Democracy in America

In Punjab, armed soldiers herded voters forcibly to the polls. Seldom has democracy been so naked. The purveyors of democracy usually try to assure us that there is no emperor, and only the clothes are real.

A democratic government functions like the abusive parent who tricks the child into believing that the abuse is somehow deserved, consented to, and even asked for.

Ideal democracy by the consent of the governed is in flat contradiction to the naked realities of power and coercion necessary for nation states as we know them to exist. Governance of the people by the people simply will not work in a centrally controlled society. Democracy can work somewhat as a means for the privileged class to come to agreement within itself, but when extended to the larger masses becomes a mask for the true sources of power. The intensive use of paranoid propaganda by modern democracies underscores this fact. Public rage must be turned toward manufactured enemies, lest the rage be turned against the true source of public misery.

Here in America, we go to the polls with grim disdain, fearful that what little choice we have left will be taken away from us if we do not exercise it. There is widespread talk of voting for the "lesser of evils." Actually, our choices were taken away from us before the ballots are even printed. Blatant collusion between the two supposedly competing parties and their corporate sponsors removes most chance of popular choice. The media obediently make much of minor differences in exactly how we are to be oppressed. The campaigns between the parties become merely a masked drama, a sort of "bread and circuses" diversion.

Politicians and the media chide us for "apathy" when fewer and fewer of us turn out to vote, but the true cause of low turnout is disdain for the process. Even the most television blinded blue collar alcoholic has begun to notice that the system isn't offering much here.

The manipulators of power have captured Lady Liberty and put her on a pedestal. Freedom lies entombed in a city of stark white monuments. The true spirit of freedom has fled the corridors of power, and lives on the streets, hoping someone will notice. Meanwhile, numerous gaudy banners and placards, along with a constant barrage of advertising, remind us of where power really resides, the corporations.