This article was published at CounterPunch on August 30, 2024.
The Presidential Election Farce
It’s difficult to view the presidential election as anything but fluff with about 10 weeks left until November. In the US, the electorate has been viewed by the power elite of the military-industrial-investment-government complex as passive non-actors in the elite’s relentless campaign for power and greed.
The point in this presidential election is to scare the hell out of enough people so they will vote for the neoliberal Harris, or alternately, to anger a voting base enough to put the ignoramus Trump back in the White House. Either way the power elite wins, and all of us, voters and nonvoters alike, get more wars, environmental ruin, and less of what would make for a sustainable life to go around.
The way Kamala Harris is being stage-managed is laughable. At this writing she has neither faced one direct question from the press, nor garnered a single vote cast. If readers wish to experience fear and loathing, here is Harris at the Democratic National Convention on foreign policy as reported by Glen Greenwald. Even a casual observer must wonder what Kamala Harris knew of Joe Biden’s intellectual and physical challenges. Did she choose to remain silent in the face of Biden’s likely inability to perform the job of president? Who in Biden’s administration continued the endless wars and support of endless wars through US weaponry and intelligence information? Trump’s foreign policy is unpredictable. It’s uncertain what he would do in a second term in relation to war. An attack on Iran is not out of the question, as are wars, both overt and covert, on other nations. His domestic policy may target his critics and those on the left. A more organized Trump administration could be a more dangerous one. Recall the debate about nuclear launch codes near the end of his first term?
There are good candidates for president from third parties, the most notable being Cornel West and Jill Stein. It is questionable if their campaigns could move either the domestic or foreign policy agenda of the power elite even one iota in a positive direction. The consent of the governed has become a bad joke. Suppose Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination for president in either 2016 or 2020. What would he have been able to accomplish if elected president? The power elite could have stopped his agenda without breaking a sweat. Medicare for all would have had the chance of that hellish snowball against the medical insurance lobby. An impartial observer might wonder if Bernie Sanders always entertained the idea he acted on in 2016 and 2020 to lead his faithful into the arms of the neoliberal political class?
We are faced with inverted totalitarianism of business, military, and government interests viewing the people, the electorate, as sheep needed to be herded along. Unionism, purposely jettisoned to the brave new world of globalization and a deindustrialized economy, seems like a relic of the past, or at least the last 50 years. The economy tanked for ordinary people in the working class and the middle class decades ago. I have walked through countless cities and towns that have been abandoned by businesses and industries without even an afterthought for their former workforce.
It wasn’t until the attacks of September 2001 that the rights of all people were placed in jeopardy. Endless wars and regime change proliferated, while the Patriot Act nailed the lid shut of the coffin for individual rights. We the people no longer had the right to know what the government knew about us, or where some endless wars were being fought. A president could order the assassination of a citizen deemed a danger. Even library visits were challenged unsuccessfully under the frenzy to collect information about innocent people. The right of habeas corpus and due process were jettisoned through draconian executive action.
Here are words from the song “Don Quixote’s Lullaby” by David Massengill:
From Kent State to Tiananmen Square
They kill the students anywhere
Every nation, every state,
Freedom means to agitate
The Presidential Election Farce