Our government has become oblivious to the ignominious irony of its policies and actions. Therefore, it blunders on, never questioning why often much of what it does produces the very opposite of either its stated or actual intentions.
Without intended irony, it arms the rest of the world to make it safer. Anyone with a checkbook can obtain weaponry from America. The U.S. is by a huge margin the biggest supplier of military hardware to the international community. We are then shocked when these same weapons end up pointing at us, now in the hands of bin Laden, al Qaeda and other militant extremists.
Without intended irony, it incentivizes corporations to export America’s jobs, reasoning that the healthier these corporations are, the sounder will be the economy of the country, evidence of spreading poverty and grotesque income inequality be damned. TPP and TTIP are the latest virulent initiatives toward transferring national sovereignty to multinational corporations, strengthening America by draining it of its self-determination and economic vitality. These so-called trade agreements are NAFTA on steroids. We just hope there’s an open seat at future Third World economic conferences and those countries don’t despise us for plundering their natural resources all these years.
Without intended irony, the President declares himself the “environmental president” while promoting the greatest surge in domestic oil and gas production in our history, including the use of fracking and opening up vast stretches of pristine land and fragile offshore sites to ruinous exploration and drilling. The U.S. still refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty, only marginally participates in world conferences on the environment, and most certainly fails to provide much-needed leadership on issues like climate change and the rapid and dramatic decline in the health of the oceans. The only environment we have protected is a business environment which worships plunder for profit.
Without intended irony, America holds itself up as the beacon of democracy in the world while supporting ruthless despots and grotesque tyranny throughout the world, likewise tolerating the corruption of the electoral system in America itself. Welcome to a world where money buys politicians and the voice of the common citizen is silenced both by oligarchical monopoly of the national conversation and voter disenfranchisement.
Without intended irony, the U.S. promotes democracy in the Ukraine by encouraging the overthrow of an elected government and replacing it in a coup with neo-nazi thugs and plutocrats, who then rig the next election which they of course claim validates their rule, then training and supplying the neo-Nazi National Guard with weapons. As we should suspect, this is part of a bigger plan which has nothing to do with spreading democracy, and in fact reignites old antagonisms with Russia and puts us all at risk for World War III. Nice work, eh?
Without intended irony, the U.S. affirms its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons by spending more now on upgrading our existing stockpiles and R&D on new more destructive nuclear devices, than we did at the height of the Cold War. With over 4,800 nuclear warheads in its current arsenal — enough to destroy life on Earth many times over — we negotiate agreements with our allies to expedite the efficient use and deployment of our bulging arsenals of collective mass suicide.
Without intended irony Obama promised to foster transparency in his administration, yet has increased secrecy, prosecuted whistle blowers at a record rate, has fanatically clamped down on leaks, drastically curtailed freedom of the press by attempting to force journalists to reveal their sources, classified more government documents and communications than any president in our history, has overseen massive and intrusive surveillance by the NSA and other national security agencies of innocent Americans, foreign nationals and even heads of state of America’s allies, and continues to expand the capacity of government agencies to unconstitutionally monitor and record every interaction by U.S. citizens.
Without intended irony, it honors its “responsibility to protect” by attacking other nations, killing a lot of innocent people, creating fear and animosity in the rest of the world, and as a result it fails its responsibility to protect the people it is most responsible for, American citizens. With our cavalier use of military force, we are more feared, resented, despised than ever. Serious blowback is inevitable. How ironic, eh?
Without intended irony, we scold other countries, like Russia and China, for being bullies, while we ignore resolutions and concerted efforts of the United Nations, refuse to join the ICC or acknowledge its legal authority over us, reserve the right to use our military at any time and place of our choosing, skirt the Geneva conventions by using torture, harass and bomb countries we are not at war with using drones and special ops troops, and talk about needed cooperation among members of the international community while economically strangling with sanctions any country which does not bend to our unilateral dictates.
Yes, we fail to see the irony in all of this. We choose to turn a blind eye to the deceptions and self-sabotaging contradictions. This has indeed made our country sick, an anemic and feckless nation of sheeple, vis-a-vis the noble ideals we once held and now unconvincingly espouse. We struggle with buckling knees in an increasingly futile attempt to prop up the political house of cards we’ve built of self-deception and delusions.
No house of cards can rise forever. The longer we pile rationalizations and faulty logic on imperialistic hubris and sociopathic fantasies, the closer we come to its ultimate collapse.
It’s no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.
It will collapse.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take the foundations of our once great nation with it and we are still left with something upon which to rebuild.
