Reviewing
Michael Parenti's "Democracy For The Few"
By Stephen Lendman
26 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Michael
Parenti is an internationally known speaker and award winning author
of 20 books and hundreds of articles. He's also a noted academic having
taught at a number of colleges and universities in the US and abroad.
Parenti is also one of the
nation's leading progressive political analysts and social critics.
He strongly opposes US imperialism, the shredding of our civil liberties,
decline of our social state, and the Bush Doctrine of preventive wars
on the world for predatory capitalism's need for new markets, resources
and cheap exploitable labor.
Parenti's latest book, and
subject of this review, is the newly updated eight edition of one of
his most noted and popular earlier ones - Democracy For the Few. In
it, he shows how democracy in the nation really works. It dispels the
fiction Americans are practically weaned on from birth, taught in school
to the highest levels, and get daily from the dominant media.
Parenti's view is quite different
from the mainstream's suppression of the "shadier sides of US political
life." He explains "proponents of the existing social order
have tried to transform practically every deficiency in the US political
system into a strength." They want us to believe "millions
of nonvoters are content with present social conditions, (and) the growing
concentration of executive power is a good thing because the president
is democratically responsive to broad national interests (ones affecting
the public)." They tell us "exclusion of third parties"
makes our system work better, and all state vices are, in fact, virtues.
Those popularly presented views turn reality on it head in a nation
dedicated to wealth and power interests since inception. It only ever
yields a little (and grudgingly) when forced to by grassroots activism
or in periods of social crisis like The Great Depression to save what
elitists value most - the soul and substance corporate capitalist America.
Parenti addresses the nature
of American capitalism that's the beating heart of our politico-economic
system. He covers our political institutions, the "foundations
and historical development of American political politics....Who governs....Who
gets what, when, how and why." Central to ask is cui bono? Who
benefits and who doesn't is key to his core theme showing how power,
wealth and class dominate America and the notion of real democracy is
pure illusion. Today, America the beautiful only exists for the privileged
few and no one else. But it's always been that way in a nation ruled
by rich white, predominantly Christian elitist men from birth. Parenti
deconstructs our system, from its roots, in 19 incisive, thought provoking
chapters, encyclopedic in depth, and up to date to the current age of
George Bush neocon rule.
This review covers them all
briefly to convey a full flavor of his important book, all of which
needs to be digested and understood. It's must reading and should be
kept as an essential reference guide for future examination and reflection.
Knowing its contents is key to arousing enough public concern for change
in our own self-interest. In the age of George Bush's America, and his
coterie of extremist rogues, the issue is now survival at a time a reckless
leadership threatens everyone with potential nuclear or ecological Armageddon
because of their lust for wealth, power and empire.
Without public awareness,
angst and plain determination not to take it any more, this agenda will
continue with potential consequences too disturbing to ignore. It doesn't
have to happen if enough people know the danger, collectively act to
defuse it in self-defense, and decide to make the country work for everyone.
Parenti dedicates his book to them - "To all those who struggle
for peace, social justice, and real democracy. May their numbers continue
to grow."
Partisan Politics Favoring
the Privileged
Privilege always counted
most from the time the nation was founded. The prevailing fiction then
and now is an egalitarian country "free from the extremes of want
and wealth that characterized (18th century) Europe" and most parts
of the world today. It was as untrue then as now with wealthy 18th century
colonialists having vast disproportional land holdings and control of
banking, commerce and industry, such as it was back then.
These "wealthy and powerful
'gentlemen,' our founding fathers," gathered in 1787 in the same
Philadelphia State House where the Declaration of Independence was signed
11 years earlier. They came to draft a Constitution intended to last
into "remote futurity" for their interests alone. Democracy
for the many was not on the table in 1787.
Yet, they nominally managed
to include unimaginable freedoms, up to that time, in the Bill of Rights
ratified in 1791. They gave people the rights of free expression, religion,
peaceable assembly, protection from illegal searches and seizures, due
process and more even though it only got done through compromise after
these ideas were twice rejected earlier. The delegates finally agreed
out of necessity to get their document ratified and avoid a second convention
some states wanted. To do it, they had to win over dissenting state
representatives who wanted Bill of Rights protections for their own
propertied interests.
