Hillary and Donald: Different Sides of the Same Coin.

With all the focus currently on Donald Trump as the likely Republican Party presidential nominee, many people are seeing Hillary Clinton as a ‘moderate’, ‘sensible’ alternative to the obviously outrageous buffoon, Trump. But, when you look a bit more closely, you will see it is not that simple.

I will not reinvent the wheel and attempt to argue the whole case against Hillary, as many other commentators have already done so far better than I could ever do, among them Cat Zavis on Salon-dot-com



http://www.salon.com/2016/03/26/hillary_leads_to_more_war_her_latest_speech_on_israel_is_just_the_newest_horrific_example/

For example, Hillary’s extremely hawkish foreign policy stance will be a disaster, as will her even more hawkish total support for the fascist regime in Tel Aviv.

So, the way I see it, is that both Hillary and Donald represent the two different faces of the SAME problem. And, that problem, which is actually quite complex, but, if we had to reduce it down to just one core ‘problem’ that is driving all of this, that problem would be this…..

Each of them represents two (somewhat) different aspects of “the synthetic society”, the totally FAKE thing that we often call “civilization”, but which in reality is not “civil” at all. The Clayton’s society, the society you have when there is actually nothing of substance there, just an imitation cardboard cutout, placed there to fool you into thinking the fake cardboard fascimile is the ‘real thing’.

We have been hurtling along on this trajectory for a long time now. I will not attempt to go into all of the sad, pathetic history of how we came to be in this total mess. It includes the false turn of neoliberalism, along with globalization, several decades ago, the Reagan and Thatcher versions of that false doctrine, and it stretches back to the foundation of the USA, as documented by the cultural historian Morris Berman, and explained so well in this interview.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzgY20d2MtU


It also includes many other false turns we have made, including much of what happened when our European forebears looted and pillaged the “known world” during the colonial era, in the process perpetrating huge injustices, and justifying their actions with a breathless display of cultural arrogance, that has been well-documented by the anthropologist Eric Wolf in his book ‘Europe and the People Without History”



http://www.amazon.com/Europe-People-Without-History-Eric/dp/0520268180/


Anyway, where we have ended up, with Hillary and Donald as our two archetypal political poster childs of the two faces of our fake society, is actually the real version of “The Matrix”, as per the movie, living in a kind of ‘virtual reality’. Only, there is no need for any fancy technology to make us think we are in a ‘real’ world, the fakery and trickery of our ‘real’ world virtual reality is built right into our collective minds!

The fake, synthetic world that the French Scholar Jean Baudrillard describes in his brilliant tour-de-force work, “Simulation and Simulacra”.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

There is a free online pdf copy of the English translation of Baudrillard’s book at this link.




http://www.bconradwilliams.com/files/7313/9690/1991/Baudrillard-Jean-Simulacra-And-Simulation2.pdf

What Baudrillard describes is the world of Disneyland and Hollywood, a make-believe Alice-in-Wonderland world of fakery and trickery, the world of (so-called) “reality” TV, which is a kind of ‘beyond real’ category of illusion that he calls the “hyperreal”, which is what you have when ‘reality’ goes BEYOND what is real, into a gross, exaggerated, surreal charicature of ‘real life’, where everything is grossly over-hyped, everything is fake in some way, including the smiles. (Speaking of fake smiles, think the TV show “The Bachelor”).

Hillary and Donald represent the two faces of that fakery. Hilary is the archetypal FAKE “politician”, the “insider’s Insider”, a woman whose smile is so plastic, one wonders if she peels it off at night, like an extra clingwrap type skin? A woman who represents everything that is so false within the “liberal establishment”. A woman who desperately craves power, to be “the one”, back in the White House, where she belongs, only this time, SHE will be “the boss”. SHE will be “kicking ass”.

And Donald. Well, is there ANYTHING about this clown that is not fake? Starting with the hair, and ending with the notion that he actually possess something known as an “intellect”! A larger-than-life ‘real life’ PRETEND of a ‘human’, a parasite who made his ‘fortune’ riding on the backs of all the people who do the real work, while he sits back and manipulates his ‘investments’. The ultimate capitalist, a kind of a cross between Scrooge McDuck and the Koch Brothers. He even LIVES (if it could be called “living”), in a totally synthetic, over-hyped building!

Unlike Hillary, Donald does not have a peel-off fake smile, his face displays a permanent cross between a smug, smarmy leer, and an arrogant “fuck you” stare. Just as fake though. The other side of the same coin. Which is a very appropriate metaphor, as, once the illusion of “democracy” has run its course, the American robot-people will have chosen the Emperor/ess who will be anointed as the next face of their nation. Watch out world, brace yourselves for another round of kick-ass from the latest incarnation of the “leader of the free world”.

So, what can be done? Nothing can be done, unless, by a miracle Bernie Sanders was to come through and snatch victory from the two different/identical fakes. Bernie is far from perfect, and he is not quite so much a synthetic human as Hillary and Donald. He appears to not have totally lost touch with real people, But, even if he were to somehow engineer that miracle, in the long run, it will not make all that much difference. The American dream has turned to ashes, and nobody can turn that around, not even a Bernie, and certainly NOT a Hilary nor a Donald. If you do not believe me, watch the Morris Berman video, at the link above, or read Berman’s book, “Why America Failed” (note the use of the past tense”).



http://www.amazon.com/Why-America-Failed-Imperial-Decline/dp/149233393X/


What to do about all of this? Start making your personal preparations for the collapse of “civilization”, and of the fake synthetic society, which always was totally unsustainable anyway, and which had the seeds of its eventual demise planted right from its founding.