Category Archives: Journalism, media

Payment of Interest on the National Debt versus Social Security Payments

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There is a purportedly existential crisis under way involving the possibility that the United States of America, until recently the world’s hegemon, lacks enough funds to pay its current debts.  Some wonder how, if that’s the case, the Biden administration can be so generous to the Ukrainian military and whether, such “generosity is not largely responsible for the current situation.  Others would note that were this a down and out debtor looking to refinance his or her debt, no competent financial institution would step up to the plate.  The International Monetary Fund most probably would not, nor the World Bank (at least if it involved any regular country whose currency did not currently, at least for now, dominate international trade).

The Biden administration is broke and its looking for a bailout, … again.  But then again, the same has been true of other administrations, Republican as well as Democrat.  This would be the 81st or 82nd such existential increase in the nation’s borrowing authority.

Public borrowing by the United States is never logical given that the funds it borrows are usually issued by that same government, at miniscule rates, to the banks that then lend them to it.  If the government just had some responsible mechanism for issuing its own currency directly to pay its debts, it would avoid the related, crushing interest payments.  But then, where’s the fun in that, or the profit.

Anyway, ….

The Biden administration will get its way, at least in part, increasing the already boated 31.5 trillion dollar national debt by another trillion and a half, but in doing so, several important points have slipped out that should have an impact on 2024 elections from dog catcher to president.  The points have to do with priorities and where we stand in that respect, but also with the cynical decision to raise the debt limit so that its impact on the 2024 federal elections will be minimized.  Are we really that stupid?

But, as outrageous at that first point is, there is one more outrageous, by an immense magnitude.  The issue of priorities.

The Biden administration has made it clear that if there is insufficient cash to go around, first priority in payments will be to holders of United States debt securities, many of them banks and financial institutions which, as indicated above, leveraged the purchase of government securities using lower interest loans from the Federal Reserve. 

At the end of the line, are Social Security recipients, although perhaps that “threat” was mainly suggested to generate massive fear among a vulnerable segment of the electorate, “encouraging” them to force their representatives in Congress to back down.  The cynicism in that ploy should have serious, indeed, permanent political consequences.  Social Security is not a welfare program, it is a compulsory investment program with penal sanctions for failure to comply, not all that different, when one considers it, from an organized crime protection racket enforced by hired goons, but an investment program in which one does not get to make the investment decisions.  They’re made by the Federal Government, “for our own good”.  Just like the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” the former phrase generates well deserved ridicule.

Investors “deserve” their profits purportedly because they assume voluntary risks.  When the “risk” is removed, they are no longer investors, they are instead an offshoot of organized criminals, like loan sharks.  Social Security recipients did not have the “option” of not “investing” and thus, under no circumstance, in a democracy based on law, should they ever be placed in a lower priority than other creditors of the United States.  That does not mean that Social Security is absolutely guaranteed.  Were the United States, for reasons beyond its control, to find itself with no funds to pay anyone, then Social Security recipients would have to suffer along with everyone else.  But to place purported investors at the head of the line is an outrage.

It’s an outrage that “investors” would be paid before military veterans or serving military personnel as well.  In fact, it’s an outrage that purported “investors” would be paid ahead of any other class of creditors.  In any other setting, holders of unsecured debt would find themselves at the end of the line, but not with the Biden administration in charge of the decision.  It knows on which side its bread is buttered, it knows from whence its political “contributions” come, and it knows to whom its real loyalties are owed, and it’s clear that it’s not to “We the People”.  All the old canards that the Democratic Party is the party of common men and women, of the downtrodden, of labor and of the retired went out with the sewage when the Clinton administration (of which the Biden administration is and the Obama administration was a continuation) assumed control of that political party in 1992.

Not that the GOP is much better, or at least the traditionalists in the GOP.  Who can tell what its populist wing (now apparently that party’s largest segment) would do.  That segment’s leaders talk a different game, but they were outmatched and outmaneuvered in 2020 by the state within a state many refer to as the Deep State, and which is the investment community’s enforcement arm.  But if populists from both the left and the right opened their eyes and took a whiff at the odor emanating from the District of Colombia, if they ever joined forces (and the outrage currently being perpetrated might be a sufficient catalyst to break the bonds that keep then apart and at each other’s’ throats), then perhaps a whole new set of government representatives and functionaries would get their priorities straight.

Something to seriously consider every time you head to the ballot box in the future, assuming that votes are still actually taken into account.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Windfall Profits, the Defense Industry and the American Tax Payer:

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Reflections during another Memorial Day

The fulcrum on which political decisions are leveraged and the world’s future mortgaged is inherently tied to the welfare of investors in “defense” industries, of their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war, and if war and the threat of war are constants, then investments in “defense” industries are predictably secure.  Something the commander of allied forces in the Second World War and later, president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower begged us to avoid.  To the extent related government expenditures are not carefully monitored and waste prevails, so much the better.  That millions subsidize such profits with their lives in diverse parts of the world is merely “collateral damage”, at least to those not suffering such consequences, directly or indirectly.  And of course, on this Memorial Day, we recognize that such casualties are not only innocent foreigners, but also the bravest Americans, those who, believing that their service is essential, volunteer to put their lives and welfare on the line.

