Events keep rolling along. One big theme of the events of the moment continues to revolve around a slightly complicated saga.
One way to put it is that people in positions of power continue to neglect and willfully ignore serious major complex problems here, in their domain of responsibility, while meddling, to an outrageous extent, in the rest of the world. Right now, I realize that I might need to stop and check some news to be sure about where, exactly, leaders in the US government might be, literally, in terms of geographic physical location.
Just within the last couple of weeks or so anyway, the news has turned up stories of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Kerry, Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, and CIA Director Brennan all being somewhere outside of the North American continent, not in DC. In some cases, it might be said that it’s part of the job. The thing is, we might need to get into the topic of asking exactly what their jobs are supposed to be.
That’s a bit of a hefty subject of its own, wondering what these people are up to in a time when we have a long list of hefty subjects to address and sort out, right here in this country.
There’s another problem that doesn’t help this task at all. You might say that when things get complicated, there’s a desire for people to simplify things, and unfortunately, what often happens is not that people do the sometimes hard work to simplify things; instead, they get simplistic, which has the problem of making things even worse. What I’ve started calling Bipolare Political Disorder is certainly a symptom of this. People become a little too willing to park thought on the shelf and revert to easy bumper-sticker slogans, cliches, platitudes, and sound-bite “news” summaries.
I’ve written variations on that basic problem many times, and, like other things I find myself repeating, I find myself repeating it all because none of it has changed.
Thinking about that unfortunate state of affairs right now, relating to all kinds of different circumstances and events and topics, I keep finding myself coming back to a general conclusion. That is that probably the biggest reason why virtually none of what I’ve been talking about has changed in any substantial basic way is simply that people are absolutely determined, even fiercely determined, to maintain the pretense, about whatever the item at hand might be. Seriously, just pick a subject.
One thing about the theatrical farce of the US government and the situation in Ukraine is that a regular feature of the pronouncements and declarations of Obama, Kerry, Biden is to include some proclamation about “the world” or “the international community” and what the rest of the world will or will not accept, or will or will not do, or what they think. It’s incredible, just staggering to think that this is considered just standard fare, as if it never occurs to people that the world and the international community might very well be thinking very differently, and part of what they’re thinking might be “you do not speak for us”.
There should have been a bit of a clue back during the episode of Obama’s “red line” admonition, which was soon followed by what seemed, at the time, and now seems almost certain to have been a “false flag” attack, designed to push the US into attacking Assad and the Syrian military. After that, while Kerry and others in our government were proclaiming that it was absolutely certain that Assad, or at the least, some rogue characters in the Syrian army, were responsible, British Prime Minister David Cameron started to go through the motions, obediently following Washington’s command in preparing to join in yet another war to put on a show of a “coalition” joining together, a “unified international community” jumping into another war.
Something interesting happened. The British Parliament got together, had a discussion, had a vote, and informed Prime Minister Cameron “no, we are not”. Closer to home, even Congress managed to do the right thing, somehow, and make it clear that they were not simply going to cough up still another resolution for a military “authorization” that has become a standard feature of American government, for one war after another, without an actual Declaration of War by Congress, or any actual need for defending the nation.
Another bits of news comes up today about the continuing dramas in Egypt. This is a reminder of the reality of the posing and pretense so pervasive in our government about freedom and democracy and people’s right to self determination. Over a couple of years, now, the turmoil and ugliness in Egypt has been going on. For years and years, the position of the US government was to support Mubarek as the head of government in Egypt, while he continued his reign as what anybody would clearly understand to be a dictator, pure and simple.
When people in Egypt begand to revolt openly in the streets in what became known as the “Arab Spring”, the US government had the rather awkward situation of wanting Mubarek to remain in power, as somebody cooperative with Washington, with, one would suspect, some of that being related to the continued funding and supplies for the Egyptian military provided by Washington to encourage cooperation. At the same time, it was a little awkward to support Mubarek and oppose what was clearly a massive uprising of the Egyptians saying “enough!”. That dance of PR problems eventually turned to proclamations of support for the revolt, with grand statements about freedom and democracy for the Egyptians, turning on their old buddy Mubarek when that became an image liability. The Egyptian military stepped in and removed Mubarek, seeing the national situation deteriorating and becoming more violent, a coup.
That made things awkward in a different way, as there was now a government by military coup d’etat, with what was certainly a kind of expectation of the Egyptian military to keep receiving the stream of money and equipment from the US, to remain, you know, cooperative. The problem then was that it turned out that there is a federal law forbidding providing funding to any government of another nation imposed by a coup. So, then, you might recall how that went. People in the US government just did an absurd dance of talking about the situation in Egypt while being very careful to say that the coup was not a coup.
But it didn’t end there. Under pressure to have “democracy” (no doubt Obama, the State Department, and bunch of Congress creatures found this situation more than a little embarrassing), the Egyptian military government conducted elections for a new leader, which was the first democratic election of a leader of the Egyptian government ever.
The thing was, the elected leader was a member of a bunch of theocratic nutballs known as the Muslim Brotherhood. (If you’re not familiar with that bunch, just turn on Fox News and at some point some idiot will be saying that Obama is their biggest fan and supporter.) That outraged a lot of Egyptians who were severely unhappy that their government was going to be run by theocracy. It’s obvious the US government was not comfortable with it, either. More trouble ensued, and next thing you know, the Egpytian military stepped in, again, removed the new democratically elected leader, and it was back to rule by the Egyptian military, and that’s been the deal since.
The point is that the US government has never been particularly concerned about “freedom and democracy” when it comes to Egypt, from the Mubarek years to the present. It’s all about having the government of somewhere else in the world obey Washington’s commands or wishes, in this case, having whatever control possible of the Middle East.
With episodes like this, along with all the massive distortions of reality about the Ukraine situation, including things like the “Jewish registration notice” fraud while calling reports of the neo-Nazi fascists involved in the US supported coup as “Russian propaganda”, the evidence mounts that Obama and company are following right in line with the Bush/Cheney operation in the neocon agenda and lying about everything.
US Fails Miserably to Hold Egypt Accountable, Continues Aid Despite Abuses | emptywheel
New U.S. sanctions target 7 Russian officials, 17 businesses – UPI.com
Posted by John Eagan 
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