John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESS TV

 

“How stupid have we been: Trump on US Mid East adventurism”

“We spent 8 trillion dollars in the Middle East, that’s with a “t”,… eight trillion. But if you need to fill a pothole, oh, we can’t do that. How stupid have we been, just stupid!”

 

What he says is, of course, absolutely true, but as so often with Trump, it is confusing and inconsistent.

He’s the one making trouble in the region right now.

What’s he’s done just to Iran is terrible. Iran has hurt no one. Iran has started no wars. Iran was absolutely meeting its obligations under the international nuclear agreement for over four years.

Yet Trump just suddenly ripped up the agreement, started imposing all kinds of (illegal) sanctions, and sent war machines to threaten the country. He then assassinated a national hero, one who had taken no action against America.

Sanctions always, even in normal times, hurt the poor and the weak in a society, the better-off and privileged managing to insulate themselves. That is just what they do anywhere. So, they are reprehensible, but at a time of world pandemic, with Iran being hit hard, it just despicable to keep sanctions on the country.

Trump does all this for one reason only, to please some American oligarchs who, in return, will give his re-election campaign large donations and perhaps other support.

Elections in America are about money, and the country’s foreign policy is essentially for sale. Just an awful state of affairs. A totally corrupt society.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PHILIP GIRALDI IN THE UNZ REVIEW

 

“It poisons everything it touches”

 

“A recent article by Philip Weiss on the Mondoweiss website… details how the vast sums of money raised by both Democratic and Republican Jews has distorted American politics since the time of President Harry S. Truman. He describes how president after president has backed down versus Israel when confronted by Jewish power and observes that ‘This is not just a domestic political question, it’s a foreign policy problem.’”

 

In any discussion of the influence of money in politics, it is important to remember that we have no democracies in the Western world, despite constant references to them. We have nothing even seriously approaching democracy anywhere in the West. Of course, the very word “democracy” implies certain kinds of equality among citizens, something we simply do not see.

We have governments wrapped in various representative democratic theatrical costumes, from parliamentary to congressional, all of which, in fact, are highly responsive to wealth and plutocratic interests, both corporate and personal. Those with more money have more influence in all our societies, always, except in times of extraordinary stress, as during revolutions.

I hardly think the case even needs to be made that wealthy corporations and individuals are especially well served by Western governments.

Their favorable treatment stems both from a belief that it is good for the country’s economy and its international competitiveness, but also from the certainty that it is good for the campaign war chests of the political parties and individual politicians involved.

This is very apparent in the United States where the Congress has often been sarcastically described as “the best that money can buy” and where the Supreme Court has ruled that “money is free speech” when it comes to politics.

Now, it seems also unnecessary to argue the fact of Jewish success in our economies. The number of successful businessmen, large and small, and professionals, of every description, is quite remarkable, their numbers well out of proportion to the numbers of Jewish people versus other groups. A source of pride and achievement, surely.

I believe that easily observable fact is explained by higher-than-average native intelligence plus a group cultural dedication to education and willingness to work hard with strong natural drives for success. All fine qualities.

So, in societies where politics are heavily influenced by money – and I really cannot think of any where that is not the case – why would it be a surprise, or in any way controversial, to say that Jewish people, out of proportion to their number, are influential?

It would seem to me to follow just as sunset follows sunrise.

After all, is anyone in any way surprised, or insulted, by the obvious fact that people of no means have no influence, none at all, their only political role being fleetingly to be appealed to for a vote every few years, and that appeal generally not even in person but by means of advertising?

And please note, even the advertising needed to do that, with all its ancillary research and marketing functions, costs serious money on a national scale.

In large countries, just sheer brief access to people holding high office is mainly determined by influence and wealth, and given the political system that we have, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. It is a form of social/political triage.

The fact shouldn’t be a point of envy or hatred either, because it is meaningless to have such feelings about natural outcomes of a given set of circumstances.

However, the unique reality of Israel, an organized state which claims to represent only one group of people, Jewish people, and employs many avenues of influence, does considerably alter the naturally occurring political situation.

It is a state with all the tools of intrusive intelligence services and with immense diplomatic privileges and access. It is also very heavily armed, giving it weight in international affairs it would not possess otherwise. And it tends to be supported, naturally enough, by most Jewish citizens in any country.

Having all the powers of an organized state behind one group of citizens in many different countries considerably distorts things, both realities and perceptions. It also becomes a source of common distress and frustration when that state is seen to be so patently unfair to millions of non-Jews who fall under its rule, as is very much the case for Israel.