The Athenians attitude towards those who provided the armaments for their military and naval forces was wise.  They were required to serve on the front lines.  Not so our own war profiteers, neither they nor their families, except in extremely rare cases, serve at all, being too busy enjoying the fruits of others’ labors.  And most of those who do serve, Albert Gore and George W. Bush being prime examples, do so ensconced in protective cocoons, far from danger, surrounded by photographers so that their purported service can be documented for future use.  The Clintons and the Obamas and the Bidens (Joe and Hunter and Jimmy) and the Trumps were excused from service through the labyrinth of useful loopholes available to those wealthy or influential enough to avoid service, something which needs to be differentiated from the refusal to serve by those opposed to war, and who would never send the children, spouses, siblings or relatives of others to tread where they refused to serve.  Those who declined to serve but on attaining power of any sort, do not hesitate to send others to die or kill, and to suffer and cause mayhem, and to suffer and cause irreparable psychological trauma, are contemptuously referred to by those who served, as well as by conscientious objectors, as “chicken hawks”.  Our country is led by chicken hawks.  Chicken hawks in government, in the “defense” industries and in the corporate media as well.  And the results are predictable.  Profits for the few, massive profits.  But famine and chaos and mayhem and death and destruction for far too many on the other side of the ledger.  Some of them our own.  Some of them the best among us.

This Memorial Day takes place at an interesting time.  There has been hugely hyperbolic debate between the Republican led House of Representatives and the Biden administration concerning the need to raise the national debt limit, an increase once again required, for the 82nd time, because rather than pay for federal expenditures through taxes, to which voters would object and, as a result, might seriously consider what their taxes were being used to fund, it is more palatable, at least for now, to just, well, … borrow the money.  Federal debt financing is done through unsecured borrowing from third parties, largely banks and financial institutions but also investors, foreign and domestic.  Interestingly, the interest paid to holders of United States debt securities is higher than that paid by financial institutions to the Federal Reserve for the money borrowed to acquire such securities, among other things.  Many might wonder why the prohibitions against “ponzi” schemes which the Federal government prosecutes, are not applicable to the largest ponzi scheme of all.

The current direct national debt, that which is disclosed (it may well be substantially greater and does not include state, municipal or local debt), currently stands at almost thirty-two-trillion dollars[1], but the Biden administration insists that it must be increased immediately, if not sooner, and traditionalist members of the Republican Party are in agreement, although its populist branch is  not.  There is a current proposal on the table in Congress to acquiesce to the Biden administration’s demand to increase the national debt during the period preceding the next presidential election (so that it need not be revisited and become a political issue therein), by one-and-a-half-trillion dollars.

Sooo.  Why?

Because the United States government wants to spend the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China into oblivion by funding wars involving the Ukraine, already under way, and Taiwan, even at the risk of a nuclear holocaust, and anyway, that addition to the national debt, like the accumulated debt before it, ends up in the pockets of, well, you may have already guessed the answer from the introductory material above, “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.

And who, you may ask, will pay that accumulated debt?

The answer is interesting and reminiscent of the attitude of French King Louis XV, you know, the one who preceded Luis XVI, who, along with his family and many others, lost his head in the French Revolution of 1789 (which, to an extent, may explain the drastic reaction by the powers that be to the political protests of January 6, 2020).  The answer is, … “who cares”!  At worse, the United States could print the money necessary to pay off the debt, although that would create never before imagined hyperinflation, inflation that would make that suffered in Germany following the War to End All Wars (well, we now call it the first of the world wars) at the dawn of the twentieth century a trifle.  One might recall that the inflation following the first of the world wars led to the rise of fascism in various countries, and threatened to do the same in most others.  Of course, some consider that fascism is currently in vogue among those who most criticized it way back then.

This Memorial Day, as I mourn my many friends and my former classmates who’ve perished in combat during the past six decades (I’m a Citadel graduate), it occurred to me that the answer to our ludicrous national debt crisis is rather simple and does not require a reinvention of the wheel.  It’s called a “windfall profits tax”.  One that should be imposed on those who’ve so profited from the perpetual wars (what would Emanuel Kant think).  You may have guessed the answer again, it’s the same as the answer to the former query: “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.  A tax of 90% on all profits derived from them, directly and indirectly, from whatever sources and wherever derived, until the national debt is paid off, with tax avoidance punishable by forfeiture of all assets and life imprisonment.

Simple, sort of.  At least in a democracy where voters have some awareness of how things work, and why.

A suggestion as we remember those of our fellow men and woman who’ve sacrificed so much, unfortunately, all too often uselessly, on this Memorial Day.

Something on which not only to reflect, but perhaps on which to act.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

[1] Information based on the national debt clock as of this Memorial Day, available at https://www.usdebtclock.org/.

The “Woke” …?

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First of all, for context, I freely confess that I’m a confirmed, left wing democratic socialist in the style of Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc., and thus an anti-interventionist pacifist, but not an isolationist.  I’m a non-globalist, non-neoliberal, non-neoconservative internationalist.  I’m an independent, disdaining both the GOP and the Democratic Party, but feel the Democratic Party is the greater evil.  I do not vote for lesser evils though.

Another confession: many people that I’ve cared for over the years, some whom I’ve loved, and even some after whom I’ve lusted, are among the “woke” who are the subject of this reflection.  I don’t like Donald Trump (who I’ve only met once).  I find him a childish, egocentric buffoon, but that doesn’t prevent me from admitting that he’s been treated in an outlandishly unfair manner by the corporate press, the Justice Department, his own appointees, traditional Republican leaders, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and, that, without a doubt, the presidential election of 2022 was manipulated, if perhaps not “technically stolen. 

The foregoing is to contextualize the following perspectives concerning the controversial nature of the postmodern term “woke”, to which I frequently allude.

