Commentary
Degradation of democracy
By Frank Scott
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Oct 27, 2006, 00:43

The usual low November turnout will see some driven to vote by hysteria over a sex scandal, a kangaroo court decision on Saddam, or a North Korean nuclear test. We're lucky that Kim Jong didn't send sexy emails to teenagers, or Armageddon might have arrived even sooner than ruling fanatics imagined.

Exercising chronic lesser evil choice, voters may switch from empire's instant suicide to its slower death, which could offer a breathing space. But it might just as well aggravate the respiratory condition of a system living on borrowed time, money and patience. And whatever band of immoralists win, Israel's American lobby will maintain dominance over congress, and global peace will lose.

Americans are under alleged assault by terrorists, sex offenders, school assassins and horny politicians, but a crippled economy is driving the nation to far more deadly crises. National and consumer debt total well over 10 trillion dollars, and interest payments to the rich -- who loan us our own money -- take more than 16 percent from our budget. Much indebtedness is to foreigners we alienate with our supremacist behavior, even as we desperately need their investments to assure we continue buying products we don't really need, with money we don't really have.

Our imperial arrogance has created global problems that can't be solved by our warped electoral process alone. But this election will hardly bring the changes needed in a government that represents corporate wealth and Israel far more than the American people. It will shamefully deserve, and depressingly receive its usual minority vote, as most citizens avoid the process.

As long as we accept this political perversion and call it democracy, we might as well eat raw sewage and call it health food. Unfortunately, recent agricultural problems indicate we may be doing just that.

We should have greater concerns than the supposed menace of gay representatives, other countries' nuclear programs, or alternate interpretations of biblical mythology. As if wretched foreign policy weren't enough, consider the following.

Some 37 million Americans are living in poverty, millions more have no health care, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and this year we will spend more than 38 billion dollars on our pets. A family with such contrasts would be deemed severely dysfunctional and probably institutionalized.

Mind management that keeps us fearing our own shadows while we blindly assault reality will go on, no matter which servants the corporados hire to run errands in Washington. With minor exceptions, Congress will accept paychecks from the taxpayer majority, but slavishly follow orders given by the wealthy minority who finance its multimillion-dollar campaigns.

And they will continue saber rattling about North Korea, which will hopefully amount to little since it represents no threat to Israel. Only Iran, even without nukes, incurs the wrath of the Israeli lobby and its paid staff in our government. An insane attack on that nation seems perfectly logical to the racial supremacists who, whether awaiting a divine rapture or a miraculous messiah, pose earthly danger to humanity's future.

There is some debate over whether the regime's actions are brilliant, moronic, crazy or shrewder than anyone can imagine. This is controversy over how many angels fit on the head of a pin. High intelligence or low, under present rule this nation is a major threat to the human race, and that rule will not change with this election. Those who truly desire peace and social justice must be aware that it won't come simply by trading religious serial killers for secular mass murderers.

We have to be collectively stoned or socially comatose to believe the dreamscape implanted in our minds by consciousness controllers. Humanity won't be able to tolerate our forced addiction or coerced ignorance much longer, given the great danger we represent. The multimillion-dollar corporate advertising farce we call an electoral process may not last much longer either, before we are compelled to bring about real democracy, or face ruin.

An election that may bring some variation into which ruling group gets richer, and what fractional servant class maintains relative security, will not change the fact that the majority will continue to be forced into alienation and debt, and more violence, as we antagonize most of the world and alienate former friends, while increasing the number and intensifying the passion of those who hate us enough to kill us.

Replacing irrational reactionaries with immoral pragmatists may spruce up the interior of our structure, but leave intact its disintegrating foundation. Some may find progress, if only in their perceptions, but many more will suffer material regression. And this will go on until we radically reform our behavior, and not only towards foreigners. Foreign policy is merely an extension of domestic policy; we need to begin treating our own people with far more understanding and respect.

Intolerance for those with critically different viewpoints is becoming as ugly as ethnic and racial bigotry. The epidemic of repressive government is mirrored by reactionary hostility among ordinary citizens. Small steps in the direction of understanding are too often transformed into giant strides toward greater division. Our competitive, warlike political economics are at the root of our conflicted social relations, and they threaten to make us a more divided and angry nation until we come to grips with the corruption at the core of our false democracy.

The vote may offer some minimal curtailing of our worst excess, but we need maximum control over our political economic system before we can create a peaceful future. That calls for real democracy of our own creation, and not the degraded corporate perversion under which we are presently ruled.

Copyright � 2006 Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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