Why the rich rule the land of the free

Great article that is IMHO very much applicable to your elections.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1166118,00.html

It's now certain. The next presidential election will be between two multimillionaire members of America's hereditary elite. For the Republicans, it will of course be George Bush, son of the other President Bush who founded Zapata Petroleum, and an alumnus of Yale University and its elite student society, Skull and Bones. His Democratic opponent, John Kerry, is no closer in origins to the toiling masses. Kerry's ancestors have been involved in Massachusetts' politics since the 1600s. His first wife was worth $300m; his second wife's family fortune is even larger. And guess what his university background is: Yale and Skull and Bones.

That two such men should be battling to lead the quintessential land of opportunity strikes some Americans as odd. "In Britain neither of these guys could lead a major party," grumbled the New York Times columnist David Brooks last week: and this was a significant remark. Americans believe that Britons are uniquely class-bound. So for Brooks to concede that even the British would not tolerate leaders like this was quite an admission. Americans "pretend to be a middle-class, democratic nation," he diagnosed: "but in reality we love our bluebloods".

But what we are witnessing in America now is something rather more than these common and universal linkages between procreation and power. At one level, the particular clout that family connections and extreme wealth exert here reflects the fact that America's politics remain in some respects rooted in the 18th century. Its written constitution, after all, was drafted in 1787 by men who had rebelled against George III, but who still thought and behaved very much like 18th-century Britons. As a result, the US, for all its republicanism and rampant modernity, has preserved in aspic some political ticks and traditions that Britain itself has long since got rid of.

In 21st-century America, as in Georgian Britain, elections are raucous, flamboyant, flag-waving, expensive, and sometimes ramshackle things. Some of Florida's difficulties in the last presidential elections, for instance, stemmed from the fact that - in the US - it is the different localities, not any central agency, that are responsible for electoral equipment and ballot forms. As a result, there is plenty of room on voting days for local variations and fiascos, and just occasionally for chicanery. Such cheerful chaos may seem shocking to modern-day Britons, whose elections are more staid and standardised, and very much cheaper. But Hogarth would have understood it.

We Americans are lazy and apathetic in general....and very suseptible(sp) to propaganda...so many would rather be told what to think(i.e. Rush limbaugh) instead of thinking for ourselves.

eom

Look all around us ... Evidence abounds.

Americans could be described as lazy and apathetic, but I like to think of it more as a "learned helplessness". We just don't think we have any control or power over our government or even our lives. So, we give up. We lower our expectatoins. It's a vicious cycle, because the more we lower our expectations, the less power we have.

The corporate media is a very sophisticated propaganda mechanism, and it has become extremely sophisticated over the years. In addition, the media is so monopolized, that alot of people never even see an alternative media source. And why trust monopolies? Alot of people will feel comfortable with a candidate, simply for the fact that the candidate gets tons of airtime -- and they will feel paranoid, or uncomfortable with a candidate they see little of. We are not careful to make sure that we spend time really listening to each candidate, but to follow along with what the media, or our peers, push on us.

The media controls us with quick soundbites, quick images, simplistic and superficial stories, symbolic visuals, with their own language and words, and with their attitude to stories and people. Unfortuantely, people really do trust the corporate media. Our schools don't teach our children how to decipher media, especially television and radio, and how to take a good look behind at who controls the media we consume. They dont' teach children about logical fallacies, about recognizing propaganda tactics, about research, about "reading between the lines" or subtext, and most important -- they don't teach kids how to follow the money and power trails.

Also, schools teach us to be bored. They have such watered down, propagandistic history texts...that most people end up hating history classes and never learn about American history.

In addition, schools make kids respect authority. Kids don't learn a healthy skepticism of authority figures. They don't learn to question things, and are taught to be trusting to a fault. I think this is due to both how teachers have to control large classes, and schools being used to prep students to be workers. Schools don't do a good enough job of teaching us how to become citizens. School doesnt allow for the questioning of authority, and I think that creates a generally unhealthy respect for authority (which gets transferred to the television and our politicians) in our country.

I'm constantly reminded of an interview with a Rumanian woman that I saw after the Ceausescu government was overthrown in 1989. As you may remember, the authorities had forced a crowd to assemble in a public square to listen to one of Ceausescu's speeches. Suddenly, some people began heckling him. The heckling spread, until the whole crowd was booing and jeering. This was the beginning of the end for an extremely repressive government.

The woman who was interviewed looked amazed and rather shell-shocked. "We could have done this at any time," she said, "and we didn't." The unspoken question was "What took us so long?"

Or seeing a recent documentary about the Red Guard movement (The Morning Sun--see it if you get a chance), I marvel at how small gangs of teenagers could intimidate hundreds of people at a time.

Or to take a much milder American example: how many parents who are dissatisfied with their school systems really understand that they have the power to change things by electing enlightened people to the school board?

Being involved in the Minnesota Kucinich campaign has been very empowering for me. With almost no money and countless volunteer hours, this campaign managed to get 17% of the vote statewide, the second highest total, and in a state much larger and more populous than Hawaii. The next step is to become active in our local and state DFL parties and impart a little needed spine and vision to this complacent group of pols.

So many in this country will not get up with the times and this silly, we are the greatest country in the world and do every thing best, should go. Clinton came from the people and so did Ike so some do. But you could start at this, we have the best health care in the world so why are we not the people who have the most live births, or live the longest. So many just say these things and they are not true. Maybe we should ask the Japanese as they have 99% that can read and write?

Often repeated. Still true. And when the word "same" is used, that's exactly what is meant. Not a dime's worth of difference between them.

We really need election reform. :(

And the political problems of 18th century Britain were put right by the great reform act of 1832 more than anything else as that act put pay to the "rotten boroughs" system that Britain had until that time. This was the system where certain parliamentary seats were openly for sale and whole cities went without parliamentary representation whilst places such as Old Sarum had more MP's than people!

Of course the US system is nothing like as bad as that, but soft money does threaten to drive things that way. From the article

And the power of such plutocrats is actually increasing. This is partly because, since the 1970s, the gulf between America's very rich and the rest of its people has widened. The 13,000 or so richest US families now enjoy as much income as do its 20 million poorest householders. Simultaneously, American electioneering has become increasingly expensive. When campaigning to be nominated in 2000, Bush grandly declined to take advantage of matching public funds (a system that matches the candidate's spending with public money, but also imposes a cap). Under US electoral law, this meant he could evade spending limits: and he went on to raise $100m for his campaign chest. One has to be very rich - as Kerry in 2004 is rich - and/or very confident to play presidential politics when the stakes are set at this kind of level.

Election reform has to be a top priority. If we don't secure that what's the point of anything else? As long as the rich can buy the legislation they want, we won't get much of anything done for the people.

:kick:

:hi: :kick:

Wait. Yes I can.

Great article, it's frightening!