doing whatever it wants in and to West Asia, and that in subservience to the Saudis and the Zionists.

Without the assistance of the mainstream U.S. corporate-controlled media, except in isolated instances where some columnist manages to get some truth published in a major U.S. newspaper like the New York Times or the Washington Post, there is still far too little direct objection to all the lies. But at the same time, clarity and some truth at least ARE making advances in a two step forward, one step backwards fashion.

 This process is dangerously slow, but it is happening, as it appears that Trump has scant hope of reelection in 2020 if he ignites, or allows other to ignite, a military attack on Iran. The “public” seems to be simply tired of wars in the Middle East, and the deflection of tax dollars for foreign policies that have not served average Americans nor resulted in ANY “victories” for the U.S. – unless chaos has always been the chief aim, and almost no one in the government will admit to that.

 It is a marvel to realize that the U.S., if it did have other objectives (aside from bolstering the apartheid regime in Israel and others which create chaos), that the U.S. has not won a single “war” (given alleged objectives) in decades, the Vietnam debacle being the primary example of a huge loss.

And there is virtually no corner of the globe where there is not a desire now, at least, to reduce the economic and military clout the U.S. has wielded to harm other countries. At the margin, this is increasingly a realization, but one can sort of understand why the process has been so excruciatingly slow.

 Perhaps in more than in any other country, and especially one with a government boasting hegemonic pretensions, the “average” American has little time or motivation to figure out what’s happening overseas in the absence of some direct attack on the so-called “homeland”. Many are beset with economic troubles, for one thing: it has been estimated that over 50 percent of Americans could not come up with $400 in an emergency.

 What wealth that exists lies almost exclusively at the very top of the food chain – among oligarchs and billionaires and those fortunate enough, like many of Wall Street, to enjoy high salaries. The skew mimics the skew seen in 1929, just before the Great Depression of the 1930s. Plus there is the fact of U.S. geographic isolation from other cultures and polities.

 Americans are not “bad” people, although it may seem so to Iranians and many others in Asia. They are mostly just ignorant and have allowed successive administrations over recent decades to chip away at the separation of powers, at the Constitution, at the rule of law and much more, such that the U.S. no longer is a constitutional republic, but something the great but now deceased Princeton University thinker, Dr. Sheldon Wolin, called a state of “inverted totalitarianism”.

Writer Chris Hedges, who was for years a Mideast correspondent for the New York Times, but who was forced out of the newspaper for his opposition to the war on Iraq in 2003, explains this kind of totalitarianism best: “It does not find its expression in a demagogue or a charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state.

 It pays outward fealty to the façade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, a fair judiciary, (etc)…but it has effectively seized all the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent.” (Except that now, Donald Trump literally considers himself a leader, and charismatic, and acts like a demagogue…and could be impeached, but don’t count on it. Trump is still likely to win reelection, provided he does not do something even more stupid than he has already done, like his withdrawal from the JCPOA.)

Meanwhile, it appears Netanyahu will be the one trying to form a new government in Israel. Many are disappointed about this, but Netanyahu is likely to accelerate Israel’s decline in world opinion since unlike Benny Gantz he won’t have any kind of grace period as the reelected PM.

And the Saudis are in steep decline post the attack on Kurais and Abqaiq. The war on Yemen has been a disaster for the Saudis, especially now. Interestingly, many in the Pentagon knew it would be disastrous well before it all began in March 2015, but the Saudis gave the U.S. no advance notice of their attack that Spring. The Houthis were actually considered a bulwark against al-Qaeda in Arabia and some senior officers in the Pentagon reportedly considered supporting them in some fashion until the Saudis began the war.