To be fair and to be perceived as fair, Israel would actually have to go out of its way, maintaining a strictly hands-off, proper diplomatic behavior, to avoid trying to influence affairs in other countries, but we can all see that it does not do that.

It literally does the opposite frequently, actively trying to influence what laws and policies are adopted, as well as sometimes entering directly into partisan political matters, as it has done both in the United States and in Britain.

Just a few notable examples include efforts to see legislation equating criticism of the state of Israel with the prejudice of anti-Semitism, something that is patently unfair and untrue. We also see heavy efforts for legislation to curtail the rights of citizens to protest the state of Israel’s behavior with peaceful boycotts, activity that was key to ending apartheid in South Africa decades ago.

And we see various direct meddling by Israeli officials in politics abroad, as recently by Israel’s Prime Minister libelling the leader of Britain’s Labour Party. He was joined by some other Israeli officials, too.  And Israel directly interferes in foreign policy at times, as in the recent launching of all-out American economic war with serious military threats against Iran, a country which has broken no laws and started no wars.

Indeed, the source of many accusations around “anti-Semitism” isn’t actual prejudice – although that is often blurred by lobbyists and special-interest leaders. It is the natural human emotional disturbance millions feel over the glaring injustice of a national state and its efforts to evade all responsibility for that injustice.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS HEDGES IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“The War on Assange Is a War on Press Freedom”

“The persecution of Assange is part of a broad assault against anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist news organizations.”

 

Wow, what an excellent piece of analysis.

I wouldn’t subtract or change a word.

I might add a point or two.

Chris Hedges includes the rot of money in American politics, but there is a lot more to be said about what is at the very heart of things.

The extent of it is not well understood by the average American and certainly not understood by observers abroad.

America has basically managed to create an elaborate political system with all the showy external trappings of democracy but almost none of its content.

America today is run by a relatively small number of people who control the levers in both parties because they control the money available, truckloads of it. These people are served by the American empire’s security-military apparatus and the politicians in Washington who are beholden to them.

The whole gang together, what I tend to call America’s power establishment, has an almost closed system serving themselves. That is why nothing beneficial or useful or even decent can get done in America anymore. And, of course, they do not like those who, like Assange, bring any light to the dark realities of American government.

The unquestioned power of that money-drenched American establishment is why there is now a continuous stream of wars which are not in the average American’s interest at all but are buried under thick layers, almost like stage make-up, of rhetoric about Patriotism and defending freedom.

There are almost no useful or effective rules governing the use of money in American politics. There are also no useful or effective rules governing the operations of America’s immensely powerful special-interest lobbies.

So, if I were a motivated young politician with some good ideas and intentions, I would virtually never stand a chance against the establishment candidate whose millions buy television ads, enable him to travel everywhere with elaborate support, and have the services of everything from a make-up man to pollsters and public relations flacks.

Of course, accidents do happen, and, once in a thousand times, a little guy does manage to win owing to some peculiar local set of circumstances, an event which will be jumped on by the establishment press as showing that things still work for the little guy in America. But such events are almost meaningless because their numbers are necessarily so small. They do not characterize the system because they cannot.

An individual little hero here or there, as a Bernie Sanders, means nothing in the big picture. Its just like a nice little bookstore trying to compete with Amazon or a local specialty soft drink maker trying to compete with Coca-Cola.

They can have their tiny local business, but they cannot dream of seriously competing with the monster corporation. And the truth is often that the monster corporation can put them out of business at any time it decides to do so, or it can buy them out, but it is usually not worth the effort.

Many people do not understand that marketing products has become a monstrous effort which includes everything from research and nonstop advertising to literally buying the shelf space for products from the local grocery store chains. You, as a small producer of anything, can often barely get space on the store shelves, will certainly not be able to get the favorable paid-for space at eye-level and easy-reach, and may indeed in some cases be closed out completely from getting space. That’s just part of the way corporate marketing works.

America has taken these proven practices from corporate business and applied them to politics. Every step in a modern political election campaign reflects the same kinds of efforts as Coca-Cola or Frito-Lay pushing their products, and it all costs a great deal of money. You need money just to recover from money spent on a tactic that proves not to work. And money itself acts as what economists call “a barrier to entry” against potential competitors. You are, in effect, not even allowed to play cards at the table without a very large stake.

The only way to stop this behavior in politics, so that candidates could have a fairer opportunity to talk about their actual ideas and views, would be to choke off the money, but no one with power is willing to do that because everyone of them benefits from the way things are run.