They weren't added to the
Constitution as a democratic gesture to "the people" who were
nowhere in sight then or henceforth. As history later showed repeatedly,
the entire Constitution was flawed from the start as governments, then
and later, freely and willfully ignored and set aside these less than
inviolate freedoms as Presidents Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Johnson, Nixon,
George W. Bush, and many others easily were able to do and often did.
Overall, "the Constitution
was consciously designed as a conservative document" the way the
framers wanted it to be. They achieved their aims with provisions in
it, or omitted by intent, to "resist the pressure of popular tides"
and protect "a rising bourgeoisie('s)" freedom to "invest,
speculate, trade, and accumulate wealth" the way things work for
capital interests today. It was to codify the law to let the country
be run the way politician, jurist and nation's first Chief Supreme Court
justice, John Jay, said it should be - for "The people who own
the country....to run it (for their benefit alone)."
Benjamin Franklin was reportedly
asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention whether the 55 attending
delegates created a monarchy or republic. He responded "A republic,
if you can keep it" without acknowledging notions of an egalitarian
nation were stillborn at its birth. It was true then and now in spite
of all the pretense contrived to portray an idealized society, in fact,
always out of reach for most in it.
This is Parenti's dominant
theme - of a government, since inception, serving the privileged few
at the expense of the neglected or exploited many. That's hardly a textbook
definition of democracy, yet it's the model one we're taught to believe
we have serving everyone equally. Parenti says his book is intended
to show how vital it is for everyone to critically examine our society
as a step toward improving it. He stresses a nation's greatness is measured
by its freedom from "poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, imperialism....environmental
devastation," and a fundamental opposition to war and pursuit of
peace everywhere. Benjamin Franklin also said "There never was
a good war or bad peace," a notion unimaginable to our leaders
today.
Wealth and Want in the United
States Getting More Extreme
Parenti distinguishes between
society's owner and worker classes with the latter paid much less than
the value they create. He calls corporations "organizational devices"
to exploit labor and accumulate capital with working people being society's
real producers. Publicly owned corporations are the dominant institution
of our time existing for one purpose only, mandated by law - to maximize
the value of shareholders' equity by increasing sales and profits, securing
new markets, and continuing to grow in size and dominance or be left
behind. Their success is measured by their concentrated, virtual-monopoly
size today. Of the world's 100 largest economies, 51 are corporations,
more US-based ones than from any other country. Noam Chomsky calls them
"private tyrannies."
They're run by wealthy and
powerful figures comprising, along with other elites, the top 1% of
the nation's affluent. Today they own 40 - 50% of the country's wealth
in the form of stocks, bonds, land, natural resources, business assets
and other investments. In contrast, 90% of American families have little
or no net worth after mortgage and other debt burdens are taken into
account. Parenti stresses America has the highest level of inequality
of all developed nations, the country is rigidly structured by class,
and most people die in the same class they were born into. It debunks
the notion of "a land of opportunity" for everyone.
It's for CEOs who are practically
deified in today's business press. They're hugely over-paid powerful
figures gaining wealth at the expense of their rank and file. In 1965,
they earned, on average, 24 times more than workers, in 1973 it was
45 times, in 1990 85 times, and in 2004 an astonishing 431 times as
the disparity in wealth continues growing to levels economist Paul Krugman
calls "unprecedented." In the last generation, worker productivity
grew, but wages didn't keep up with inflation, and essential benefits
declined and are disappearing. Corporations rely on downsizing and offshoring
manufacturing and other high-paying jobs to cheap labor markets to reduce
costs and raise profits. They maintain lean labor forces, rely heavily
on part-time workers, are hostile to unions, and achieve the benefits
of a huge reserve army of unemployed or underemployed to contain wage
pressures.
Working people suffer the
effects. Since 1999, consumer debt grew at twice the rate of their income,
millions live in poverty, many more millions just above it, far more
still have inadequate or no health insurance or other safety net protections,
and defenseless children and single mothers (many black and other minorities)
suffer most. Parenti sums up America's dark side, unreported in the
mainstream. Our nation "squanders our national resources, exploits
and underpays our labor, and creates privation and desperate social
needs serving the few" at the expense of the many. It mocks the
notion of a egalitarian democratic society serving all its people and
shames the nation for unjustifyably claiming it.
