- "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered
by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully
and unawaredly enslave themselves." ---attributed to Dresden James
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- A caricature of a man who has wrought havoc in virtually
every endeavor throughout his miserable existence has found his calling.
Exuding false bravado and contrived machismo, he has swaggered his way
into the deepest recesses of America's collective psyche, fulfilling the
inculcated need for a "manly" patriarch. Chest thumping, bullying,
and ultimately unleashing the Hell of the Pentagon's death machine upon
those brazen enough to resist conversion to the American Way, King George
IV has succeeded the tyrant American Revolutionaries toppled over 200 years
ago.
-
- While the tyrant may be intellectually challenged, his
court is filled with cunning Artful Dodgers like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
Conscienceless people for whom guile, deceit, and exploitation are ways
of being write his scripts and pull his strings. But ultimately it is George
Bush, a morally bankrupt cur of a man, who gleefully issues proclamations
and decrees that victimize the working class and the poor of the world.
Bullies take such delight in plying their craft. Yet as vigorously as they
have striven to realize the dream of the US aristocracy and reestablish
an overt tyranny, Bush and his handlers have devoted equal volumes of sweat
to maintaining the illusion that America is a "democracy".
-
- Buoyed by a virtually omnipresent corporate media equally
dedicated to spiritually and intellectually enslaving the poor and working
class, sacrificing them as cogs in the corporate machine and as cannon
fodder, and relieving them of their hard-earned dollars via irresistible
lures of immediate gratification and an increasingly regressive system
of taxation, a privileged class comprised of the wealthy, intellectual
elites, and well-connected has become the "power behind the throne"
in an oligarchy disingenuously portrayed as a democracy.
-
- In November of 2003, George Bush assured his constituency
that:
-
- It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies
took place in a time when the world's most influential nation was itself
a democracy.
-
- Serving up an even bigger "Whopper" to a nation
of people conditioned to be addicted to fast food and clever sound bites,
Bush proudly proclaimed in September of 2004:
-
- Because we believe in human dignity, peaceful nations
must stand for the advance of democracy. No other system of government
has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to
raise the status of women, or to channel human energy to the pursuits of
peace.
-
- As is true with most concepts, there is no universally
accepted or simple way to capture the meaning of democracy. However, Wikipedia
offers concise definitions of the four fundamental types of democracy:
-
- Direct democracy is a political system where the citizens
vote on all major policy decisions. It is called direct because, in the
classical forms, there are no intermediaries or representatives.
-
- Representative democracy is so named because the people
select representatives to a governing body. Representatives may be chosen
by the electorate as a whole (as in many proportional systems) or represent
a particular district or constituency), with some systems using a combination
of the two. Some representative democracies also incorporate some elements
of direct democracy, such as referenda.
-
- Liberal democracy is a representative democracy (with
free and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities, the rule
of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name
liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property.
-
- Conversely, an illiberal democracy is one where the protections
that form a liberal democracy are either nonexistent, or not enforced.
The experience in some post-Soviet states drew attention to the phenomenon,
although it is not of recent origin. Napoleon for example used plebiscites
to ratify his imperial decisions.
-
- At best, the United States is an illiberal democracy.
Which really is not too surprising. While the Founding Fathers forged a
Constitutional Republic that incorporated many of the values of the Age
of Enlightenment, the government they crafted was largely representative
of a patriarchal society dominated by White male land-owners. Women had
no right to vote, chattel slavery remained legal, the indigenous population
was excluded, and the Bill of Rights was an afterthought that many of the
Founders initially opposed.
-
- George Bush and propagandists who have been intellectually
assaulting US Americans for years would have us believe that the oligarchs
masquerading as democratic leaders have blessed "the masses"
of humanity in the United States and beyond with unprecedented advances
for human rights and social justice.
-
- Are their claims grounded in reality? Let's put them
to the test.
-
- We believe in human dignity. Abu Ghraib certainly reflects
the commitment of the United States government to human dignity. What could
be more dignified than abject humiliation and torture? And to further reinforce
the United States' resolve to preserve human dignity, the Bush Regime and
the "representatives of the people" in Congress recently negated
Article Three of the Third Geneva Convention, Article VI of the US Constitution,
and the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights by legalizing torture.
