This past Sunday, the grounds of the White House were taken over for one of the most gaudy and depressing spectacles in recent memory, a series of high-profile cage fights entitled UFC Freedom 250.
While mixed martial arts matches on the White House lawn were ostensibly to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, the event was held a few weeks before July 4 to coincide with a more important date, the president’s 80th birthday.
Despite the incredible talent and athleticism displayed by some of the fighters, the tastelessness of the whole thing was overwhelming. In between the AI-generated montages of World War II combat and Ronald Reagan speeches, the broadcast cut to advertisements for gambling apps and energy drinks. One fighter used his post-fight speech to call former First Lady Michelle Obama a man (a common conspiracy/crude joke among the online right). Fighter bonuses were apparently paid with cryptocurrency from a Trump family scam business, World Liberty Financial.
It’s sickening, an ominous sign of an empire in decline, but it’s difficult to look away. Sunday’s tacky display is modern U.S. culture in microcosm: the exaltation of extreme violence, along with contempt for human dignity and health, the inevitable result of the amoral pursuit of power.
One advertisement that played during the evening was for high-tech military contractor Anduril, showcasing drones and missile strikes under the tagline “Fight Unfair”.
A little too on the nose for a country that recently bombed a school full of children. The current U.S. administration seems keen to rub everyone’s faces in whatever crime of the day they’re committing, from drone-striking fishermen to insider trading.
Trump’s war on Iran alongside the genocidal Israeli regime has dragged on for months and accomplished few (if any) of its stated goals. What the war has accomplished is an enormous amount of pain for people around the world. Who has benefited, aside from the weapons manufacturers?
In his iconic tract “War is a Racket”, former U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler cuts through the fantasies of those who believe their country is promoting “democracy” or “freedom” rather than pursuing material interests of select businesses at the expense of countless lives in the southern hemisphere.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about,” he wrote. “It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
A nation whose way of life is enabled by violence on its colonial periphery will, in its decline, carry out that same violence with increasing frequency on its most vulnerable domestic populations. Inflation, combined with corroded institutions and infrastructure, have led to declines in American (and Canadian) living standards in recent years. The headlines are filled with stories describing what Friedrich Engels called social murder, where the living conditions imposed by the ruling class lead to the death and degradation among workers.
The South African oligarch responsible for cutting U.S. aid programs across the world, resulting in mass suffering for many of the world’s poorest, recently became a trillionaire on paper. This kind of greed is obscene, but hardly unique in our modern Gilded Age.
The racketeers now feel so untouchable that they’re doing their dirt out in the open. The con is plain for all to see, celebrated even.
Now what do we do about it?
Caleb Nickerson