-
- It combines and represents:
-
- money power in private hands to make more of it at the
public's expense;
-
- super-wealth and privilege;
-
- one-party rule - corrupted money party duopoly power;
and
-
- major media managed news, not real information and analysis.
-
- Angry street protesters nationwide must understand and
focus on these above other issues. Achieving social justice depends on
it.
-
- Basic information on how America's been run from inception
is also essential.
-
- It was established as a government of men, not laws.
Then and now, democracy was illusory, not real. Constitutional language
about "We the people of the United States" was manipulative deception.
-
- In fact, only white property owners mattered, a small
minority. They alone were enfranchised. Others were entirely shut out.
Women were considered appendages of their husbands and child bearers, nothing
else. Blacks were commodities, not people.
-
- In 1865 they were freed, in 1870 enfranchised. It hardly
mattered until passage of the mid-1960s Civil and Voting Rights Acts. Even
then and now they haven't worked as believed.
-
- Religious prerequisites existed until 1810. Property
owner enfranchisement lasted until 1850. Voters couldn't elect senators
until 1913. Women couldn't vote until 1920.
-
- Native Americans couldn't until enfranchised by the 1924
Indian Citizenship Act. Poll tax requirements existed until 1966. It hardly
matters now with corporate-manipulated electronic machines voting, not
citizens.
-
- It's worse because voters have no choice. Duopoly power
prevents it. The electoral process is kabuki theater. Major media and PR
scoundrels manipulate the public mind.
-
- Everything is pre-scripted and pre-packaged. Secrecy
and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Candidates
are pre-selected. Big money owns them.
-
- Key outcomes are predetermined. Duopoly power serves
the privileged. Voters get the best democracy money can buy. Horse race
journalism and trivia substitute for addressing real issues fairly, fully,
and accurately.
-
- Voter disenfranchisement is rife. Peremptorily removing
many from voter rolls is commonplace. Intimidation, illegal practices,
and obstacles deter others.
-
- Millions can't vote because of past criminal records,
no matter how minor the offense. Millions more in America's gulag can't,
including many wrongfully there.
-
- In his book "Democracy for the Few," Michael
Parenti said American-style democracy was created to "resist the pressure
of popular tides (and protect) a rising bourgeoisie's (freedom to) invest,
speculate, trade, and accumulate wealth."
-
- John Jay, America's first Chief Supreme Court Justice
said America should be run by and for "the people who own it."
John Adams wanted it run by "the rich, the well born, and the able."
It's been that way from inception. Privilege alone mattered, not popular
interests.
-
- Democracy for the few was established. Populism was nowhere
in sight. Nothing changed from then to now. In spite of commonly believed
myths, people don't govern directly or indirectly through representatives.
People are governed by wealth and power, serving privileged interests only.
-
- America's founders were that time's equivalent of a Wall
Street crowd. They were property owners, bankers, merchants, lawyers and
politicians. Bill of Rights freedoms were established for them alone.
-
- Moreover, constitutional America isn't constrained by
checks and balances. Then and now, sitting governments act without popular
approval. In fact, they're entirely detached in a realm of their own.
-
- Constitutional restraints are pure fantasy. Presidents
and Congress do what they please. Washington is corporate occupied territory.
Bankers sit stop the pecking order.
-
- America's national resources are squandered. Labor is
exploited, underpaid, and abused. Monopoly capitalism and democratic freedoms
can't coexist. Americans can have whatever they want if they can pay for
it.
-
- Money power, privilege, corruption, greed and imperial
arrogance substitute for equal rights and social justice.
-
- Exorcizing that cancer is job one. Returning money power
to public hands is key to having a chance. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act
let powerful bankers usurp America's money system in violation of the Constitution's
Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to "coin Money
(and) regulate the Value thereof...."
-
- Thereafter, they victimized working Americans by using
money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment by bankrolling and colluding
with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them.
-
- As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic
financialization, and casino capitalism followed. Purchasing power eroded.
Asset bubbles were created. So were record budget and national debt levels,
as well as depression-sized unemployment manipulated lower to conceal the
state of working America.
-
- Dire conditions also include high levels of personal
and business bankruptcies, millions of lost homes, record impoverishment
affecting society's most vulnerable hung out to dry on their own, and America's
greatest ever wealth gap.
-
- Today's America is too broken and corrupted to fix. Nothing
short of dismantling it and starting over can work, including a new Constitution
put to a national referendum to vote up or down section by section.
-
- That's direct participatory democracy, the real kind
with referendum voting on major issues too important to leave solely to
elected officials.
-
- Most important is making banking a highly regulated public
utility, nationalizing or abolishing the Fed. Wall Street's franchise must
end. Giant banks must be broken up and nationalized, insolvent ones liquidated.
-
- No more money power in private hands! No more government
paying interest on its own money!
-
- No more bailouts and other corporate handouts! No more
privatizing profits and socializing losses! No more business as usual!
-
- No more democracy for the few! No more duopoly power!
No more government of, by and for super-wealth! No more imperial wars!
-
- No more a nation not fit to live for everyone not privileged!
No more police state laws!
-
- No more cops serving as enforcers for crime bosses! No
more tolerating their beating up on peaceful protesters!
-
- No more media and PR scoundrels manipulating the public
mind! No more managed news, infotainment and junk food news!
-
- No more manufacturing consent! No more suppressing truths
too ugly to reveal! No more state and corporate propaganda substituting
for real news, information and analysis!
-
- No more the way it's always been since inception! No
more faking it! No more money in politics! No more corporate bosses and
political Washington having it all their way!
-
- No more popular interests entirely shut out! Social justice
change demands clean-sweeping out everything and starting over!
-
- It bears repeating. Money power must return to public
hands. Political duopoly power must end, and media giants must be broken
up and prohibited so fake news, information and analysis no longer is tolerated.
-
- Americans deserve direct democratic government of, by
and for everyone equally. So do others living everywhere.
-
- Wishing won't make it so. Nor will it happen if dark
forces succeed in infiltrating, manipulating, and subverting the way they
always try to prevent social, economic and political change. Exposing,
deterring, and expunging them when found is crucial.
-
- Only unrestrained popular resistance for change works,
doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get it.
-
- There's no other way! There's no turning back! Go for
it!
-
- Quitting's not an option! There can't be to have any
chance for success!
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive
Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central
time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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