(S)election 2016 briefly

Haven't posted here in a while, and thought this was the place for a brief post about the upcoming elections. We are in big trouble. And, in spite of the overwhelming conventional wisdom that has Clinton as the lesser evil, that likely is not the case. As Assange stated, "A vote for Hillary is a vote for endless, stupid war." While Trump at least wants to get along with Russia, Clinton wants to establish a no fly zone over Syria, which will mean direct confrontation with Russia. This is very dangerous.

And Trump is a disaster in every other way..... We the people, no matter the outcome, have already lost this election.

Redacted Tonight: Election Fraud Special Report! (You Won't Believe This)

The saga of the pre-selected 45th president continues

This from, of all people, Glenn Beck, only further reinforces my belief the American presidential elections are rotten to the core. From the writings of Webster Tarpley we learn that there has been a plan for sometime to make Sen. Ben Sasse the 45th President of the US. If this third party comes to be, I will no longer vote in the presidential elections of my country, as I will understand just how corrupt these elections are.

Lack of Democracy

Sometimes, when I'm motivated to write in this blog, I literally don't know where to start. I've probably used this next quote in other posts. I am often reminded of it. When George Carlin was on the Keith Olbermann show several years ago, at one point he told Olbermann very plainly, "This country is finished."   I would have to agree with Carlin if he meant the country is/was finished as a democracy. In fact, there have been scholarly studies suggesting just that. 

It could be argued that this concept is not new, as we have had academics tell us similar things even decades ago. For example, C Wright Mills wrote, The Power Elite in the 1950s. And I'm sure that some variation of the idea about the powerful elite of business, finance, and military interests dominating political life - of course with the help of the more staid media - has likely been with us for eons.

However, I would argue that in the US today (possibly other countries), things have gone way beyond that basic concept. It is such a big topic, and one is likely to have the scornful label of "conspiracy theorist" placed upon the one's self for even considering that our democracy might be corrupt beyond just the corruption of ordinary manipulation of opinion, and powerful persons having too great an influence on policy.

I tend to believe that at some point, I don't know when exactly, the very mechanics of our electoral democracy became corrupted. The first investigation into this that I am aware of was a book called, VoteScam: The Stealing of America. This book was written by two brothers, who having the experience of knowing some of the more radical politically minded people of the 1960s, decided that they should try to run an election campaign, just to record their experience. It was a way of testing whether they, two rather regular guys, could find the value, or lack thereof, of doing so.

According to them, they found out quite a bit more than they originally hoped to discover - namely that our elections are hopelessly corrupt. What was supposed to be a project to possibly write a book turned into a lifelong journey for them.

As they point out in the book, they believe they discovered sort of the pilot project for American democracy. Since then, as James Collier (one of the brothers who wrote the book) points out in various interviews, it has only gotten much worse.

I can't even recall if the electronic voting machines were introduced within the period covered in the book. Yet, at some point during the 1990s, these machines began to turn up in American polling places. The first time I remember reports of them appearing in the news was the election featuring Bush vs. Gore. For example, there was the voting machine that counted backwards.   By the time of the 2004 election, a great number of people had become suspicious of these machines, and believed they were being used to deliver elections to Republican candidates. Whether that is true or not, the machines are design in away that would allow either party, or potential outsiders, to basically rig an election.

In fact, those who were concerned with election integrity around this time were almost able to force a Republican tech consultant to appear in court in order for him to tell whatever he might know about alleged tampering with the 2004 election. Notice the circumstances of his not appearing in court.

At any rate, it would seem that the election result could be anything the machine says it is. I don't believe we select the president anymore, and I'm uncertain how much say we have in the lesser offices. Put this together with the work of people like C Wright Mills, and there is very little democracy regardless of the election results. This is truly a time of universal deceit.

The possibility of the predetermined presidential election

More than a year ago, because Webster Tarpley began talking about it on his show, and on other internet radio shows, I became aware of a politician called, Ben Sasse. The interesting thing about Ben Sasse is that there are those who claim, as far back as Sasse's college days, he would tend to introduce himself as the 45th President of the United States.

For a time, I didn't think too much about that story. After all, there was no sign of Ben Sasse on the radar as a candidate for president.

The days and weeks went on, and Trump became the front runner in the campaign on the Republican side. Suddenly, a low rumble began. One might just make it out coming through the media cacophony. It was the leader of the opposition to the Trump Republicans, Ben Sasse, gaining notoriety. Then came the movement to draft him into a third party, and run him as a candidate for president. As of this writing, he claims he would never do that.

Will he run for president after all? Will he become president? I don't know. I do know this video of Tarpley explaining the story about these allegations of a man who introduces himself as the 45th president long before the election campaign for that position is interesting to say the least.

The Rise of Discontentment and the Continuing Unraveling from the "Centrist" Establishment

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was once quoted as saying that the collapse of the USSR was one of the major geopolitical disasters of the century. What many neglect to mention are his next few lines, which describe the reasons he said this. It wasn't exactly because of a fondness for communism that he brought this up. His reasons were: a) the fact that so many citizens rapidly found themselves outside the borders of their former country. b) the fact that so many were driven into poverty within a very short time after the collapse. I would believe that his point (b) is the more important point. (Note: For English subtitles turn on YouTube captions in controls of video.)

