First thing first: If you want to know what is going on in the world, especially the political world, do NOT turn on the boob tube. And that is what it is, a vehicle for boobs. Similar to the world of sports media, if someone is allowed on mainstream television, then they have to be a complete sellout! Easy to understand: The Two Party/One Party system is owned by the super rich corporate empire. Thus, their embedded apologists working for the media channels reflect the views of one party or the other. In sports the owners of media decide what the suckers… sorry, the fans, are allowed to see and hear. This writer was on the phone with one of my small business customers from Montana the other day. I asked him what professional football team he followed. ” Ever since they { AKA black players, which by the way make up 70% of NFL players} took a knee I gave up on following pro football.” Think about this? How quickly did Colin Kapernick fade from view, as NO team would even sign him , despite the myriad of season ending injuries of quarterbacks that year and the years after? None! Yet, the guy was a Super Bowl QB a few years before he lowered his knee. Plus, how many mega millionaire players continued to take that knee? The protests faded just like that. Yet, rogue cops continue to kill unarmed black men.
Don’t you just love how the Two Party/One Party media savants keep parroting the Lie that our nation is a Democracy? Oh, it’s a democracy if you have mega millions to get on the ballot and actually win an election. I have written many times about how it takes an obscene number of $ millions to win a seat, even in state legislatures. The last person to get high up on a presidential ballot was Ross Perot in 1992, a billionaire who spent his own bread. Thus, there is NO democracy in America! This lie has been sold via Republican and Democrat politicians and media hacks forever. So, we get two parties who continue this myth, and we, the serfs, pick from column A or column B, as Ralph Nader always referred to it.
Trump sold himself as a populist who intended to ‘ Drain the swamp’, when anyone with ( sorry) half a brain should have known that he came out of that swamp! His opponents, Hillary Clinton and Lunchbox Joe Biden, owed their entire careers to the super rich who fill that swamp. So, here is what it translates into: Trump promoted and still receives his support ( as do ALL the other Republicans) from basically angry white people. Their anger is against anyone not white, anyone gay or recently transgender, and of course those promoting abortion. Sadly, this fascist element of understanding influences blue collar and white collar white Americans who are sold the BS that blacks and browns are sucking on the government’s teat, and ‘ Coming for us!’ If only they would realize that they are in the same prison with working stiffs of all colors and creeds.
The Democrats, so slyly, keep their rhetoric confined to Identity Politics. They caress women who want the right to end a pregnancy within what was once a legal and rational time period. They protect the LBGTQ community, as they should be doing. They do stand up for civil rights, but yet allow the perpetrators of institutional racism to continue to plunder low income communities through piggish absentee landlords charging too high rents with decrepit services. They allow the infrastructure of those areas to continue to be below par with the rest of American towns. Of course, this is not solely a ‘ People of color’ issue. Plenty of white Americans live in squalor throughout our nation. Polls show that many such white folks continue to support demagogues like Trump and his party. Sadly, their anger at the Democrats, who their parents and grandparents always supported since FDR, reveals so much. The Democrats do as little as possible to support working stiffs. Why? Well, because they know that their adversary on the other side of the aisle has never done anything for working people. So, that issue will never be a defining one when it is time to vote in this so called democracy.
If one really wishes to have a true democracy, then Socialism is the only solution. Disallowing ALL private donations, or one’s own money spent ,out of the process is step one. With public funding of all elections we can finally see a chink in the wall of this Two Party/One Party fortress.
Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is also frequently posted on Nation of Change and Countercurrents.. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 500 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