-
- And let's not forget the "dignity" of state-sanctioned
murder. The United States is one of the very few "democracies"
that has not abolished the death penalty. In 2003, China, Vietnam, Iran
and the United States accounted for 84% of the world's executions.(1) If
one accepts the corporate media spin on China, Iran and Vietnam, the "leading
democracy" is hanging out with the wrong crowd. Or is there just the
tiniest of possibilities that the United States government engages in oppressive
policies too?
-
- Would the US "democracy's" government's protection
of minorities include the perpetuation of slavery, the execution of abolitionist
John Brown, Jim Crow laws facilitated by Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Native
American genocide, the Japanese Internment, racist drug laws, and lack
of response to Katrina?
-
- What would best exemplify the US government's efforts
to secure the rights of labor? The state-sanctioned murders of Albert Parsons,
August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel? How about the 26 workers
killed (and 172 arrested) by the National Guard at the Ludlow mining colony?
Or the government's rush to enforce George Pullman "right" to
exploit his workforce? Would the Taft-Hartley Act be a shining example?
Perhaps the pompadoured darling of the US aristocracy and his firing of
striking PATCO workers? Maybe it would be the sub poverty level minimum
wage stagnated since 1997? Or the 46 million Americans without health insurance?
Perchance could it be the NLRB's recent decision which will prevent 8 million
workers from unionizing? With such a dizzying array of choices, one can
hardly settle on just one.
-
- And how has the world's "shining beacon of democracy"
acted to raise the status of women? Women Suffragists battled long and
hard to amend the Constitution so that women could vote. It only took 130
years of tireless effort by the people to overcome government obstructions
(i.e. the Supreme Court's Minor vs. Happersett ruling that enabled states
to limit suffrage to men in spite of the Fourteenth Amendment). The Equal
Rights Amendment was conceived in 1923 and is still not incorporated into
the US Constitution. Hiding behind the claim that it would threaten national
sovereignty, the US "democracy" has refused to ratify the international
women's bill of rights called CEDAW (since 1980). In 2002, the nation which
has done so much to "raise the status of women" accounted for
70% of women murder victims amongst industrialized countries.(2) While
women have outnumbered men throughout most of its history, the United States
is one of the few developed nations where a woman has not served as head
of state and currently only 15.1% of the US Congress is female.(3)
-
- According to Bush and his script-writers, the nation
from which democracy bubbles forth like pure water from the mouth of a
spring has done more to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace than
any other system of government. Given the magnitude of that deception,
Orwell would probably have identified it as Quadruplespeak. With 5% of
the Earth's human population, the United States accounts for half of the
world's war expenditures. Over 100 countries are subjected to the "benign"
presence of US military bases. The US is home to the world's largest stockpile
of WMD's and is the only nation to have unleashed nuclear weapons on civilian
populations. American military intervention led to the slaughter of anywhere
from 250,000 to one million Filipino civilians(4) and an estimated four
million Vietnamese.(5) 200,000 Central Americans died thanks to the "pursuit
of peace" by the Reagan Regime.(6) Over one hundred thousand Iraqi
civilians are dead thanks to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war. Positing
the United States as a champion of peace is akin to praising Jeff Skilling's
selfless concern for Enron employees and shareholders.
-
- No abundance here
-
- Obviously, democracy is in very short supply in the United
States. And it has been from the nation's birth. Even the Constitutional
Republic which the Founding Fathers intended has steadily frayed over time.
But why stop with these examples of the rapidly approaching extinction
of the populist visions of the more enlightened Founding Fathers when there
are so many more?
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- How democratic is the United States' income tax system?
