This current presidential election will be perhaps the single most important event the United States has faced in a hundred or more years. Never before has there been such a wide range and disparity between the different candidates. Never before has there been so much at stake.
This is where we decide if we’re a representative democracy or an oligarchy.
What has our country come to?
The answer is that there have been some very fundamental, mostly gradual changes in recent years that brought us to where we are now. The biggest single, most disastrous event was the advent of the Citizen’s United, Supreme Court decision. This is where the oligarchs – the 1%, truly took over control of our country.
As President Jimmy Carter observed about Citizen’s United,
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now [the United States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
It’s true. If someone dumps massive amounts of cash into a politician’s campaign, they do expect results. The politicians are not dummies, they know what’s expected. And they have a vested interest to keep the money coming in, so they work diligently to protect the interests of the people who bankrolled them. Continue reading “To be, or not to be…”