The Mockery Called 'Democracy' in the USA

Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board The irrefutable reality in the United States is that ordinary everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people do not have or enjoy a genuine people's democracy. Rather, the people of this nation are the victims of a continuing singular sham - the greatest mockery of democracy this world has ever known - and it is the objective of the present U.S. corporate /military elite to perpetuate this sham against the ordinary people of this nation and world. Voting and elections in this nation have been made utterly irrelevant by conniving and spineless politicians in the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, etc., whose de facto allegiance is to the accumulation of wealth and who are in fact bought and paid for by an avaricious corporate elite whose tentacles horribly impact every single aspect of the daily lives of everyday people. Concomitantly, the so-called U.S. 'news and information' mass media [i.e. the corporate-stream media] is a sick joke in service to its corporate masters. The U.S. corporate-stream media is all about manufacturing and manipulating public opinion, and has little or nothing to do with honestly and forthrightly informing the populace and serving to facilitate and stimulate relevant debate by an 'educated' people who are truly informed. There is no such thing as simultaneously having democracy for the wealthy corporate elite and democracy for everyday people. The desires and objectives of the corporate elite always trump ascertaining a genuine people's democracy. In this vein, the comments of the late great people's historian Howard Zinn are very pertinent: "The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history...There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media -- none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty." Pertaining to elections in this nation, Zinn further notes this poignant fact: "The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world." The corporate Democrat and Republican parties are jointly the callous political pimps of everyday people, even as they rhetorically feign their sham of political warfare with one another in their endless quest of manipulating the populace for power and financial gain. As with so many alleged 'journalists' who are a part of the fake U.S. news and information mass media, so it is that in this nation's colleges and universities there is an inordinately large and growing segment of persons who pass for being supposed 'scholars,' but who in fact are systemic manipulators - historical revisionists and propagandists for the elite of the U.S. corporate/military state. Their role is to infest the minds of college and university students with an uncritical and inaccurate perspective. The very last thing that many of these college/university instructors and/or professors want to occur is that their students become critical thinkers and seriously question the validity of this U.S. corporate system of government. None of these things represent a genuine people's democracy. To the contrary, they represent hypocrisy - the continued mockery of democracy. As corporate-government subterfuge, perpetual wars abroad, and economic austerity against the masses of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people abound, there is the need to understand that what is needed is genuine and serious systemic change, not reform. It is imperative that we everyday people of all colors intensify in this struggle - agitating, educating, and organizing - to bring about real systemic change. Joe Hill was correct when he said so many years ago, "Don't mourn. Organize." We must remember the poignant words of Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.