To me, the term “woke” is a sort of neologism in the sense that during the past decade it has acquired very different meanings depending on who’s using it, in what context and for what purpose.  It no longer merely refers to the opposite of sleeping in a biological sense but has been given political overtones.  It is a self-anointed appellation by those I describe below, who consider it a positive metaphor but, in my opinion and as I use it, the people who apply the term as a self-description instead engage in futile, hubris afflicted self-defeating distortion of progressive values.  Because, as I indicated, I frequently use the term in my reflections, articles, reports and comments, I’m frequently asked what it means, albeit usually by people who clearly have their own opinions on the point and who are usually among those I describe as “woke”.  In any case, this reflection involves an effort to describe the term for both those people (whose minds are already made up as to its meaning), and for those who are honestly curious concerning its use in my discourse.  I note that, apparently, there exists a dictionary definition which identifies them in a manner which their adherents love, in essence, as selfless, well informed, well intentioned humanists.  I assume it was devised by a “woke” lexicographer.  I, find it misleading at best, hence this reflection.

From the foregoing it’s obvious that I’m at odds with those who describe themselves as the “woke”, a group that reminds me of Star Trek’s fictional “Borg” (because to the “woke”, resistance to them is futile).  The irony is that we purport to share the same goals and similar values: a more enlightened world, a more equitable world, one free of racism, misogyny and xenophobia.  A world where justice prevails and impunity and nepotism are minimized, an environmentally sustainable world where everyone is enabled to attain their highest potential.  But we differ on bellicosity.  Bellicosity in every sense (personal, domestic and international).  We differ on tactics and strategies.  And we differ on the essential need for mutual respect and for open minds and the importance of empathy.  “Empathy”, that psychological state of mind which enables us to understand (in a non-judgmental fashion) the positions held by others and the reasons for their actions and reactions.  Which enables us to maintain open minds and to listen at least as much as we preach, and to differ respectfully instead of with animosity.  I believe that only through the use of empathy and respect can we all evolve, changing our hearts and souls as well as our minds in the manner necessary to attain our mutual goals.  I derive great satisfaction from what I’ve learned from others, as well as from the shifts in attitude, especially concerning war and the military-industrial-intelligence complex, of many of the military personnel (both retired and active) with whom I’ve interacted.

In my opinion, politics, on a worldwide, not just United States basis, has not really been the realm of a liberal left versus a conservative right for a very long time.  Those are cultivated delusional illusions.  Rather, it involves a truly adversarial relationship between an alliance of deep states subservient to the primary Deep State (the one associated with the United States but with tentacles everywhere), versus diverse, divided and fragmented populists, “populists” being those who believe that traditional governmental institutions, self-described as “democratic”, are in fact, chokeholds to assure popular democracy is at best a dysfunctional illusion.  The rise in populism is being addressed by deep states though coercive communication-censoring policies, abuse of prosecutorial and judicial systems, and, if all else fails, by facilitation of the development of a capitalist oriented, for-profit market in votes through relaxation of procedures safeguarding against electoral fraud (e.g., identity verification, direct voting, verified ballot collection, etc.), oxymoronically, in the name of “democracy”.

The purportedly “woke”, as I see them, are tools of the permanent government structure owned by the wealthiest among to which I alluded above as the “Deep State”, which is an informal but highly efficient structure comprised of ensconced bureaucrats unresponsive to democratic vagaries, the corporate media, the aforementioned military-industrial-intelligence complex and the newly empowered owners of the Internet’s technocracy, to which, during the past decade, has been added Big Pharma.  The role of the “woke” in that scheme (albeit perhaps a role of which they are not aware) is to distract the attention of liberals and progressives from the goals described above through polarizing identity politics, keeping us divided through wedge issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, revisionist history and exaggerated racism and divisive gender related issues (using gender in the broadest possible context), all of the foregoing never to be resolved, as resolution would minimize their political usefulness.

The “woke” are characterized by a blend of naivety and hubris, believing themselves morally and ethically superior, better informed, wiser, more erudite and, most of all, entitled.  For some unfathomable reason, they’re convinced that the minds and hearts of those not yet “woke” can best be changed through ridicule and rhetoric, clever distortions, and ignoring past realities through creative fiction.  In essence, they’re intolerant in the name of tolerance (freedom of opinion and of expression be damned!).  Narrative replaces history (well, … okay, …it always has, but much more aggressively), in the belief that the past and even the present are irrelevant to the future, so long as both are presented in a manner that facilitates the belief that the future sought is inevitably preordained, a sort of five story mansion, but without a foundation or first story, just somehow floating closer to heaven.

It’s much easier to win arguments if truth is irrelevant, if it is “relative”, something flexible to be molded as best suits a particular occasion, and easily discarded when inconvenient, discarded to an abyss for those beliefs which, in an Orwellian sense, “never existed, … anymore”.  The “woke” are firm practitioners of that verisimilitudinous art form in the firm belief that the means justify the ends, and thus, as so often happens in those cases, there’s a shift and the means become the ends, the former ends fading into oblivion.

“Merit” is, as I see it, a pejorative to the “woke”, a synonym for racism, and for misogyny, and for xenophobia.  To them, quotas are essential in everything; something glaringly obvious in the entertainment industry where accurate reflections of society and history are irrelevant and every scene must now include non-existent racial and gender balances, with positive attributes concentrated among women and minorities, especially African Americans and those who adhere to sexually alternative lifestyles, and negative attributes are primarily ascribed to Caucasian males older than forty.  Of course, “merit” has always been an elusive concept, especially where nepotism provides an alternative, and, of course, merit has never been all that relevant in the apparently eternal political-favors-based-favoritism-system in which we humans appear to have always lived.

So, the “woke”, to me, are a sad irony involving a diversion of energy and human resources that could really make a difference in the attainment of the values and the world to which they and I both aspire; to which most people aspire., but which, as economist Thomas Piketty’s ground breaking studies and analyses clearly demonstrate, is becoming more and more distant and more and more unlikely as we become more and more polarized, more and more embittered and more and more successfully manipulated by the cynics who joyfully rule as all.

