I voted only once in life; trust me it is a lie

The United States became a free country after the British imposed tea tax on the Americans. A revolution ensued that resulted in American independence. I moved to America from a British colonised country, where I was addicted to tea in the morning, instead of coffee, although there are some in Pakistan who want to look cool by consuming coffee now. I still struggle with finding tea for my breakfast every time I travel inside America.

Americans consume coffee and there is no tax on it, at least not from a foreign power that controls America. However, a generation of Americans have been high on the we-need-to-protect-Israel-kool aid, if you will. And maybe how expensive that kool aid is becoming and especially a realisation about it just might cause America to undergo another revolution, this time only a mental one, to free itself from this manufactured consent that Israel is an American ally and that as Christians, Americans must protect these so-called chosen people that the Holy Bible talked about.

Iran does not threaten America. It did not attack America, nor did it express any interest or inclination toward it. Iran does not have nuclear weapons and its late supreme leader was preventing acquiring it. Americans' mortgage crises, credit card debt, inflation and other problems are not caused by Iran. Americans do not feel threatened by Iran. Actually, Iran does America no harm. The reverse is absolutely true. America does attack Iran, shows and clearly expresses willingness and plans to do so, kills its leadership and scientists, makes cyber-attacks, imposes sanctions, threatens other countries that buy Iranian oil, and so forth. The lives of the Iranians are absolutely impacted by the actions of the American government.

I had voted for Trump in the last election, only because I was disgusted by how Biden provided blind support to Israel when it was killing innocent people in Gaza. But with Trump bending backwards to appease Israel, it has made me realise how this man-made voting system, including in the proudest democracy, is merely just a system for domestic consumption, to make people think that they may have a say in what happens in their country. Nothing can be further from the truth though.

If one pays attention to the Americans and the Iranians that met in Islamabad, it becomes very clear how the mighty country's representatives looked like illiterate men compared to the highly educated Iranian men there. But in the proudest democracy with the biggest noise ability and the biggest destructive ability, the leader can afford to lie every time he opens his mouth. And it would make not much difference in how world affairs are conducted.

The power of truth and intellect are no match for the power of lies, deceit and weapons. They say lies spread faster. And when lies are repeated enough times and through the years, it somehow becomes the conventional wisdom and an important part of academic and journalistic literature. If the young generation reads any of the mainstream sources on how the Oslo Accords failed, for example, they would come to the conclusion that Yasir Arafat did not want peace and Israel was an honest victim of Arafat's shenanigans. I wouldn't be surprised if the teenagers of today would read decades later that this war between America and Iran happened because Iran was plotting to assassinate Trump and it had designs to make nuclear weapons to attack American cities.

The main business of any democracy is the spread of lies and the manufacture of consent. Fiction remains alive because that is how humans are wired. We advanced from being apes to being sapiens because we enjoy gossip. We like telling and hearing stories. That is why movie stars are more popular than climate scientists, for example. The latter tell us the truth about our actions and warn us about the dangers. The actors literally make a living out of creating fiction. But we like the lie more than the truth.