US Politics Today
Democracy in America? Republicans & Democrats … That’s It!
Now at age 72 and having matured throughout my adulthood with America’s Drug War, I’ve long stated, “The best way to enslave people is to make them think they are free!”
I’ve determined poverty is an intentionally kept condition and that America’s underground economy is part of a strategy for drugs and weapons transfer coupled to a form of population control where some folks win scratch tickets or meat raffles and all are able to drink cheap alcohol. There’s actually a real reason why 12% of all Americans hold felony convictions and why America through the years has imprisoned 20 to 25% of the world’s prisoners.
America’s Occupy Movement proved into the thick of our consciousness that tremendous wealth disparity exists and only the fat cats at the top benefit from both US policy and action (see 2014 Princeton Study on Oligarchy).
Our nation has evolved into what I describe as America’s Oligarch Enrichment Project (AOEP), whereby everything that happens in society is meant for the benefit of the very wealthy. The AOEP is supported by Oligarch Protection Units (OPUs) dedicated to protecting and preserving the interests of those at the top who wield great wealth.
Our nation has settled into a two-party system whereby both major OPU political parties primarily preserve interests of corporate capitalism. This is accomplished by assuring a line of continually reelected pedigreed politicians (95% of members of Congress are reelected). Some become powerhouse types who sit at the heads of House & Senate committees. They determine the agendas for consideration and control the deliberation process.
Democracy in America: Limit and Control the Vote!
Meanwhile, the OPU media — five conglomerates control 90% of all media in America — present a propaganda stream that thoroughly discourages third party formation or participation (third parties are excluded from presidential debates, for example). It was bad enough for the progressive Bernie Sanders as a Democrat. But had he created a third party he would have been severely ridiculed and made completely irrelevant by the OPU media.
Up to year 1900, 74% of the electorate voted nationally for president. From then to present only 56% of those eligible have voted in presidential elections. In state races only about 33% vote for the governor and state legislators. In municipal elections only about 19% vote for mayors and city or town councils. These are very small numbers and represent extremely poor voter participation!
Next, consider the enormous amount of money (see Citizens United controversy) injected into races of a political system where 25 to 30% of the voters belong to each of the two political parties and nearly 40 to 50% are registered independents. The oligarch money makes it easy to control who becomes the nominee among the Republican or Democrats.
Once each party’s oligarch-friendly nominee is settled, Americans then get to choose between a Coke or Pepsi-like candidate, a Comcast or Verizon-like candidate or a Lowes vs. Home Depot-like candidate. There’s never a citizen referendum over whether banks should keep changing their name, whether health care should be available to all or whether the needs of cottage industry should override local zoning privilege.
US elections and our form of governance is set and well-established for the wealthy! America’s middle class increasingly becomes indebted. More and more they join the poor folk forced to live within the underground economy. It’s hard to get a big league baseball game on television, never mind being able to afford the cost of a ticket — or a beer and a hot dog, if you make it to a game.
Lock Out The Progressives
America’s OPU media remains severely bent against any form of socialism or communism. Sadly, this now includes FDR and JFK-like political progressives. Ironically, it subliminally welcomes forms of fascism even though it remains on record opposing it. But what slips through is killing. Basically, the rightwinger won’t attack obscene profiteering and warmongering; but a leftwinger will … so the lefty gets screwed! This is why a rightwing Trump can win; but a leftwing Sanders can’t.
To maintain the power of control, the OPU media specializes in lies, distortions, omissions and perversions of truth. The never-ending Drug War, The War on Iraq, the Bernie Bro image, fraudulent reporting on Russiagate, Syria and Venezuela are but a few prime examples.
Also suspect is the OPU media’s role with how Trump initially got the 2016 GOPwinger nomination. There’s a lot of us who believe the invaluable early publicity Trump got after he announced was precisely so he could become Hillary Clinton’s easy-to-defeat opponent.
Early on, the media ignored or discounted things like Trump’s shady business dealings, his mob background, his impostor plays (see aka John Miller), his fake veterans organization or his charity losing its legal license to operate. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, the only progressive in the race — whose never before seen-like audiences that filled major league sports stadiums — suffered a huge media blackout during the early primary phases.
Plain and simple? 2016 was not a fair election and the OPU Media tilted the scales with its role!
America’s Two Principal Political Parties
Trump Brand GOPwingerism
Trumpism equivocates into multipronged evangelists, Q-Anons, swamp variety lizard-throated theorists, stubborn often cruel gun freaks, 5-G paranoidstas, viral antivax extremists, Brietbart-Gateway table punditeers, shadowy Falun Gong Epoch Times alarmists and, finally, NASCAR enthusiasts together with an oddball mix of bikers, wrestlers and UFC fighters.
What makes the above coalition especially dangerous is there are roughly 100 million evangelist voters in America. This is why Trump political rallies have always been large. These votes are bused and shepherded by directives from mostly millionaire evangelical preachers-at-the-top. This means that in every presidential election, a tiny but powerful cabal of religious zealots control an enormous demographic chunk of America’s 240 million potential voters. The effects on local elections is even worse.
