If it’s any consolation to Hillary Clinton (not that she needs it) had the US Election been held in Britain, she would’ve won by a margin of over two to one. But while Americans are more alert to political codswallop, I can’t help feeling that incessant corporate media propaganda there will bear a heavy responsibility if we wake up to President Clinton tomorrow. Our addiction to tribal ideology continues.
All day long – like Vesuvius sitting atop a magma of sewage – the US media have been spewing out red-hot excrement against Trump, while offering Clinton the warmth of their collective opinion about how “every poll” says she’s going to win.
The reason for both those actions is not exactly a brain-teaser: for the American mainstream stations and titles have but two communications objectives:
- “Hey there Trump supporter, you chose the wrong one”
- “Hey there Trump supporter – don’t waste your energy…it’s all over”.
Judging by the early voter analysis today, they may well be right. But powerful media have the principle of self-fulfilling prophecy on their side.
To be more exact, the final eruption began from late evening ESDT in the US, when the chat shows started…..and a hundred lightweight pundits began churning out limp jokes about what the Democrats have laboured so long and hard to tell the American people were the Donald’s shortcomings. He’s in Putin’s pocket, Deutsche could bankrupt him, he’s a rapist….on and on it went. There were of course no jokes about buggered Benghazi ambassadors, Qatari bribes, Foundation embezzlements, national security lapses and the belief systems of close advisors: it is, let’s face it, hard to make jokes about serial dead bodies, corruption, criminal accounting and treason. So that probably explains their absence.
But the names and occasions will linger on, and perhaps come back to bite the Second Clinton White House in the butt: Chelsea Clinton’s wedding expenses, J Christopher Stevens and his defenceless compound, Anthony Weiner’s access to top secret emails, a disgraced Wasserman Schultz, Bill Clinton’s cosy parley with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and – perhaps bigger than most – the security clearance given to known Islamist and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Now just in case the above comes across as a Brexit Brit wiseass US-bashing post, let me offer you some research carried out in the UK by an American company- Pollfish – in Britain during late October.
- The study found that, if they could vote in the U.S. elections, 51% of the British would vote for Hillary. Only 21% would choose Trump, and 27% would not vote at all.
- The vast majority of the British (73%) think Hillary would do a better job than Trump at creating good diplomatic relations with the UK. Only 27% of UK residents said the same for Trump.
- Even among those who voted to leave the EU, 48% support Hillary versus only 28% for Trump.
That suggests almost twice as many Americans are awake and paying attention compared to the British. And given a large-scale British survey found last year that over three quarters of all Brits thought the US “our best ally by far”, I would have to concur with the Pollfish findings: viz, we of the Sceptred Isles are simply not paying attention.
Too many moons ago for me to recount, there really were only good guys and bad guys. The good guys were decent citizens who wanted to be left alone, help look after those who’d been left behind, but as and when necessary go out and stop the totalitarian ideologist nutters following Stalin and Hitler.
The bad guys were those making excuses for the actions of Left or Right fascists. These arseholes squirmed their way through Poland, Berlin, Hungary, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, Vietnam, Zimbabwe and Tianmen Square.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union – and the rapid colonisation of former Soviet satellites by the European Union – what both Western socialist and neocon ideologies have been trying to do is make good guys bad guys and bad guys good guys depending on what their various Party Lines insist is the Truth. Worse still, those belief-fantasies have been overlaid by the cold, dead hand of universal pc.
The degree to which the process has produced tedious predictability alongside astonishing contradiction is probably unique in all recorded history.
The use of misogynist 4-letter words is condemned, but when uttered by black rap artists is excused as art.
Female genital mutilation and repression is excoriated, but overlooked when shown as the natural belief of Islamics. Those who point this out are dismissed as racist Islamophobes.
The European Union is held up as a beacon of peaceful coexistence, but its flagrant disdain for the Rule of Law, illegal bullying of member States, imperial ambitions, corrupt carpet-bagging and disastrous fiscal/currency dysfunction are ignored by the liberal press. Anyone presenting empirical evidence of the problem with federalist aims and fascist directives is written off as “a little Englander”.
In the UK, what we have today is bitterly opposed Conservative and Labour Parties nevetheless at one in their determination to quash the will of rank and file members and ordinary citizens, and instead serve the interests of their donors. Both Parties prefer to put the patched eye to the ideological telescope, rather than face the reality of philosophical boils left unlanced for far too long.
The problem is our ideology addiction.
I’m beginning to sound like a looped recording. More to the point, I’m beginning to lose the point of constantly repeating this observation – when there is little or no evidence that enough people out there think it worth making.
The Slog 