"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, former CIA director, at his first staff meeting in 1981.

The great election theft of 2008 began months ago as the "unelectable" candidates were identified, branded, demonized, ridiculed and eventually weeded out one by one. It ended on January 30 when John Edwards, resurgent neo-populist and the last remaining bane of status quo oligarchs, dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.

Only six states had a chance to make their selections known before Edwards ended his campaign; residents in the other 44 have no progressive alternative on the ballot. With "super Tuesday" coming up, millions of voters will be asked to choose among candidates from the moderate right, the corporate right, the religiously insane right or the Curtis LeMay right.

So, through deft manipulation of voter attitudes by mass media, status quo corporatists and oligarchs can't really lose. This outcome may not meet the standard for election theft, but the results speak for themselves. Our ruling aristocracy has hijacked another critical election cycle, and they didn't even need electronic vote switching, voter caging, voter roll purging, deceptive mailers, stolen or destroyed ballots, access to proprietary source code, hacking for the GOP or simple understaffing in progressive precincts. At least not yet.

Nope. This variation on election theft just required that people turn their televisions to any of the conventional mass media news outlets -- notably Fox, CNN or MSNBC -- find a political talk show or panel discussion or rant fest, and internalize the labels attached to some of this year's presidential candidates: "controversial," "unelectable," "unconventional," "goofy," "loser," "weird," "outside the American mainstream," "radical." The candidates not so labeled are, by definition, the serious contenders and therefore the only ones we need to watch.

So that worked out well. We're now down to three corporatists and a Strangelovian loon. Corporate mass media were kind enough to choose these awful people for us on orders from their overlords at GE, Disney, News Corp, Viacom et al. Which was a real help because we didn't have to risk overheating our dulled, narcotized, under-exercised brains worrying about boring stuff like politicians -- unless Entertainment Tonight does a special on their wardrobes or what kind of cars they drive or their latest makeovers . . . you know, I mean something, like, you know, interesting and, like, I mean OH MY GAWD like WHERE'S MY IPOD!!.

Control the message; limit what's acceptable; win great prizes

It's axiomatic that as long as you can keep the choices within a narrow spectrum that you define and control, you can't lose. Which is to say, if a panel discussion only includes conservatives and their ideologies range from hard right to moderate right, a conservative point of view is inevitably going to prevail.

The only question is which subset of conservatism will come out on top -- Straussian neocon imperialism, Goldwater old school traditionalism, Chuck Hagel-style moderate right pragmatism, fire breathing hellfire and brimstone fundamentalism, Reaganesque happy face authoritarianism, non-ideological greed-driven corporatism or any of dozens of variants and little-known derivatives.

Being relatively smart people and well educated in the nuances of human behavior, media savvy corporate schemers have perfected the process of adapting the message control model to leverage the strengths of their mass media propaganda machines and get their way 100 percent of the time.

Thinning the herd

Voters had some real alternatives this time. Between Kucinich, Gravel, Edwards and even Ron Paul, people could have had the rare experience of voting their hearts, consciences, self-interests and party affiliations at the same time.

But the purge happened quickly. With the elimination of Edwards, all candidates with "unconventional" views, except for Paul, have been written out of the script. Unconventional in this case is code for believing the dangerous idea that government should promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's absolutely unacceptable to the oligarchs because if that kind of nonsense catches on, it could undermine the only organizing principle left in this country: the dogma of ever-expanding corporate profitability.

A politically significant percentage of Americans have been taught by television to purge their minds of important issues like REAL universal health care, ending US military and corporate aggression around the globe, dealing somehow with the massive debt and trade imbalance Bush has piled up, figuring out some way to avoid another 1929-class depression, shifting scarce federal money to programs that actually help Americans rather than those that efficiently murder Middle Eastern civilians . . . And all this while halting and, ideally, reversing the ecological meltdown heading this way within a few decades at most.

