The two most important issues of the 2016 election are non-partisan.
(1) The federal government and the media are, as institutions, hopelessly corrupt.
(2) The United States has elections, but we no longer have representative government.
Americans are no longer citizens of a republic, but subjects of a reigning oligarchy composed of a self-absorbed permanent political class, which services the interests of wealthy financiers at the expense of the wider population. They maintain their authority by an ever-expanding and increasingly intrusive government and using a compliant media to manipulate public perception and opinion in order to maintain the illusion of democracy.
The federal government is now an industry competing with the private sector, but unconstrained by regulation and the rule of law, which has inevitably led to massive and wide-spread corruption.
From the perspective of the oligarchy, elections are nothing more than an opportunity to redistribute power among select Democrat and Republican elites, who use the legislative process and tax revenues to increase the personal wealth of the ruling class.
There is no clearer example of the absence of representative government than the actions of the Republican Party after the November 2014 election. Despite the fact that the Republicans sailed to victory in one of the biggest election routs of the past century and grew to historic levels in the U.S. House, they never intended to honor their pledges to the voters, caving to Barack Obama and the Democrats on every major issue.
They do so to preserve their fragment of the political landscape as junior partners in a corrupt status quo; eunuchs and bold-faced liars, who represent only themselves and their major donors.
To maintain control of a timid citizenry that they wish to nurture, both Democrats and Republicans foster a culture of dependency. Democrats create dependency by expanding federal mandates and increasing entitlements. Republicans promote dependency by limiting voter choice and co-opting or crushing independent thinkers and grass roots movements like the Tea Party.
The policies of Democrats and Republicans are hardly distinguishable, both offering little more than sclerotic big government solutions designed more to limit, rather than expand, liberty.
Alexis de Tocqueville, author of "Democracy in America" (1835), predicted our current state of affairs:
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Dominated by crony capitalism and political correctness and unaccountable to the American people, our political-media system is now characterized by executive over-reach, legislative complicity, judicial partisanship and journalistic decadence, where truth is treated like a tin foil hat and the Constitution is replaced by the conventional wisdom.
There is now a sharp division between the bipartisan ruling class and the rest of Americans; a separation between the rulers and the ruled that bears comparison to the conditions leading up to the American Revolution.
We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon. - Alexis de Tocqueville
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I'm not sure Tocqueville ever wrote the quotation that's in the inset.
ReplyDeleteThere is no clearer example of the absence of representative government than the actions of the Republican Party after the November 2014 election. Despite the fact that the Republicans sailed to victory in one of the biggest election routs of the past century and grew to historic levels in the U.S. House, they never intended to honor their pledges to the voters, caving to Barack Obama and the Democrats on every major issue.
ReplyDeleteHow about the elite tax code? That seems like a pretty clear example of non representation. Congress by law could change it to a fair or flat tax in one hour, so why don't they? They don't want to that's why.
Authors like this one still think there is hope. There is not. The entire system from top to bottom is lost. All that can happen now is a slow, drawn out death. We either convene a state convention and impose term limits on all facets of government, Congress, SCOTUS, as a start- or prepare ourselves for more of the same.
My take on it. http://thecivillibertarian.blogspot.com/2015/08/extreme-taxation-with-no-representation.html
Every country gets the government it deserves. Be it bureaucrats that write laws, courts that decree laws, politicians that invent new laws, to presidents that ignore laws, Americans are faced with tryanny. We are self absorbed, lazy, and cling to security rather than fight for freedom. We demand the security of the false promises of politicans rather than depend on ourselves or the free market.
ReplyDeleteSo now we watch a rerun of the fall of the Roman Empire/British Empire.
And who is to blame?
De Toqueville did write the quote.in the inset. Maybe go read his book and you'll evsnnfind the context of it too.
ReplyDeleteI have no faith that the voting citizen will do anything to stop the train wreck from happening. They've become complacent and dependent on government largesse and frankly it will take more than voting to make the change we need to make. The political class is entrenched and has shielded itself from almost everything we can do short of revolution or dissolution, in whatever forms they may take.
De Toqueville did write the quote.in the inset. Maybe go read his book and you'll evsnnfind the context of it too.
ReplyDeleteI have no faith that the voting citizen will do anything to stop the train wreck from happening. They've become complacent and dependent on government largesse and frankly it will take more than voting to make the change we need to make. The political class is entrenched and has shielded itself from almost everything we can do short of revolution or dissolution, in whatever forms they may take.
The 2016 election for Retards
ReplyDeleteWe had our last chance to change things back in 2012. It's too late now; the left has sealed all the exits. Notice all those assholes flooding our southern border? They're Democrat voters. They can vote more than once just as well as the next guy.
This election season is a charade, just like those in Chicago have been for the last umpteen decades: we can go through the motions, but it won't mean a thing.
And whatdya wanna bet Obama finds a way to run for term 3? He dropped a hint last week. Our Congress sure as hell ain't gonna stop him, and he has many, many more votes than the 120%-140% of each county he got last time.
Put a fork in it.