Note also that money not only closes off honest campaigning and exchange of ideas, it serves to discourage from running those who have sincerely-held independent views and a desire for changing something that is wrong. This way of doing things is responsible for pre-packaged candidates and lists of campaign phrases out of manuals. In those senses, too, it is closed system.

But the people putting up the large amounts of political campaign money – literally billions in every major American election – want things to be exactly that way. They don’t want surprises or significant change. They want what they want and what they pay for. It is easy to see the tendency for government to become plutocracy, no matter what nice words are written on pieces of parchment kept in museums.

When a country has become an international imperial force, such as the United States very much has, it is just not the money people who want things to remain as they are. It is the powerful groups running massive agencies like the Pentagon and CIA. They, too, spend vast amounts of money, most of it serving the interests of those same money people, and they do not want change.

Great bureaucracies always have a tendency to protect and perpetuate themselves. The values and intentions of huge forces like the Pentagon and CIA are not friendly to democratic principles, no matter what their charters may say. They are intrinsically authoritarian organizations, and the more they grow and influence a society, the less it becomes a free place, again no matter what the old words on parchment say.

They are, of course, the natural allies of the money people. They serve them abroad in the workings of empire and have a common interest in minimizing political change at home. It is easy to see why ordinary citizens come to feel politics is useless and unresponsive to them. It is.

Whether you vote for Democrats or Republicans, you get the Pentagon, the CIA, the money people, and a ruthless empire abroad, with just some differences in rhetoric. Here again the system operates much like great corporations with their promotional and marketing wars for McDonald’s or Burger King, Coke or Pepsi. Huge amounts of money are spent, and the result is a choice between products similar in most essential respects. Both corporations prosper and their vast walls of spending make it mighty hard for any new competitors to enter against them. That is pretty much what American politics is reduced to.

And this way of operating applies not only to political campaigns in America but to matters like major foreign policy. Take the example of the bizarre relationship America has with Israel, a country with a population the size of Ecuador’s. It is a relationship which causes great amounts of war and trouble in the world and truly works against the long-term interests of ordinary Americans, to say nothing of its spurning of all ethical principles.

The relationship is based on the same money-drenched methods which govern American politics. Israel, despite its insignificant size and greatly troubling behavior, is able to stay right at the forefront of things, to be on every politician’s lips, to be constantly mentioned (favorably) in the press, and to heavily influence American foreign policy through exactly the same mechanisms.

Some of its demands today are even going beyond foreign policy and into the internal affairs of the United States, as with the constant advocacy for laws making support for peaceful boycotts to influence Israel’s awful behavior illegal or the advocacy for laws in every state equating criticism of a powerful state actor like Israel with hate-speech. Just nasty, self-serving nonsense, but it goes on day after day with little attention paid.

Well, Washington’s establishment today just goes on and on about supposed Russian influence in America. It is unproved stuff serving powerful imperial establishment interests, but, even were there some bit of truth in the accusations, the underlying reality of Russian influence in America is a bad joke. Russia cannot even get a good word in the press and is treated unfairly in countless serious matters.

When I saw the silly Facebook stuff, about so many insignificant ads having been bought during the election by a few people in Russia, offered as evidence of influence, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Out of countless billions of dollars in advertising and advocacy on Facebook, the claim represented national concern about someone spitting into an ocean.

But here is Israel and its domestic advocates waging a vast and ongoing campaign to influence a great many matters inside America – from freedom of speech and peaceful protest action to foreign affairs and every national political campaign held – and we hear no complaints or concerns at all. And Israel’s influence in foreign affairs has been deadly, tumbling America into pointless wars time and again.

And it is doing so again, right now. Only recently, we have a recording leaked in Israel of Netanyahu bragging about how he is personally responsible for Trump’s destroying the Iran Nuclear Accord, an act opposed by every expert and most countries on earth, and an act causing dangerous tensions and threats of instability and hostilities.

Israel doesn’t have to worry because it is protected. But what about everyone else? The results of deliberately destroying a peaceful, smoothly-working international accord could be truly catastrophic.

A small country is able to leverage the United States in this unacceptable and dangerous way, against the wishes of almost every statesman and expert in the world, precisely because of the way America runs its national politics. Trump is looking to assure the success of his 2020 campaign, and everyone else on the planet is taxed with fear and threats so that he can feel secure politically. I think nothing better demonstrates the insanity of America’s laws about money in politics.

