A certain Soviet leader once reportedly commented, "We have a hard time convincing people in the USSR that our elections aren't rigged because we have only one party on the ballot, you Americans have figured it out though... you have two parties on your ballots!"
We do. We have two political parties on our ballots. But are our elections still rigged? What good does it do to have two political parties if the people chosen to run against each other are hand picked for us by big money?
What good does it do to have two political parties if there's not an ounce of difference between them?
Case in point: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney.
Both support the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which gives the US government the power to indefinitely detain US citizens on US soil without a trial (a clear violation of the fourth amendment.)
Both support the right of a US president to assassinate US citizens if they are deemed a "terrorist" or a "terrorist sympathiser" by top administration officials (remember that this administration was calling the Tea Party "terrorists" not too long ago!)
Both support bailouts of big financial institutions that have made incredibly bad business decisions (rather than letting the bad ones fail so the good ones can rise to the top.)
Both support Corporate Welfare - the idea that the government needs to intervene on behalf of the corporations it wants to succeed--with bailouts, and tax incentives--and against those it wishes to fail--with excessive regulations and environmental restrictions (refusing again, to let the free market sort out winners and losers on a level playing field.)
Both support the idea that the president can take us to war without a congressional declaration of war (in other words, without the approval of the people.)
Both support Keynesian economics - the idea that government spending will improve a bad economy (in spite of the fact that we are so deep in debt right now that there is not enough physical money in the world to pay what we owe!)
Both support the Federal Reserve system and the idea that financial crises are "eased" (and Wall Street is buoyed) by printing more money (despite the fact that every time money is printed - without being tied to anything with concrete physical value: ie gold or silver - it is worth less in real spending power.)
Both support an interventionist foreign policy and the idea that it is up to America to right the wrongs in the world (despite the fact that the blowback from all of our international interventions has been catastrophic in every region we're in and the fact that we're broke and can't afford to police the world any longer.)
Both support continued foreign aid (again, even though we're broke and even though most of our foreign aid actually goes to interests counter to our own.)
The list is even longer but those are the points I can think of just off the top of my head.
This Republican primary season has been a real eye opener for me. I watched in amazement as all the big money interests, and their propaganda machines, got behind Mitt Romney from the very beginning. I watched them weed out his challengers one by one. And I watched them completely ignore the one candidate who doesn't share the common views listed above.
So what now that big money has chosen its contenders? Who do they want to win? That's the genius of it - it doesn't matter!!! Either way Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the corporations chosen by the government will win. And everyone else loses.
It's time to wake up America. It's time to stop letting the media--and the big money interests behind it--pick our candidates for us. We need to take our country back!
