Freedom To Lie

Medal Of Freedom For Lying

President Kennedy invented a distinction called the “Medal of Freedom”. Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey got it. I am familiar with Clinton’s work: without question a much loved president, although not as much as JFK (the most popular USA president).

In my book, undoubtedly, Clinton was the worst president since the worst side of FDR. Clinton enabled plutocracy more than any other president. G.W. Bush just pursued it, with amateurish lying. Amateurish relative to Clinton’s. Clinton is such a good liar that, to this day, most Americans love to believe him. 

Kennedy deserves his popularity. He was neither a liar nor a coward: he took responsibility for the Bay Of Pigs invasion and then he refused to double up on the error by sending US regular forces to help. JFK, helped by his brother, did not hesitate to use force to make the Mafia, the racists, and even the Nazi connected CIA bend (that may have cost him his life). 

LBJ imposed anti-racism laws, and the “Great Society” (now being dismantled). There were other great presidents: even Hoover launched great works. Truman finished the Second World War with gusto (bluffing the crazed Japanese High Command into submission with two quick nuclear strikes). Eisenhower  brought up taxes on the rich to 93%. Even Carter named Volcker, who broke inflation (allowing Reagan to rip the profits).

Teddy Roosevelt broke the monopolies. FDR was great in many ways: public works, WWII, and… the Banking Act of 1933 (aka “Glass-Steagall”).

So what is Clinton most famous for? Intervening in Rwanda? (No, the French army did that.) Intervening in Yugoslavia? (Sure, but the British and especially the French, under UN mandate, had stood in harm’s way, for years before that.) No, Clinton is famous for his “good” economy: 8 years of bubble, thanks to Greenspan, Rubin, Summers. The committee to ruin the world.

What did they do? Destroy Roosevelt’s most important work, the Banking Act of 1933.  That enabled the biggest banks to run amok.

As Obama’s most important act , so far, has been to prevent “Medicare For All“, by using the smokescreen of Obamacare. (“We should have done ‘Single Payer'” just admitted that high class liar, Nancy Pelosi… Let me rather suggest doing Hara-Kiri.) It was therefore only natural that he offered the Medal of Freedom to that other great right wing president, Bill Clinton.

History will judge both of these “democratic” president to be followers of Reagan. But strikingly more to his right. As they presented themselves as progressives, that means they deserve the Medal of Freedom from Truth. Indeed.

I confess I find Oprah Winfrey gross. Her speciality seems to be emotional diarrhea. Formed as a “black” beauty queen, she rose quickly in the celebrity circus. She periodically appears to make outrageous statements of the most violent racist nature. Here she is on the BBC, November 15, 2013:

WINFREY: “Are there still places where people are terrorized because of the color of their skin, because of the color of their black skin? Yes… I said this, you know, for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own, you know, community in the south – there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and THEY JUST HAVE TO DIE.”

If they just have to die, maybe she can ask her friend Obama to spare a few drones?

BBC’s Gompertz: “…has it ever crossed your mind that some of the treatment of Obama and the challenges he’s faced… if he was a white guy, those wouldn’t have happened, he wouldn’t have been treated in quite the same way, he wouldn’t have to deal with quite the same confrontations?”

Patrice Ayme: Indeed, BBC! Obama would never have been elected if he had been a “white guy“, so he would not have had to suffer as president, challenged and confronted.

WINFREY: “Has it ever crossed my mind? It’s crossed my mind probably as many times as it’s crossed your mind. Probably it’s crossed my mind more times than it’s crossed your mind. Just the level of disrespect. When the Senator yelled out, “You’re a liar.” Remember that? Yeah, I think that there is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs, and that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African-American.”

It was not a Senator, but a Representative. The White House admitted in the last week, that it deliberately decided to lie about Obamacare, after debating the pros and cons of the lying (!). For months.

The “disrespect for the office” may come from the increasing feeling that this office ought to be disrespected. After all, taxation through representation is not real democracy, just a parody, and increasingly that way for all to see. Watch the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership between three  government officials and six hundred lobbyists. The meta knowledge that, the government engages in deliberate lying, does not help. Many know that lying as a method of government was tried before.

Her stupendous wealth not having been serviced with enough perceived deference by an employee of a Zürich store, Oprah Winfrey’s flew back in her personal jet to the USA,

Winfrey appeared on “Larry King” (not his real name: basically all is false in USA media; his name is Zeiger). Larry King is “worth” more than 150 millions, and Oprah Winfrey, the queen of race and abuse, three billions. American media is all about extremely rich people interviewing filthy rich people, whose “worth” is only measured in money. OK, let’s not be unfair about Zeiger’s worth: he was married 8 times.

Winfrey, you have to understand, is, on the (admittedly tiny) mental scale of the USA the equivalent of a celebrity intellectual, the Albert Camus of the USA, imperishable author of slave’s truths such as:  “The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work”. Work, get it? To go well with Reagan’s claim that all jobs are equally worthy. Or this: “Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness. The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”

The slaves in Zurich had the wrong attitude when the American queen showed up, and they were not afraid.

Oprah faced Larry King, with her ineffable self-satisfied smirk. With a smile, Larry King, that master of the straw man and the red herring, asked the multibillionaire about racism. “Oh, it’s around, Larry”, said the queen of quick and dirty philosophy, an Ayn Rand for the 21st century. Winfrey was beaming with pride, happiness and a smug smile, hardly contained: her preferred subject! If was as if racism was one of the best things that ever happened to her.

I was looking at her, and I thought: this is so strange, how come the public cannot see it? Racism makes that woman happy. How could it be that racism is the best thing that seems to be happening to her? Then why does she complain that it is done to her? Is she into emotional ad-lib sadomasochism? Could it be that racism is her bottom line? Psychologically and business-wise?

Is Winfrey popular because a large part of the mentality in the USA is sadomasochist? Is sadomasochism the mentality symbiotic to plutocracy? When in Rome, do as the Romans, debased and cruel, the more the plutocracy grows?

Winfrey proceeded to make racist allegations against Europeans in general. European bashing is a most important notion among USA plutocrats: by demonstrating that European are base, racist creatures, they implicitly allege that’s what lack of respect for money leads to. It demonstrates the superiority of the American system, where racism completely honorable, as long as it is connected to money. (Come to think of it, that’s how it started in the Barbarous Years.)

Thus, did Winfrey’s racism earn her the Medal of Freedom? What else? Imperishable quotes such as: “Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.” (She should know: pregnant at 14, her only son died shortly afterwards.) Or her allegations of sexual and other abuse against her entire family, denied by her entire family?

One of my faithful and long-suffering commenter interjected:”Patrice, I completely disagree with you.”

To protect this person’s identity, we will call her NV (for Naive Victim). NV insisted:“You are talking about maybe 30 minutes in a millennia of racism. Until equal is equal no one can talk shit. Sorry.”

So we deserve a millennia of racism from Winfrey and her ilk, because kings in Africa sold slaves? Come again?

And that was not 30 minutes, that Winfrey show, but a real campaign: the billionaire queen went around no less than the six most major venues in the USA to instill the notion of exuberant European racism. A pattern with her over the years.

As we saw above, she appears to incite murder, on racial ground, and then, logically enough, the droning Obama gives her a medal.

Who sows racism, harvests racism. As simple as that.

(To be continued…)

Patrice Ayme