EMMA AND LESSER EVILS

Paul Edwards

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Time has come for life to imitate art in America...and improve on it.

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With the Presidential election weeks away now and the country rigidly polarized—people violently divided on matters rooted deeply in their moral and cultural biases and unreconcilable—an urgent call is made from true believers in the democratic process, liberals mainly, to vote. 

 

While this is nothing new, the pressure this cycle is more intense than ever.  The mantra goes like this: if you don’t vote for their candidate, the other will win, and that will be the end of America.  By voting, you act to preserve our great democracy, hence not voting is unthinkable.  It would sully your citizenship and spurn your priceless birthright.

 

Two elements in the mantra need revision.  First, we don’t have, have never had, a democracy; at best, a hamstrung republic.  Second, not voting won’t end America and whatever you wish to call what we do have.  America is ending itself fine on its own, regardless of voting, campaigning, and all the Dada imbecile trappings of our polity.

 

So, what drives this persistent, passionate adjuration?  Why are so many so certain of its critical importance? The idea of democracy, at its origins, was to entrust governance to the Demos, the People.  It was a noble concept that, when implemented, was quickly subverted by brute economic power and has been, when tried, ever since.

 

Human history, as far back as we can trace it, has been a tale of the tyranny of economic power in various forms, and the struggle of the  people for equity, endlessly waged and endlessly defeated.  Until very recently, power had no need to disguise itself because its mandate was said to be divine.  Only in the last few hundred years has a rising tide of popular discontent forced power to camouflage its cruelty and corruption.  Democracy—the idea of it—has been its very best cover.

 

 

That’s the primitive model of the “democracy” ruse, employed by all absolutists: caudillos, dictators, military capos.  Nations claiming to be democracies refined their methods to disguise their predatory nature.  The fact that every one is an exploitative Capitalist Tyranny obviously required a more subtle, persuasive masking.  

 

The method was creation of a multi-party system, each one founded on specific principles, theoretically presenting a range of options, left to right, with radical outliers at the extremes.  None, regardless of tint and tilt, could be seen to be acting against the interest of the people.  

Allowing choice conceals the fact that “democratic” government, just as all others, serves only its economic elite.  People have to be convinced this is not so, that they are sovereign, that by voting they control the policies of their nation.  Thus, the intense effort nations invest in sacralizing the vote, and the plea that we do our civic duty.  We are all enjoined to act in this barefaced, shopworn charade.

 

A century ago, battling the monstrous power of rampant Capitalism, Emma Goldman said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  She saw that the core purpose of “democratic” government had nothing to do with improving the lot of its people, and everything to do with maximizing profit for the Capitalist juggernaut.  No country on earth has greater government/Capitalism symbiosis than America. 

 

Most Americans, after life-long indoctrination, can’t believe they have been deceived about their government, bytheir government.  A short exercise can address that inability.  (If your net worth is $10 million, or your annual income $1 million, stop reading.  Nothing for you here.)

 

Try to recall the last legislation that socio-economically benefited the American people at large.  Stumped?  That might be because it was before you were born.  Two bills have passed that were indisputably for the public good: Social Security, in 1935 under FDR, which also provided for unemployment and aid to mothers with dependent children; and Medicare/Medicaid, under LBJ in 1965.  That’s it.  

 

Take that in.  Digest that.  There has been, in 55 years—the better part of a normal lifetime—no legislation to significantly socially and economically benefit 300 million ordinary American people.  None.

 

One would think that a raging flame from that titanic betrayal would burn great, ragged holes in the smothering blanket of propaganda under which our government hides its crimes.   One would think that, like the Finch character in Network, Americans would all be roaring, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” 

But, no.  Instead, the public—passive, deluded victim of this cynical abuse—is urged to vote, to preserve the desperately dirty, spiritually sick racket that has deceived, defrauded and impoverished them.

 

The indoctrination is being reinforced by the unity of most Deep State heavyweights appalled at the ludicrous, pants-dropping burleycue Trump has made of the presidency and, more importantly, desperate to regain control of what they regard as their very own ship of state.  With fronting by the Dem Politburo’s Crone and Geezer junta, and all media—visual and print—but Fox, they are all in on replacing their nightmare with the appalling ghost of the reprehensible Joe Biden.  

 

Apart from the fact that Joe is far past his sell-by date, Biden has been on the morally and ethically wrong side of every major policy issue that has arisen throughout his endless tenure as the Senator from MBNA.  The list is long.  Let it suffice that he shilled for mass jailing of black men, cheerled for the Iraq invasion, lauds the Zionist Nazism of Israel, and is a major War Machine flack baiting China and Russia.  Oh, and there’s the multi-million black bag job he and son, Hunter, pulled with Burisma in that hog’s nest of corruption, Ukraine.

 

When you live in a false, rotten Capitalist “democracy” in which there is no hope of reform; when the same vile crimes and depredations will continue at home and abroad under either contemptible phony; when nothing of value to people or the world is even considered by either dead soul, then engaging in fine gradations of imposed evils is a lunatic’s exercise.  Emma got it.  We keep hoping for a different result.  

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