The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 2010)

Fourth of July Independence Day Delusion

 

 

JOHN SARGIS

 

 

 

The American elite disguises its fascist repression on the Fourth of July as a birthday party celebration and fireworks extravaganza commemorating, it says, the country’s declaration of independence from the colonial tyrant Great Britain from which a long fought war for independence followed. Certified propaganda on the Fourth liberally pitches the mirage that America stands for irreproachable moral rectitude. This deliberately blatant false piety clashes with reality. The people have their timid political heads in the sand and refuse to confront this hypocrisy. The Fourth of July is much more about inequality than equality.

 

The past

 

US history, past and present, proves the point that the US steadfastly carries out its role as the foremost international terrorist state. The British and their colonial brethren in the New World murdered the indigenous population, drove the remaining out of their lands and onto prisons called “reservations,” broke every treaty, plundered indigenous lands and resources across forests, lakes, prairie, mountains, ocean, Gulf of Mexico and whatever is above and below.

 

After the American Colonies won their War for Independence, which neither dislodged Great Britain from the continent nor eliminated America’s wars with its former colonial masters, the newly formed US republic crafted manifest destiny to fit its land grab west to the Pacific and beyond and got on with its genocide of the indigenous people spewing biological warfare and latest killing technology.

 

The top of the US hierarchy have built for 300 years a society based on the forced exclusion of the people already living there for thousands of years, and also a market society, based on the values of heteronomy. The oligarchy have accumulated economic and political power and recently thanks to their law office, the Supreme Court, have the go-ahead to control the outcome of elections. They always did, but now it is legal and worth more. Their lackeys inhabit Congress, its federal bureaucracy and state and local governments along with a myriad of civic and business/law associates, contractors, think tanks and other moneyed/market interests. Their operative phrase is “control the purse strings”. The Founding Fathers, who were the rich and powerful economic and political elite, feared democracy, because power would be taken from them with a direct democracy. So, they created a Republic, one that they only would control. But they had to win the support of the people.  The elite induced the people with ideas of equality, freedom, self-government, values that are self-evident and must be fought for and paid with blood. The colonists found out fast that the government was interested in rule of law (now rule of the economy) as they apply it, rather than equality. It was the people who lost direct democracy fighting a war for the economic and political elite to maintain minority privileges. These prestigious and honorable white men of wealth and influence in Massachusetts within ten years of the Revolutionary War, put together a private army and suspended habeas corpus in order to destroy farmers’ resistance to an unjust economic system. Direct democracy was lost when the war was won.

 

The English Puritan breed, a patriarchal religious cult of women haters and witch hunters undertook many hazards to travel to America. To overcome these risks they did not put their faith wholly in God or freedom of religion, as children we are led to believe, but above all they sought security and trade benefits before they would undertake a perilous journey and uncertain future in the new world, otherwise the trip would not have been worth the effort. After all, others have been doing it. The first English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia was established a decade or so earlier than the Puritan invasion by a group of English entrepreneurs of the Virginia Company of London whose stockholders wished to make big profits on the incalculable and diverse resources to be found in the “new world”. Thus, the need for market profits supersedes all the rubbish we are led to believe about the Fourth provided in school text books about religious freedom, equality, self-determination, etc. The outcome contradicts the belief[1]

 

The present

 

The US is neither a democracy nor a democratic republic. It is a fascist state under the cover of democratic politics which is controlled by two opposing but interchangeable facets of the same system, who have shared power since 1860. Americans have been disenfranchised, since the Supreme Court, completing the fascist turn, declaring corporations can influence elections. Now it is dictated that corporations and government will work hand in hand determining foreign and domestic policy. Corporations can participate in all elections and of course will soon be sponsoring candidates just as they now sponsor sports/entertainment figures and heroes. Corporations will be able to spend whatever amounts of money by its innumerable means to get a commodity/candidate elected. The perfect persona for the corporate domination of politics is the professional politician, an immutable creature that casts its vote according to its corporate trustees. With such a system in place how can we trust their judgment and the legitimacy of privatized politics? The fact is that corporations bankroll professional politicians who then open the doors of the US treasury to their overlords. The economic and political elite are the new aristocratic fascists on the Fourth.

 

The US is no more a sovereign state, but a police state which holds every person as a potential threat. The people and corporations are recruited to spy on Americans. The public is cleverly connected to the myth of freedom the Fourth of July and other patriotic rubbish promote. As a result the public is lost in delusion and habitually believes things that are not self-evident. The public must discard such patriotic nonsense because what they believe contradicts the outcome, i.e., the belief is that the Fourth of July is about freedom, but the conduct contradicts the belief as the US is an occupied nation controlled by the political and economic elite. The US is an open jail as everyone is under surveillance. Whatever remnants there are of democracy regress into hypocrisy. Indeed, it is delusion that Americans in reality celebrate indoctrination, obedience, freedom, loyalty and patriotic junk bonds on the Fourth.