Others have echoed this sentiment in different ways, and even sometimes for different reasons. For instance, James Petras in an article circa 2012, notes that the fall of the USSR may have contributed to the further rise of neo-liberalism in the US and Europe. He particularly is displeased with those academics (and others) who chose to vilify the USSR, and took an anticommunist line, which may have aided the neo-liberals rise. As Petras writes, "The entire army of impotent ‘anti-Stalinist’ leftists, comfortably established in the universities, brayed till they were hoarse against the ‘neo-liberal offensive’ and the ‘need for an anti-capitalist strategy’, without the tiniest reflection over how they had contributed to undermining the very welfare state that had educated, fed and employed the workers."

For decades, arguably until the time of Reagan (although probably earlier), the Soviet Union provided a model that had to be vilified and guarded against, as far as the US and Western European political class was concerned. One way of doing this was to provide high standards of living (relatively) for their populations. Of course, perhaps another less positive method of defending against this concern was to go after those who saw the potential of communism, and sought to apply some what was pragmatic about communism to Western European societies. Thus, we have the reports of things like "Operation Gladio" that took place in Europe.

In short, there was a modicum of balance in the world, and although the US did things like the Vietnam War, the USSR tended to provide balance in the sphere of foreign policy as well. For example, we should take notice that it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the time of Gorbachev, that the US decided to begin the long program of the destruction of Iraq. It is an open question I pose: Could the US elite have   given us the first Gulf War if the USSR was not so weakened? I contend that they would not have been able to do such a thing without confronting the risk of global war.

Therefore, I would argue that we can trace out current set of circumstances, at least in part, back to the collapse of the USSR. I wouldn't claim it was a chain reaction, but would say without the USSR, the US and Western Europe were left unconstrained in the economic and military sphere to a large degree. Since then, we have had not only an endless cycle of wars, but increased pressure for neoliberalism that has decimated the middle class, and certainly harmed the poor.

Shortly after the first Gulf War, circa 1992, Gore Vidal wrote an essay entitled, "Monotheism and its Discontents."  I don't exactly agree with the way he tied his entire argument to religion, however, he certainly seems to play the role of a latter day Nostradamus. He was critiquing what he saw happening during the 1992 election. He began to see the outlines of two parties, not the phony two-party (which is one-party) of the current system of his time, but of two distinct parties. For him, the embodiment of one party, which he called the "party of man" was on display in the person of  Jerry Brown, who was running a quixotic attempt at a campaign for president. Pat Buchanan was doing the same, in Vidal's terminology, for the "party of God."

As I've said, I'm not sure how much religion has to do with it, but if one looks closely, we can see that two distinct parties did (and do) exist, and more than 20 years later, they are confromting one another yet again on the fringes of the political establishment. Except, it is no longer very "fringe." For Vidal's "party of man" we have Bernie Sanders standing in for this election cycle. And until Super Tuesday, the media had to very much count him in as having a chance to gain the nomination of the Democratic Party. Even more amazing, standing in for the "party of God" we have the Donald Trump. What either of these two think about religion is irrelevant.

If I could be so bold as to attempt to summarize what I think Vidal was getting at, the  "party of man" wants things like campaign finance reform, rights for the many, a general enlightenment if you will, while the "party of God" would want to curtail immigration, to scapegoat the other, and generally be comfortable with a more authoritarian society. Of course, as Vidal pointed out, the "party of God" also seemed to be against the continuance of an American Empire abroad.

But rather than put words into Vidal's mouth, let me share some of what he wrote about these parties. Of the "party of God," Vidal wrote, "Buchanan speaks for the party of God--the sky-god with his terrible hatred of women, blacks, gays, drugs, abortion, contraception, gambling--you name it, he hates it. Buchanan is a worthy peddler of hate. He is also in harmony not only with the prejudices and superstitions of a good part of the population but, to give him his due, he is a reactionary in the good sense--reacting against the empire in favour of the old Republic..." Of the "party of man," he wrote, "The party of man would like to re-establish a representative government firmly based upon the Bill of Rights..." This isn't much to go on, but if one reads the essay, Vidal gives a pretty explanation of what he means by all of this.

Rather than attempt to tie this together on my own, I'll leave this essay with some of what Vidal wrote from his essay. He certainly said it better than I can. Near the end of his essay, Vidal makes a point that is difficult for me, but none-the-less something that leaps out of the page given our current politics. He writes, "For once, it's all out there, perfectly visible, perfectly plain for those who can see. That Brown and Buchanan will not figure in the election does not alter the fact that, for the first time in 140 years, we now have, due in part to their efforts, the outline of two parties. Each knows the nature of its opposite, and those who are wise will not try to accommodate or compromise the two but will let them, at last, confront each other."

Now that is such a frightening prospect, that I can understand why the establishment would rather do all it can to provide us with a comfortable "centrist" for the next election.