The political ploys of our corporate parties can be seen as
unique to them if you accept the
fiction of our national democracy.
That fiction is more a religious faith than it is a democratic system. It serves
to not only keep things as they are but make them worse when voters seeking change
are tricked into maintaining rather than solving our problems.
The center-right party is campaigning to keep the November
vote down, especially among so-called minority Americans. This is the divisive policy
practiced by both sides even if to bring different outcomes. Along with their
brain dead notion that elections are being decided by illegal voters, there is
an equally democracy damaging idea on the center-left that bringing minorities
to the polls – only as minorities - can assure corporate rule superior to that
of the center-right in the way that polio is superior to cancer. Meanwhile,
voters get to choose which disease will be maintained as proof of our great
democracy.
People from the center-right are obsessed with the idea that
illegal immigrants are voting in numbers great enough to affect election outcomes.
It may be that somewhere, at sometime , an immigrant voted illegally. But that
happens about as often as someone is simultaneously attacked by a shark and
struck by lightening. The potential is a little greater than that of alien invasion
from outer space. Yet people are feverishly protecting a democracy - which has
never really existed – from this
alien invasion out of foreign space.
Almost as bad is the idea from the center-left that votes
are being stolen by computerized voting machines endangering that same
non-existent but devoutly believed in democracy. This one is entertained by
people who think themselves intellectually superior to the illegal voter folks
but while the scare stories are as gripping, the material evidence is as far
fetched.
Elections are regularly stolen from the people, but hardly
by illegal voters or nefarious machine tampering. As this is written in
September, nearly 500 million dollars has already been spent on the campaign.
Each corporate candidate has already raised more than 700 million dollars .
Democracy? Sure, right over there
under the illegal voter’s foot and next to the computer stealing her vote.
Propaganda about votes stolen by machines, foreigners or Plan
Nine From Outer Space only serve
to cover a history of national elections controlled by great wealth with voters
herded into polling places with no more real choice than cattle herded into a
slaughter house. If that seems harsh, consider our history.
The nation’s origin, biblically taught as a patriarchal
benediction by “founding fathers”, was essentially an organization to keep
wealth in their hands and see to it that their peasants, servants and slaves
remained worshipful of the fathers and mindful of their lower status. Despite
this, desires for real freedom and democracy persisted, with enough people fighting
for them to bring about great advances in the material status of the common
people. But the power relationship of rulers to ruled has not changed, even if descendants of those peasants, servants
and slaves now ride cars instead of horses or rent condos instead of hovels. At
least in some cases.
It is the perpetuation of this class division that our
national electoral process has always served, with prevention of majority
organization sustained up to the present.
But the threat to global minority rule and American royalty
is under great stress, not the least because the world is facing a crisis of
capital that is really a crisis for humanity. As imperial power is opposed by
greater numbers demanding majority control, the need for heightened divisions
among the people becomes more urgent. Thus, we have our voting public turned
against itself by a propaganda barrage which would be hilarious if not so
deadly.
Voting is already easy in much of america and perhaps should
be even easier. The hard part is having anything to actually vote for, and that
should be our real concern. Which is why our minds are occupied with stories
about illegal voters and voter suppression, some of it true, but all of it
unimportant in the larger picture of what we call, despite all evidence, our
democratic tradition.
Some feel that having to provide a photo I.D. in order to
vote ranks as a crime against civility. What is really criminal is that some
born in this country are unable to get such identification because they are
poor. This in an economy that imports cheap labor, even illegally, and provides
them with social security numbers and driver’s licenses so that profits can be
gleaned from their labor. And in some places, voter registration is possible by
mail and all you need is an address and ss#, which feeds into the fantasy of legions
of foreign voters.
As loopy as the seekers of alien voters are their brethren who claim Gestapo tactics at
having to show personal identification to do things like vote. Certain civil
libertarians would find it intolerable to be asked to identify themselves?
Imagine this:
You march into a bank, say “Hi, I’m Warren Buffet and I’d
like to withdraw 50 thousand from
my account. No, just kidding, I’m really Bill Gates and I only need 25
thousand. Still joshing you; I’m really Barack Romney and I just need 10
thousand. Thanks. Have a nice day.”
Of course that’s ridiculous, but if
you have to prove your identity to do something like get a license, open a bank
account, cash a check or get married, what is wrong with doing so in order to
exercise the cherished, if fictional, sacred rites of democratic tradition?
The fact that some use the lack of
I.D.to suppress votes is not nearly as bad as the fact that a system does not
provide such identification to all its citizens, but distributes them as it
does food, clothing, shelter and health care: on the basis of whether it can be
purchased. Viva democracy?
Instead of going to the polls on
election day, would you be better off going to a church, shul or mosque and
saying your prayers?. Probably so, unless you make a truly democratic choice
and vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party or some other candidate who is not a
corporate servant. That might strengthen a real democratic tradition by ending minority
rule, along with fear of alien votes and rigged computers.
No comments:
Post a Comment