Are you as nauseated, saddened,
horrified and disgusted by this Presidential election campaign as I am? In one
generation, mine, this country has gone from the world’s beacon of democracy
and prosperity to the giant village idiot bumbling and stumbling incoherently around
the planet, an untethered corporate mascot gone berserk.
With the ascension of Trump, our
election process has become an international joke, and other countries look at
us with pity and sadness as they watch a once admired champion lean helplessly
against the ropes, punch-drunk and bran damaged, in what is surely its final
round.
We are here today thanks to greed,
plain and simple. Despite a booming economy and a real chance for citizens to
live the American dream, the military/industrial/media complex of the 1960s/70s,
like Frankenstein’s monster suddenly realizing it has superhuman strength, woke
up to its horrible potential to influence this country’s political process
through its wealth and connections to America’s elites. The ball really got
rolling during the Reagan administration with its tax cuts for the wealthy and,
despite sixteen years of Democratic rule, the trajectory has been downhill ever
since.
Having destroyed America’s middle
class, stretched income inequality to ludicrous extremes and purchased the two
major political parties, the wealthy elites are surely enjoying the spectacle
we serfs naively call a democratic election. The reality is, they don’t care
who is crowned President. The oily, snake-tongued Trump is one of their
members, as is the neo-liberal Clinton. Neither candidate is a threat to the
current hegemony that is pulling this country beneath the surface like a weight
tied around its ankles.
The corporate media dutifully continues
its assigned goal of making the Presidential campaign look like a race when it
is actually more like a horrific automobile accident from which we can’t avert
our eyes. Our elections have turned into a dark spectacle, a cirque du macabre
of huge laughing orange faces, cackling countesses and obese promoters counting
their stacks of coins backstage. We willingly pay the price of admission while
they laugh at our gullibility from behind the curtains, filling their vaults
with our hard earned cash.
This election year, regardless of who moves
into the White House, Americans will lose, and despite being conned once again,
their attention will be drawn to the shiny object the media tells them is the
next big thing.
