The Day American Democracy Died (January 21, 2010)
The government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has perished. Democracy was terminally ill for a long time and just lingering on life support. Freedom of individuals to choose their leadership has been trumped by the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision known as Citizens United which gave corporations equal rights with the people. As then-candidate Mitt Romney famously quipped, “Corporations are people.” Importantly, that SCOTUS decision was not a fluke or accidental, it was part of a strategic long-game designed and engineered to shift the balance of power even further into the hands of plutocrats. It was a culmination of carefully packing the courts at all levels of government with judges favorable to big business at the expense of middle class.
With the legalization of political action committees (PACs), the amount of money that can be spent on elections is virtually limitless. Even worse, PACs often are allowed to conceal their donors and thus it is impossible to determine who is supporting the ads. Masquerading under innocuous sounding, and often misleading names, they sway unsuspecting voters, usually with emotional discourse devoid of accurate facts. More disconcerting are the ads and social media campaigns using overtly false information, and doing so with impunity.
The notion that people have a real choice is an illusion. What is left of elections are referendums about what appear to be the lessor of bad or even evil options. Like many others, rarely have I voted for any candidate. Rather, we have voted against the candidates we thought posed the most harm to the country. In the current presidential election cycle, the leading candidates of both parties hold the unenviable record of being the most disliked in history. Yet, inevitably the media keeps referring to the choices as “the will of the people.” In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. At present the voters mostly are stuck with the simply awful candidates that represent the plutocracy in which we live.
More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-b-alexander-phd/the-day-american-democrac_b_10073652.html?utm_hp_ref=politics