Saturday, November 19, 2022

American Democracy: Buying & Selling Elections

 By Frank Scott

 

"In the US, voting is the adult version of writing a letter to Santa."   Patrice Greanville

 

This was the most important election in American history, as was the previous one, the one before that, and all previous exercises of marketing that pose as democratic rule in our great example of how to fool most of the people most of the time. Of course this election, as all others, cost more money than the previous marketing fiasco, when more than 14 billion dollars were spent on the 2020 purchase of the White House and Congress which rose to more than 16 billion for this cycle of shopping center lesser evilism that cost even more just to purchase Congress. Clearly, democracy survived its most serious assault in the history of marketing, at least according to our mind managers and consciousness controllers who make pimps and sex workers seem like poets of love. The only thing that is consistent in our one corrupt system with two corrupt parties is the rising profit margin as all manner of advertising, insurance, polling and other marketplace hustlers feast on the profits available in marketing capitalist democracy while claiming to stand for truth, beauty and other forms of mass hallucinations.

 

 

The entire world was recently being shamed by any claim to international democracy when the United Nations once again voted overwhelmingly to end the murderously cruel American boycott of Cuba by a vote of 185 -2, as usual to no avail. Despite more than 95% of the world's nations voting against the vicious policy, two shining democracies outnumbered by a global margin of hundreds of millions of people and seen as the most dreaded nations in the world according to numerous polls, the USA and Israel, gave examples of how democratic freedom flourishes the way pus flows through healthy veins. This foreign disaster mimics the national one in which 8% of American wealth rules 92% of non-wealth and people who might as well be stoned, drunk or otherwise mentally disabled incur a national debt by borrowing more than 31 trillion dollars from private finance in order to defend ourselves from thinking and assure that we send plenty of money to the Ukraine to kill Russians, to Israel to kill Palestinians and other incredibly murderous methods of defending ourselves from having health care, housing and other luxuries that might make survival more comfortable and life more worthwhile for most of us.

 

Of course we do offer heartfelt democratic rights to raving American maniacs who can stride into any weapons shop in the nation or use mail order and buy a gun, bullets and then march off to a school, movie theater or shopping center and murder as many un-defended Americans as possible before either killing themselves or being killed by a relatively helpless-to-defend Americans from Americans police force. To be sure, all the freedom loving participants in our great democracy were and are very well protected from any foreigners who would attack us, especially China and Russia who have no such plans but are necessarily geared up to retaliate if and when one of our ruling class lunatic servants to the warfare state rich bring on a nuclear war that destroys most of us while most of them hide in some lead lined shelter hoping to re-govern the ruins that remain if anything does, which is unlikely.

 

Of course there were elements, as in every election, on which localities and specific identity groups were able to achieve victories, in the way that the House Negroes of slavery days were able to achieve Saturday night fish fries and Sunday morning church services to alleviate the incredible pain of the Field Negroes who picked the cotton and absorbed most of the physical abuse. Just as an antidemocratic Supreme Court made abortion legal fifty years ago a new anti democratic court made it illegal again and voters expressed their opposition to one form of anti-democracy by supporting another. But we still have no relief for the much maligned minority of disabled Polish American gay Jews of color who remain unrepresented in Congress, the White House or perhaps in reality.

 

Lesser evilism has passed for democracy among most people for so long it now passes for the real thing and voting for polio rather than cancer while forgetting they are both diseases has set people against one another in a national state of disgrace and contempt which finds many needing letters to Santa calling for death and destruction for those who dare to vote for what they are manipulated to see as the worst disease while making good health available only to those who can afford it. While marketing sets up investments depending on the cost of votes our shopping mall that passes for democracy among poor souls who might find some pig who upon finding out his wife or girlfriend was pregnant would demand she immediately abort and thus be cheered as being pro-choice. Are we confused? Does a snake have wings?

 

 In the desire and desperate need for real democracy and the majority of Americans taking control of our country out of the hands of a warfare state owned and operated by a minority rich, we need a political party that represents the 92% of us who are not millionaires. We work hard to survive – with millions holding two jobs and dependent on credit cards in order to pay rent, eat and have shelter thereby incurring crippling personal debt with attention paid to the disgrace of student loans but still forgotten when it comes to survival among the great majority who are not attending college unless they are employed to clean its toilets or deliver food to its cafeterias. How about a party, not simply a lone voice unable to get on the ballot for lack of wealth, demanding that, say, all debt incurred by the vast majority living on much less than 100k be cancelled? Difficult to achieve while the market forces of capital profit from creation of the armed forces of mass murder while the incredible loss to humanity is alleged to be the work of evil demons like Hitler, Putin, Trump, Clinton, Gore and more, all of whom are paid employees of rich capital.

 

 Ultra rich donor-investors purchase the votes of their working subjects in "our democracy", a phrase entertained by good people still having some food clothing and shelter to show for their labors and who would have referred to their hovels in time of slavery as "our plantation". As largely corrupt representation in the employ of minority capital still get away with preaching more private profits as the way to save a crumbing natural environment from continued economic rape and plunder, the vast majority reduced to gasping for breath and survival need to activate and not simply repeat as a prayer a form of global and not simply national democracy that confronts the threat to all of us and not just some in one or another poverty-stricken-by-colonialism nation. Americans have a long way to go but so does the rest of the world and it will only be able to do so if the threat of continued marketing of everything necessary to survival so that only a shrinking minority and grossly expanding and un-payable debt for the rest enable some form of material comfort for the few while the vast majority suffer ends, once and for all. That means capitalism, whether in its idiotic reactionary form here or in relatively progressive attempts being made in China. Ending capitalism will not end all of humanity's problems but it certainly will end most of them, while its continuation will guarantee increasing all of them until nothing is left. That calls for real democracy of a global nature and not the criminal sham which makes most religious mythology sound like critically arrived at material analysis of reality. We need to stop acting like pathetic children begging Santa for peace, clean air and a thriving environment and actually create those things and more by voting for democracy with our bodies, minds and souls. Before it's too late.

Saturday, November 12, 2022

The Most Meaningless Elections Of Our Lifetimes (Until the Next One)

Outside MAGA circles we're all supposed to cheer the "Blue" victory in the elections just past, largely due to backlash against the repeal of Roe v. Wade. But an annoying thought inevitably spoils the victory party. In the U.S. abortion was taken away by the same process through which it was initially granted - by a highly undemocratic Supreme Court. So what grounds are there for complaint? 

If democracy is the issue, and it clearly is, why can't we notice that we have more and more elections and less and less democracy? There may have never been an emptier ballot than that of the California November 8 elections this year. Absolutely pathetic. No Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, People's Party, Fusion Candidate, not even a Ron Paul libertarian. Unlike previous years, there was no token peace candidate anywhere in the Democratic Party, just perfect unity in unrestrained funding for the Ukraine slaughter that has brought us to the brink of nuclear war. 

The prime function of voting is to fool people into thinking they have a voice in government. 

As Patrice Greanville of The Greanville Post noted, taking it seriously is like sending a letter to Santa Claus - as an adult.