But we keep getting the silly distraction of what a threat to American democracy Russia is, simply an idiotic and unsupported idea. Meanwhile, Israel’s direct meddling in American politics threatens to bring an economic and military calamity down on our heads, and you will not find a word of criticism from politicians or the press.

Israel’s lobby in the United States is one of the best organized, best financed, and feared in existence. If you go along with it, you benefit with campaign money and good press and perhaps assistance from various experts and professionals. If you oppose it, those same resources will be applied to working against you and making you look bad in one way or another. It undoubtedly has information systems for tracking all political activities and attitudes that would be the envy of many large corporations.

It is easy to see that if the rules governing lobbies and campaign donations were changed, this would all come screeching to a halt. American policy in the Mideast could reflect fairness and decency and even most of America’s long-term interests. Wars and threats and terrible things like millions of desperate refugees created by those same wars would disappear.

But you will not see it changing any time soon in a country whose hideous Supreme Court – each member appointed by politicians benefiting from things just as they are – has ruled that money is “free speech,” just as it once ruled in favor of the rules governing slavery. No one with power in Washington wants change, just as the various estates (the great lords and churchmen) of the Ancien Régime in 18^th century France wanted no change affecting their personal situations and privileges. And their unblinking selfishness ultimately brought catastrophe to France.

The model for Israel’s influence in American politics is the model for the general operation of the American government. The same elements are at work in every important matter. And that’s why there is continuous war, massive security and spying systems, gigantic corporations with no limits on their size and influence, and no attention paid to the pitiful rot and poverty so easy to find in a thousand places in America.

Men like Assange – and there are few of them, just as there are always relatively few brave and intelligent people who work to change what is wrong in the world (after all, gifted people can make a whole lot more money by going with the flow of things and working for a corporation) – become effectively “the enemies of the people” under the system. His work shed light on the rot and served as real investigative reporting, while the corporate press just functions as part of the system, defending it, avoiding investigating it, and almost never publishing anything adverse about it.

The corrupt nature of America’s national politics is nicely symbolized by Obama, a man so often regarded (wrongly) as liberal and principled. He came to politics as a second-rate lecturer in constitutional law, the kind of work that earns a moderate middle-class income and maybe a pension. Yet, he just left the presidency as a man worth literally tens of millions of dollars. His new home alone cost more than eight million dollars.

Doing the establishment’s work – which in Obama’s case involved killing hundreds of thousands of people abroad and supporting massive new intrusions into the privacy of Americans – is very rewarding. And that is pretty well the story of every major American politician.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY KONRAD YAKABUSKI IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“…[Obama’s] the most formidable fundraising apparatus in the history of American politics…”

As with almost anything in American politics, you cannot make such a generalization.

In this case there are genuine reasons for change less than 4 years later.

In 2008, the entire world held its breath in anticipation of Obama, a seemingly charming and graceful figure with great promise, succeeding George Bush, a certified moron, and his ugly gang of war criminals.

Less than four years later, what do we have?

America is still fighting in Afghanistan, it is also assassinating thousands in Pakistan, Guantanamo is still open, the CIA’s International Torture Gulag still operates, America only has come even closer to being a police state, and virtually nothing of Obama’s promise has been realized.

Obama’s Peace Prize has become a nasty sarcasm with his most memorable contribution being the work of death-drones, a new form of South American death squads.

The second big factor here is Obama’s relationship with Israel.

He started in office with the right view for those who care about peace and justice, but that view earned him only hatred and contempt in Israel.

He was reviled and called names, and his Vice-President was insulted on a trip.

He has back-peddled, succeeding in making himself not only unliked by those wishing for justice and peace, but gaining no popularity with Israel or its apologists.

Wealthy American Jews are very important political contributors to a campaign system built on private money, with, only recently, just one man having given Newt Gingrich about $18 million for his brief nomination drive, the quid pro quo for that money being Newt making absurd public statements like “There are no Palestinians.”

Already Romney has make the statement that in the Middle East, he would do everything the exact opposite to Obama.

That is music to the ears of American donors who like to hear good things for Israel, and it will be re-inforced by government and private contacts in Israel privately expressing their contempt for Obama.

I doubt Obama stands a chance of matching Romney’s funds, unless he starts a new war with Iran, something not unthinkable and that would turn around the opinion of an important group of contributors.

It is all very sad from the point of view of democratic and other human rights principles.