Rule us all as surely as though we were ringwraiths and they possessed Sauron’s once and future ring.

Of course, the “woke” who’ve read my reflections and opinions probably reciprocate my perceptions, believing me to be as delusional as I perceive them.  And that’s fine.

Paraphrasing the refrain used in adds concerning historically black colleges: “An open mind is a terrible thing to waste”.

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

A Glance at an Ugly Image in an all too Accurate Mirror

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Mirrors can be useful things if used objectively, but the truth is frequently uglier than we care to bear. Who we’ve become politically, perhaps who we’ve always been, is an all too accurate example.

A reflection of sorts:

The voting dead used to be a reliable Democratic Party constituency.  They won the presidency for young John Kennedy in 1960.  In Illinois.  In Chicago to be precise.  Home town to another slick president almost half a century later.  It’s a bit trickier nowadays to convince the deceased to continue to exercise their political rights, but the concept has morphed and we have voters who’ll vote as their told, no matter what.  To vote as if they were zombies.  Whole “blocks” of them, … Well almost, there are always those inexplicable few who insist on exercising their own judgment, but they’re pretty few.

A “motley bunch” is a misunderstood expression.  It does not denigrate the nature of its members, rather, it makes clear their diversity and perhaps even, their diverse goals, backgrounds and aspirations.  Today, the Democratic Party is a motley group comprised of one large ethnic group, African Americans; women desperate to preserve their ability to discard their would be progeny; those unhappy with their gender; feminists who have a flexible approach to misogyny depending on the political leanings of particular misogynists; the rebellious children of the very wealthy; artists of questionable talent other than their ability to self-promote; pseudo journalists much more talented in creative writing than in seeking the truth; creative academics and historians interested in molding the past as they wish it had been; and, government bureaucrats, especially of the quasi-permanent mole variety.  But it is a “motley” which rather than generate synergy, is merely subservient to the billionaire classes who own the Deep State, the potentates who, like Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s novels, ruthlessly rule us all.

The GOP is not a motley, it is much more homogenous than the Democratic Party, albeit now divided into two ideological groups: traditionalists like the Bushes, the McCains, etc., also owned by the Deep State, but now a majority seems to be comprised of right wing populist libertarians who in some, but unfortunately not all, aspects, oppose the Deep State.  Too often all of the foregoing are supportive of the Deep State’s primary business, perpetual conflict and a quest for global hegemony similar to that once enjoyed by the Roman empire, not cognizant of the fact that the human cost is all too similar quantitatively to that paid by the victims of the Nazi’s own pursuit of hegemony.  Unlike the Romans though, who cared not a whit about moral justification for their actions, the United States is compelled to justify itself through hypocrisy, deception and self-delusion, something it inherited from the British (from who it inherited its own hunger for hegemony).

Political independents, a heterogeneous group whose members  purportedly form a larger block than either Democrats or Republicans, together with members of minor political parties like the Greens, the Libertarians, etc., could theoretically change the current United States cascade towards mutually assured oblivion but seem trapped in a quagmire, hypnotized and unable to move or act, as though charmed by a snake, the snake being the corporate media that convinces them, briefly but regularly (during electoral cycles), that the exercise of their better judgment would be anathema and would assuredly bring on an apocalypse.  And that their efforts would, in any case, prove futile.  The current apparent only choices, choices between a bombastic and childish lesser evil (Mr. Trump) and an utterly corrupt war monger (Mr. Biden, the clear Deep State designee), illustrate the foregoing.

Thus, we, as a People, become more and more polarized, more prone to violence and psychological and sociological anomalies (like mass murder both abroad and at home).  We sit sort of idly watching and perhaps kvetching as the Deep State destroys more and more of everything around us, whether our environment or our fellow men and women, especially the aged and the very young.  Destroys them sociopathically and amorally for the profit of the billionaire class, to the delight of the laughing and smirking hyenas (my apology to hyenas) who comprise our purported cultural leaders (i.e., massively overpaid albeit usually ignorant glitzy entertainers and athletes).

A conclusion:

That is by all appearances who we are today.  Ugly is as ugly does.  Perhaps it’s just the predictable evolutionary path of who we’ve always been as a group, although perhaps individually most of us seem very different.  One wonders if nature’s purported natural selection of the fittest still applies, and just what that might imply.

A sort of Cassandric entropy seems to shout that we’ve already passed the point of no return, hence, our current epigram at birth would seem to be “abandon all hope ye who enter here”.

To which, unfortunately, no pithy rejoinder comes to mind.

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Bombastic Pomposity and Egocentrism: …. What a World!!

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It’s a Saturday morning in May, 2023.  The first seven days did not bring the political crisis envisioned in Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel’s 1962 story, Seven Days in May.  Those were a wasted seven days anyway, lesser evil triumphed there, or perhaps it was greater evil.  It’s a matter of perspective.  But it seems like a good morning to break rules, like the prohibition against mixing metaphors, so I’m playing with imagery involving mirrors, perhaps magic mirrors, perhaps not.  But mirrors that give us slightly distorted but not wholly inaccurate glimpses of ourselves, of our realities, but also of our perceptions, whether truthful or not.  Interesting topic for speculation: are truth and accuracy synonyms?  My instincts tell me that’s not the case, although I don’t know why.

