John Chuckman comment: America’s politics without meaning – the fundamental questions about the country’s modern structure which no American from patriot-type to self-proclaimed socialist dares raise

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON ZEROHEDGE

Michael Moore Loses It (Again): Warns Of “Extinction Of Human Life Due To Donald Trump”

But contrary to some of your words, Michael Moore is neither a “leftist” nor a particularly liberal guy.

His record of political support proves that absolutely. General Wesley Clark? Hillary Clinton?

He is also a talker and not much of a doer when it comes to politics and social issues.

He is just one more comic American political figure, yet another buffoon.

American politics are packed with them, in all shapes and sizes. Airheads, narcissists, phonies, cheap opportunists – a regular human menagerie.

John McCain. Newt Gingrich. Joe Biden. Lyndsey Graham. Chris Christie. Trent Lott. Bill Clinton. Nancy Pelosi. Good God, what a sad parade marches across America’s national politics.

There is unquestionably a tragi-comic streak in American politics.

Part of it is in something a great critic called the “culture of complaint.” This is a phenomenon observed by outsiders and given its name by Robert Hughes, in which Americans argue endlessly without ever solving or achieving anything.

All kinds of pro- and anti- groups form on any issue you care to mention, and all the groups provide soapboxes for wannabe politicians, and almost nothing ever said or done amounts to anything beyond a great deal of noise.

I suggest the roots of America’s truncated politics as being both the way politics are financed and the massive reality of America as world bully, an ugly reality which goes pretty much unquestioned by all significant participants in American politics while they quibble about this or that fine point.

These two things form the entire foundation for modern American society: elections which cost billions of dollars each campaign, assuring only candidates the donating elites approve of and a massive, brutal world empire, which entails the ugly realities of the Pentagon, 17 national security agencies, plus regular coups, overthrows, and colonial wars.

You never even get a guy like Bernie Sanders, self-proclaimed socialist, seriously questioning the thing that overwhelms the political reality of America, the thing which chews up money, creates endless conflict, and slowly destroys the very freedoms Americans like to foolishly believe they enjoy. The Patriot types are the most foolish in their childish words on the subject, but in the entire American political spectrum, you find no serious questioning of foundations for fear of being called disloyal or cowardly.

It all makes the establishment pretty much unassailable in a form of permanent government with the constant demands of empire always put first but with lots of pretty window dressing about democracy and rights. Hopes for change are dim to non-existent. Even pushy, billionaire, iconoclastic Trump is pretty well shut-down already. I very much doubt he will achieve anything worth achieving.

The final truth Americans just cannot face up to is that you can have a world empire or you can have a free society. You simply cannot have both.