 

Today this habitual behavior to occupy land, to send into despair a nation, and steal the resources has been accepted by the elite’s front man Obama who persists in, the same and more, warfare activities as his criminal predecessors. The Fourth of July is two-faced in America.

 

This criminality against fellow humans and nature goes on today with America’s “operation enduring freedom,” the counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan which is to free its resources from the people into the hands of multinational corporations. For the US enforcers of freedom and prosperity there is no need to physically remove the residents. They will be integrated into the New World Order. The US claims it occupies Afghanistan and bombs Pakistan daily to protect the civilians.  The villain of democracy alleges to bring self-determination. Rather, it imposes submission. Self-determination can only come from the people, otherwise it becomes an effort in futility against heteronomy. It is delusionary for Americans to celebrate obedience and loyalty to America on the Fourth.

 

America’s ruling oligarchy partners with the corporate mass media to directly influence public sentiment and opinion. It floods the media with information it wants the public to consume. The best way to direct what the public will read, hear and see is to manage information by regularly communicating propagandistic themes throughout all media outlets. Given deliberately managed misinformation how can a public make rational decisions? Indeed, those who receive the message will go around repeating what they hear thereby spreading the fairy tale. Who needs facts, knowledge or truth when jingo and dis-information will create the palatable perception? But this is nothing surprising or new. The government has been caught many times manipulating with the media’s connivance information to convey its propaganda.

 

The patriotic indoctrination infusing the Fourth of July contradicts the long barbarous tradition the US perpetrates and will be held accountable for. This incongruity between  the myth of the Fourth and reality has inflated patriotic heroes and feculent slogans on the one hand, and on the other hand the reality of genocide, slavery (Jim Crow, prison system, mis-education system), anti-immigrant laws (the bigots forget their fore-bearers were immigrants), Patriot Act, etc. Furthermore, certified dogma on the Fourth reinforces the system of representative “democracy” and the market economy and forces the populace to believe foolishly that democratic capitalism is the only way to freedom and prosperity. Tell a young child, who does not know, the sky is yellow and the child will believe it and live it until it is convinced that it is not yellow.

 

The supposedly self-evident truths of representative “democracy” and market economy for all inhabitants have intrinsic worth only for a few privileged economic and political elite, that is, freedom and prosperity are reserved for them. Holding and believing these “truths” legitimates a contradiction because representative “democracy” and the market economy are mutually exclusive and cannot together produce anything but inequality. Evidence is the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else.[2] Therefore, embracing such a belief is a delusion. We must abolish the belief because its outcome or conduct contradicts the belief. Yes, representative “democracy” and the market economy bring freedom and prosperity for the rich, of course, because they control the wealth and economic and political decision-taking. Something like 1% of Americans control over 40% of the wealth and the next 3% of the richest control another 40% of the wealth. So that leaves crumbs for 96% of the population. Americans slap some Fourth of July barbeque sauce (read: corn syrup) on that factory farmed genetically modified chicken breast without bone or skin and eat it!

 

Controlling a society of linear thinkers where everyone thinks the same way provides for the elite the elimination of any critical analysis that would undercut such straight thinking, because people’s knowledge base has been radically reduced. The resulting monotone thinking puts people asleep and prevents them from distinguishing political propaganda in official speeches discharged on 4 July. So the American people have no polity or political awareness since this public has been forced out of the public space. This is not surprising, this project has been ongoing for some two-hundred and thirty-four years. Linear thinking mis-educates, because people are not taught to critically analyze statements, myths, or consequences of any discourse that would provide the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. Therefore getting people thinking alike is all the better to control society without overt force. The Fourth’s patriotic festivities, the smoke and mirrors of which, are creating a citizen army saturated in market values and the habiliments of an entrepreneurial society who are liable and pre-disposed to do what they are ordered by unbelievable beliefs. The people are persuaded by the nationalistic pride permeating the Fourth to pledge allegiance to the war of necessity against those who want to take their freedom away, but it has already been stolen by the political and economic elite. This great patriotic duping and deception celebrates US terrorist tyranny and barbarian forces around the globe.