Our Plutocratic Culture Defiles
Our Nominal Democracy
Parenti stresses America
is a plutocracy, run predominantly by hugely affluent business people
in industry and commerce, the dominant media as well as others in academia,
entertainment, the clergy, and private foundations and charities. They
spread the false gospel that "capitalism breeds democracy and prosperity"
ignoring how democratic freedoms are incompatible with acquisitive corporate
free-enterprise thriving on the exploitation of the majority everywhere.
Parenti asks "What about
(forgotten) values relating to justice, health, occupational and consumer
safety, regard for future generations, and accountability in government"
along with concern for the environment, an educated and informed citizenry,
affordable housing, worker rights, and peace on earth and an end to
wars and conflict. In a "capitalist democracy," we're on our
own, able to have anything if we can pay for it. The result is an enormous
growing disparity between haves and have-nots and an uncaring government
unwilling to help the ones in greatest need. That's "The Other
America" Michael Harrington wrote about 45 years ago that aroused
John Kennedy's concern in ways unimaginable in today's age of greed
and imperial arrogance.
A Constitution for the Privileged
Few Alone
The origins of republican
America were addressed above - to create a nominally democratic government
Adam Smith said should be "instituted for the defense of the rich
against the poor." The nation's founders achieved mightily, handing
down their legacy to succeeding generations of leaders always mindful
of who gave them power and who they had to serve. At the nation's birth,
only adult white male property owners could vote; blacks were commodities,
not people; and women were childbearing and homemaking appendages of
their husbands.
Religious prerequisites existed
until 1810, and all adult white males couldn't vote until property and
tax requirements were dropped in 1850. States elected senators until
the 17th amendment in 1913 gave citizen voters that right, and Native
Americans had no franchise in their own land until the 1924 Indian Citizenship
Act gave them back what no one had the right to take away in the first
place. Women's suffrage wasn't achieved until the 19th Amendment passed
in 1920 after nearly 100 years of struggling for it.
The 1865 13th Amendment freed
black slaves, the 1870 15th Amendment gave them the right to vote, but
it wasn't until passage of the landmark Civil and Voting Rights Acts
in the mid-1960s, abolishing Southern Jim Crow laws, that blacks could
vote, in fact, like the Constitution said they could decades earlier.
Today those rights are gravely weakened for all through unfair laws
still in force and a nation growing more repressive and less responsive
to the needs of ordinary working people and the nation's least advantaged.
The limited high-water mark of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society has steadily
eroded since in loss of civil liberties and essential social benefits.
Rise of the Corporate State
that Rules Our Lives and the World
Parenti explains how, contrary
to popular view, the history of America was marked by "violent
class struggles, with the government" siding with "big business."
Native peoples were slaughtered for their land and resources, large
landowners and corporations exploited slave labor, and limited labor
rights were only won through pain and struggle. Government always sided
with business interests "gorg(ing) themselves at the public trough,
battening on such government handouts and protections as tariffs, subsidies,
land grants, and government contracts." Along the way, the public
got pathetically little.
Governments also handed down
friendly legislation and court decisions favoring wealth and power over
ordinary people consigned to low wages, few or no benefits, unemployment,
unsafe work conditions, child labor, poverty, and few of the rights
democratic states are supposed to afford but don't in America. It hardly
mattered who was president, Democrat or Republican, Teddy Roosevelt
or Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft or Calvin Coolidge. "Silent
Cal" belied his reticence proclaiming what all presidents swear
allegiance to - that "The business of America is business,"
and government officials, chief executives and others in high places
better not forget it.
They never did, even during
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, "an era commonly believed to have
brought great transformations on behalf of (what FDR called) 'the forgotten
man.' " Roosevelt was a patrician allied with business interests
trying to save capitalism in America from meeting the same fate as in
Czarist Russia in 1917. That was job one, and giving a little to save
the system was a small price to pay.
It showed in the National
Recovery Act (NRA) benefitting corporations by restricting production
and setting minimum price requirements. "The federal housing program
subsidized construction firms and loan insurance for mortgage bankers."
Price supports and production cutbacks advantaged corporate agriculture.