Once more I imagine what it must have been like for Troy’s princess Cassandra, after she was afflicted by Apollo’s curse, and she became uselessly clairvoyant.  I imagine what she might have been shouting to disinterested winds, were she among us today.  Perhaps something like the following with respect to the political climate in which our world finds itself, one where egocentric Paris has become the norm.  Perhaps the following is what she might write, seeking to warn us, had she ever learned to write:

Donald Trump’s bombastic pomposity and egocentrism is not unique to today’s major political characters, it is at least equaled by the Clintons and the Bidens and the Obamas, but theirs is more deceptive, more subtle.  Obfuscated by the corporate media and thus, much more dangerous.   Their respective followers (all furious) are comprised, on the one hand, of the mid to lower, less educated but much more hardworking classes that idolize the brash Mr. Trump, and in doing so, vent their frustration at their denigration while being looted, and on the other by the purportedly “woke” who follow the latter three, not realizing that they are, more than anything else, tools of the tiny oppressor class.  “Woke” in the sense that zombies can be said to be awake, blindly and blithely following orders they don’t comprehend, but doing so relentlessly.   Mr. Trump’s unpleasantness does not mean that his grasp of reality is less than that of the Clintons and the Bidens, the Obamas and their ilk.  To the latter, reality is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is the narrative they weave and seek to impose, believing. Justifiably. that if truth us totally hidden, then its impact on the present and the future can be blunted, can be manipulated, at least for a while, reveling in Lincoln’s “you can fool most of the people some of the time”, and like Louis XV, rejoicing in the belief that such time is now, that it’s their time and to Hell with the future they’ve so thoroughly mortgaged.  Their adherents, for the most part, do not plan on having the children who will have to bear that burden.   Mr. Trump’s glimpses into reality, slight and distorted as they might be, recognize that the anti-Kantish state of perpetual war so profitable to the “woke’s” masters is disastrous for business, which is seemingly Mr. Trump’s guiding principle, and that a prosperous future requires mutually profitable coexistence with the “enemies-on-demand” that keep the military industrial complex humming, hence peace with China and Russia and North Korea is essential, and NATO is but an anachronistic white elephant looking to justify its existence, and that for the United States, the tax dollars wasted on defense spending and military bases and adventures abroad ought to be redirected to repair and modernization of internal infrastructure, on bridges and roads and airports and railroads, and public utilities.  But his view is myopic and occluded when it comes to the Middle East, where whatever Israel does is fine with him, and whatever it wants it deserves and should get, so Iran has to go, at the very least.  After all, what is one more genocide (of others) in Judaea’s long history?  And, of course, Mr. Trump’s perspective is utterly convoluted when it comes to international economics which he treats like New York City real estate machinations, i.e., where the art of the bluff is key to “the art of the deal”.   Perhaps, the abuses of both groups of bipolar bombastically pompous and egocentric leaders, as they inadvertently slip into the light as a result of their policy of mutual calumny, will somehow filter into the collective consciousness and, like an annoying morning alarm clock, jolt the electorate awake, although the Clintons and the Bidens and the Obamas hope that it is way too late for that to make any differences, and it at least smells as though they might be right, at least in the verisimilitude of democracy in which we live.  Electoral manipulation through misinformation and information withheld, if not outright electoral fraud, has seemingly become the norm, covered in a cloak of impunity by a judicial system which equates the refusal to investigate allegations as definitive proof that they’re not only false, but deliberate lies.  Not just errors in judgment, but deliberate sedition.  And where the totally politicized judiciary has joined the totally politicized corporate media to throttle any attempts to change the profitably pro-perpetual-bellum quagmire in which ordinary citizens are trapped.  After all, neither rules nor consequences apply to the extraordinary few, no talent needed, the awards and rewards are theirs to bestow upon themselves, and, of course, upon the groveling useful.

Still; … even Cassandra seemingly had hope.  The one positive thing that remained when Pandora’s amphora was unsealed (it was not really a box) and emptied.  And even if only an illusion, or perhaps a delusion, hope apparently springs eternally-enough to keep things interesting.  And thus, …  Mr. Trump.  “What a world”, as the purportedly Evil Witch of the West declaimed as she melted after exposure to the cleansing effects of water, “what a world” where apparently, the bombastically pompous and egocentric Mr. Trump represents the almost unattainable but much sought, lesser evil.

As an irrelevant but funny aside (at least we still sometimes have humor, as long as it’s not politically incorrect), someone innocently pointed out to me the uncanny resemblance on a number of levels between the current president of the United States and a character on the long running “Simpsons”, Montgomery Burns.  That person may well soon find himself or herself (I need to protect my sources) in big trouble, although purportedly not having anything to do with such observation.  That’s apparently the current price for exercising the right to freedom of expression. 

“What a world” seems to fit the bill.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Damned Trump!!!

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The corporate media is in hyperbolic, hysterical meltdown.  The thoroughly unpleasant Mr. Trump has rejected their narratives and continues to express his beliefs, whether all too accurate or deluded, on one of their own platforms, the very much discredited and disdained CNN.  But, the corporate media, its supporters in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, prosecutorial authorities and the legal profession, as well as victims-on-demand, remain as dedicated as ever to assuring that he shan’t govern, no matter what the electors think about the choices being foisted upon them by the Clintons, the Bidens, or the slickly subtle Obamas.

Mr. Trump had a Town Hall meeting on CNN this week and he spoke his mind during a week in which those who not only disdain and dislike him (like me), but avidly hate him, attained a series of triumphs in the legal system, albeit perhaps transitory.  Unfortunately, notwithstanding their machinations, he was not universally rejected.  Indeed, polls show that the United States electorate prefers him to the inept and unscrupulous mad man the Deep State has imposed on us all, with, of course, the full-fledged support of the corporate media, Mr. Trump’s own intelligence agencies and the oxymoronic Department of Justice.

