Political Distractions

Of all the methods that the ruling class uses to keep the people in their control, the use of political distractions is among their most cunning. The vast majority of the population is, of course, angry about the corruption in the political systems of the world…but how should we understand the true nature, the origin, of this corruption? The ruling class’s deft use of distractions is what causes far too many people to misinterpret the nature and source of these problems.

Typically, these misinterpretations involve a mixture of some truth with many falsehoods. For example, we all know that there’s a kind of unholy alliance between corporations and the state: it’s a natural, logical state of affairs that in capitalism, the more successful businesses will centralize and concentrate their capital; then in the bloodthirsty world of competition, they’ll step on and crush the smaller businesses to ensure their ascendancy. Using the state to enact laws favouring the big businesses at the expense of the smaller ones is par for the course.

A misinterpretation of this process occurs, however, among the right-wing libertarians, who–unable to admit that their precious capitalism is the problem–imagine that this merging of government and corporations isn’t “real capitalism” (i.e., the no true Scotsman fallacy), but rather “crony capitalism,” or “corporatism” (that infelicitous word whose incorrect usage is a misinterpretation of Mussolini‘s meaning, and which should, if anything, be replaced by “corporatocracy”…which, incidentally, is capitalism brought to its logical conclusion!).

If there’s private property (factories, office buildings, apartment buildings, farmland, etc., owned by bosses, as opposed to being collectively run by workers…No, communists don’t want everyone to share his toothbrush or smartphone with everyone else!), that’s capitalism. If commodities are produced for profit, rather than to provide for everyone, that’s capitalism. If capital is accumulated (hence, the word capitalism), that’s capitalism. How extensive, minimal, or non-existent (this third being an impossibility) government regulation happens to be in an economy is completely irrelevant.

Right-wing libertarians believe the current system isn’t “true capitalism” because they can’t bring themselves to face the reality that capitalism has been an epic, spectacular failure…and it’s obvious even to them that the current state of political and economic affairs has been only a failure. But rather than face the facts, they’d rather be distracted by a belief in other, spurious causes.

Another group, one that to a great extent overlaps with the right-wing libertarians, is the conspiracy theorists who believe in such nonsense as the NWO: apparently, the ‘old world order’ wasn’t all that bad. They imagine a one-world government will be the ultimate dystopia, as if one cannot be as brutally oppressed by many governments. They imagine the Illuminati still exists, it supposedly having descended from the Bavarian one that helped end feudalism: this, incidentally, was a good thing. Then, there’s the whole chemtrails thing. And finally, we have to throw some bigotry into the pot, so there are the Masonic and Jewish conspiracies, too.

Though secret societies certainly have existed, one doesn’t need to believe in them, let alone those that apparently worship the devil, to understand that there’s a lot of wrongdoing in the world. One doesn’t need to believe the Devil exists to believe evil exists; nor does one have to limit one’s understanding of aggression and destructiveness to the instincts or to the ideas of the behaviourists–as Erich Fromm argued in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Our malignant aggression comes from our failure to transcend our nature through creativity, from our failure to feel a oneness with others, and a failure to feel a sense of accomplishment.

Fromm states that “the character-rooted passions are a sociobiological, historical category. Although not directly serving physical survival they are as strong–and often even stronger–than instincts. They form the basis for man’s interest in life, his enthusiasm, his excitement; they are the stuff from which not only his dreams are made but art, religion, myth, drama–all that makes life worth living. Man cannot live as nothing but an object, as dice thrown out of a cup; he suffers severely when he is reduced to the level of a feeding or propagating machine, even if he has all the security he wants. Man seeks for drama and excitement; when he cannot get satisfaction on a higher level, he creates for himself the drama of destruction.” (Fromm, page 29)

The conspiracy theorists seem to think it’s bad only when Jews, Freemasons, government workers, or businesses favoured by the state get rich, but if any other capitalist does well, then it’s OK. Their scapegoating of anyone outside of their circumscribed fantasy world of the “free market” is yet another political distraction from the real source of the world’s problems: capitalism.

Of course, the political right are far from the only people distracted by nonsense. Next, we must discuss the liberals, who often pose as left-leaning, but are really centrist or even right-leaning when the pressure is on to protect their privileged place in society. These are the people who think that, as long as Trump (or whoever the leader of the GOP happens to be at a given time) is booted out of the White House, and as long as a Democrat is elected, all will be well. (The same applies to the Tory vs. Liberal/NDP parties in Canada, Tory vs. Labour in the UK, etc.)

Things have gotten so bad in the US that liberals there think that voting in Biden is acceptable, even desirable. Who is more right-wing, I wonder: him, or Trump? Granted, I agree that, after his caging of “illegals,” the fascist antics he’s brought about in Portland, Oregon, and his wish to suspend the 2020 election that he’s increasingly unlikely to win, Trump has become intolerable by even neoliberal capitalist standards; but placing hope in Biden is yet another distraction from the real problem. Why can’t we try revolution instead?