Only faced with mass unrest were relief programs created to relieve
human need. So some real democratic gains were achieved, most notably
essential social welfare legislation. Key but short-lived was the passage
of the landmark Wagner Act in 1935 establishing the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB). It gave labor the right to bargain collectively on equal
terms with management for the first time ever, an achievement the repressive
1947 Taft-Hartley Act began undoing that's now lost altogether.
Parenti sums up the era as
follows: "the New Deal era hardly adds up to a great triumph for
the common people" with government mostly being responsive to the
will and needs of corporate capitalism. It was true then but far more
so now through "subsidies, services and protections that business
could not provide for itself" and even plenty of them they can
but don't have to because government largess (with our tax dollars)
does it for them.
Politics: Who Gets What?
Who's Left Out?
Parenti explains today we
have a corporate state writ large with government taxing the many (the
public) to subsidize the few (the privileged). This practice has been
especially pernicious since WW II when the US emerged as the only dominant
nation left standing. "Moderate" Republican Dwight Eisenhower
gave private corporations the equivalent (in today's dollars) of $300
billion worth of offshore oil reserves, public lands and utilities,
atomic installations and much more in what Parenti and others call "socialism
for the rich." The rest of us are on our own, sink or swim, under
free-market capitalism. It's heralded as the American way.
Today, corporate giants get
multi-billions in all kinds of handouts we pay for. They come in tax
breaks, price supports, loan guarantees (many never repaid), bailouts,
marketing services, export subsidies, R & D grants, free use of
the public broadcasting spectrum, and huge subsidies and other government-directed
benefits proving "big government" works great and business
loves it. The system works by socializing costs and privatizing profits
"in an enormous upward redistribution of income from the working
populace to the corporate rich."
Even the tax system works
to corporate advantage with corporations today paying, on average, a
tiny 7.4% of their revenues compared to 49% in the 1950s. No need asking
who makes up the difference in revenue lost, but it's even worse than
that. Sixty percent of US corporations pay no income taxes, and many
profitable ones get rebates. That's reality in today's America with
government showering business with a tsunami of benefits and ordinary
working people paying for them in a huge upward distribution of income
now way exceeding one trillion dollars annually and rising.
The US Global Military Empire
Threatens Everyone
The US emerged from WW II
as the world's dominant superpower. Today it's the only one, and it
throws its weight around recklessly proving it. First, it spends more
on the military than all other nations combined. It has many hundreds
of military bases worldwide including many secret ones that by some
unofficial estimates number around 1000 large, medium and smaller ones.
In Iraq alone in May, 2005, the Pentagon acknowledged having 106 bases
including permanent super ones the size of small towns with all their
amenities included.
Further, the US is recklessly
embarked on new super-weapons building programs, including nuclear ones,
in defiance of arms control and reduction and other treaties it renounces
unilaterally. It's aim is "full spectrum dominance" of all
land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum
and information systems with intent to fight preventive wars of aggression
against any potential challengers to its status as lord and master of
the universe.
Money is no object or restraint
toward this aim with the Pentagon unable to account for multi-billions
annually from waste, fraud and abuse no one in government cares about.
After all, it's taxpayer money payouts to corporate fraudsters in lieu
of funding essential public services and having regard for environmental
protections. It's spent on a reckless imperial agenda claimed for national
security at home and to spread democracy abroad to nations having none.
In fact, it's what Parenti calls "defending the capitalist world
from social change" - even the peaceful and democratic kind seen
as a threat to corporate interests.
Since WW II, it's been a
US-led "global bloodletting" through wars of aggression, CIA-instigated
coups and political assassinations, and supporting a rogue's gallery
of S.O.B. tyrants as long as they're our S.O.B.s. The list of them earlier
and now is near-endless. They serve the US empire well and its corporate
giants hugely at the expense of ordinary people everywhere. Parenti
rightfully calls America "the greatest imperialist power in world
history." It's also the greatest of all threats to humanity from
possible nuclear or environmental Armageddon.
Health and Human Services
- Victims of Corporate Capitalism
Parenti explains even plutocratic
rulers have to make concessions at times, but for the last generation
hard won earlier gains have eroded. He names some of them:
-- the WIC program aiding
women, infants and children;
-- AFDC aid to needy families
with dependent children wiped out by Clinton's welfare reform;
-- SSI supplemental income
for the blind, disabled and low income persons;
-- food stamps;
-- child nutrition help and
school lunch program;
-- nursing home assistance
for indigent elderly;
-- legal services for the
poor;
-- remedial education;
-- maternal and child health
care;
- student grants and other
aid;
-- drug treatment;
-- Medicare and Medicaid
reductions, and much more.