Perhaps, assassination is now the only option if the United States electorate continues to seem disinclined to yield and cooperate.  Who knows, it’s happened before in the United States, at least according to rebel Democratic Party presidential contender, Robert F. Kennedy III, who, if his own prospects take off, may face the same hazard as Mr. Trump, in his case, a family tradition in the form of a curse.

What’s very sad is that the belligerent and unpleasant Mr. Trump and the utterly corrupt and apparently senile Mr. Biden are clearly not the only choices.  Sure, most of the options presented to us by the Deep State (Republican and Democrat alike) are terrible, but, in addition to the apparently decent Mr. Kennedy, there’s Tulsi Gabbard, although she’s veering sharply to the right on moral issues, and the always decent Dennis Kucinich.  There’s former Virginia Senator James Webb, and even recently fired sort of journalist (the closest thing to one we had within a major media organization, but no Assange), Tucker Carlson.  And perhaps, promoting other alternatives, we have a real live version of Ben Bova’s fictional Sam Gunn, blended with Robert Heinlein’s Delos David Harriman, who seemingly likes to stir the pot hoping something interesting will pop up: Elon Musk (whose name my mind keeps confusing with Nikola Tesla).

The problem, of course, is us.  The intellectually malleable electorate, which, if the Deep State shouts BOOOOO loudly enough, promptly return to the wolves’ fold to be slaughtered like the foolish sheep we are, actually more a hybrid between lemmings and sheep.  All elections, according to the Deep State and its minions, are existential choices between evil and lesser evil.  The good, ensconced in smaller political parties and independents, is never (heaven forbid, or maybe hell) an available option.

BOOOO!!!  The evil Russians are coming again!!!  BOOO!!!  The evil Muslims who hate freedom are around every corner.  BOOOO!!!  The evil Chinese seek to take over the world.  Vote for our choice, good old Joe, or else.  And keep on earning all those dollars we need to extort from you in the form of taxes, essential to finance our liberty loving, sort of democratic aspirations.  Peace is only viable through constant war; and freedom and liberty and respect are only possible through constant meddling and coups, hard and soft (and military interventions when sort of absolutely necessary).  But don’t worry, we’ll finance a great deal of the costs through constant increases in the permissible ceiling for our national debt, already greater than our gross domestic product, but who cares, as long as we can keep printing dollars and force others around the world to accept them, or else.  As Louis XV heartily extorted his People, shortly before the unfortunate Louis XVI and the French Revolution, “Après moi, le deluge” (After me, the flood).

But, … BOOO!!!  The damned pesky BRICS countries (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) seem to be expanding (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and who knows who else), and threatening to take away our printing presses.

Elections are once again around the corner, so BOOO, BOOO, BOOO and BOOO some more!  Interestingly, from a small segment of the electorate, a seemingly responsive sound resounds in the form of a “raspberryish” booooooo!

That damned Trump just won’t let sleeping dogs lie!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

On the Coronation of Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Hanover)

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Charles and I are of an age, albeit with drastically different life experiences. 

He has a warm spot in my heart, despite my leftist, democratic socialist political tendencies.  He visited my alma mater in Charleston, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, on two occasions a half century apart.  Once as a young prince in 1970, and then again, as the inchoate king of the Britons, in 2020.  On the latter occasion, my beloved alma mater granted him a degree honoris causa.  I’ve followed his difficult life (despite all the wealth, privileges and trappings) closely, and have come to believe that in many ways, it is an allegorical reflection of our times.

He has been criticized, often, too often unfairly, for whatever he does and doesn’t do, in the “heads I win, tails you lose” manner now prevalent in the corporate media and among the faux leftists who for some reason or another, have decided that only they are conscious, and have consciences, that they are the repositories of virtue and morality despite their consistent failure to attain any of their supposed goals, and instead, have succeeded only in generating intolerance, hatred and polarization, while permitting the worst among us to continue to rule unabated.

That’s sort of weird, given that Charles’ background is exactly what the worst among us aspire to possess.  Still, while Charles has the trappings, they have the power.

I am confessedly among the minority who find that his late, former-wife, Diana, was among the most egocentrically frivolous and devious among us, which of course, made her a media darling.  That she used Charles to ascend the social ladder she so craved, and that once there, she sought to ensconce herself, at his expense, and even at the expense of her purportedly beloved children (who she primarily raised through self-serving photo ops).  But she did it with such grace and style that the commons loved her, regardless of her obvious “indiscretions.  She was an inverse Cinderella, … or was that Camila.  And what does the adjective “inverse” do to the concept I seek to portray anyway?

Charles was the victim of duty every second of every minute of every hour of every day of his life.  The “Duty” which prevented him, for a long time, from being the husband of perhaps the only woman he ever loved, and instead, being placed in a loveless and counterproductive marriage, which, like a plague, still refuses to set him free, even after the death of his “fairy tale” wife, “fairy tale”, but not in a good way.  He was subservient to his mother, as he was duty bound to be, and it seemed as though he would never attain his own, independent destiny, and even as he was crowned “King”, perhaps he never will.  He’ll be an afterthought, a cipher, an interregnum, and one tainted at that.  At least among the “woke”.

To me he has been, is, and I think will continue to be a symbol of courage and duties honored under difficult circumstances, all too often in no win situations that refuse to grant him the status of “human” we all proudly claim as our own.  But that’s the nature of monarchy, and of real monarchs, and of real men, at least as men were once defined.  Not as selfish, self-centered misogynists, but as chivalrous defenders and providers for their families, their communities and their nations.  Not perfect by any means, but compared to his brother Andy and his youngest son harry; compared to his late, former wife, Charles is a complex human being deserving of admiration, not because of but notwithstanding his royal standing.

