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”.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
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The election of Donald Trump to the
presidency in 2016 was something of
an upset for the usual process. His
then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton
was supposed to be the winner back then,
as preconceived by the US elite. A
populist insurgency against the
establishment politics favouring the
outsider Trump overturned the usual
predetermined outcome. Trump’s personal
wealth also helped him ride out the
selection process which would have
weeded out a financially disadvantaged
candidate.
Like him or loathe him, Trump got
elected. But ever since he took office
more than three years ago, the ruling
elite has never accepted the “democratic
result”. The never-ending but now
defunct scandal of alleged “Russia
collusion” was meant to oust Trump from
the White House.
That didn’t work, so
the recent impeachment circus was then
invoked as the next means to eject
Trump. This constitutes, in effect, a
soft coup against the electoral rights
of the citizens who voted for Trump in
2016. They dared to vote the “wrong
way”, according to the ruling oligarchy,
which favoured Clinton.
Trump has been acquitted by the
Republican-controlled Senate of
impeachment charges concerning his
communications with the Ukrainian
president. Nevertheless, most of his
presidency has been dominated by
relentless political and media efforts
to abort his presidency and the
democratic process which managed to
somehow get him into office against the
usual odds determined by the elite.
We see this same elitist selection
process at work in the current contest
among Democratic candidates for their
party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
The anti-war candidate
Tulsi Gabbard is being denied equal
media coverage by the corporate
media which prefers someone more
“centrist” like former Vice President
Joe Biden. Despite a strong showing in
some polls, Gabbard’s supporters accuse
CNN of gagging the Hawaii congresswoman
by not permitting her participation in
televised town-hall debates.
Tulsi is calling out a stitch-up by
the Democratic Party leadership. She
accuses Tom Perez, the chair of the
Democratic National Convention, of
“kowtowing to billionaires” by not
allowing more radical contenders to have
a fair crack at the presidential
nomination.
Bernie Sanders, an avowed “socialist”
candidate,
is surging ahead in the polls among
ordinary Democratic Party voters due to
his policies of ending billionaire tax
privileges and introducing free
education and healthcare for all
citizens. Yet, by and large, the US
media are hostile to Bernie and his
policies. CNN has even run dirty tricks
to portray the 78-year-old Vermont
senator as “sexist” or “too old”. This
is while it gives endless favourable
coverage to Joe Biden whose mental
faculties have been lacklustre or worse.
This week, Biden demeaned a female
student who asked him tough
questions about why he failed to
gain votes in the recent Iowa
caucuses. Snarky Biden called her
“dog-faced”. CNN played down his
verbal abuse by saying that’s a
“pretty normal thing to say – for
Joe Biden”.
Can you imagine the hue and cry if,
say, Sanders had said that?
On Bernie Sanders, CNN
editorialised this week: “History
suggests Sanders is unelectable…
socialism has never established a
foothold in American politics.” It added
that the “Washington’s elite” fear “his
budget-busting plans for revolution will
scare moderates away in November
[presidential election].
And if Sanders is nominated, Donald
Trump will delight in branding him a
Fidel Castro-loving radical antithetical
to the US mainstream.”