I remember the awe I felt in September of 2001. I didn’t believe what had happened. I couldn’t. I was in high school, and for hours, I thought it was a joke in poor taste. It wasn’t really until the next day, on the 12th, that the notion that the Empire was vulnerable really sank in.
As part of growing up, even far away in Scandinavia, it was a monumental moment. Much like, I suspect, the murder of JFK or perhaps V-day.
Last Wednesday wasn’t like that. The storming of the Capitol building in Washington DC felt inevitable. Granted, it was an important moment in the history of the US and for it’s position as the dominant power in the western world. But it wasn’t a surprise. It had been foretold. So foretold, in fact, that it seems that some parts of the MPDC were even in on it. For the past four years, five if you include the election process of 2016, the American democratic experiment has been steamrolling toward this conclusion.
I hate to admit it, but it is not without a fair amount of schadenfreude that we from the outside witness the United States of America tear itself to bits. It is not without reason that the internet brought out popcorn to watch the prototype of modern democracy burn its own credibility to the ground. Americans may not like hearing it. Nor will neoliberals or free market sharks. But it is not just China and Russia and North Korea that have been gloating this week.
So then, will this be the wake-up call that the US needs to get its shit together? One might hope, but don’t count on it. We’ve already heard talks of a new front on the ‘War on Terror’, turning inwards against the growing threat of domestic terrorism. The ‘War on Terror’ was a heinous reaction in its first incarnation, and there is absolutely no sign that this next facet of it will be anything but another step towards turning the USA into a police state. Or, I should say, even more of a police state.
Look, there’s no punch line here. Other than perhaps a lame “I told you so”. The governance of the World Police took a nasty hit. But even a half-naked Buffalo Boy bumbling his way through the Capitol building won’t likely be rock bottom in this decline.
The bottom line is this: The US may very well be in need of a revolution to get back on a decent track. Certainly not the kind of revolution that these MAGA-cretins thought they would deliver, but a revolution that shapes a country where childish outburst like this won’t just benefit an empowered elite to entrench their status quo of warmongering resource colonialism. But all they got was this red herring thinly veiled as a privileged and uneducated temper tantrum. Which is just plain sad.
/Sebastian Lindberg 12/1-2021
WastedWords 