I like the newly crowned King, I’ll confess it, but as a person, not as the crystallization of the purported aristocrats among whom he was born and who from now on, will surround and seek to suffocate him more than ever.

If I were a believer, which I may or may not be, I’ve never been sure (other than that I am not a believer in the religion “created” by the egregious Saul of Tarsus), I would end this, and perhaps I will, whispering “God Save the King”!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Trump, Clinton and the Dystopian New York Penal System

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Former president Donald Trump has been indicted by a politicized Manhattan grand jury handpicked by New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg for misclassifying a purported political expense, a settlement payment to a porn star, as a business and legal expense, while former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff and attorneys, who were in fact sanctioned for classifying the funding and distribution of the infamous Steele dossier as a legal expense, not only got a pass, but publicly revel in the difference.  As does most of the corporate media, as do Democrats everywhere.

So, aside from political affinities, what is the difference between these two situations?

Well, the Trump situation involved an issue not necessarily tied to politics and thus, not illegal in any sense.  It could well have involved an expense classifiable as involving business or personal factors and should perhaps be classified as the response of a victim of blackmail and extortion entitled to protection under the penal system.  On the other hand, there is no doubt about the nature of the Clinton expenditure, a political expense involving a fraudulent campaign disguised as a legal fee, thus, the case against Ms. Clinton and her campaign organization is much stronger.  Other than that, not one thing.  Well, Trump is despised by the Deep State and Mrs. Clinton is their idol although both Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton are unpleasant and unsavory characters.  But justice is supposedly blind, albeit purportedly in a positive sense, stressing its neutrality, not in a negative sense involving utter incoherence, hypocrisy and malfeasance.

The 2016 electoral cycle was a wakeup call, but not in a good way.  The People, fed up, reacted in a manner much different than that anticipated by the corporate media and traditionalist politicians in both major United States political parties.  They made it clear that they were prepared for real change.  But rather than correct the injustice, inefficiency, corruption and misfeasance that led to the revolt by the electorate, from both the left (the Sanderistas) and the right (the Tea Party), a massive reactionary campaign was launched by traditionalist politicians in both major political parties to silence populists of all bents, to censor opposition to Deep State (i.e., Democratic Party) candidates, to facilitate a market in electoral ballots, and thus to assure a satisfactory, predetermined electoral outcome.  Further, in order to preemptively quell furor over the foregoing, a massive prosecutorial campaign was implemented, with agent provocateurs insidiously planted, to insure that electoral protests would not be permitted to spread.  Instead, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the justice system spread a veil of silence, promptly dismissing, usually on procedural grounds, all legal actions seeking to demonstrate the existence of electoral irregularities, making it impossible to determine if enough irregularities took place to change electoral outcomes.  Something we will now never know, although many have strong suspicions.

The results of the 2020 elections were profoundly satisfying to the Deep State.  Mission accomplished.  The attempted mini-revolt that seemed brewing in 2022, was at least minimized.  Now 2024 is looming, and the Deep State, fearful of another revolt in 2024, as implied by most polling data, is seeking to limit opposition to its candidates, not just through control over available information, but also through abuse of the legal system, and it may work. 

Mr. Trump, to the dismay of many, the disgust of some and the panic of others, is once again running for president.  But unlike 2016, he seems a much stronger candidate; certainly within the GOP.  That is in large part because of the horrendous performance of the Biden administration in every possible sense, but, it’s loyalty to the Deep State is unquestionable, hence, Mr. Biden will also apparently run again.  And Mr. Trump may well defeat him, if given a chance to run.  Which is why litigation, both penal and civil, is being resorted to by those who have good cause to fear his return to power.  Mrs. Clinton?  Much as she might wish she were still relevant, she seems to have been consigned to a role as an embittered relic of days we wish were gone-by but which, unfortunately, have just changed some of the cast.  Of course, perhaps one should beware of the “walking dead”.

What a world in which Messers. Trump and Biden and the ghosts conjured by Mrs. Clinton are the candidates offered up to lead the purportedly free world, especially when there are people like Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich and Even, Joseph Kennedy IV available as alternatives, but there you have it; we are collectively up the creek with no paddles in sight.

Sooo, in conclusion, an imprisoned candidate in the United States is precluded from conducting a political campaign, and in many states, from being on the ballot.  That, clearly, seems to be the Deep State’s ultimate backup strategy for 2024. 

Which explains all the Trump related litigation and the dichotomy in Mr. Bragg’s approach to law enforcement.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

Quizás, quizás, quizás

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For erudite and knowledgeable conservative Republicans of the populist rather than traditionalist bent, it must be shocking to have to admit that Hugo Chavez was dead on with respect to his New Latin American Constitutionalism, a political philosophy premised on the hypotheses that elite control over the judiciary, the media, the bureaucracy and the legislative branch was antithetical to democracy, and especially to democratic reform.

Chavez, in essence, recognized the functioning of Latin America’s version of the “deep state”, a subsidiary of the United States’ own Deep State, and tried his best to dismantle it in Venezuela, impossible given the economic leverage against Chavismo exerted by the United States and its allies, including fifth columnists predominant among the Venezuelan elite, but he at least managed to splinter the preexistent power structure, at least in the public’s perception.

His successor, Nicholas Madura is no Chavez, he is a lightweight caretaker whose replacement never arrived.  He is not an intellectual theorist, or a revolutionary.  But amazingly, notwithstanding the theft of major Venezuelan assets organized in a bipartisan manner by the United States and its allies, especially the United Kingdom, he has hung on.  By his fingernails at times, but he has hung on.

