You Are the Target of Political Distractions

Joyce L. Arnold, Liberally Independent, Queer Talk, equality activist, writer.

The current Two Party Politics stories successfully distracting “we the people” include: Santorum’s “suspended” campaign, the unsurprising Romney as GOP nominee, and the Obama campaign response. It’s the 2012 version of politics designed for public consumption which provide “Look! Over there!” distractions for Electeds and Wannabe’s in pursuit of lucrative service to the Oligarchy. There is, of course, substantive news involved. This post is another tiny effort to resist the also existing distraction factor. A few headlines:

John Whitehead, at Intrepid Report: Mayhem in the making: A political circus, an out-of-control government bureaucracy, and a distracted populace.

Les Leopold, via AlterNet: 10 Ways Our Democracy Is Crumbling Around Us.

Hamid Dabashi, at Al Jazeera: The Spectacle of Democracy in the US.

Joel S. Hirschhorn, via Intrepid Report: Losing constitutional competition.

All of these were written prior to Santorum’s exit, but the points being made aren’t about specific candidates. Candidates are more or less interchangeable in the Two Party Front for the Oligarchy.

From Whitehead’s post:

With less than eight months to go before the … presidential election … the corrupt government machine is taking advantage of a populace distracted by the political theater to advance agendas that are completely at odds with the nation’s fiscal, legislative and constitutional priorities. …

Whitehead highlights a number of things from which we’re supposed to be distracted:

… while the candidates mug for the cameras, American taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners … by government officials eager to placate their corporate benefactors. While the surveillance state is slowly being erected around us, our civil liberties are systemically being dismantled. While our government wages war after endless war abroad, the war on the American people—fought with sound cannons, Tasers and drones—is entering its early stages. And while the partisan rancor over who will occupy the White House becomes more toxic … , the elephant in the room … is the fact that it doesn’t really matter who gets elected, because no matter how often we change out the resident of the Oval Office, the … bureaucratic colossus that is our federal government remains entrenched.

The “lesser of two evils” argument continue to be made because there are some differences, and so it does “matter” who’s in the WH. But … these differences are restricted by the System within which they are defined and enforced.

From Leopold:

Our democracy … may already be fatally wounded as a financial oligopoly increasingly dominates American politics and the economy.

He provides “10 reasons to worry”:

1. Money and Politics …

2. Voter Disenfranchisement … According to a recent report … , ‘More than 5 million Americans could be affected by the new rules already put in place this year …’ .

3. Our Skewed Distribution of Income …

He cites a report of the “Ratio of CEO Compensation To Average Employee Compensation in 2000.” Japan at 10:1 is best. At 365:1, and worst, is the U.S.

4. Tax Breaks for the Super-rich … You know the oligarchy is rolling along when it wins enormous tax breaks during good times and bad, under Democrats and Republicans. …

5. Wall Street Bailouts …

6. Deficit Hysteria … It’s remarkable to watch how oligarchs shift the national conversation toward debt and away from themselves. …

7. Crumbling Social and Physical Infrastructure …

8. The Failure to Create Jobs …

9. The Revolving Door …

10. Worshiping the Market Gods … The financial markets have more power than ever before, and every political leader knows it.

Leopold asks, “Is It Too Late for Democracy?”

We still have freedom of expression and the right to protest – more or less. Occupy Wall Street both showed how the debate could be altered, and how easily the authorities could end the encampments. So, it’s an open question whether we have the will to build and sustain a broad, powerful anti-Wall Street movement.

Dabashi writes of the “Commodification of democracy”:

The globalised showmanship of (the) American presidential election is geared and designed to sell one commodity … – that the US is a democracy and by virtue of that fetishised commodity, it gets the privilege of sending its aircraft carriers and fighter jets around the planet … .

But … (t)hat commodity is self-destructing as … revealed … in the current course of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the European Indignados and the Arab Spring. …

Instead of the delusion of the American democracy aiding the cause of democracy anywhere in the world, it is the fact of the global democratic uprising aiding the ordinary Americans revolt against their own degenerated system that is the only cause of hope for future.

Democracy as commodity is related to what Hirschhorn writes:

… ‘The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,’ according to the study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia. …

The new study examined the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006 … . This is what they found: ‘… the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.’ …

… In a television interview during a recent visit to Egypt, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. ‘I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.’ She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights. …

Question One: Should the fight be for the preservation of a version of a “Democratic” System, or for the people living in it? Question Two: If you chose the people, what’s the best way to proceed?

(Graphic via Occupii)

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