By Finian Cunningham
February 10, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - The
double-debacle of President Trump’s impeachment and
the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate race
shows the limit of an American article of faith:
that its democracy is founded on the principle of
“we the people”.
“We the people” is more an aspiration, even a
myth, rather than the existing reality. The reality
is that citizens’ votes are not the primary driver
of democratic rule. The nature of ruling power is
determined by the elites: the tiny minority of
ruling class that comprises super-rich political
donors, corporate executives, Wall Street banks and
highly concentrated news media.
America is not a democracy – at least not yet
anyway – despite nearly 244 years of history as a
modern state. It is a plutocracy run by an
oligarchy. Such an observation is not a radical
criticism. Former President Jimmy Carter came to the
same
conclusion. So did a
study conducted by researchers from the
prestigious US universities, Princeton and
Northwestern.
Thus, the four-year exercise of citizens voting
for president or members of Congress is more
accurately a “selection”, not an election.
The selection being made, largely, by the ruling
elites and the mass media controlled by a handful of
corporations. Before a candidate’s name gets on the
ballot paper, there’s a huge filtering process which
whittles down the final list presented to voters for
their nominal “X”. Big-money donors (billions of
dollars), as well as withering and warping media
coverage, usually determines who gets selected for
voters to “choose”.