AMERICAN DEMOCRACY? The Citadel Of Hypocrisy
While Trump’s fascist militias are busy lining up their Panzer divisions, Joe Biden and the dems can’t manage to get themselves all on a school bus.
Column and cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was written for another publication in January of 2022, and has — sadly — stood the test of time. The only thing that has changed is Pres. Biden cooked up the disastrous Ukraine proxy war and now the U.S./Israeli genocide in Gaza. I have updated some data. — MT
Trump didn’t initiate the fall of democracy, he was a product of that fall. He and his legions of shady supporters have profited off the fall and goose stepped into the vacuum of the fall of whatever small gestures of democracy we once had.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink
The recent one-year anniversary of the January 6th Trump-led fascist Insurrection was covered wall-to-wall by the corporate liberal media and featured somber commentary on the threat to “American Democracy”. One liberal academic wrote, “The United States came perilously close to losing its democracy in 2020…”
Over and over, we were told the United States is the “leading democracy” in the world. We were even told that we are the world’s Citadel of Democracy”.
It was all far too much. What passes with our government has about as much relationship to real democracy as a warm, out-of-date can of Diet Pepsi and a bottle of fine wine.
The proverbial “shining city on the hill” has become a “simmering shantytown in a poisonous fog”; a city where three billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of the country and 40% of the population would struggle to pay a $400 emergency [Updated.]– like a car repair to be able to get to work – and 20% would have no ability to scrape up the cash for such an emergency.
Liberal figurehead leaders pontificate on MSNBC and the neoliberal corporate media about a democracy that respects and responds to the will of the people at the same time they steadfastly ignore and dismiss the 70% of the population – including many Republicans – who support Medicare for All.
At the same time, in the first six months of 2021, the industrial medical complex delivered $1.6 million in campaign contributions to congressional lawmakers: $785,000 to Republicans; $776,200 to Democrats, making the betrayal completely bipartisan.
At the same time, studies have shown some 200,000 of the nearly one million covid deaths in the United States were a direct result of people being uninsured.
Cruelty across the board
Biden and the Democrats promised some form of public health insurance protection throughout the 2020 campaign, but not a syllable has been uttered on the subject since Biden’s inauguration.
The brutal dissociation between citizen desire and government performance runs right down the list of public preference, need and desire.
While public support for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour consistently has two-thirds support of the public, it was one of the first campaign promises Biden and the Democrats left in the gutter.
We do not have a democracy. Call it what it is: oligarchy; rule by and for the tiniest sliver of the super wealthy. Call it what it is: Kleptocracy; rule by and for the benefit of grifters and criminals.
As our schools teeter and public infrastructure crumbles and a majority of Americans have no money saved for retirement, 78.8% oppose our never-ending wars. Biden did the right thing by pulling troops out of Afghanistan, where we blew $7 trillion (minimum), but we continue to support Saudi Arabian war crimes in Syria, maintain some 800 overseas military bases (that we know of) and spend more on war than the next twelve major countries combined. Despite that, the recent $378 billion War Department budget was $20 billion more than the Pentagon had requested. [Three years after this was written, that number has exploded to $847.3 billion—$45.0 billion (5.6%) more than the request. —MT]
Jerk as he is, Trump is not the problem
Donald Trump didn’t initiate the fall of democracy, he was a product of that fall. He and his legions of shady supporters have profited off the fall and goose stepped into the vacuum of the fall of whatever small gestures of democracy we once had.
But the facts of government indifference and outright hostility to the needs and wishes of the people is not anecdotal. It is systemic and has been researched and even tracked out on graphs; it is completely measurable.
The first step in resolving any problem is to properly define the damn problem. Until then, proposed solutions will work as well as trying to fit a foot in a tea glove. We do not have a democracy.
In their 2014 study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”, professors Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University tracked nearly 2,000 public opinion surveys over 20 years and showed that the opinions, needs and desires of the bottom 90% of income earners in the country had no impact at all on national policy and legislation.
Comparing public opinion to legislative record, they concluded:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."
Zilch. Zip. Zero.
Citadel of Democracy?
Oh please, better call it out for what it is: A mockery of democracy.
The Citadel Of Hypocrisy.
The essential first step
The only legislative needs, desires, opinions and demands that matter in the United States of America are those of the wealthiest 10%, and – given the accelerating wealth of mega grifters and cheats like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk – it’s really only about 1%.
The first step in resolving any problem is to properly define the damn problem. Until then, proposed solutions will work as well as trying to fit a foot in a tea glove. We do not have a democracy. Call it what it is: oligarchy; rule by and for the tiniest sliver of the super wealthy.
Call it what it is: Kleptocracy; rule by and for the benefit of grifters and criminals.
And where is it that we are headed? Fascism.
And while Trump’s fascist militias are busy lining up their Panzer divisions, Joe Biden and the dems can’t manage to get themselves all on a school bus. The complete gridlock we see among the Democrats is the single best thing Trump has going for him. Through abandonment of their campaign promises and haughty dismissal of the opinions, needs and desires of the American people, they are paving the parade ground for Trump and the Republicans in 2024.
“To be an enemy of the US is dangerous but to be a friend is fatal.”
– Online comment.
I think we should start calling ourselves what we really are and what the 2014 Princeton study says we are: an oligarchy. There's no use trying to hide it any longer. Recent polls show that the vast majority of Americans want to stop the genocide of Palestinians and would like to have some sort of universal health care. And yet... Neither of these things have happened. Why not? Because they wouldn't make record profits for the military-industrial complex or for the Big Pharma/Big Health Insurance industries. Yeah, let's just face facts and call ourselves an oligarchy and skip all the lies about bringing "freedom and democracy" to other countries by dropping bombs on them. We're just dropping bombs because it makes our corporate owners richer. It's that simple and sociopathic.
Countries that are neoLiberal are not democracies. They don't serve the interests of the people they are supposed to represent, and we are suffering the consequences.