“I’ll tip my hat to the new Constitution
Take a bow for the new Revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees,
And Pray.”

We don’t get fooled again? Maybe.

There’s a line further down in the lyric that goes:
‘I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky, for I know that the hypnotized never lie’.
In performance, right after this line, either Daltrey or Townshend will spit out:
Do ya?

The meaning is clear. No, dear listener, you don’t lie, because people who are hypnotized do what they’re told, and really believe what they hear. When they parrot back untrue bullshit, that’s not lying, because they utter those statements with utter conviction and sincerity.

MSNBCIA is a hell of a mesmerizing machine, ennit.

***

Maybe about a year ago I noticed Biden, and Bidenistas in the media, using a specific word to describe ‘the enemy’.

The word was Autocracy, or sometimes a variant: ‘autocrat(s)’ and the like.

They soft-pedaled it for a time, but in the wake of the Resident’s trip to Poland and Ukraine this month, it has reappeared with a vengeance.

Autocracy is rule by one person, and there is no such thing.

It has gained such cynical currency because the enemy always needs a label.

We can’t call the enemy commies any more, because not only are there no communist systems left, but the best young people have not been trained to find the word scary anymore. In fact, with very little chance of acquiring a real career, or a house, or a family to feed, the generations coming up are inclined to viscerally hate capitalism and think that something more socialist might be a real welcome change.

Calling Putin a dictator happens sometimes, but as a standard way to refer to the enemy’s leader, it’s obviously fucking ridiculous. They have elections, and they have polls, and Vlad’s approval ratings far exceed those attained by any recent American president.

“Oh but their elections, their polls, are rigged!”

And it’s different over here, right? Uh-huh. Tell it to Bernie. Tell it to any third-party candidate ever. Tell it to the CEO of Diebold, maker of fine dependable vote-counting systems. And recall that the polls had Hillary crushing Trump by nearly double-digits right up to the end.

On the subject of autocracy, even Wikipedia has to hem, haw, and temporize.

“Because autocrats need a power structure to rule, it can be difficult to draw a clear line between historical autocracies and oligarchies. Most historical autocrats depended on their nobles, their merchants, the military, the priesthood, or other elite groups. Some autocracies are rationalized by assertion of divine right … “

So, even in the good old days, dictators, kings, pharaohs, and other so-called autocrats depended on other people, usually oligarchs of one kind or another, for their allegedly sole power over everything. Moreover, nobody calls themselves an autocrat, like one might call themselves King or Queen or Emperor.

The concept of autocracy is self-negating and absurdist. Which makes it perfect, as a label for the People We Don’t Like. Using it, as Biden has done freely of late, is Orwellian doublespeak at its finest. All he’s really trying to say with it is “NotCoolModelDemocracyLikeUs!”.

There are no functional autocracies, and there is no functional communism, and hardest to see from this fishbowl, there are no functioning democracies either.

Every major nation-state today is an oligarchy.

There are fascist-flavored oligarchies like America (fascism, again, being the merger of state and corporate power–let me and Mitt Romney spread to you the good news behind the Citizens-United decision at the Supreme Court … ).

There are commie-flavored oligarchies like Russia, where the oil and gas companies are literally owned by the State.

There are mutant oligarchies like the one in China, or Syria, or Ukraine.

Everywhere you look now today, at this peak of civilization, the oligarchs run the show, ably assisted by semi-hypnotized house Negroes formed into a Parliament or a Duma or a Senate, and beneath that a well-meaning army of zombified field Negroes on school boards and zoning commissions and college faculties.

Full circle, back to the top …

I don’t think there are any Russians
And there ain’t no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin’ with tanks

***

This might be a good time to point out to you that Anarchy is not the absence of rules.

It’s the absence of Rulers.

But if I can’t get you to stand up against the Lie, even anarchy will do us no good.

I’m beginning to think we might be fucked.

(“I stand where I stand, convinced by the sight–we hold in our hands, Darkness and Light;
Where they meet In a scene beyond dreams”)