by axolotl_peyotl
This is a very thought-provoking article that hits at the heart of the corruption in American politics today, a corruption that is explicitly bipartisan.
The only way America can be saved, not just through newfound isolationism or trade wars, is through restoration of traditional checks and balances that long ago melted away as the fake “conservative right” reengineered America’s institutions to fail.
The article offers some suggestions:
Moves toward reforming term limits for congress, removing corporate and foreign cash from elections, reforming electoral districts, reforming the committee system in congress itself, these and more are needed to restore a semblance of representative government to America.
Simply put, even with congress totally restructured, the runaway Supreme Court would require disbanding as well, as it is a total failure, a “star chamber” owned by organized crime.
As for other institutions, let’s look at the courts: Money owns America’s courts and the rich appoint the judges, at least most of the time. Trump’s own appointments are 100% corrupt, a reason, a very good reason, to be suspicious of Trump’s real intent.
From day one, Trump has backed powerful special interests that victimize Americans, pollution, dangerous foods, untested and overpriced drugs, financial scams and wholesale robbery of the US Treasury by “insiders” who contribute to right wing candidates.
The evidence here is overwhelming.
But courts are more than lawsuits and judges who protect criminals who victimize investors and consumers. Courts send people to prison.
Toward that end America’s legal system is among the world’s worse. No one really knows how many Americans are in prison or under lessened freedom due to court findings, as many as 13 million some sources say.
Simply put, America puts people in prison, often prisons owned by corporations, corporations that pay to elect politicians that pass more and more laws criminalizing everything imaginable and promoting longer and longer prison sentences for anyone except, of course, the most dangerous “white collar” criminals of all, the members of congress themselves.
The press itself is one of the biggest offenders:
Another institution is the press, hardly free, each year the “fake news” as Trump calls it, falls under more and more censorship or corporate ownership, which is one and the same.
Where independent news may once have been seen as “conspiracy theory,” recent observation has shown that the internet monstrosities, Google and Facebook, with YouTube, Twitter and service providers onboard, are the real control of an unending and totally pervasive flow of rigged and fabricated information custom tailored to confuse and victimize.
Past that, the traditional media is simply along for the ride, making it all up, seeing vast financial incentives in “dumbing down” America.
What will it take to reverse this tide of tyranny?