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https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57700.htm

The Senility Of Empire

Empires end. As they approach dissolution, they are described as “senile". Historically, the term was used to describe empire itself, and not the monsters who happen to run it but in this as, sadly, in so many respects, America must rank as exceptional.

Within the last weeks Americans have witnessed a series of disturbing, inadvertent exhibitions of the pathetic debility and lamentable incapacity of some of our putative “leaders”, high-ranking members of the Crone and Geezer Junta that rules us.

Putting aside the fact of the moral and intellectual nullity of the overwhelming majority of cyphers and cretins that infest our Congress, and concentrating on the most piteously afflicted invalids in our superannuated political coven, one must cite first our dithering, blithering President, an excruciating example of hopeless human inadequacy, too afflicted to even recognize its own vacuity. This sad, lost wreck could be regarded with pity as a fuddled, leering simpleton were it not that he is nominally in control of the fate of millions that his loopy, aggravated anoia puts in gravest jeopardy. And his bitter, blind and terrified party, instead of placing him in the care his condition screams for, plans to run him for another term of irrational and perilous lunacy.

Concurrently, in our egregiously degraded Senate, we have been treated to the spectacle of the ancient, dingy, and disoriented Mrs. Feinstein returning, cerebrally disarmed, to the fray, unable to do more than present her physical remnant, unwilling to retire with what grace remains, rather than to muddle on as a baffled, mumbling ego, the butt of embarrassed pathos, a zombie relic.

Turning the other cheek of the One Big Money Party, that artifact Ninja Turtle Warrior for sleazy, unprincipled graft and grift, Mr. McConnell, was seen, during one of his deathly tedious public statements, to freeze and seize up mentally, and to stand staring catatonic, aphasic, utterly separated from his cognitive function, till he was passively led off, one supposes, for resuscitation.

None of these vulnerable souls is to be condemned for the ravages time has inflicted on them. The decrepitude of age is inevitable and sad, and it evokes only sympathy. That these sufferers happen to be among the most contemptible sociopathic human beings alive is a separate issue from their debility, and it does not disqualify them from concern for their afflictions.  

What cannot be excused them, though, is the fact that these selfish avatars of solipsistic egomania have continued in their exalted posts long after the capacity to perform any useful function has deserted them; long after the animating Elvis of whatever mojo they may have had has left the building.

It would be an indictment of our “democracy”, if we had one, that it permits, or rather, requires this madness, this pernicious policy of letting the undead rot away in office. Since we haven’t, it’s not even surprising, because vetting by the two cesspit parties is so stringent that no one with the least taint of independent mind or moral courage is ever permitted to run for major political office, hence the decayed remain and decompose, stinking, in place.

Blame the voting public? How to justify that? Indoctrination by the vast Capitalist propaganda machine has made its abysmal ignorance all but universal. The failing Empire, run by rapacious Capitalism with its unassuageable lust to steal the world’s wealth by violence, though its military can’t defeat even feeble, destitute tribal states, has convinced Americans this is its right, and they support this evil madness that, as it invites furious blowback, courts destruction by those mighty powers that can deliver it.

The level of comprehension of world reality, ever dependent on sound information, has been so degraded among Americans— even those of supposedly higher learning—that the electorate, bereft of it, has no capacity to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from deception, or actuality from fantasy. Through the blitz of state propaganda in media, and its incorporation in education, the American mind has been completely infantilized. By the manipulation and exacerbation of its latent and long cherished prejudices, and the strident prominence of cynically promoted official narrative, Americans’ capacity to think and assess with discrimination has been reduced to a proclivity for fierce, jejeune, tribal enmity and mindless, reflex, jingoist hostility.

Be clear: this is not an argument for “civility”, or a plaint that irreconcilables cannot come together and get along: it is a dirge for cogent, responsible intellection; a kadish for the demise of basic cognition. Child mind rules taste and politics. Barbie has whipped Oppenheimer. Americans don’t understand anything but toys and games and don’t want to. How should they begin to resist the chaos and dissolution they are being herded to?

And so it goes, as Vonnegut said. It was he who opined years ago that mankind had been put on earth to fart around, which seems, at this stage, to have been thoroughly demonstrated.

Nothing will change in The Senile Empire. Biden—once semi-coherent—swore it. Change is a function of mature thought, and we’re all out of that. As Carlin cracked, don’t look for it. Those doddering psychopaths who lead us, mentally drooling and incontinent, will drive us on toward our fated end, while we censor, flay, and anathematize each other over whether Russians or Chinese are more Satanic, whether Zelensky is Churchill or Hitler, and whether people should be able to say what gender they really are, and then become it.

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/indoctrination_intimidation_intolerance_what_passes_for_education_today

Indoctrination, Intimidation & Intolerance: What Passes for Education Today

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.

Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.

Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading.

Instead of raising up a generation of civic-minded citizens with critical thinking skills, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

Under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:

• draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
• overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
• school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
• standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
• politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
• and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

This is how you groom young people to march in lockstep with a police state.

As Deborah Cadbury writes for The Washington Post, “Authoritarian rulers have long tried to assert control over the classroom as part of their totalitarian governments.”

In Nazi Germany, the schools became indoctrination centers, breeding grounds for intolerance and compliance.

In the American police state, the schools have become increasingly hostile to those who dare to question or challenge the status quo.

America’s young people have become casualties of a post-9/11 mindset that has transformed the country into a locked-down, militarized, crisis-fueled mockery of a representative government.

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, America’s schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.

Not even good deeds go unpunished.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.

Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

How do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.