Originally published via Armageddon Prose:

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
-H.L. Mencken

This could’ve been a debate from 1992, or 2004, or 2012.

These hacks have no shame – the reason, incidentally, they made it as far as they did in politics.

With the possible exception of pharma bitch Vivek Ramaswamy, they all came equipped with their focus-grouped, donor-mediated standard talking points about “government spending” (a euphemism for cutting Medicaid and Medicare because they don’t have the balls to come out and say it) without every broaching the elephant in the room, as it were, of the bloated military budget. This is because Raytheon, Boeing, etc. run Washington and benefit greatly from endless war – another plain truth that these testicle-less tools.

Fake tough guy Chris Christie – a man I refuse to take seriously on any account ever because he visibly lacks any sense of self-discipline or self-respect at a BMI of approximately 50 – went on the offensive against Ramaswamy, a proxy for the absent Trump, with his tired “straight talk” routine minus any actual straight talk.

Pharma bitch Vivek did his best Trump impersonation, mixed with odd Obama pandering, apparently in the hopes that he’ll be the next token minority rock star on the campaign trail for the other team (but let’s be honest; they’re all on the same team).

As for the rest of them, the predictable drivel and plastic smiles made their commentary unremarkable.

If you took a shot for every time these people said:

·       Protect America

·       Values

·       Small towns/”small-town values”

·       Farmers

·       Fiscal responsibility

·       Jesus Christ

·       Regulations

… you would’ve been too drunk to fuck 20 minutes in.

The main issue I have with all of this kabuki theatre is that, to the extent they made any specific pledges on policy, I don’t believe one individual on that stage is sincere about fixing any of the problems they profess to care deeply about.

Were any of them elected, of course, multinational corporations would continue running the state, the Federal Reserve would be permitted to run monetary policy in the shadows in perpetuity, the endless war machine would keep getting serviced, the border will remain open for the sake of importing corporate wage slaves who can drive down the cost of labor — and all of these traitorous assholes would continue getting filthy rich off of all the graft in the meanwhile.

“There’s hope in the words and emotion in the eyes
It’s so easy to be misled by the savvy gentle guise
And like fools we trust the delivery
But it’s all just drunk sincerity”
-Bad Religion

They are incapable of elaborating on their professed beliefs in any degree of detail and engaging with the substance of what the last guy said because they have no beliefs or thoughts that haven’t been drilled into their heads by consultants – and so they can’t give or take in real-time.

So what we got is two hours of empty platitude non-sequiturs.

The audience is another impediment to a sober, sincere conversation because they are willing to clap like seals at meaningless platitudes if they are just delivered with the right vocal intonations and conviction, which incentivizes more mindless sloganeering and less rational debate.

That this is ostensibly the best that America can produce would be profoundly depressing – if, indeed, these puppets were actually the best potential leaders out there. The reason people like this make it to the national stage in the running for high office is not because of their credentials, but because of their cavernous cravenism. They have no moral core and therefore are imminently pliable by the corporate and Deep State interests that actually run the country.

There’s no line fed to them that they won’t repeat with a straight face in full make-up. (Incidentally, any adult man who wears makeup has already earned my scorn and is forever suspect in my mind.)

Conspicuously absent was any man of principle like Ron Paul or any sacrilegious bull in a china shop like Trump. It was wall-to-wall hacks.

I don’t ask for much: all I want to hear from a candidate is that he is going to #draintheswamp, with specifics on what hell he’s going to unleash on the corporate state. None of that was forthcoming.

Of course, in the vast majority of the media, including “independent” conservative media, you’re not going to get any of this analysis. It’ll be horse-race blather and tabloid-style, credulous analysis of which made-up doll said what to which other made-up doll. It’ll drive clicks, the readers will be disserviced, and the charade will continue uninterrupted.

This is America.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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