The Trouble with Iowa is US Fantasy Democracy

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Was grand theft Iowa prelude for more of the same ahead, designating Buttigieg the winner of a process won by Sanders?

Will the DNC rig things against him like its power brokers arranged Hillary's 2016 nomination as party standard bearer?

Looking increasingly like the best chance for Dems to defeat Trump in November, will DNC power brokers choose a losing candidate over Sanders, preferring a second Trump term to him as US president?

Does it matter who holds the nation's highest office under one-party rule with two extremist right wings, serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people?

Hypocrisy, plutocracy, autocracy, and corporatocracy define governance in America, a fantasy democracy, the real thing nonexistent from inception.

Money-controlled duopoly power runs things, voters with no say whatever. 

Elections when held are farcical, electoral cycles producing the same outcomes, notably since the neoliberal 90s, dirty business as usual winning every time.

Candidates are bought like toothpaste. Rare exceptions aside, they're virtual cardboard cookie cutouts of each other — promising constituents one thing, delivering another.

On issues mattering most, they're in lockstep — notably for endless preemptive wars on nonbelligerent states, economic terrorism on others, corporate empowerment, police state crackdowns on resisters, and eroding speech, press, and academic freedoms to control the message.

A feature NYT report on the "how the Iowa caucuses became an epic fiasco for" Dems omits all of the above, what's most important, Iowa a symptom of the greater issue.

The US is a totalitarian state, a fascist police state, an anti-peace, equity and justice state, a corporate-controlled one-party state waging war on humanity, a lawless state contemptuous of the rule of law, a mass surveillance state, a torture-prison gulag state — all of the above wrapped in the American flag.

Elections are farcical theater, not transformational, their outcomes scripted.

Candidates for serving all Americans equitably are marginalized, criticized or ignored with no chance for election to high office.

Each cycle names and faces change. Governance remains unchanged. Run by Washington's criminal class, it's too debauched to fix.

The business of America is hostile to what just societies cherish, a ruler/serf nation, a belligerent state threatening everyone everywhere.

Its ruling class seeks a new world order with no middle class, no fundamental freedoms, global dominance enforced by US-controlled NATO operating worldwide — nonconformists targeted for elimination.

America's privileged class never had things better. Protracted main street depression conditions affect most others – social justice fast eroding, heading for elimination altogether.

The world's richest nation doesn't give a damn about ordinary people everywhere — to be exploited, not served.

It shows in what's coming in Trump's proposed budget with "big safety-net cuts," according to the Wall Street Journal, adding:

His regime "aims to reduce deficits by $4.6 trillion over a decade" — by gutting social justice while increasing military and related spending.

Candidate Trump vowed no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, in May 2015 tweeting:

"I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid," months later tweeting:

"I am going to save Medicare and Medicaid."

His tenure pockmarked with Big Lies and deception, he favors draconian cuts to these vital programs, reducing Social Security benefits as well — in his proposed budget with no chance of congressional adoption, possible in a second term if Republicans control both houses.

Supporting tax cuts for the rich and more of them, he wants social justice greatly eroded to pay for them, perhaps gutted altogether.

Growing exponentially on his watch, there's virtually no chance for deficit reduction.

There's a major chance for greater transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to corporate interests and the nation's privileged class on his watch — supported by dark forces running things.

The nation's power elite consider ordinary people spectators, not participants in how the nation is run.

Whatever the outcome in November, privileged interests will benefit at the expense of most others like always before — especially since the Clinton co-presidency and succeeding regimes.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html