 

Loyalty to this glossing, trickery, magic, rituals and narratives repeated ad nauseum in numerous ceremonies that correspond to the ideology of violence and concomitant, values, heroes, etc. of the Fourth, distracts the people from the multidimensional crisis  in order to keep the hocus pocus myth of the American Dream alive which prevents them from seeing things as they are by rerouting their intelligence to an inner (read: isolated) private individual consumed in egoism, but not without emotional violent outbursts. The myth that Independence Day is the epitome of freedom subsists because people are superstitious. The belief will persist until the people regain their intelligence, that is, gain the ability to distinguish the contradiction between the belief and the conduct it controls, thereby breaking the habit. The US we are led to believe is in Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida and prevent the Taliban from gaining control, however, the US is Afghanistan’s largest employer spending $10 billion a year training the Afghan police/military forces in order to create a security state. Yet, the Afghan economy is $14 billion.[3] Got a 4th job America?

 

We have heard many times that America is a culture of violence. This truism has its basis in history. The system disarms the people’s thinking capabilities through its institutions with the ease of a commercial message, you see, because US society is a market democracy, a commodity of fetish made profits consumers buy into thus accepting the behavior the message expects. The public is fed all kinds of dis-information, but because they lack higher cognitive skills (due to their mis-education), the public cannot make distinctions or question propaganda. For example, youth gangs, we are told, are the cause of the “violence and drugs” that plague our society. The mis-informed decision-taking members of our communities all agree that we must rid society of these “animals”. In fact it is systemic violence that is the cause of violent youth gangs. The effect of the market economy and representative “democracy” is youth gangs. So, violence will continue to be a tradition in America until the objective conditions throughout society are changed. The Fourth of July is part of the overall plan to keep the homogenized public stupefied by the leader of the free world.

 

Democratic decision-taking was abridged under the cover of patriotic fervor. People are finally removed from politics and in the hands of professionals. Firstly, through the run up to any election the voters are fed what is erroneously called the democratic process; secondly, people can even vote by mail which further alienates them from politics because it opens a wide front for fraud. No authentic public political discussion is allowed! What is called public debate is an attempt to influence perceptions and attitudes by the ruling elite to confirm their legitimacy and capabilities. Free speech is co-opted, but this does not stop people from celebrating and picnicking on the Fourth. Patriotism leaks from flags and songs ―our country rights or wrongs. It is through this type of mindless propaganda that further confuses an already dumbed-down citizenry who do not need censoring, because they pattern their life-worlds from what is given as self-evident heroes, values, beliefs, institutions, symbols, and hierarchical correlations of the dominant social paradigm. With this the public remains politically inert and undisturbed in their stupor. Equality and freedom are humbug in the growth of the secret security state.

 

When the market and its political complement determine national policy, the fascist state appears. Fascist tyranny is framed within the state security apparatus. Foreign or domestic decision taking is made amongst the institutions of corporate boards, G20, G7, IMF, Congress, lobbyists, corporate PACS, think tanks, military/law enforcement, etc. A gigantic secret intelligence gathering conglomerate spies on its populace, who are now considered a threat to national security.[4] The people are left behind not being able to compete with corporations over elections as ad campaigns. Corporate money will directly find its way into voter’s pockets. This form of social control supersedes all previous contradictions and inconsistencies in US affairs and places the US as the premier fascist state. US national interests are synonymous with the fascist slogan “democratic capitalism”. The Fourth of July is an easy venue for accomplishing the task of accepting such patriotic non-sense, as Thoreau exhorts, is a maggot inside a person’s head. Patriotism eats away the person’s sensibilities.

 

As we have seen, from colonial times through the War for Independence and thenceforth, the American government directed the stealing of indigenous land, plundered their resources and designed corporate cities built on the blood of slaves, and immigrants. The tyrants who now inhabit Congress along with their friends and comrades in other government institutions and agencies mentioned above, fabricate patriotism draped in propaganda that people can relate to and believe in. The perpetual war council feeds the public the patriotic slogans “the most effective weapon against terrorism is you” and “see something, say something”. The mass media is a willing participant on sounding the corporate chorus to deceive the people into self-censorship. Fear issued for political gain is terrorism. The publicis roused to patriotism. Political misinformation, disinformation and psyops (read: counterinsurgency) used in this way is a form of terrorism. Terrorism is fear issued for political gain by any means necessary. The public weal is destroyed as economic and political decisions are taken out of the public’s hands and concentrated in the morally bankrupt elite. The public space is disappearing as the last inroads of neoliberal privatization, i.e., corporate control and transferring of wealth takes place ―a democratic fraud. While this theft is going on the public think they are being patriotic. False unease grips the egocentric public who snuggle up to market managed freedom on the Fourth as the government showers hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Wall Street as if it were confetti. When the people come to the political awareness that Congress caters only to their corporate masters, and are provoked into action, then they will be in a position to abolish the market economy and representative “democracy” and replace it with inclusive democracy.[5]