Nobody really wants to hear that kind of doom and gloom stuff. It's too painful for people subsisting on an intellectual and cultural diet of perky morning network happy talk shows, CNN or Fox for the mid-day news, an hour in the afternoon scanning Vogue for something besides ads, nitwit local news at six, an evening of celebrity stalking and reality show tripe, a couple of reruns of "Cops" for some excitement, Dave or Jay to calm things down and finally, an Ambien to dull the grinding pain long enough to permit a few hours of fitful sleep before rising and resuming the same dreary, empty life with no hope, no prospects and no way out.

It's life experienced as a passive consumer rather than as an active participant, and it has a way of keeping the peasants docile and compliant.

The ceremonial purging of the heretics

So the heretical candidates were gradually burned out of the public consciousness, first by ham-fisted tactics like leaving them out of group shots, removing online polls that they had won, ignoring them during the so-called debates and, when they were finally brought into the discussion, questioning them about expensive haircuts, McMansions and UFOs.

Then the more sophisticated forms of demolition kicked in as somber, veteran TV pundits, looking like philosopher kings cross-bred with hyenas, engaged in rampant character assassination, dismissed them as clowns or fools, disparaged their stance on the issues at every opportunity and assured viewers that they were entirely unremarkable because they couldn't even get elected county clerk running on these crazy platforms.

Americans sat back, took this all in and let these manipulative swine call the shots yet again, thinning the herd until the corporate choices were the only ones left standing. And nobody but the politically rabid even raised an eyebrow, much less their voices in howls of rage and frustration.

The November ritual validates the scam

Now all that remains is for us to troop dutifully to the polls this fall, ratify one of the pre-selected status quo stick figures -- neither of whom a sane, bright, reasonably self-interested person would ever vote for if there were any real alternatives -- and perpetuate the illusion that we live in a democratic republic where elected representatives are actually accountable to the people and work tirelessly to serve their constituents.

Does it matter if the machines are rigged? Does it matter if the usual GOP game plan goes operational this November? Does it matter whether the eventual selection has a "D" or an "R" after their name?

Well, sort of, when you're talking about federal judges or regulatory appointments. But not when you're talking about maintaining the stranglehold corporate institutions have on every single aspect of life in America today.

The corporate nouveau riche, their entitled brats, the old money elite, the world-class thieves, the exploiters and slave masters, the billion-dollar paper pushers, even the second-tier people who own the support systems that keep the top one percent obscenely wealthy and extravagantly comfortable -- all these wonderful people will continue to live stressless lives of ease and contentment no matter which of the chosen gets the electorate's nod.

All this was pre-ordained from the moment mass media eliminated the first "non-conforming" candidate and eventually force-fed us only the safe and trustworthy ones -- those with absolutely no interest in tampering with the status quo.

Same as it ever was . . .

Maintaining the status quo is also vital if our members of Congress are to remain on the lofty -- and lucrative -- pedestals we've built for them.

As Mark Twain noted on several occasions, " . . . there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Just so, although today's beltway bandits have elevated graft and corruption to an art form rarely seen in Twain's day.

Now that the country is a de facto bribocracy rather than a constitutional republic, Congress can be far more open about their venality. They're actually expected to gorge themselves at the vast feeding troughs corporate America sets out for them; to abstain is seen as a bit weird.

So common and overt is the practice of systematized political bribery that there are even web sites devoted to tracking the flow of corporate, PAC, lobbyist and special interest money -- who gives, who gets, how much -- and hardly anyone seems concerned that they're hearing the death rattle of representative government with every ring of the cash register.

But that's not important in the big picture. What IS important is that the constituencies that count -- politicians, their rich patrons, the major political parties, the rulers of corporate America, the rest of the campaign donor class -- can rely on the approved presidential candidates to preserve, protect and defend the status quo for at least four more years.

As long as the outcome meets that criterion, another election cycle can be counted a success -- another big victory for the oligarchy and another hearty kick in the rear for everyone else.

Time for the production crew to strike the set, take everything down to the bare walls, remove the props that led the more naïve members of the cast and the audience to believe that something resembling democracy was taking place, put it all into storage until the next election cycle and let the corporate massas get on with the serious business of whipping the debt slaves back into line.

All that's missing is a deafening, ceaseless howl of outrage and betrayal from the other 297 million or so Americans who have had their country stolen right out from under their noses and haven't a clue how to get it back.