ISIS is US: the Empire and the Evil Genie It Released
Picturing Papal Petrification
The reigning politics and media culture of the United States is not without moments of high comic relief. Three weeks ago, for example, CNN’s Chris Cuomo presented the buffoonish Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a bizarre hypothetical situation. What would Trump do, Cuomo asked, if he met the Pope and the pontiff expressed his opinion that capitalism can be “a real avenue to greed, it can be really toxic and corrupt.”
Trump didn’t miss a beat. “I’d say ISIS wants to get you,” Trump said. “You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that’s a dream of theirs, to go into Italy.”
“He talks to you about capitalism, you scare the pope?” Cuomo asked.
“I’m gonna have to scare the Pope because it’s the only thing,” Trump said. “The Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is — you know, if you look at what’s going on — they better hope that capitalism works, because it’s the only thing we have right now. And it’s a great thing when it works properly.”
Funny stuff. It doesn’t get much wackier than that. Forget for now the notion that that capitalism is a wonderful “thing” when it is functioning “properly,” whatever that means. And never mind whether or not ISIS chiefs dream of claiming St. Peter’s Square for Islamic jihad (maybe they do).
ISIS as Imperial Blowback
Let’s look instead at Trump’s suggestion that the Pope would do well to stop mouthing off about the profits system because he needs to get under the protective umbrella of the U.S. against the Islamic State. Trump’s balderdash aside, the notion that the U.S. is the leading and true enemy of ISIS is widely assumed across the U.S., thanks in part to the properly working propagandistic mechanisms of dominant U.S. corporate war, election, and entertainment media.
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