 

As it stands today, if the US were asked by Great Britain in 1774 to initiate a counterinsurgency program in the Colonies, because the insurgents (read: rebels) challenge the legitimacy of the Mother country to rule, the US would immediately accept and commence a counterinsurgent program to hinder and make ineffectual the intolerable behavior of the insurgents and therefore enhance Great Britain’s legitimacy. Thus, it is a given that the US would wage counterinsurgency operations against the Colonies without considering the claims of the revolutionaries. Because power must remain in the hands of the political and economic elite and with fear as the driving factor that fuels the bogus war on terror abroad, the elite decides when and where to set up counterinsurgent missions.

 

Official US propaganda portrays the Fourth of July and fighting the American War for Independence in order to create a nation based on freedom, equality and justice. The reality is that the US has none of these. The people have been removed as a polity and are now merely consumers of politics. As long as there is no rupture of values, beliefs, etc. the dominant social paradigm which are now determined by the market economy will remain in place, i.e. a system of heteronomy established by the market economy and representative “democracy”. The only solution is the fight for a mass political movement which will begin creating new political, economic and social institutions of Inclusive Democracy, transferring resources from the capitalist market economy and representative “democracy” to the new institutions until the new antisystemic sector replaces society’s institutions with institutions securing the necessary conditions for the equal distribution of power.[6] It is only through the process of creating such institutions and the actual experience that people get in really administering the polity and the economy for themselves that a new truly democratic consciousness will be created that will eventually become hegemonic and replace the present pseudo-democratic consciousness.

 

The future?

 

In order for self-determination and the building of an autonomous society it is necessary to institutionalize the equal distribution of political, economic and social power for all citizens across society. This means discarding the market economy and representative “democracy”. The objective conditions that cause the present multidimensional crisis[7] provide the opportunity for change. This determination to build a new society has to follow the axiomatic choice for autonomy rather than heteronomy. Self-determination was the ruse to get the poor and powerless involved in the effort of the elites to establish an oligarchy. Hamilton and his ilk abhorred democracy and the struggle of humanity to achieve real freedom and self-determination. Our so-called political and economic leaders gladly deceive themselves about liberty, freedom and equality, and subsequently are most resourceful at deceiving the people. This assures the elite’s privileged niche. What the elite do in purported good faith is in fact irreconcilable with good faith. It is naïve for anyone to assume the hijackers and haters of democracy are found in foreign lands. No! They are located in their base camps in the US ―Congress, Pentagon, Supreme Court, White House.

 

Inclusive democracy creates a new conception of democracy where the public realm includes the political sphere, the economic sphere, the social sphere and the ecological sphere that seeks the equal distribution of among all citizens. Inclusive democracy offers a new concept of what it means to be a citizen by taking as a defining point freedom.[8] The citizen in an inclusive democracy is far from the egoism of the privatized individual of the market society. If freedom is not linked to the political and economic sphere, it becomes merely a tool manipulated by the political and economic elite to fashion democracy ―a papier-mâché democracy.

 

The people have the right to dissolve the government that has become a tyranny. The time is now to start building the new mass movement I mentioned above to get rid ourselves of the system of the market economy and representative “democracy” that is the cause of the multidimensional crisis we face. Democracy cannot exist in a mis-educated society with its contrived freedom and happiness to shop or being comforted in and by amusements. The people celebrate this merry ignorance thinking they are in their own reality show, yes the camera is on them, but it is the police state camera. An ignorant society cannot be a free society, but a barbaric society.

 

 


 

[1] Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Persistent Issue of Race Is in the Spotlight, Again,” The New York Times (July 22,2010). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/us/politics/23sherrod.html

[2] Laura Bassett, “Income Gap Between Rich and Poor Is Highest in Decades, Data Shows,” Huffington Post (July 8, 2010). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/income-gap-between-rich-a_n_639984.html

[3] Rachel Maddow, “For Afghans, the best training U.S. money can buy,” The Rachel Maddow Show, msnbc tv (July 14, 2010).  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#38252923

[6] See Takis Fotopoulos, “The Barcelona  talks: The transition to an Inclusive Democracy” (in this issue)

[7] See Takis Fotopoulos, The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy (IJIDD, Special issue, August 2005), ch. 9. http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/ss/ch9.htm

[8] ibid. Part II