Similarly among liberals, the whole Russiagate farce was yet another distraction from facing up to the Clintons’ corruption. I discussed here why there was, and is, little substantive difference between Trump and Hillary Clinton. That’s what I meant above by why ‘left-leaning’ liberals are centrists or right-leaning in disguise. The same can be understood with regard to Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, etc. They aren’t socialists: they just lure progressives over to vote for the Democratic Party.

And now, we have the greatest political distraction of all, one that has addled the right, centre, and many on the left: the coronavirus. Most of the world’s population has been distracted from dangers far greater than a virus that, when you catch it, you usually show few, if any, symptoms, and those who die of it are less than 1% (We need to be careful only with the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions, not the general population.). Lockdowns are causing millions to be thrown out of work, and out of their homes, in all likelihood.

Millions of people worldwide are either being thrown into poverty or from there to extreme poverty because of the coronavirus scare. Tens of thousands of people die of seasonal flu every year, but only this virus has gripped the world’s attention–and by an interesting coincidence, this is when the global economy has crashed, millions of dollars have transferred upwards to the already obscenely rich, and the administration of “anti-establishment president” Trump has, like those of Bush and Obama, bailed out the big financial institutions.

Millions of people in Third World countries die of malnutrition every year, especially children under five. We have, for a long time, had a perfect “vaccine” for hunger…food! The wealth of billionaires like Gates, Bezos, and Musk could easily feed these people, but they are never adequately fed. Gates‘s ever-so-dubious vaccine research–a real money-maker for him, but for Covid sufferers, virtually needless, and for other patients, possibly dangerous–is the priority. And no, I’m not an ‘anti-vaxxer,’ I just don’t trust him. That computer, not medical, man is practically running the WHO, so we shouldn’t be too sure about that organization’s objectivity.

The virus has, for the most part, declined, but the capitalist class is going to milk COVID-19 for all it’s worth. Small wonder we keep hearing warnings of the “next wave” of the coronavirus. Constantly wearing masks does virtually nothing to protect oneself or others from the virus, but wearing them for excessively lengthy periods of time can cause some other very serious health problems. (Granted, not bad enough to develop hypoxia or hypercapnia, but still, bad enough problems. In any case, if you’ve read enough of my posts, you should know by now, Dear Reader, how much I distrust the MSM, so their attempts at ‘debunking’ criticisms of the ‘rona narrative don’t impress me.).

The global capitalist class has every motive in the world to keep this coronavirus hysteria going. They’ll have ever more and more money to make, not just from Gates’s putative vaccine project, but also from the killing that e-commerce is making at the expense of physical stores (think of Bezos‘s soaring fortunes: as Marx once said, “One capitalist always strikes down many others.” [Marx, page 929]), and from the benefits the ruling class hopes to get from a cashless society (the result of customers being too scared to touch ‘tainted’ money).

You don’t have to be a flaming right-winger or conspiracy nut to doubt the coronavirus narrative. Nowhere in this post have I said we’re inching closer to a ‘one-world-government NWO.’ Nowhere have I said the Freemasons or the Rothchilds are behind this. Nowhere have I said the government has made “real capitalism” impure. Nowhere have I said the coronavirus isn’t real. Nowhere have I said that the lizard-people are behind this. And I’m not opposed to vaccines in general.

I don’t base my coronavirus research on YouTube videos made by cranks; I base it on the research of doctors, virologists, and epidemiologists who don’t conform to the MSM narrative (when CNN and the like sell the coronavirus scare without rest, that’s when I get skeptical). The right-wing conspiracy theories, as I said at the beginning of this post, are as much a political distraction as the b.s. mainstream liberal narrative is.

The capitalist class wants to keep the social distancing and lockdowns going on in order to increase our sense of alienation, and to keep the working class distracted from organizing and planning revolutions. They know that we are getting increasingly fed up with neoliberal capitalism…and any and all forms of capitalism. The capitalists are destroying the planet. They’re stealing from us and making us more and more desperate. They’re secretly scared that we’ll rise up one day. Hence, the virus is, for them, a Godsend. Keep us too scared of getting sick, and keep us from revolting.

Just because the Trumpist right talks about ‘prematurely’ ending the lockdowns and getting people back to work, doesn’t mean people like me are supportive of him and his ilk. Their wish to end the lockdowns, etc. only means that they’re right in a ‘broken clocks’ sense. Where the Trumpists are dead wrong is in their refusal to put any money into a decent healthcare system, what would truly stop the spread of COVID-19, as well as properly deal with all the other health problems Americans have.

People forget that the ruling class has several competing factions, not just one agenda. We must do a lot more than just get rid of Trump, or just get rid of the Democratic Party. It isn’t a matter of choosing conservative vs. liberal. That divisive thinking is just controlled opposition. We need to get rid of both sides. We need a revolution. Then we need to build socialism, which means providing guaranteed employment, housing, and healthcare, all the required solutions to our current problems. We don’t need masks; we need Marxism. We need socialism, not social distancing.

Nothing will do a better job of ending pandemics than universal healthcare. Nothing will do a better job of overthrowing the elite than a socialist revolution.