Using the oppressive threat of the nearly omnipotent IRS, the federal government
extorts money and spends it according to the whims of a president placed
in office by the Electoral College (or Katherine Harris and Diebold) and
a Congress rife with members so beholden to corporations that they don't
dare cross their patrons by truly representing voters' interests. Riddled
with loopholes, tax laws too complex for a Cray supercomputer to decipher
enable corporations and the wealthy to shelter their income from taxation
in a multitude of ways. And the federal tax burden is increasingly shifting
onto the backs of working class people. Between 1977 and 2003, the percentage
of tax revenues collected from corporations fell from 14.4% to 7.7% while
the percentage derived from payroll taxes rose from 29.9% to 40%.(7)
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- Ironically, the world's "leading democracy"
has the highest rate of incarceration. As of April of 2005, there were
2.1 million US Americans under the supervision of the penal system, an
increase of 2.3% from the previous year.(8) China, a nation with four times
the population of the United States and a frequent target of critics of
human rights violators, jails fewer people than the "paragon of democracy".
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- Sixty percent of US Americans now oppose the war in Iraq.(9)
As of October 8, 2006, George Bush had a 41% job approval rating(10), an
April Washington Post poll showed that 33% of Americans wanted George Bush
impeached and removed from office(11), and the shocking violations of domestic
and international law by the Bush Regime leave Nixon and Clinton looking
like little leaguers.(12) Yet in the "great democracy", Bush
and company continue to commit mass murder and grand larceny with impunity
as they implement an agenda which favors their aristocratic "base"
and exploits most of those they "represent".
-
- Oppressive legislation advanced by the Bush Cabal and
timorously rubber-stamped by Congress has finally relieved the US plutocracy
of the onerous burden of the Bill of Rights. The Patriot Act and Military
Commissions Act of 2006 effectively torpedo most of the US citizenry's
Constitutional protections from the tyranny of its "democratic government".
-
- Certainly the United States ruling elite can truthfully
credit themselves for allowing a high degree of free speech. In fact, when
their democratic nature is attacked, their tolerance of free expression
by dissidents is usually their first line of defense. Yet in a nation in
which 90% of the media market is controlled by just six major corporations(13)
and where a majority of the inhabitants are bribed and conditioned to reflexively
reject challenges to the "American Way" as products of irrational
minds, godless Communists, spoiled whiners, or terrorists, how much does
"free speech" actually contribute to true democracy? While dissenting
messages do win some hearts and minds, they are usually drowned out by
a blaring chorus of mind-numbing corporate media reassurances that the
United States is God's gift to humanity that is incapable of wrong-doing.
-
- Yes, democracy in the United States is but a pleasant
fiction that never existed. And with the passage of time, it has become
more of an unattainable fantasy than a dream to be realized.
-
- What to do?
-
- It is unlikely that a significant number of people in
the United States will find the motivation to pierce the simulacrum until
they have experienced severe hardship or pain. Many US Americans are not
even aware that their enslaved psyches condemn them to an existential hell
of spiritual vacuousness, blind loyalty to a ruthless empire, and obsessive
devotion to a predatory economic system. And many of those who do become
aware don't care as long as they can continue to relish heaping portions
of fat-laden addictive repasts from the ubiquitous Golden Arches, to intellectually
gorge themselves with the brain candy eagerly proffered by the corporate
media as propagandistic seeds sown into the rich soil of otherwise fallow
minds, to make Faustian bargains with Visa to adorn their walls with plasma
televisions of elephantine proportions , and to drive urban assault vehicles
capable of transporting small armies and ensuring that they will dominate
the road.
-
- Given humankind's United States-led pursuit of self-destruction,
an economic, ecological, or humanitarian cataclysm is virtually inevitable
at some point. However, there is a silver lining. The survivors who rise
from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix will be blessed with a second
chance. And let's hope those Founding Parents will have the wisdom to remake
civilization according to truly democratic, just, and humane principles.
-
- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically,
his essays have appeared widely on the Internet, and he volunteers at a
homeless shelter. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
-
- Sources
-
- (1)
- http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570630_3/Capital_Punishment.html
-
- (2)
- http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press04172002.html
-
- (3)
- http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts.html
-
- (4)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_American_War
-
- (5)
- http://www.vietnam-war.info/casualties/
-
- (6)
- http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a1.html
-
- (7)
- http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Images/rasmus1105.html
-
- (8)
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4481261.stm
-
- (9)
- http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/09/iraq.poll/
-
- (10)
- http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm
-
- (11)
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_immigration_041006.htm
-
- (12)
- http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=127726
-
- (13)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
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