The little joke about putting the interest’s name after a politician’s name instead of the state they’re from — Max Baucus (D-Wellpoint)– dates back to the muckraker era. Nowadays, however, the joke would be far more appropriate to replace the party affiliation and keep the state –Charles Schumer (Goldman Sachs-NY)
In fact, when you look at the Senate, with it’s binary seating arrangement, you may think you see Republicans and Democrats, neatly divided on each side of the isle. But I assure you this is merely an illusion. If you could see each senator’s real affiliation as a little sign above their heads, what you would really see is corporate logos bobbing up and down on the Senate floor.
The Democratic party is a myth. Not for us plebes out here in the real world. But the higher up the food chain you go, the less party affiliation means. By the time you reach the United States Senate, you are almost certainly, completely owned and affiliated with one of the big powerful interests or, most commonly, a combination of them.
How it really works is pretty simple. We have a Plutocracy. It is controlled by a small, handful of interests, or more accurately, assholes who have taken over our government by subversive means. They own almost everything, more than Michael Moore estimates and certainly more than the comical Forbes 500 suggests. And they control most of our most established institutions: almost all the main universities, think tanks, PR firms, defense organizations and of course, the mass media. They also control state and local governments all across the country.
But their main prize is the US government, especially the U.S. Senate. With few exceptions, each of your senators is a crook (most probably), an accomplice after the fact (maybe but probably a crook), or a useful idiot (unlikely).
The way the Plutocrats use the two party system is like good cop, bad cop. The good cops are the Democrats, off to the rescue to appease the disgruntled masses. Except they always seem to have an excuse to fail – the evil Republicans. They would be the bad cops. They serve as a sledgehammer, constantly knocking the Overton Window to the right. Making it easier for the Democrats to fail.
It is all a charade. They all work for the same little group of asshole, mostly bankers and/or the oil and energy cartel. (the intersection of these groups is quite fascinating)
The exact song and dance act they perform on behalf of their clients, the Plutocrats, varies as needed. But regardless of the play, it’s almost always to the benefit of the Plutocrats. Of course, the greatest function the parties serve is to keep the public as evenly divided as possible. Think about this:
Ever heard the expression divide and conquer? How bout divide by 50% and conquer quicker? We have millions and millions of people. What are the odds of our population being so consistently, evenly divided for so long? Kennedy and Nixon, 1960, down to Chicago? How did Barack Obama’s approval rating drop to, surprise, 51%?
The function of the media is to set the debate, and keep the people evenly split. If one side starts to pull ahead, they get taken down a notch or two. This doesn’t require a conspiracy. It is almost automatic. But it is intentional.
It was almost exactly 40 years ago that Lewis Powell wrote his infamous memo – a call to arms for big business to get serious, take control of the American political and cultural centers, and RECREATE AMERICAN SOCIETY.
This is what we have seen. The deliberate, well funded, and quite successful re-engineering of American society to be selfish, short sighted, materialistic, and uneducated.
Congratulations. Look around.
The two party system is simply the means by which to turn the American public against itself while the Plutocrats pillage the common wealth. Remember the common wealth?
Forty years later, after the Powell Memo launched the greatest political campaign no one has even heard of, what have they accomplished? They have gutted this country.
We have been gutted. All of our common wealth, from infrastructure, schools, parks, government services, are all starved to death. Our communities, towns, cities are in ruin, complete with their own war zones.
Our families have been decimated, with unprecedented rates of divorce, domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies and teen suicides.
This was an attack. A full scale assault on our very way of life. And no one ever even knew it was happening. Well, no one except for the US Senate, much of the House of Representatives, and the last four presidents.
I will do anything within the framework of the US Constitution to stop this attack. What about you?
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….give or take a thousand or two,
great diary…nail on head.
And just like now, all she could do was talk herself blue in the face and keep voting for people that would eventually screw someone somewhere for a few thousand which is now a few million.
We have to get the big money out of the House, Senate, and Whitehouse. And that’s going to take electing enough people that make straight up, get the money out, campaign finance reform their priority. That is all I want to hear from here on out from any congressional or presidential candidate.
Nothing else matters because it won’t get done right or at all anyway until this is fixed.
It should have been where Obama started if he was fucking serious at all. But his first cave in was his own publicly funded campaign promise.
I don’t know alot about third parties except they’ve usually been headed by fairly offbeat characters. And of course, without money to fight back the slants and slights from the plutocrats (who are even more far out than uranuscrats) whether they are or not, they’ll continue to be painted that way. I’m ready to delve into it. Anybody got any insights to that?
Im referring to much great writing and dicussion here and elsewhere while the teevee news shows (ALL of them, apparently) rattle on and on about balloon boy.
okay, on this.. yes. But… its so… sigh … gordian knot … “I’ve got you right where you want me” twisted up.
We Are Here:
behind the eight ball
The 60’s scared the shit out of them. Champions of the people were cut down with assassins bullets. That sent a very clear message to all in the future who thought they were going to move the status quo via the will of the common folk.
The Constitution originally allowed slavery, most of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, women couldn’t vote, non property owners couldn’t vote, the senate was originally selected by state legislatures, not elected by the people, for fear of the masses gaining control of their own country. Rich white men benefited the most from the Constitution. The aristocracy won the debate, hell you can go all the way back to the beginning of time for that one. Commoners have had to fight tooth and nail for every scrap they have ever gotten. The deck has always been stacked.
Good luck getting the rich to vote against their own best interest. Can we really expect them to vote on legislation in our favor that would lead to their diminished returns? And that includes Democrats. I’d like to know exactly which stocks each and every one of them are invested in, that’d go a long way in explaining things.
Campaign reform ain’t gonna happen, Constitutional Amendment and Constitutional Convention are a pipe dream, 3rd party, maybe, but a really long shot. There is a way but with NSA eyes and ears and such…well, you know, but even then you start over with a brand new aristocracy…oh well I give up, I’m going to bed. Good night America, and I mean that more ways than one.
It’s as important, if not more important, than health care reform.
Obama shot that to hell, and set the issue back with his Orwellian logic:
Sure they will!
except quit voting for the Democrats.
The US is a one party state much like China or Cuba. The difference is that in China and Cuba the one party works for the interests of the people, at least in theory. In the US it doesn’t even in theory. As a consequence Americans have been trained to accept less from their government and therefore object less to corruption.
Again the US media is as corrupt as any state media ever was but the difference is every other nation with a state media knows its a state media and takes that into account. Americans don’t.