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Once again the U.S. media switches rapidly to ‘hysteria mode’ as yet another mass shooting occurs. This time it’s in Orlando, Florida. For a moment, there almost seemed a hint of celebration from some, as the total killed becomes a new record for America – the most ever slaughtered in a single mass shooting, possibly since records began.

It’s a great excuse to bandy about the emotive word, “terrorism”, and it may well have set another record, for the most used word on U.S. television in a single half-hour segment.

It’s strange how words can be changed to suit the mood. Surely anyone who points a loaded gun at another is guilty of terrorism. Who wouldn’t be “terrified” to be on the receiving end of such an act of potential violence? But now, it means something much more narrowly defined – the act of a person, or persons, acting on behalf of, or at the behest of, a politico/religious organization generally of Middle Eastern origin.

We were told by half a dozen reporters, local Orlando dignitaries, politicians, the police, and eventually, the President himself, that it’s vital to discover whether this man acted alone, or was part of a “terrorist plot”,

Why? Why is that the factor of over-riding importance in this disgusting affair? Will it bring the dead back to life? Will it make the despicable act of mass murder of innocents anymore acceptable if this man is found to have been perusing Islamic State websites?

It’s likely the murderer did peruse such sites, but it doesn’t make him a ‘terrorist’ in the sense of working for I.S., or al Qaeda, or any other Muslim fundamentalist organization. He had a grudge against gay people; that’s why he chose a gay bar.

One more sad result of this mass shooting in Orlando is that only two days earlier, less than twenty minutes from the scene of this latest carnage, a young singer, Christina Grimmie, was senselessly gunned down as she was signing autographs after a concert. Her death, at the age of twenty-four and with a promising career ahead of her, has been totally eclipsed by this latest tragedy.

Two major shootings in two days is rapidly becoming a norm in America. Most don’t make headlines anymore.

This one did. But then, it’s one for the record books – until another surpasses it.

Orlando, Florida, was once known throughout the world as the home of Disney World. Now it’s earning a less enviable reputation.

^{[1] “Orlando gay nightclub shooting: 50 killed, suspect is Omar Mateen” BBC, June 12th 2016}

^{[2] “Former Voice contestant Christina Grimmie shot dead in Orlando” BBC, 11th June 2016}

With Democratic contender, Hilary Clinton, now set to become the party’s nominee for president, many outside America are left wondering why Bernie Sander’s hopes have been dashed so decisively, and the ‘Establishment’ contender allowed to gain outright victory.

Throughout the primary season, Republican voters have made a clear statement of their views towards the Washington establishment by turning out en masse in support of the somewhat bizarre Donald Trump. If his landslide victory weren’t a rebellion against the U.S. political establishment, then it’s hard to know what else it could be.

With corruption, corporate-control, and the will to bring government to a halt in order to get their way now rife in Washington politics, it seems almost unbelievable to outsiders that Democratic voters should yet again choose the Devil they know, rather than someone who promises to fight their corner in Washington on the issues they’re supposed to believe in.

Much is being made in the popular press of the possibility of a first U.S. woman president, but that hasn’t been the issue in this campaign. Clinton hasn’t made it to the nomination because she’s a woman. She won precisely because she is Washington establishment, and the American Left isn’t yet quite ready to embrace a contender who unashamedly calls himself a Socialist.

In America, socialism is equated with communism. The propaganda of the Cold War years still weighs heavy on the American mindset, particularly among older voters. It’s no coincidence that the majority of Sander’s supporters are too young to have been affected by McCarthy, in an era that judged anyone who dared question capitalism a communist.

America isn’t yet ready to jettison its capitalist ideals in favour of socialism. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton are both evidence of that. The average Joe still clings firmly to the belief that America will one day rise again from the doldrums of Empire and take its place as the true leader of the free world.

They have yet to realise that it’s the very capitalism they worship that is inexorably strangling the world’s freedoms and confining us all to the fetters of a corporate-controlled society determined to abolish culture and humanity in favour of the artificial concrete jungle of marketing blandness that is so evident throughout the U.S. heartlands, with its Walmarts, Lowes, McDonalds, and a multitude of other conglomerates, dominating the landscape of every state, city, and one-horse township.

The American Democrat desperately seeks change, but not at any cost. For them, Bernie Sanders is a price too high. So, for now, they’ll conveniently forget the abysmal record of the first Clinton administration: the ‘three-strikes” law; ending Glass-Steagal; NAFTA; the Defense of Marriage Act; expansion of the War on Drugs (prison population doubled from about 600,000 to about 1.2 million during the Clinton years); 1994 crime bill (which expanded the death penalty to 60 additional crimes including three that don’t involve murder: espionage, treason and drug trafficking in large amounts.); the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that provided 50% of Sudan’s medicines; doubling of Iraq sanctions (begun by Republican president George H.W. Bush) causing infanticide in Iraq; failing to act when U.S. intelligence knew in advance of the upcoming Rwanda genocide that claimed nearly a million lives, and the escalation of foreign drug wars by multi-million dollar military aid to right-wing factions of the Columbian military that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, with hundreds of thousands displaced.^[1]

It’s not a great legacy for his wife to inherit, should she be elected president in November. One can’t help thinking that ‘more of the same’ will be the norm, if there’s yet another Clinton administration.

Frankly, the choice for voters come November is not an enticing one. The film, ‘Silence of the Lambs’ depicted a battle between two evils, one portrayed by Dr. Frederick Chilton, the jailer, and the other, the infamous Hannibal Lecter. It is, perhaps, too extreme to cast either Trump or Clinton in either role, but nevertheless, when U.S. voters go to the polls in November they will have to decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils.

As for Bernie Sanders, due to the present unease in American politics it’s likely that some form of social reform is not too distant. Unfortunately, unless he’s able to remain fit and healthy into his nineties, by the time the outcry is sufficiently loud to gain majority support among a normally reticent Democratic public, there may well be no Bernie Sanders around to take up the cause.

^{[1] “15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World” AlterNet, June 22nd 2015}

It may be risking an accusation of churlishness, but isn’t “going somewhat over the top” a reasonable criticism of the world’s media in its reaction to the death of Mohammed Ali?

He was, after all, a man who made his fame and money from pummeling the senses out of his opponents, in what is probably the most barbaric activity still considered a “sport” in the 21st century.

While applauding his stance over the Vietnam War, for which American society of the time crucified him, and begrudgingly accepting his work for black equality – although the Nation of Islam was a highly suspect organisation – it’s ironic to note that the thousands of white people pouring out their grief at Ali’s passing were more than once condemned by Ali as his ‘true enemies’.

His poor health can almost certainly be attributed to the damage he suffered in the boxing ring over many years. In this way he was no different to other boxers who rose to fame, and died early, from their beatings.

With a lull in the U.S. election, and the boredom of ‘Brexit’, it’s easy to see why the media is making such a fuss of Ali’s passing. Less easy to understand is the political fawning over a man quick to condemn the white political establishment. Ex-president Bill Clinton will give a eulogy at the funeral, and the present incumbent, Barack Obama, on hearing of Ali’s death, stated:

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it.”

Unfortunately, he failed to explain just how the world is so improved, and how worse off we would all have been had this man never existed.

There is no wish to belittle Ali’s achievements in the boxing ring, nor as a champion of the U.S. black community, but he was no ‘God’ in life, and neither should he be treated as such in death.