The Hypocrisy of Our Rulers Knows No Limits

Jimmy Carter's Remembrance Ceremony

I started to listen to the Jimmy Carter Remembrance Service which was broadcast live on both BBC1 and Sky TV. So I had no opportunity to change channel.

The camera beamed in on the face of senile Genocide Joe listening to the mellifluous voices of country stars Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood singing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Biden read the tributes to Carter.

Let us remember what the words of Imagine, written by John Lennon, who saw himself as a revolutionary socialist say:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, to

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Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

I can’t imagine that many of the good and great who attended this service agreeing about getting rid of countries and national boundaries, religion and private property. They all seem to rail against migrants trying their luck in crossing national boundaries.

One wonders what these hypocrites would have said if they’d met Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus on the way?

But it really is hard to write a song that pays tribute to the virtues of capitalism.

Even U2’s Bono, the incarnation of the imperialist rock musician, will probably find it hard to write a song celebrating Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Writing lyrics celebrating children starving to death is a bit difficult.

All those attending Carter’s memorial service are paid up servants of US capitalism and imperialism. All of them subscribe to the idea that capitalism brings ‘freedom’ forgetting that it is at the expense of others, not least the millions of Americans who live on the breadline.

Its hard to write a song about the eviction of landless peasants, or the refusal of union buster Amazon to pay decent wages. It’s really difficult to write good songs that celebrate the massacre of Palestinian civilians, or Vietnamese peasants or the incarceration of people in Guantanamo. It’s also hard to write a song celebrating how United Health Care under Brian Thompson increased their profits by increasing the number of those whose claims they denied (1/3).

Celebrating nuclear weapons or the turning away of patients who can’t afford treatment in America isn’t something that inspires creativity and the imagination.

We live in a society that is anything but democratic. A society of controlled violence and that is what the 5 Presidents who attended the memorial service represent.

Carter was the best of a bad bunch but he was no way near perfect, from arming and supporting the Indonesian dictatorship in East Timor (another genocide) to supporting the Shah of Iran. See Jimmy Carter And Human Rights: Behind The Media Myth

We see a bit of this in the reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Health Care. They had to turn the comments of from their tribute to Thompson because so many people were laughing at the demise of this appalling man.

See e.g. A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? in the New Yorker or

People know that whereas Luigi Mangione may have killed one person, Brian Thompson, Thompson and United Health Care killed thousands. And Wes Streeting, who is in charge of Britain’s NHS and who has taken £65,000 from John Armitage, a hedge fund manager with more than $500 million invested in UnitedHealth dismisses his critics as ‘middle class lefties’. Streeting favours a private insurance model for the NHS with parasites like UnitedHealth pulling the strings and profiting handsomely.

If ever this was a wake up call this is it. Private health means profits for the likes of Thompson and death and misery for the millions. This is the capitalism that Bush, Clinton, Obama, Biden and Trump all believe in which is why their attempt to appropriate the hymn tune of John Lennon, who wrote it to help people believe in a better society is so inappropriate.

Having to listen to the outpouring of grief for Carter with Imagine playing in the background whilst these same Presidents and their lackeys will continue to support the USA giving billions of pounds in weapons to Israel so that they can completely finish off Gaza is enough to make anyone sick. It is the ultimate in capitalist hypocrisy and a religiosity that takes refuge in another, better world.

To American workers all I say is, if they can massacre abroad they can massacre at home. International solidarity is in the end solidarity with your brother or sister standing next to you.

Tony Greenstein