Thursday, January 08, 2015

No Lesser Evil

The United States’ government may claim liberty and justice for all; however, in practice, it exhibits all four major characteristics of a fascist state: a one party government, extravagant economic inequality, a totalitarian police state at home and militarism abroad, and a strong reliance on propaganda. Yet America’s  government system has evolved without the need for traditional hard power tactics, such as ballot-rigging, coercion and force; it is based on soft power policies and the illusion of choice. It requires its citizens to make a choice between personalities, rather than genuine political alternatives. For instance, the top three candidates for President have all inherited their political status through family: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton. The Bush-Clinton families may potentially occupy the White House for a staggering 28 out of 36 years.

The United States essentially has a one-party system; and the ruling party is the corporate party. Elections present the population with two variants of a pre-designed policy: free-market, neoliberal capitalism. This benefits the elite at the expense of the majority by promoting privatization of public services, frozen wages, job losses, and reduced social benefits. Elite American politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, choose austerity and privatization as their flagship economic polices. Both the Republican and Democratic factions of America’s ruling corporate party have destroyed trade unions, while “democratically” promoting corporate welfare. The narrowing ideological gap between the policies of major political parties reflects the decay of the nation’s democratic system.

In America, corporations exert strong influence over the state for the benefit of a wealthy minority. In fact, over the last few years, the top thirty American companies spent more money on lobbying politicians than they paid in federal taxes, according to a report from the non-partisan reform group, called Public Campaign. The richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the majority of 150 million Americans combined. Truth is, America has shown that free markets and free elections simply cannot co-exist. Corporate campaign contributions become votes; thus, the poor are politically marginalized. Money becomes speech, muzzling the poor. How can capitalism and democracy co-exist, if one concentrates wealth and power in the hands of few, and the other seeks to spread power and wealth among many? Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The media determines our language, our language shapes our thoughts, and our thoughts determine our actions. Language is the fulcrum of a society’s perception. Whosoever controls the public’s language, controls the public’s perception. The corporate elites who sit on media editorial boards control said language. In 1983, fifty companies owned ninety percent of U.S. media. Today, only six media giants control a staggering ninety percent of what the American public listens to, reads, and watches. Inverted democracy is where you have freedom of speech but the administration doesn’t listen. “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play,” once remarked Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda. In the Soviet Union, citizens were aware that by reading Pravda, they were being fed government propaganda, so they learned to tune it out. Many Americans believe that the WSJ-New York Times-CNN outlets are credible, despite ample evidence to the contrary. How can we forget the media reports of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the undivided support for the catastrophic failure of the intervention in Libya, and the arming of rebels in Syria, who turned out to be ISIS, to name but a few? The beauty of the U.S. propaganda system is that it creates the semblance of impartiality by offering diversity only on non-core issues. When it comes to core issues affecting the privileged corporate class, such as inequitable tax regimes and for-profit wars, the media sings in unison. By indoctrinating “Socialism”, and “Marxism” as taboo subjects, the ruling class has effectively outlawed any discussion on class reform and democratic choice. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, American propaganda works by indoctrination that is so profound, it is never perceived. Americans are increasingly immersing themselves in reality T.V., only to lose touch with reality.


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