Led by OPU lobbyists and consultants, the above demographic components form into organizations funded from millionaire and billionaire golfing buddies. The GOPwinger Party is led by well-pedigreed politicians who support corporate America, especially oligarchy’s military-media-industrial complex.
Ironically, none of this coalition — which has oligarchs at the top — could have happened without precious assistance from America’s so-called fake media!
Bidenism — Third Way Neoliberal Brand Democrats
Bidenism consists of staunch Obama-Clinton adherents, techcentric elitists, people whose names grace hospital wings, foundation and institutional CEO/board members, tinted and tainted Hollywooders, out-of-synch Top-40 musicians, labor that once saw gains from past Democratic administrations and minorities who’ve historically gotten a better shake from the JFK-type Democrats. The workers and minorities have always remained consistent. However, the others seem liberal only when safe. Meanwhile, the OPUs push the purse-string Democrats past the center to the right. At one time most all Democrats were antiwar. What happened?
Led by consultants and political operatives, the above demographic components form into organizations funded from millionaire and billionaire golfing buddies. The Democratic Party is led by well-pedigreed politicians who support corporate America, especially the military-media-industrial complex.
Ironically, none of this coalition — which has oligarchs at the top — could have happened without precious assistance from America’s so-called fake media!
Regarding the media? Consider this:
Other US Political Parties
All other political parties in America— primarily Libertarians and Greens — are severely diminished, outright ignored or manipulated. You never see their leaders or political positions represented on the evening news or Sunday morning news shows where the pundits gather. Rare is there ever an op-ed piece in a print journal that includes a third political party viewpoint.
The GOPwingers, for example, use the Libertarian Party as a steppingstone shaping it as an ally when it comes to economic issues, especially for deregulating financial markets to benefit oligarchy. Even though civil liberties, antiwar and anti-drug war issues are Libertarian positions more closely aligned with Democrats, the rightwing billionaire Koch Brothers has largely funded the Libertarian Party causing it to overwhelmingly tilt it Republican on all economic matters.
The Green Party, despite its impressive progressive agenda, never achieves any meaningful viability. Essentially, it is used as a dumping ground for disenchanted progressive Democrats who have nowhere to go when Democratic leadership stakes out center-right positions. Ultimately, the progressives are ignored as the Democratic political operatives, who work for oligarchy, know full well that a progressive will never support a rightwing Republican.
So the ideas of progressives get downplayed or outright ignored. Notice how the US Senate Parliamentarian has been overworked lately in order to discard potential progressive policy emanating from the Sanders political forces. Also spend some time wondering why polling shows wide public support for what Sanders advocates. But few, if any, of his ideas ever become policy for America. Pick an issue: Health care? Minimum Wage? Free College? Taxing millionaires and billionaires? The list moves on!
American politics essentially evolved into a Good Cop/Bad Cop scenario. The way it works is GOPwingers wreck havoc with major wars, a rigged economy or environmental crisis. Then a Democratic administration takes over. Like a back-up quarterback, they clean or carry the mess in a way in which oligarchy remains unharmed. Little to nothing gets accomplished for the people.
For example, nobody was ever held to account for the illegal wars, torture and rendition programs, illegal drone strikes, stealing another nation’s oil or gold, and financial scams that collapsed America’s middle class and plagued millions of Americans. Nobody has ever had to withstand scrutiny for America’s continually failing drug war, our nation selling weapons to the world’s dictators or the cruel and harmful effects of sanitized economic sanctions upon poorer nations who won’t toe the line when it comes to economic subjugation.
The below meme provides a simple description of the reality of American politics. In fact, all of the great ideas for sound governance — family issues, labor concerns, race relations, worker safety, environmental, civil liberties and voting rights, etc., … they all came from the progressive camp. All of the gains made on those issues have been made in a way similar to how teeth are pulled — a long, grueling and enduring battle!
Again, the progressives have been locked out of power precisely because they threaten the greedy forces which control capitalism.
Conclusion
The thinkers best able to capture new ideas, fairness and opportunity — the progressives — have been thoroughly shut out of the process since JFK was shot. The American Dream should have been allowed to have become exactly what it once was becoming. Instead it got seized upon as a motive for US oligarchs to profiteer not only internationally, but also domestically.
When today seeking blame for America’s terrible condition — collapse of the middle class and why why so many millions of poor folk must survive within an intentionally-created underground economy — do not point the finger at progressives.
They are not the ones who’ve held the power of the presidency; they are not the ones whose money keeps reelecting same-olds to Congress; they are not the ones who’ve been elected to governorships or state legislatures. They are not the ones who’ve been appointed to the executive branch, the judiciary or the diplomatic corps. Progressives are locked out!
Americans are sick of insider politicians! Progressives, the true outsiders, are the ones with the good ideas which no longer get to see the light of day in American politics. Americans need to realize it was, in fact, the Bernie Sanders-type — not the Donald Trump-type — that America needed the most. America still needs this!
So there you have it!
