From Patrick Henningsen
It’s not so much we are witnessing history unfold, as it is Washington’s hypocrisy unravel before our eyes.
Washington is infested with busy-bodies who run from one briefing to the next, one press conference to the next, in a drive to conduct their symphonies of policy and media in a desperate bid to remain relevant. Some try harder than others. Inside the beltway, original ideas, humility, honor and integrity are somewhat hard to come by these days.
They are the high-flying political class in the United States, an elite tribe who are so detached from reality that it’s become an almost embarrassment to watch. The Orwellian doublespeak which is now coming out the State Department’s office of nation-building is hitting new highs.
They grandstanded on the TV, and fawned Tunisia and Egypt during the celebrated Arab Spring. Then they ordered Libya and Syria to ‘show restraint and let democracy take it’s natural course’.
Even if – armed insurgents were burning down government buildings in Tripoli, and or firing upon and killing police in Syria.
Obama confidently that other governments “must be responsive for their citizens aspirations”.
Even if – those citizens are being backed and financed by the US State Department, Whitehall, Élysée Palace and allies Qatar.
Hillary Clinton ordered Libya to “respect the universal rights of its own people, including the right to free expression and assembly.”
Even if – her own government cannot even manage to cater for this right any more, even in the United States of America.
Watch this video and you will have a decent idea of what hypocrisy means today in the US:
In the US, the erosion of our basic rights provided by the Bill of Rights and US Constitution has been a long and painful process.
9-11 gave us the naziesque Patriot Acts I & II – two bills which have achieved nothing since their inception, and yet, are still as enthusiastically championed by Barack Obama as they were by GW Bush.
The anti-war demonstrations of 2003 gave us “free speech zones”, in country where freedom to assemble, where and when you want, used to be a god-given inalienable right. Now its a mere privilege.
The G20 demonstrations of 2009 gave us police brutality on a mass militarized scale, not seen before domestically. Thousands of paramilitary police where shipped in to Pittsburgh, sound canons were deployed and students were chased down, tear gassed and beaten in what came to known as forced compliance.
Even an obvious avant garde demonstration, a silent disco at the Jefferson Memorial saw police beat and injure Americans who were only trying to test the vital signs of a US Constitution in critical condition.
What elite political performers like Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are really saying to the governments of Libya, and now Syria, and later to Algeria and Iran- is that you cannot put down an armed insurrection in your countries, but in the US we reserve the right to beat and shoot our own citizens, and arrested without charges- if they attempt to demonstrate in public.
In other words, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
President Obama will have the world believe that America is less brutal to its own citizens than the rest of the world, but as hundreds of thousands of people in the Occupy Movement now get their first taste of civil disobedience, it is inevitable that some will be unlucky enough to get the hard end of the state’s velvet fist. Indeed, Scott Olsen found this out the hard way in Oakland this week.
And the Occupy Movement will also learn very quickly that we cannot ignore the rights which our US political elite have been denying the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Libya for all these years now- and expect to be afforded those same rights by the same criminal US government here at home.
We are witnessing a culture in decline- a people who for the most part, are having trouble remembering what made it unique in the first place, and so many who can think of nothing more frightening than to be called to live up to any of those ideals – who forgot what freedom actually is.
The level of Washington’s hypocrisy, its arrogance – has never been on display so vividly as it is today. It’s a clear indication of a society in decline.
What will surely accelerate this decline is a mass chunk of Americans who still to this day, remain unaware that these changes in society have even taken place. And more to the point, too many are ever willing to profit, or make their daily crust from this hyper-security police state. This is one of the signs of a civilization in decline.
Our celebrity politicians have permanently lost touch with reality, and sadly, this tribe will never come back to the source of liberty.
It’s high time for Americans to stop making excuses for the lobbyists, the wars, the pork, the bailouts- and for selling out the principles which once made it an inspiration to so many others around the world. Stop making excuses for elite bureaucrats and Wall Street tycoons.
At a watershed moment in history, it can go both ways, so you only get one shot to make it right.