Now the tactics used against Latin American progressives by elites loyal to the United States billionaire class have come home to roost, … in a sense.  The diverse agencies charged with administration of the justice system in the United States, on federal and state levels, including prosecutors, private attorneys and judges are busy investigating and litigating in order to obstruct functional democracy and to deprive voters of choices deemed unacceptable, to exact revenge on political adversaries, while the corporate media is not only cheering them on, but censoring information damaging to predetermined electoral outcomes, predetermined, of course, by the Deep State and its owners.  The mole ridden bureaucracy is a second line of defense, should primary efforts to block an unruly electorate prove insufficient, as occurred in 2016.  Just as Hugo Chavez predicted.  Only the victims now include the American People, and of course, superficially, those rigidly antisocialist populist right wingers beloved by adherents of the philosophies of the non-existent Tea Party.

Unfortunately, victims also include the left wing Cassandra class.  We who’ve been pointing out the dangers of a Deep State dedicated to extracting every penny possible from “ordinary” Americans through taxation and government borrowing, mechanisms for generating and “laundering” extorted wealth through the ill named “defense industry” (what Ike referred to as the “military industrial complex”), now supplemented by the pharmaceutical industry via “blessed” pandemics.

Perhaps, somehow, Latin America can escape the vicious sociopolitical-economic quagmire in which so much of the world finds itself.  Perhaps it can orchestrate such escape through the insights Hugo Chaves tried to weave into an effective oppositional strategy, and if it does, perhaps other countries will follow it and escape the Deep State gravity well whose event horizon seems to have the world trapped in endless war.  Perhaps the BRICS’ efforts to attain a non-hegemonic world power structure will bear fruit, and, echoing the hypothesis on which United States federalism was premised, a multipolar world will experiment with different sociopolitical and economic options resulting in new solutions to age old problems which can then be adopted by others.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, as the wonderful Hispanic song “Quizás, quizás, quizás” croons.

But from where I sit, that seems to be somewhat beyond today’s horizons.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.

The Political Fallacy of Right versus Left

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The left-right dichotomy in the political spectrum is greatly exaggerated and manipulated in order to (through the divide and conquer strategy made famous by the British in foreign affairs) keep the most selfish among us in perpetual power.  The infinitesimally tiny billionaire class which owns the corporate media, all major political parties and the leadership of “our” government’s bureaucracy, uses that left-right divide to fuel the polarization essential to maintain itself in power, stressing faux issues such as abortion, gun control and identity politics in order to avoid the issues that really make a difference in our lives, issues like peace, equity, healthcare, education and sustainable family economics.  Issues as to which families on both sides of the left-right political spectrum mostly agree.

The majority of citizen-victims (a more accurate characterization of just what and who we are, except, perhaps, that “subject” might be more accurate than citizen), sense that something is terribly wrong, and so, are more and more drawn to populist figures who, although less articulate and less versed in rhetoric, resonate with them.  And it’s not a United States phenomenon but rather, one spreading throughout the “western” world.  Jair Messias Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodolfo Hernández Suárez in Colombia were analogues to Donald John Trump in the United States, albeit much less experienced or capable than the unpleasant Mr. Trump.  All received significant support from populists on the right.  But other much more palatable choices on the left of the populist spectrum like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have managed to attain power.  Other leftist populists in Latin America attained power briefly but were quickly deposed by United States funded and supported “soft” and hard coups d’état, as was the case recently in Peru, and a few years ago in Bolivia and Honduras.

If populists on the left and on the right, including populists in the United States, e.g., political followers of Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich, etc. (on the left) and the Republican Tea Party (on the right) ever stopped to carefully analyze the current situation and their respective ideals, we’d realize that we have a great deal in common, most importantly, a common foe.  That foe is the billionaire class referenced above, and its tools, are primarily the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans, the corporate media, and moles implanted throughout the federal bureaucracy, especially the intelligence communities, the Department of Justice and the judiciary.  A foe which, however, if we united and respected our right to be different, even our right to be wrong, we could finally render impotent.

The “Deep State” is a term some of us use to identify the informal coalition that comprises our foe.  The foe that bleeds United States tax payers of funds that could be used for universal healthcare, for universal education at all levels, for a meaningful universal social safety net, for decent infrastructure, etc., syphoning such funds into expenditures to fund permanent armed conflict around the world, which, at the costs of millions of lives, funds the lavish lifestyles of the few.  Consider: most of the world’s wealth is owned by sixteen families, while a majority of the world’s people lack adequate food, adequate shelter, adequate clothing, adequate healthcare and adequate education.  Children die every second of every day from United States funded bombs to support the whims of the very worst among us, all with the essential assistance of very foolish voters who feel that by rewriting history, evil history will not have happened.  That through censorship, reality and truth will become irrelevant.  That by insulting, ridiculing and calumnying those with different perspectives we will all finally get along and freedom will finally ring.

All of the foregoing negativity is possible because we are denuded of empathy and common sense through emotional manipulation.  Through what purports to be entertainment but is instead, Orwellian propaganda glorifying villainy, murder, dishonesty and violence; an us versus them disease, with what passes for news being a filter that eliminates that which does not promote Deep State agendas and replaces it with calumny, ridicule and deception (plus a smattering of Pablum to keep us bored).  Some of us remember Pablum, albeit vaguely; tasteless baby food, carefully blended to assure homogeneity.

If we, as a People, in sufficient numbers, ever grasp the foregoing and, taking the time to reflect on it, evaluate it and digest it, unite (despite our superficial differences), and, rejecting polarization, decide to impose rather than merely demand change, our progeny might inherit a world they’ll respect.

And we’d earn their blessings instead of their justified disdain.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.