Re: <nettime> nettime-l Digest, Vol 9, Issue 6

[Allan Siegel via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hello Francis et al,

The two party 'system' of democracy in the U.S. is a rapidly dissolving 
scam orchestrated by oligarchs and corporate interests whose task is to 
promote the image that U.S. citizens can play a meaningful role in how 
their country is governed. The U.S. is not necessarily unique in this 
regard but the manner in which 'third party' candidates (and ideas) are 
marginalized in the U.S. has its own special flavoring. Biden's embrace 
of Netanyahu is like Chamberlain's encounter with Hitler - an exercise 
in projecting illusions.

The fact that there is widespread disillusionment with Biden's response 
to the war in the Middle East is telling and indicates more far reaching 
fractures in the institutional fabric of the U.S. government and the 
forces that control and shape domestic and foreign policies.

Probably the last meaningful distinctions between the two political 
parties was in the contest between Nixon and Kennedy. This revolved 
around foreign policy issues such as the Vietnam War and Cuba and 
brought JFK into conflict with Nixon's gurus the Dulles Brothers who 
pulled many foreign policy levers. Kennedy was assassinated, remember?

Meaningful public political discourse was buried many years ago, Chomsky 
has detailed this rather thoroughly.

cheers

allan


On 06/03/2024 19:11, Francis Nowak via nettime-l wrote:
> > For Biden, they've become a 24/7 noise
> > machine about the supposed problem of his age, and their "legitimation" of
> > that pseudo-issue has consumed their reporting
> "Beer brew here is used to [unintelligible] to make the brew beer
> [unintelligible] ooh earth rider thanks for the great Lakes" - Joe Biden,
> 2024. I mean, he's a pretty old guy, like a lot of the guys packing the
> upper reaches of the US political scene. You remember Mitch McConnell
> freezing mid-speech a while back? Or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at the
> wheel at age 87, leaving the Republicans with an absolute majority in the
> Supreme Court, to the terrible detriment of women across America.
>
> Trump's also pretty old (77 to Biden's 82), but I think he's lived a more
> relaxed kind of life, and his general speaking style (remember Covfefe?)
> makes a virtue out of unintelligibility, digression, left-field
> interjection, as the relentless chaos-machine of Trump's subconscious
> steers him through. You remember all those quotes you used to read from
> Trump where he came across as unhinged? If you watch him speak, it's not so
> much that he's mad, as it's just all ad-libs, off-the-cuff, like a slime
> mold reaching out a tendril one way and the next, hoping he'll find
> something.
>
> For me, I don't get why anybody feels obligated to close ranks around
> Biden. Nixon had it right: the whole mechanism of politics in a two-state
> America is about who hates who. It is not a system where people vote for a
> good candidate - it's a system where people vote for keeping the worse
> candidate out. And that's why Biden is there in the first place: if the
> electoral system strongly biased towards charismatic, competent candidates,
> nobody could imagine Biden coming out on top. I mean, would he even be in
> the top fifty percent of US citizens? Would Mitch McConnel? Would Nancy
> Pelosi?
>
> Practically, you have to hold your nose and vote for the guy, but do you
> have to pretend you're voting *for* him? Half of the USA would vote for a
> dog with mange if it was on the ballot, and it meant Trump wouldn't get in.
> Half of the USA voted for *Trump*, so Clinton didn't get in.
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