America simply gets the best government money can buy.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED COMMENTS TO A COLUMN BY MARGARET WENTE IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Margaret Wente is back with her favorite cheap-trick “analysis” of a serious matter.

She gets one person who has written a book or is known for his/her views on a topic and treats the person’s unproved notions as authoritative research, here that person is Jonathan Haidt.

She did the same thing in Iraq some years ago, quoting the infamously one-sided scholar on the Mideast, Bernard Lewis.

She did it in Vancouver where she was supposed to be studying free-injection sites and sourced a single prejudiced “authority.”

Her method represents hack journalism at its most developed. It just happens to be one of the basic techniques of propaganda too.

It’s all very much like the notorious legal practice of expert witnesses: a single expert witness is brought into the courtroom and paid for his/her one-sided opinion in hopes of influencing the jury when indeed the reality is that hundreds of experts disagree and only their full range of views offers the state of the truth.

Her “authority” in this case just doesn’t begin to get it right, offering a specious notion dressed up as an idea.

The political Right’s success anywhere is not owing to a better understanding of human nature. That’s actually rather a sophism and an indirect way of saying what would read as foolishness were it phrased more clearly: the Right is right.

The Right’s success is owing to a couple of extremely basic factors.

The first is money and lots of it.

We always and everywhere observe the Right pandering to special interests for campaign funds.

Money doesn’t buy a seat in a legislature, at least not yet, but it gives politicians the wherewithal to market and advertise and travel and put on an impressive show (everything from stages and backdrops and music and big flags and the ease to ship them around quickly like a travelling rock band) and just saturate the airwaves with their pancaked faces, fluffed hair, and bleached teeth.

And then there are constant polls to test the effect of statements day by day, sophisticated polls that are very costly to run.

We know marketing and advertising work: tens of billions are spent every year just to sell this versus that soda pop or burger or deodorant, and the companies spending those vast fortunes know they are not squandering their money.

It is no different in politics.

Human beings are highly susceptible to suggestions, only the suggestions must be cleverly phrased and they must be tailored to the needs of the individuals or groups – the job of marketing. It is very costly to create and tailor these suggestions across millions of people.

Genuine issues have long receded into obscurity in elections. Rather we get costly advertising pitches designed to just suggest a position on a matter of public importance, and we get swirling dust about non-issues like patriotism, religious views, families, or flags.

And just whom do you think it is that has the best access to money?

Second, there is what we might call the stupidity factor. It is an established fact that conservative views tend to be correlated with lower intelligence. Like all correlations in statistics this one does not hold in every individual case, but it very much does hold on average.

It doesn’t take a great effort to sell stupid people: just look at the millions who bought books and tickets supporting that total air-head, Sarah Palin.

When you direct your appeal to this group, it doesn’t take much imagination or hard work to come up with the right words.

Witness Rob Ford’s (relative) success: he’s actually convinced that if he asks people in general, people who have no idea of costs or finances or urban planning, about wanting subways, that he has earned a mandate to build them. But it is an illusion, one built on asking a simplistic question of lots of people with no background in the subject being asked. It much resembles asking a very young child whether she wants to be a princess or he a magician or armored knight.

Were the same question put, as it should be: here are the choices and briefly here are the costs and taxes and difficulties associated with each, the results would be quite different.

It is actually part of the approach of genuinely stupid politicians – the Sarah Palins, the Rob Fords, the George Bushes – to elicit public responses with the least possible thought or detail or accountability. That makes their jobs so much easier. And as any good advertising person knows, selling a complex idea is very difficult.
_________________________________

“Liberal$ have lost the trust of Canadians. The need to learn some lessons about telling the truth from the Conservatives.”

A 39.6% majority represents lost trust in the other side? After all, this is not just about the Liberal Party, it is about liberal views.

This reader brings up, inadvertently, a major factor in our politics: our democratic system is broken.

There can be no mandate to do anything involving great change, change which affects everyone, when more than 60% of voters don’t want you in office.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY TOM FLANAGAN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Davidovitch seems the perfect example of Tom Flanagan’s target market.

“Harper’s reasoning was, why should Canadians be forced to pay a party who’s [sic] sole existence is based on the fact that it wants to destroy Canada.”

That is just plainly an untrue statement.

The Bloc wants a form of quasi-independence, but it has never stated that Canada’s destruction is a goal. Perhaps Davidovitch cannot grasp the subtlety of the difference? But then Flanagan himself seems rather weak in understanding this.

