OpEds: America’s Multi-Headed Monster

America now combines and represents:

• money power in private hands to make more of it at the public’s expense;
• super-wealth and privilege;
• one-party rule – corrupted money party duopoly power; and
• major media managed news, not real information and analysis.

Angry street protesters nationwide must understand and focus on these above other issues. Achieving social justice depends on it. Basic information on how America’s been run from inception is also essential. 

It was established as a government of men, not laws. Then and now, democracy was illusory, not real. Constitutional language about “We the people of the United States” was manipulative deception. 

In fact, only white property owners mattered, a small minority. They alone were enfranchised. Others were entirely shut out. Women were considered appendages of their husbands and child bearers, nothing else. Blacks were commodities, not people.   In 1865 they were freed, in 1870 enfranchised. It hardly mattered until passage of the mid-1960s Civil and Voting Rights Acts. Even then and now they haven’t worked as believed. 

Religious prerequisites existed until 1810. Property owner enfranchisement lasted until 1850. Voters couldn’t elect senators until 1913. Women couldn’t vote until 1920.  Native Americans couldn’t until enfranchised by the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. Poll tax requirements existed until 1966. It hardly matters now with corporate-manipulated electronic machines voting, not citizens. 

It’s worse because voters have no choice. Duopoly power prevents it. The electoral process is kabuki theater. Major media and PR scoundrels manipulate the public mind. 

Everything is pre-scripted and pre-packaged. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Candidates are pre-selected. Big money owns them. 

Key outcomes are predetermined. Duopoly power serves the privileged. Voters get the best democracy money can buy. Horse race journalism and trivia substitute for addressing real issues fairly, fully, and accurately. 

Voter disenfranchisement is rife. Peremptorily removing many from voter rolls is commonplace. Intimidation, illegal practices, and obstacles deter others.  

Millions can’t vote because of past criminal records, no matter how minor the offense. Millions more in America’s gulag can’t, including many wrongfully there. 

In his book “Democracy for the Few,” Michael Parenti said American-style democracy was created to “resist the pressure of popular tides (and protect) a rising bourgeoisie’s (freedom to) invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate wealth.” 

John Jay, America’s first Chief Supreme Court Justice said America should be run by and for “the people who own it.” John Adams wanted it run by “the rich, the well born, and the able.” It’s been that way from inception. Privilege alone mattered, not popular interests. 

Democracy for the few was established. Populism was nowhere in sight. Nothing changed from then to now. In spite of commonly believed myths, people don’t govern directly or indirectly through representatives. People are governed by wealth and power, serving privileged interests only.

America’s founders were that time’s equivalent of a Wall Street crowd. They were property owners, bankers, merchants, lawyers and politicians. Bill of Rights freedoms were established for them alone.

Moreover, constitutional America isn’t constrained by checks and balances. Then and now, sitting governments act without popular approval. In fact, they’re entirely detached in a realm of their own. 

Constitutional restraints are pure fantasy. Presidents and Congress do what they please. Washington is corporate occupied territory. Bankers sit stop the pecking order.

America’s national resources are squandered. Labor is exploited, underpaid, and abused. Monopoly capitalism and democratic freedoms can’t coexist. Americans can have whatever they want if they can pay for it. 

Money power, privilege, corruption, greed and imperial arrogance substitute for equal rights and social justice.

Exorcizing that cancer is job one. Returning money power to public hands is key to having a chance. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp America’s money system in violation of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to “coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof….”  

Thereafter, they victimized working Americans by using money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment by bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them. 

As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed. Purchasing power eroded. Asset bubbles were created. So were record budget and national debt levels, as well as depression-sized unemployment manipulated lower to conceal the state of working America. 

Dire conditions also include high levels of personal and business bankruptcies, millions of lost homes, record impoverishment affecting society’s most vulnerable hung out to dry on their own, and America’s greatest ever wealth gap.

Today’s America is too broken and corrupted to fix. Nothing short of dismantling it and starting over can work, including a new Constitution put to a national referendum to vote up or down section by section. 

That’s direct participatory democracy, the real kind with referendum voting on major issues too important to leave solely to elected officials.

Most important is making banking a highly regulated public utility, nationalizing or abolishing the Fed. Wall Street’s franchise must end. Giant banks must be broken up and nationalized, insolvent ones liquidated.

No more money power in private hands! No more government paying interest on its own money! 

No more bailouts and other corporate handouts! No more privatizing profits and socializing losses! No more business as usual! 

No more democracy for the few! No more duopoly power! No more government of, by and for super-wealth! No more imperial wars! 

No more a nation not fit to live for everyone not privileged! No more police state laws!  

No more cops serving as enforcers for crime bosses! No more tolerating their beating up on peaceful protesters!

No more media and PR scoundrels manipulating the public mind! No more managed news, infotainment and junk food news! 

No more manufacturing consent! No more suppressing truths too ugly to reveal! No more state and corporate propaganda substituting for real news, information and analysis!

No more the way it’s always been since inception! No more faking it! No more money in politics! No more corporate bosses and political Washington having it all their way!  

No more popular interests entirely shut out! Social justice change demands clean-sweeping out everything and starting over! 

It bears repeating. Money power must return to public hands. Political duopoly power must end, and media giants must be broken up and prohibited so fake news, information and analysis no longer is tolerated.

Americans deserve direct democratic government of, by and for everyone equally. So do others living everywhere. 

Wishing won’t make it so. Nor will it happen if dark forces succeed in infiltrating, manipulating, and subverting the way they always try to prevent social, economic and political change. Exposing, deterring, and expunging them when found is crucial. 

Only unrestrained popular resistance for change works, doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get it. 

There’s no other way! There’s no turning back! Go for it!  

Quitting’s not an option! There can’t be to have any chance for success! 

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.   Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.