The American Dream now the American Nightmare

A ZNN Editorial

Reflections on the US Election

The provocative and invective-laden nature of the US Presidential election campaign and much of the associated rhetoric has effectively eclipsed news and authentic discussion concerning substantive issues and policies - disarming informed debate and holding for ransom the very future of American democracy. 

The American electorate has been treated to a political vacuum of unheralded and deadly proportions. It appears a new American nightmare is ready to emerge no matter who is elected. Some say, "Settle down - take a pill", but it may not be that easy to get rid of this kind of headache.

With the so-called US election just days away, the campaign and its ultimate results have become a huge pit in the stomach of western society and a garish circus to the rest of the world. 

No other US election campaign in memory has ever had as its main focus an ‘attack mode’ that has become so virulent, toxic and media-driven that it has extinguished all forms of rational thinking and overshadowed the necessary discourse of issues, policies and programs so crucial to a seriously fractured United States of America.

The term - “united states" - seems an anathema - a dichotomous descriptor of a schizophrenic collection of territories situated below the 49th parallel and above the Mexican border.  

Mercifully this political and cultural schizophrenia is currently quarantined within these borders and the vastness of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans... though this may change when Americans and the rest of the planet awaken on November 9th. 

Americans witness this social and political dichotomy each time the current President of this disjointed and turbulent nation stands and smiles behind a podium in the White House Rose Garden, fulminating over the fictitious American Dream. The American media takes it all in – thirsty for substance but relegated to drinking the same old punch of Presidential platitudes.

Never – since the ravings of a bombastic Nikita Khrushchev or the disgraced Richard Nixon – has a sitting head of state been so out of touch with reality and dismissive of the demise of his country. 

Sure, job figures are up, the housing crisis on a back-burner and some new infrastructure is in place. Yet there are other more prescient symptoms that cannot be ignored or remain unarticulated.

But the harbingers of the dream's demise are as indisputable as they are self-evident. 

American police are killing citizens at an alarming rate, Congress is in stalemate, racism has been rekindled, three percent of Americans own 250 million guns, the 597 billion dollar US defence budget dwarfs the spending of Russia and China combined while a paltry 42 billion is spent on primary school education. The murder rate in Chicago, ironically hometown to the sitting President, has increased 88% with a staggering 677 shootings between January and March 31, 2016, almost 2 per day in that period alone.

Sadly the list does not stop there...  

Add to the list the incendiary pipeline protests by the indigenous people of North Dakota. Protestors are confronted by the systemic eagerness of American para-military police to shoot first and never answer questions later. Will the blood of indigenous people be mixed with the oil that will flow across the Dakotas after the pipeline is built when FEMA and tanks step in to settle the matter and legitimize genocide? 

It seems the escalating subjugation of indigenous people and framing the American police state and its military as the vanguards of good and power is the ultimate political imperative, while American children are kept illiterate and poor - 2.5 million of them endure homelessness each year. 

Are these the hallmarks of a dream or a torment?  

These danger signs are poised to become even more magnified and pernicious when an apparent madman or an alleged criminal becomes the most powerful leader of the free world.  

This is not hyperbole or a hollow prediction – it is an indictment of things as they are and, of those to come. At issue here is a challenge facing political observers, pundits, journalists and Rose Garden chatter-boxes to answer these questions:  

- What will ever alter this incessant cycle of instability, social anarchy and political loss of consciousness? 

- What cabal entices Americans to engage in a election in which nobody wins, and,  

- Who is really in charge of manufacturing this madness?  

This is the American Dream? From the vantage point of even the most casual and disinterested observer, this is the American Nightmare. 

What solutions have been spun through the media or advanced by the candidates? The cognitive vacuum created by caustic campaign rhetoric seems to answer that question as personified in debates and fed to the electorate by the media as beguiling entertainment.   

What choice is the American electorate faced with? Take the red pill or the blue pill. The stain-driven personal and political credibility of the blue pill - who many are calling a criminal or the red pill - a sociopathic misogynist whose incessant ramblings and lies make headlines almost daily.  