More importantly, while I do not have any affection for separatism, as a critical observer, I do have to say that the Bloc has sometimes played a constructive and civil role in Ottawa.

It has supported some good legislation and has, at times, acted rather statesmanlike, more than anyone can say of Harper and his gang of Alberta frat boys.

Indeed, we have the irony that the Bloc has supported legislation of Harper’s it regarded as beneficial to Quebec, a fact which the politically inept Ignatieff seems incapable of turning on Harper and his advertising lies about the support of separatists.

“I like Flanagans [sic] idea. I don’t want another red cent of my hard-earned tax dollars going to the enemy, which is the Bloc. I want the Bloc to die, and the sooner the better.”

I am not surprised Davidovitch likes Flanagan’s ideas.

They are the ideas of a narrow-minded ideologue with a dark agenda which includes decreasing the political vitality of Canada and moving it into the kind of vicious, yet meaningless, partisan politics of the United States, his home.

Davidovitch has demonstrated on these pages many times his having a similar harshly ideologue viewpoints.

“If I want my money to go to a political organization then I should be able to decide which one I want to fund by checking off a box.”

That is exactly what they do in America, and do you know what? It is completely ineffective. The funding of America’s parties at the national level much resembles what we find in third-world country; votes and candidates are pretty much for sale to the highest bidder.

Many aspects of American policy – a good example being the almost insane support for Israel with its rude injection into daily national political life, something Harper has already tried to copy to the extent his limited mandate allows – reflect only special-interest funding.

The George Bushes, the Sarah Palins, the Newt Gingriches, and the Tom Delays – comprising a rogues’ gallery of nightmare politicians – are only made possible by America’s lamentable, twisted system of campaign funding.

The leader of the Bloc seems almost a cultured gentleman by comparison.

And I am actually rather proud to live in a country with the tolerance and civility to permit the Bloc in Parliament, despite its inconveniences. It will fade and perhaps alter over time, but that should reflect the desires of its supporters – Canadians all – and not the high-handed thug politics we find in the United States.

Making a big issue of this relatively small matter is just one more example of Harper’s ceaseless effort to use nasty wedge issues to move Canada in the direction of East Texas politics.

And Tom Flanagan plays, if you will, Igor, the lab assistant, to Harper’s Frankenstein creature in the effort.
___________________________

From another commenter: “...when the Conservative Party is able and willing to fund itself simply through personal donations…”

Sorry, that is a meaningless and uninformed comment.

The ability of very conservative parties to finance themselves has been the history of countries everywhere. Why? Because very wealthy people and business interests, and, in some cases, even foreign governments keep them flush with cash.

You cannot have a strong democracy that way. Indeed, the very claim for today’s Conservative Party in Canada has absolutely nothing to do with democracy.

Just examine the United States in any detail, and what you find under the outer trappings of democratic government is almost an 18th century aristocratic state.

The U.S., the inventor of marketing techniques, has worked its way through a long experiment, conclusively proving that it is possible to have the trappings of democracy without the substance.

Money controls who can get a nomination, money controls whose face will dominate the airwaves, and money pays for many special tools and helps from travel to dinners and expensive special assistants and technology.

In this sense, America has made almost no democratic progress since the time of its revolution. Despite the fact that slowly, gradually most people have gained the vote since those early days – only about one-percent of a place like early Virginia had the vote, it being by no measure a democratic state – the same small percent of wealthy men pretty much control the nation’s destiny nearly two and half centuries later.

We know marketing and advertising work: we all accept that fact today in everyday life. So it should be no surprise in that it works in politics?

The best funded candidate virtually always wins. Occasionally, in this or that individual case, that may prove untrue, but in the language of science – statistics – it is absolutely true.

On average, money prevails, no matter how poor the candidates, how empty the party platforms.

Just look at the line of silly clown figures in the United States whose voices remain in our ears despite their mediocrity and lack of anything meaningful to say.

Truly, a George Bush or Sarah Palin would not be competent to be promoted to department heads in a Wal-Mart super-store

Yet I believe most people, deep down, are disturbed by the idea that our leadership and policies should be determined in this way.

Many ordinary Americans just fatalistically accept the unpleasant political realities of their society, feeling utterly inadequate to change them, just as they do in so many matters of consequence from wars to oppressive legislation like the Patriot Act.

Let’s not have Canada follow that terrible pattern, which, when all is said and done, is precisely what the Tom Flanagans and Stephen Harpers want. They are truly secret embracers of privilege and an almost Nietzschean belief in the right of “supermen” to govern.