Making America hate again

How ironically appropriate that Kyle Shaw’s eulogy for the truth should be so full of false representations. As Shaw would have it, the United States (though admittedly built on shaky foundations) was essentially a force for good in the world until Donald Trump was elected president. The reality is entirely different. The United States came into being and expanded to its present dimensions through the genocidal extirpation of the country’s aboriginal inhabitants (the same is true, of course, of Canada). The obscene wealth of the United States was first amassed by the monstrous enslavement of millions of Africans and later augmented through the brutal exploitation of generations of nominally free workers (or as Shaw styles it, by “putting immigrants to work”). In time this came to be supplemented by pillaging the country’s near-abroad through the establishment of a network of banana republics and, more recently, by the imposition of the “Washington consensus” throughout the Third World.

The United States has been bellicose and imperialistic since its inception. These impulses were initially directed against indigenous North Americans, then extended to Latin America and later to the islands of the Pacific (Hawaii, the Philippines, etc.). Since the end of World War Two, this pattern has become global, with Washington attempting to overthrow a foreign government at least once per year, on average, for the past six decades.

The equal opportunity that Shaw extols is a cynical myth. African and indigenous Americans have only recently achieved even juridical parity with other US citizens and have never been compensated for their systematic despoliation by the United States. More generally, social science research has shown that the degree of social mobility in the US is low compared to that of other developed nations and has been stagnant or declining since the 1970s. Nor, needless to say, has there ever been any equality of opportunity with respect to non-economic matters. To take one example: today, as ever, Black men in the United States suffer an enormously disproportionate risk of being sent to prison and of being shot by police.

Given that Shaw’s depiction of the United States is so vapidly fallacious, it is no surprise that his take on the country’s recent election is likewise untroubled by any correspondence to reality. Shaw tells us that he supported Hillary Clinton “in all her experienced and capable complexity.” It is just as well that he leaves it at that for any attempt to expand on what he means by this would necessarily involve him in further fabulation.

Clinton’s psyche may well be complex but that is quite irrelevant. For any rational individual, what is important is not whether there are nuances to Clinton’s character but what one could have expected from her as president. For an answer one might look to her statements on policy but there is little reason to trust the campaign pronouncements of any candidate and Wikileaks has shown that, in Clinton’s case, this would be exceptionally foolish — behind closed doors, Clinton reassured Wall St. bankers that her public positions were simply fabrications designed to gull voters.

Looking at the positions Clinton espoused in private is likely to be more useful. Here, the news isn’t good for her fans: whatever progressive policies Bernie Sanders might have arm-twisted her into taking in public, in private she was taking them right back (e.g., saying that people opposed to fracking or pipelines “should get a life”). Notably, however, there was one issue on which Clinton came to have a consistent stance both on and off the record: her support for a no-fly zone in Syria. What makes this remarkable is that Joseph Dunford, the top member of the US armed forces, has testified to Congress that imposition of such a zone would bring about war with Russia (AKA World War III). Evidently, Clinton is as capable as Shaw claims capable of promoting Armageddon while still retaining the admiration of people like him.

Perhaps the most reliable guide to what Clinton would have done as president is to examine what she did previously. In her eight years as senator, only three bills that Clinton sponsored became law (none of them about anything much); hardly the formidable record that Shaw wants us to imagine. As Secretary of State, Clinton proved more energetic. Inter alia, she was the chief architect of US intervention in both Libya and Syria, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, the creation of millions of refugees and the ruination of two countries. This was completely consistent with her previous behaviour: as a key adviser to President Bill Clinton, she backed her husband’s genocidal sanctions on Iraq, which killed 500,000 children, and as senator she strongly supported the invasion of Iraq.

Shaw tells us all we need to know when he reveals that casting a ballot for Clinton felt like a vote for the future. Hillary Clinton is the very apotheosis of the political establishment: so much so that two consecutive chairs of the Democratic National Committee conspired with Clinton’s team to help her beat Bernie Sanders (and don’t forget all those super-delegates). Hillary and her husband have amassed personal wealth in excess of $200 million from peddling their insider influence to domestic financiers and foreign potentates alike. Hillary Clinton has always stood four-square for Wall St. and war — in other words, for the continuation of the status quo that has reigned uninterruptedly in Washington for the past 70 years.

Kyle Shaw tells us that the truth just died. He should know — he’s doing his level best to make sure it stays that way.