The Monster Puts on Makeup, or How the Empire Renews Itself
By Vladimir Acosta – Feb 10, 2020
At last with Trump out of power, the Monster that is the US Empire starts anew with Biden, a new and urgent coat of make up, trying to regain its world image, and searching for a veneer that will excite Latin America.
It ‘s not the first time this has happened. The Monster’s always wearing makeup. And with the US two-party system and its false democracy, the most frequent makeup artists have been the Democrats. I point to several cases.
Eisenhower, republican, imperialist aggressor, promoted a coup in Iran to crush the nationalist government of Mossadegh and return Shah Reza Pahlevi to power, another in Guatemala to overthrow the progressive government of Árbenz, and a direct invasion of Lebanon. He was succeeded by the Democrat Kennedy. Young, elegant and dynamic, this one aroused great illusion. But, outside of makeup, nothing changed. Kennedy achieved his narrow electoral triumph thanks to his father’s friendly mafia, invaded Cuba and was defeated, started the Vietnam War and ended up murdered in a suspicious manner, which fed the illusion that he was going to change something.
Nixon, a republican, a repulsive, tricky and arrogant character, provoked the coup that overthrew the democratic government of Allende in Chile, to impose the murderous Pinochet dictatorship, and in Vietnam not only took the war to monstrous extremes but, seeing that it was lost, he submitted Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam to genocidal bombardments that almost destroyed those countries. And he ended up resigning power, threatened with impeachment in the Watergate scandal.
His successor, Carter, a Democrat, returned artifice to the country. However, the Carter who, after being defeated by Reagan in his re-election bid, and who in subsequent decades appeared as a defender of democracy, was an imperialist president while in power. He brought Israeli Zionists into Central America, started the Afghan war to provoke communist Russia by arming the Taliban, confronted the Iranian revolution by supporting and protecting the Shah, supported Somoza in Nicaragua, and started the war of aggression against the Sandinista revolution.
Then came the last illusion, the biggest and most fake of all. Following the second Bush—the exploiter of the extremely suspicious attack on the World Trade Center, the invasion of Afghanistan; the criminal war against Iraq, falsely accused of having nuclear weapons; the Patriot Act; internal repression; torture and neo mercantilism—came the accession of Obama.
Obama was hypocrisy and lies in power. He received a Nobel Peace Prize in advance, which his government trampled with impunity with its wars and crimes. He sold more guns and murdered more black citizens than Bush. He kept the US in perpetual war while speaking of peace and friendship. He used NATO to invade Syria and Libya, and his vice president celebrated the sickening way in which Gaddafi was killed. Always with clean hands, he had Bin Laden assassinated so that he would not speak. He promoted coups in Honduras, Paraguay and Ukraine. He declared Venezuela an unusual danger for the United States, and made his favorite entertainment killing thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis, men, women and children, who were celebrating weddings and family gatherings, with drones that he piloted from the White House.
The worst thing is that this illusion did work. And not only that, but it still endures. And it lasts for a single reason, which goes against reality, but is worth a thousand arguments: the power of the big media, those that based, on accommodating Manichaeism, lies and half-truths, impose everywhere, in the press, radio, TV, networks and cell phones, this false truth that reaches everyone and that everyone repeats. And it is to this falsity that Biden tries to return.
However, there is a powerful force that opposes him and that will hinder the success of that illusionary return to the United States prior to the years of Trump’s government. Of course, they are not the naive who believe in Obama, and believe that the Empire can always be renewed. It is a material force that has been gaining weight, that collides with the false media truth of the profound power that dominates the United States, and that has even cast doubt on the current governments of servile Europe, masochistic worshipers of the gringo Empire that despises them, humiliates and orders them. It is the material force that Trump unleashed, and that caught on in a large and important part of the US population, because it is a direct and sustained product of the terrible crisis that the US population has suffered for years, in the midst of its disappointment on the State, power, and partisan manipulations. It is a multifaceted force that explodes at every step, exposing its scope, peculiarities and deep contradictions.
The current crisis facing the United States is multiple and profound and cannot be solved with mere makeup aimed at hiding and deferring uncomfortable and profound realities. In this sense, the chances of success of Biden’s attempt to return to the Obama era are more than remote. And Trump did not create that crisis, it originated much earlier. What he did achieve, without wanting to, with his arrogance, narcissism, racism, aggression, mistakes and terrible attitude towards the pandemic, was to fan the flames, and make it explode in all its various levels.
This crisis is nothing but the inevitable decline of a proud and arrogant Empire beginning to reveal its slow but unstoppable collapse, its internal rot, and its need for a profound change, that no one will attempt. And it is the case that Empires rot—decadence makes them more dangerous, and it’s not uncommon for them to appeal to war, taking advantage of the enormous power they retain despite this growing decline.
The Monster is sick. The crisis in the United States was not solved with patches of makeup and even less with a government like that of Biden, a lifelong servile and mediocre imperialist, an active accomplice in all the wars of the Empire, new and old, an indecisive and half-stammering man surrounded by a team that, despite its apparent diversity and costumes, is more of the same. Internationally, his speech is that of Trump, sweetened with a soft name to make it digestible: making America great again becomes “we are the lighthouse that gives light to the world, and we’re here again to direct it.” His inauguration speech was an example of this. Biden, a Catholic, spoke of the union of all, of peace and love, like an old hypocritical priest, and after asking God to bless “America,” he concluded by asking for another blessing from God for his troops. His Secretary of State repeated what was the farewell of Pompeo: that we must unite the whole world against China, and continue to attack Venezuela, saying that even more painful sanctions will be imposed on our country.
And there is something else that the Biden administration seeks to achieve that is key: destroy not only Trump but the Republican Party itself. As they mount Trump’s final impeachment, they have turned the January 6 attack to the Capitol building into “the most serious terrorist conspiracy and criminal coup project in American history.” The manipulated investigation that they mount for this is directed not only at the liquidation of Trump and his 75 million votes but also of the Republican Party, which would cease to be an adversary for the Democratic power.
Despite Biden dominating Congress, the absurd impeachment should fail because it puts Republicans in a dilemma. They cannot support it, and if a part of its congressmen supported it, the Republican Party would be divided into two opposing groups and therefore annulled as a competitor for power. In this, too, the Democrats should fail, unless the Republicans “self-kill themselves,” as Carlos Andrés Pérez would have said.
There is no room for illusions with the Monster.
Featured image: File photo courtesy of Twitter/Mark Hamill.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
Vladimir Acosta
Venezuelan Historian and graduate in Philosophy from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). In 1994 he won the Municipal Prize for Literature in Caracas. Prolific writer and columnist.
