https://tonygreenstein.substack.com/p/the-hypocrisy-of-our-rulers-knows
Jimmy Carter's Remembrance Ceremony
tony greenstein
Jan 09, 2025

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
o
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).