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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/21/20

The Myth of Our Democracy Exposed

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Message John Pagoda

Democrats claim that "our democracy" is under siege by Trump and the Republican Party which now belongs to him. Political pundits connect the dots from rampant corruption to shredding the central basis of our Constitution i.e. three co-equal branches of government, separation of powers and congressional oversight and conclude Trump is a threat to "our democracy".

One rarely hears any Republicans mention "our democracy" because theirs is a pursuit of the kind of power that corrupts absolutely and greed for the love of money which is the root of all things evil both of which are antithetical to any understanding of "democracy".

The Democrat presidential contest is framed with Sanders representing socialism and the rest supporting the moderate wing of the democrat establishment with Warren in between. At present conventional wisdom says at the end of the day Sanders will have a plurality of delegates but the possibility exists that the Democrat Party will once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Should Sanders prevail we can expect the 2020 election will be cast as "socialism" vs "democracy" with all Democrats being labeled socialists and ironically all undemocratic Republicans being seen as those who support freedom and democracy.

The reality is that the Democrat Party supports "our democracy" which never existed while it openly condemns socialism meanwhile the Republic Party i.e. "the Party of Lincoln" has fully embraced fascism defined as "a form of far-right, authoritarian ultra nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy." To date not one Democrat presidential candidate, including Sanders has had to the courage to correctly label Republicans as the party of fascism.

Trump has already announced his branding of the Democrat Party as being Socialist to be perpetuated by Republican media outlets from television to hate radio and regurgitated by the malignant MAGA cult. During his 2019 State of the Union spectacle speech Trump appealed to the fear, hate, anger and ignorance of his base when he read these words from the teleprompter "Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country."

In response to the latest bromide by the brander-in-chief, the feckless democrats couldn't get in front of the cameras fast enough to pledge their allegiance and fealty to capitalism while at the same time claiming that they are trying to protect "our democracy" against Trump's abuse of power thereby conflating "capitalism" with "democracy" in order to convince the public they are diametrically opposed to "socialism" without exposing their willful ignorance about "our democracy' these moral cowards claim to protect that which never existed in this country.

The comfortable yet dangerous lie is born by conflating "democracy" with "capitalism" and "dictatorship" with "socialism" but the big lie that we are a democracy begins to fall apart when we consider the reality that we are not or have we ever been a democracy.

Democracy means that the majority rules in a system "of the people, by the people and for the people" but such is not the case in this country. The minority has always ruled in this country from its inception when only white men of property could give their consent as to how the rest of us were to be governed by the wealthy. A few decades later most white men could vote, a hundred years or more would pass before white women could vote and another near 50 years before people of color could participate in their own oppression by voting for candidates selected by two major political parties who represented the interests of capital in a rigged system.

We've never had a democracy or anything closely resembling a democracy in this country. The uncomfortable truth is that initially we were an oligarchy that eventually morphed into our current kleptocracy of parasites feeding off the carcass of the administrative state for personal gain.

Today, as it always has been, there only two political parties which realistically ever have a chance of winning the consent of the uninformed, the misinformed and the truly ignorant who identify with the white supremacy red tribe or the "vote blue no matter who" appeasement blue tribe. In addition the party of capital have legitimized the system to keep it that way with gerrymandering, state voter ID laws, voter roll purges, and SCOTUS decisions claiming money is speech.

Our democracy is a sham, a hoax, a fraud sewn with evil intent and influenced by wealth and found on the foul breath of the empty patriotic rhetoric spoken by our representatives from both sides of the political aisle which owe their allegiance to the wealthy owners who financed their campaigns and not "by the people" as would occur in a democracy.

Mainstream media of which 90% is controlled by 6 corporations packaged the narrative and repeated that comfortable feel good lie ad nauseam until most people now believe we really are a democracy when clearly the facts indicate otherwise resulting in the unavoidable conclusion that we are not a government "of the people, by the people and for the people" but we are a government "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich".

Even in this Age of Despair, Despotism and Ignorance where alternative facts challenge substantiated facts and the truth no longer matters nothing is more dishonest than conflating 'real democracy" with capitalism. Indeed under capitalism where the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit at the expense of people is more compatible with racism, sexism, militarism and imperialism and than with democracy.

In essence, "capitalism" has more in common with authoritarianism and fascism than it does with a government "of the people, by the people and for the people". As Justice Louis Brandeis is reported to have said: "We may have democracy in this country or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."

Given that our educational system is designed to breed conformity and produce workers and consumers rather than "educate" it comes as no surprise that most Americans lack any understanding of or any intellectual curiosity about socialism and have no knowledge that Marx and Engels linked socialism and democracy as end and means "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" i.e. of the people, by the people and for the people.

Nor do most Americans have the most rudimentary grasp of Russian history in which Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks led a successful workers revolution in pursuit of a worker's democracy a real "of the people, by the people and for the people" democracy while the world around them responded with foreign military invasion, economic blockades, a bloody civil war funded by foreign capitalist powers that produced a brutal one-party dictatorship to hold things together.

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I am a fellow traveler passing through this existence trying to stay sane in an insane society while stopping to smell the roses and the garbage as well. I've been a political activist since 1968 when my active duty military experience (more...)
 

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