Ahab, Twice

In America there are two major political parties, one right wing conservative party and a progressive left wing party. Or so they say... For someone like me, who was raised in Europe, both American parties are right wing, and the differences between the two are marginal.

"The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican." These words were spoken in a 2012 White House interview with Barack Obama. Although this is truth, it's still an understatement as far as I'm concerned. Like they always do, the Republicans accused Obama of turning America towards socialism, the only thing they had left after their attempts at painting him a Muslim without an American birth-certificate had failed. But they always accuse Democrats of being socialists and communists, which is all part of the political theater both parties perform before a largely unwitting audience.

This deceit becomes fully apparent when we look at Obama's health insurance reforms, famously known as "Obama-care", which were designed by The Heritage Foundation, a right wing conservative think tank. So, the theater play performed for the American audience consists of a left winger implementing right wing programs, and right wingers accusing the left winger of being a socialist for implementing those programs... When there's a left wing and a right wing party, one would expect the former to resist, denounce and overturn the policies of the latter, but all the Democratic party has done for decades is maintain the state of the status quo when they're in power, only to let the Republicans resume the country's movement to the right when they take over; both parties move further and further to the right.

Because both parties listen to the same donors, there's no tangible difference between them in the fields of economics, finance, the military and foreign policy. That's why Democrats can only, to maintain that they really are different, focus on the things that have become known under the labels of social justice and political correctness. And Republicans resort to fighting that war with a passion of course. For real, LGBTQ+ people in the military gets more publicity than the military's unlawful foreign missions. Americans are in the the unfortunate position to have to vote for the lesser of two evils, which is the useless Democratic Party. But my American friends won't have to feel lonely; the difference between right and left wing parties is fading fast in the rest of the "civilized world" as well. Neoliberalism, globalization, unfettered capitalism and corporate control over the government are spreading all over the world.

This is a big problem, a global problem even. Chris Hedges compared our civilization to the crew of the Pequod, the whaling ship from Herman Melville's famous novel Moby Dick. This crew blindly follows captain Ahab in his quest to exact revenge on Moby Dick, a giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg. Ahab promises a doubloon, a gold coin, to the crew-member who first spots the white whale, which binds them all to his obsessive quest for revenge and destruction. In the name of progress and wealth we've been ravaging the planet and its inhabitants for centuries, killing all who stand in our way, but even in the face of cataclysmic climate change we're unable to change course, much like Ahab and his crew. Only the first shipmate Starbuck opposes Ahab briefly, as he foresees the tragic end of the ship and its crew. And in the end they all die, except for the narrator Ishmael who survives to tell this horrible tale of revenge, hubris and insanity.

There's no Starbuck in American politics, there's only Ahab and Ahab, there are two right wing political parties, both steering the country and the world to our collective demise in their corporate insanity. Watch the below linked video on how America ended up with two right wing parties through the ratchet effect.

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