$35 trillion in US public debt matches – to the dollar – Washington’s war spending since 2001. It’s been trillion a year, in inflation-adjusted dollars, a trillion a year in fake MICIMATT money for over 20 years.
The neocon wars have nothing to show for these trillions, except wasted uninhabitable cities and land, billions of angry people, and the priming of brand new warfronts. A normal empire profits from its forays abroad, and uses its dominating presence to enrich its people. But the US Government works a little differently, and like any unrecovered addict, lies about what it is, what it has done, and why.
Signs of the Potemkin empire are all around us, much like the orange day lilies that bloom along the roadside this time of year. While both parties and past presidents have cultivated war and lies, the Biden Administration gets the credit for the blossoming of fake villages for the benefit of the governing class.
We have a Potemkin President, a fake construction that has been gradually – then suddenly — recognized by the entire global population. Whether it is hidden Parkinson’s, or outlandishly obvious senility, the lies of the state, from all state podiums, have been worthy of Oscars and Golden Globes. The state-pleasers have given their all, in performances worthy of the original Potemkin myth.
Our Potemkin president – less than four months to an election that his vacant frame, and more vacant party, still hopes to win – promises to “do his goodest.” Yet, his Washington base, in both parties, are J. Alfred Prufrocks – daring not, presuming not, “attendant lords… Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous…” Do we dare to impeach, can we presume to exercise the Constitution, will the mermaids sing to me?
No, no and no.
While literal Potemkin villages may never have existed, the boys and girls in the Corn Pop administration said “Hold my beer!”
This gang of Jakes, Avrils, Tonys and Kamalas couldn’t put together a functional bicycle gang in a cul-de-sac, but they are kings and queens in their Potemkin village. We have noticed that our trains derail, our dams degrade, and our power grids discombobulate on a regular basis. We sense our dank economic ditch and dry social well is the result of several decades of hard core and wasteful militarization; militarization that has abjectly failed to secure and defend our borders, our cities, our economy, our territory and our very existence as Americans. We no longer wish to serve in the US military, and we notice that in response, the state simply automates our “service” with a clear intention to violate at least 7 of the first 13th Amendments.
As our own bridges shake, rumble, and collapse, we find “NATO unveils a ‘Bridge to Membership’ for Ukraine.” The US taxpayer, who overwhelmingly pays for Washington’s NATO proxy, is building a fake bridge, to impress a made-up enemy, and provide solace to a fake “security organization,” using fake money and lying about it to please the rulers in Washington. If “Potemkin Village” is a metaphor for imperial lies and self-deception, this Ukrainian bridge to NATO membership is the literal “phony portable settlement” built along the banks of the Dneiper to impress a past lover.
The details reveal the insanity of the new Potemkinism. US/NATO will “set up an entire command” for Ukraine – not a real command, not a real defense organization, but a Ukrainian storefront on NATO Street, the saloon doors swinging open to nothing but desert and tumbleweeds, like a movie set in an old Western. The reality behind those doors is depleted uranium and cluster bomb-polluted farmland, shattered infrastructure, countable corpses, and uncountable ghosts of the Ukraine that was and might have been.
The destruction of Ukraine is publicly denied by Washington and NATO, even as US and NATO actions precipitated and pushed that destruction, even as Ukrainians fled the country and the front lines, in a country that is no longer a democracy, no longer rational, no longer coherent. The lies of the West about Ukraine, while not admitted, are certainly confirmed by the need to build a fake village for the West to gaze upon.
A small, but important icon of the Biden Potemkinism, and our Potemkin empire, was observed this past spring, off the coast of Gaza. The US-Israel genocide in Gaza is a politically driven murder spree aimed at killing a certain population, driving them into starvation and demoralization, ensuring that survivors cannot return, and cannot live on the engineered moonscape that is the Gaza Strip after nine months of US munitions and IDF insanity.
But in classic Potemkin fashion, the US denies this truth, and publicized it would build a beautiful bridge to Gaza, for the delivery of food, aid, and medical supplies, off the coast. Only the US could do this wondrous thing – and with a generous third of a billion dollars taken directly from the pockets of 200 million American workers, who increasingly hold two or more part-time jobs to make ends meet — it created a testament to the might and the heart and the goodness of the US state. This literal movable village never moved a thing, collapsed and blew away in the waves of the Mediterranean, something that in a previous era would have been lied about as well – but today we can often see these things for ourselves.
The naval port was completely for show. To help Palestinians bombarded by bombs, the US government could have simply not delivered those bombs, not delivered and maintained the F-35 squadrons that dropped them, not sent aid and comfort to Israel in a way that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and destroyed more than 70% of the buildings that once stood in Gaza.
To deliver aid to Gaza, the US government could have simply driven convoys from north, south and west, loaded with food, water, medical supplies and medics. But that would have displeased the powers that be in East Jerusalem and in Washington. The Helms Amendment, since 1973, has sought to prevent US taxpayer money sent overseas for the purpose of abortion, because half of the taxpayers have a moral aversion to the practice and do not wish to pay for it. Yet, Congress and both parties work hard to hide the trillions of taxpayer receipts they spend on the regular, daily, overseas murder of mothers, fathers, children, and the unborn.
When what the state has built, what it does, and who it consists of is hidden from the people, and a fake front is presented, it never works for long. Potemkin’s villages – as the myth is told – tells us that state lies never really fool the people. In fact, it is the people – paid or ordered by the state – who do the actual construction, and play their parts to “serve” the state.
Whether in a movie studio, or along the banks of a old European river, market forces ensure that all Potemkin villages are entirely cosmetic and superficial. The US port to Gaza to end a humanitarian crisis, Ukraine’s false bridge to NATO to increase European security, or the pitiful dementia patient propped up in the White House in the name of stability, are all Potemkin-esque. The state’s fake structures of peace, security and good-will will crumble and fall away. The imminent collapse of a one-sided building is nothing to be afraid of, and we should anticipate, welcome and applaud it!