While the electorate looks for solutions, the media instead feeds on campaign hostilities, the fossil fuel industry continues to stuff oil down the throat of anything that moves, systemic secrecy reigns, the environment calls out for help and nuclear missiles stand in silos ready to defend a collapsing dream. Solutions to these enigmas are deftly side-stepped by both suitors as they race each other to the throne of the free world.  

Onlookers could continue to scold and berate the campaigners, US politicians and US institutions for what they are not doing or suggest what they should do. What real good will it do? - they're not listening anyway. Many feel disenfranchised and will opt out of the election - leaving despair the deciding factor in the demise and imminent collapse of the American Dream. These options are indeed frightening.  

One cannot remain insensitive to Americans who scream in desperation into their pillows at night hoping this nightmare will be over soon so they can get on with the next one... a madman or a criminal for President.

The most sad feature of the election results – which ever way it goes – won’t solve a thing. 

There are only two choices here. 

If the sociopath were to triumph, a desperate planet will have a lunatic at the helm – fingers twitching towards the nuclear button as he bakes bricks for a wall.  

If the reviled and FBI-dogged madame should be victorious – little will change. A stench of sameness will settle over the land after the election soot settles. 

If the madame does claim the White House a collective sigh of relief will only permit US citizens to be consoled temporarily. The system will move on - a continuance of the dangerous same-old same-old with perhaps a somewhat slower but nonetheless painful spiral into historic oblivion for the American Dream… if there ever was one in the first place. 

After taking the red or the blue pill on November 8th Americans are destined to awaken with one massive and throbbing headache on the morning of November 9th. A headache that was predestined. Its cause? The end of one nightmare and the beginning of another.

God help America.

COMMENTS

UnknownNovember 4, 2016 at 12:20 PM

America has left Divine ordinance as the rule of existence, falling for relativism as what dictates moral conduct. One deeply interested in how this has all taken place in the last fifty years should read up on the Frankfurt school (Google it). It explains nicely how Hollywood, and then the print media, came around to call lust and bodily pleasure as the rule of existence-- with greed not far behind. The Democrat Party Convention in 2012, which renominated Barack Obama for President, booed and cat called when the name of God was pronounced by attendees at that convention. Anyone with the smallest amount of intelligence would have known what this meant and what was coming. Only a total spiritual revival, where God is recognized and honored as King of a people, can turn around the lawless cesspool that America has become. I am not holding my breath for this to happen.
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AnonymousNovember 4, 2016 at 4:38 PM

Victor? Excellent, precise article. You write for an educated audience and use words that are expression exact. I also found the alliteration very enjoyable. Nice to read good writing--for a change.

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Richard O'ConnorNovember 4, 2016 at 8:01 PM

A key word from this insightful essay is "disenfranchised", but the vast majority of kind and generous, albeit too patriotic and too naïve American citizens continue to refuse to see our situation for what it truly is. That this election is symptomatic of the rot that has long festered within our government should surprise no one, but I do not agree that its primary source is "Godlessness".

The U.S. led UFO cover-up continues for almost 7 decades. The continuing shock waves of the "inside-job" we call 9/11 will soon likely propel U.S. troops back into Iraq and on into Syria, perhaps ending in a direct confrontation with Russia - a conflict that could potentially involve nuclear weapons. U.S. citizens are (mostly unwittingly) living in a nation based on a foundation of huge lies designed to further establish U.S. hegemony around the globe and beyond. We are pawns ensnared in a system of dispassionate economic slavery who are witnessing from the sidelines a dangerous and completely unnecessary war game initiated and orchestrated by a power elite who continuously echo their alleged concerns about our "national security", a deception which justifies their unbounded lust for wealth, power, and control. Perhaps what is happening in North Dakota and the DAPL pipeline will open a few eyes to what our nation has become - an oligarchy being run by sociopaths in which those who oppose are ridiculed and/or met with an overwhelming show of force. I was there on October 27 and I saw this with my own eyes which are now fully open. 

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