America's Corrupted Political Process

America’s Corrupted Political Process

by Stephen Lendman

America’s political process is too corrupted and dysfunctional to fix. Democracy is pure fantasy. Money-controlled duopoly power rules. People have no say whatever.

All candidates march to the same drummer, differences among them too minor to matter, Republicans interchangeable with Democrats, in lockstep on issues mattering most, their agendas belying their rhetoric.

Campaigning involves delivering prepackaged, prescripted demagogic sound bites, catchy one-liners, slogans and other rehearsed rhetoric - stringing together enough phony promises to gain popular support.

No matter how often voters are fooled, they’re easy marks to be deceived again. Jimmy Carter calls America’s process “one of the (world’s) worst…because of the excessive influx of money.”

The US is the only country where campaigning never ends. Fundraising is constant. House and Senate incumbents spend hours daily on “call time” - the amount spent calling prospective donors plus “strategic outreach” face-to-face meetings.

America’s money-controlled system requires politicians often having to spend more time raising it than governing. Endless money-chasing is part of the dirty system. Aspirants have to work harder at it than incumbents.

Voters get the best democracy money can buy, illegitimate by any standard. Power brokers choose who’s in, who’s out. Back room deals decide everything.

Business as usual wins every time, popular interests ignored, independents entirely shut out. Media scoundrels ignore them. Issues mattering most go unaddressed.

Half the electorate opts out for good reason. Why bother when their interests, concerns, hopes and dreams aren’t considered. Corporate favoritism and warmaking alone matter.

Power brokers decide everything. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s too late for scattered reforms. Transformational change is needed. Resisting tyranny is vital.

America is the most venal, ruthless state in world history, a monster devouring fundamental human and civil rights, threatening world peace, waging endless humanity-destroying wars, raping one country after another, heading for devastating nuclear war if not stopped.

Two Democrats dropped out of presidential contention. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb said “the very nature of our democracy is under siege, due to the power structure and the money that finances both political parties.”

“Our political candidates are being pulled to the extremes. They are increasingly out of step with the people they are supposed to serve.”

“Poll after poll shows that a strong plurality of Americans is neither Republican nor Democrat. Overwhelmingly they’re independents. Americans don’t like the extremes to which both parties have moved in recent years, and I don’t blame them.”

“(M)y views on many issues are not compatible with the power structure” dominating US politics. He dropped out of the Democrat party nominating race. His support was 1 or 2% at most.

He’s not going away, he said. He may run as an independent - impossible for any unaffiliated candidate to win high office given America’s money-controlled corrupted system.

Joe Biden finally made his long-awaited announcement. With over a year remaining before next year’s election, he nonsensically said he’s “out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination.”

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower waited until January to announce his Republican candidacy for the November presidential election - when Robert Taft was the frontrunner, securing solid backing from the party’s conservative wing.

War hero Eisenhower was nominated, then trounced Adlai Stevenson - 55.2% to 44.3% of the popular vote.

Electoral cycles in other countries are short compared to America, a few months or less, with amounts spent a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars funding US races.

Biden was a bench-warmer, to be called on by party faithful if Clinton self-destructed - so far well ahead in polls, but with over a year before November 2016, her disturbing record may be her undoing, especially against a Republican, depending on who it is. The choices are loathsome.

America’s war goddess is the worst choice among an array of deplorable candidates - the one most likely to start WW III.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen [at] sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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