The result is "more
hunger, isolation, unattended illness," homelessness, untreated
illness and more "for those with the fewest economic resources
and the least political clout."
The picture's even bleaker
with states and private charities unable to make up for what Washington
eliminates, and rising costs of essential services like health care
means tens of millions unable to afford what everyone must have. The
plutocrats' solution: privatize everything including the most successful
government poverty-reducing program ever - Social Security. For now,
efforts to do it stalled, but the scheme won't go away. Wall Street
is drooling over the possibility of getting a huge cut out of what seniors,
"survivors," and the disabled badly need in retirement and/or
supplemental income. The plutocratic sharks will be back trying again
to steal what they haven't gotten so far.
Parenti covers other areas
where public need and welfare are sacrificed to plutocratic greed -
occupational safety, ergonomic standards, untested chemicals and additives
in foods, factory farms polluting ground water, minimum wages kept low
in spite of the recent inadequate increase taking 10 years to get, disappearing
low-cost housing, and education falling victim to reduced funding and
efforts to let private pirates teach our kids wanting only to profit
most by doing the least.
Then, there's what Parenti
calls "mess transit." Mass transit rails efficiency and low
fuel consumption got Big Oil and Big Auto to doom the system, another
victim of plutocratic greed. It got us dirty air, global warming, 42,000
annual needless highway deaths and huge numbers of accidents and injuries,
clogged highways, congested inner-cities, and an enormous expense to
many car owners struggling to afford what many wouldn't need if efficient
mass transit served them. Parenti's conclusion - "Once again public
service was treated as something to be eliminated rather than be improved."
The public ends up the loser.
The Last Environment Becoming
the Lost One
Parenti explains privilege
and power give plutocrats the right to "expropriate and use....whatever
natural resources" they want, "while passing off their diseconomies
(or externalities) onto others." He means maximizing profit and
minimizing costs by dumping huge amounts of deadly toxins on land, in
water, and in the air. Corporate giants are licensed to strip mine rapaciously,
clear-cut forests, turn rain forests in wastelands, harm natural species
and wildlife, erode topsoil by harmful chemical farming, sell unsafe
and untested foods and drugs, destroy the ozone layer, increase global
warming, and threaten human health and welfare, all for the sake of
greater profits.
For their crimes, "corporate
polluters are more often rewarded than punished" with lucrative
contracts to clean up the mess they made. They gain at public expense
twice over. They're allowed to foul the environment, then get us to
pay the cost "for the private sector's diseconomies." The
alternate approach is obvious but untaken because it's bad for business.
So Parenti concludes "An infinitely expanding capitalism and fragile,
finite ecology are on a calamitous collision course. Our very survival
hangs in the balance." But for corporate predators, that's someone
else's problem after they're gone.
Unequal before the Law Favoring
Elites
Crime in the suites prevails
in America because the law is usually written and enforced "to
favor the very rich over the rest of us." Put another way, the
rule of law depends on who it's intended for or aimed against. Corporate
crime is far more costly in lives and money than crimes on streets.
Even worse, what's uncovered is the tip of the iceberg, and the worst
corporate crimes go unpunished - exploiting people everywhere for profit,
fouling the environment, and profiting hugely from destructive wars.
Then there's growing mass poverty from neoliberal globalized trade;
turning a blind eye to corporate complicity in drugs trafficking; money
laundering; underpaying employees; union busting; waste, fraud and abuse
on government contracts generally ignored; insider trading rarely caught
or prosecuted, and more and more.
In contrast, steal a few
tomatoes to feed your hungry kids and face stiff prison terms, and do
it three times in states like California and many others and get life
sentences. In an age of neocon rule, it's hardly surprising the Supreme
Court ruled 5 - 4 in March, 2003 such harsh sentences don't violate
the Constitution's Eight Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual
punishment. Parenti cites the cases of a Virginia man sentenced to 10
years imprisonment for stealing 87 cents and a Houston youth getting
an incredible 50 years for robbing two people of a dollar.
