In terms of political organizations, the concepts of “conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “left”, right” and “center” no longer have any real meaning. Their meaning and context have been vacuumed, distorted and destroyed by those in charge of perpetrating and perpetuating lies and disinformation, the corporate media, faux historians, controlled academia and those who control the Internet (including both social media and search engines where algorithms rule). Such terms are now merely tools to polarize us, to divide us and to make us easier to control.

Two relevant opposing concepts do however exist: state-ism and populism.

Statists include an ironic amalgam of those who honestly believe that current governments are beneficent and the answer to all our social, economic and political problems with cynical deep state operatives who see the state as the ideal tool to control us and through such control, to extract ever increasing profits for the billionaire class. The latter is comprised of moles buried throughout the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the media who assure that government works to perpetuate the worst among us in power while keeping the bulk of us safely divided.

Populists are an amalgam from diverse, frequently opposing sociopolitical perspectives who share a belief that the institutions of government have been perverted and thus oppose them. In general, they share beliefs in real democracy and real liberty but acknowledge that such concepts do not currently exist.  Populists comprise the vast majority but have permitted statist to maintain them divided into opposing camps based on the fake labels listed above, i.e.: “conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “left”, right” and “center”, which populists take seriously. The labels are institutionally fake but contextually relevant. The differences exist for populists but the reality is that far more unites each sector of the populist political spectrum than that which divides them. Something that statists seek to obfuscate at all costs because, should populists attain their common interests and often complimentary goals, the statist empire could be destroyed and the dreams of equity, relative equality, justice and peaceful coexistence might become realities.

Statists use divisive emotions to maintain dictatorial control: what were once known as “wedge issues” which keep populists at each others’ throats. Issues like abortion and gun control and immigration, and they distort sociocultural divisions like gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality and religion keeping real problems festering because as long as they remain unresolved, populists can be kept from uniting. And, of course, the most cynical and thus most effective statists in the United States are today found in the Democratic Party and among the traditionalist wing of the Republican Party, and in the United Kingdom, in the once populist Labour Party and in the Conservative Party, in each case, merely virtually identical two-headed-Hydrae.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton and her groupies try to re-seize control of the Democratic Party from a dazed and confused Joe Biden so that she can have one more chance to be the first female president while the Obama camp keeps pulling tangled strings behind the scenes to deflect her aspirations but is itself confused as to whether Michele or “AG” (his real name is Eric but he can’t let us forget he was once the Attorney General) Holder should replace their inept current figurehead, and Donald Trump keeps smirking and holding massive rallies while we ignore that three decent people are seeking to lead us out of the Deep State wilderness: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornell West, PhD.

And the rich keep getting richer, the poor, poorer, the economic center keeps shrinking and people keep dying massively in elective and genocidal wars while defense industry dividends soar and the corporate media shouts:

“Nothing here to see!  Move along!!!  Turn the page!!! Or else!!!”

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.