Saturday, July 02, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE RIGGED SYSTEM OF SUPER-DELEGATES - BUT THEY ARE ONLY THE LEAST PART OF WHY AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY- SOME OF THE EGREGIOUS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FEATURES OF AMERICAN POLITICS


COMMENT ON THE NOTION OF A RIGGED SYSTEM WITH SUPER-DELEGATES


"This is NOT democracy."

Well, that could apply to the entire American political system, not just super-delegates.

The Electoral College is not democratic, and it is what actually elects the president.

The two-party system is not democratic but a kind of political duopoly. You can start a new party if you like, but the nation is an absolute web of traps and barriers created by the two establishment parties against your success.

America’s press is not democratic in its practices or desires. It completely favors one of the two institutional candidates. A Harvard School of Government study has just shown that in the Bernie Sanders’ campaign, at key points the press played a significant role in giving him little or no voice. After all, the press is owned by the 1%.

Big money for campaigns is not democratic. Automatically, the requirement for big private money leaves the 1% pretty much determining who can run and what major policies of the winner will be.

Trump only squeezed through because he is so rich he can pretty much finance himself, and even that fact is not democratic.

And when any newly-elected president comes to Washington, he is immediately faced with a massive establishment which is effectively an unelected government inside the elected government, the military-security monstrosity and special interests. They blanket everything.

And, in the last instance, should a person manage to rise and be elected, a person who really does want to change some of the established practices and institutions, there is always the fact of John Kennedy's assassination (plus that of his aspiring brother) to provide a powerful deterrence.

There is no way a reasonable person can look at America and call it democratic.

And it is stunning how many Americans do not understand that basic fact.

America is run by a set of globally-powerful elites, differing only from 18th century France in the fact that every four years one of two people, both pretty much proved and vetted by the establishment through their careers, gets to be called leader.