A nation treating its people
this way is one gone mad by its brazen defiance of democratic justice
exposed as a pipe dream for ordinary people and an impossible one for
the least advantaged, people of color and anyone happening to be Muslim
in an age of the concocted "war on terrorism." Then there's
the other phony "war on drugs" that's just an ugly scheme
to fill prison cells, take restless minorities off the streets so they
don't get more restless, and build a huge criminal justice system as
another avenue for profit. Those homeland wars and the long-standing
one on the poor and least advantaged left the US with the largest prison
population in the world at 2.2 million that's rising by 1000 new inmates
weekly.
It's the shame of the nation
and was the subtitle this writer used in 2006 for an in-depth article
called "The US Gulag Prison System" referring to the one at
home. Everyone pays for it including taxpayers and the mothers and children
left behind on their own to fend for themselves. Not the families of
corporate fraudsters, however, whose offending members rarely serve
time if caught, do it in country club prisons if they do, and get short
sentences and affordable fines made easier by automatic early releases.
Then there are government
criminals caught, tried and convicted. They just enter the presidential
commutation and pardon queue awaiting their turn, like I. Lewis Libby,
that usually comes up before they ever serve a day in soft-on-crime
prisons. In America, it's called justice. In this review, it's called
outrageous.
Political Repression and
National Security Under Police State Rules
Parenti puts it this way:
"The corporate-dominated state is more sincerely dedicated to fighting
dissent than fighting organized crime" including in the suites
where the worst of it's committed. So we have the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS,
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and NORTHCOM protecting the rich
by coming down hard on the rest of us if we have "dangerous thoughts"
or support "peace and social justice organizations." Corporations
can fire employees with the "wrong political opinions." Secret
courts can order secret surveillances, render secret decisions and keep
no published records.
We can be wiretapped; illegally
searched; have our possessions seized; and now declared an "enemy
combatant," denied due process and sacred habeas corpus rights,
and "renditioned" to a torture-prison hellholes for indefinite
incarceration and trial by a military tribunal with no right of appeal
or legitimate access to proper legal help. That's today's America where
anyone disagreeing with George Bush can end up a political prisoner
in a nation claiming to have none. We've always had them with shameful
examples to prove it like Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders
like Big Bill Haywood who had to leave the country to avoid serving
time, others in the IWW, socialist leader Eugene Debs, and radicals
Sacco and Vanzetti made to pay for crimes they never committed.
Then there were WW II and
Korean War resisters arrested for their beliefs and 120,000 law-abiding
Japanese Americans sent to US-based concentration camps because of their
ancestry in time of war with the country most were never born in. There
was repressive legislation going back to John Adams' Alien and Sedition
Acts of 1798 criminalizing dissent in his day. There was Woodrow Wilson's
Espionage and Sedition Acts that were just as punitive. There was the
1940 Smith Act making anti-capitalist dissent a crime. There were jailings
of African American leaders in the civil rights struggles, and today
there are mass witch-hunt roundups and unlawful detentions of Muslims
because of their faith and Latino immigrants persecuted twice over.
Destructive trade agreements like NAFTA destroyed their livelihoods,
forcing them here for work unavailable at home. Then, once here, they're
treated like criminals if caught or ruthlessly exploited by employers
as virtual serfs.
There were Black Panther
leaders murdered in their sleep like Fred Hampton, Jr. in Chicago and
others imprisoned on spurious charges like Geronimo Pratt (now a free
man after being held 20 years in jail unjustly). There's Mumia Abu-Jamal
framed for a murder he didn't commit, denied due process, confined to
prison on death row for the past 25 years still hoping for a new trial
to vindicate himself. There were American Indian Movement leaders like
Leonard Peltier also framed for a murder he didn't commit and still
incarcerated after 30 years. Add to these, Puerto Rican nationalists,
peace and environmental activists, and others still fighting for their
civil rights and right to dissent.
In all the above instances,
"unworthy" victims paid for the crimes of their "worthy"
victimizers. Parenti documents these and other examples of a repressive
state apparatus protecting the rich from their exploited victims daring
to resist. He sums it up saying "under the guise of 'fighting communism,
fighting terrorism, protecting US interests, keeping us safe, or defending
democracy, the purveyors of state power have committed horrendous crimes
against the (innocent) people of this and other countries, violating
human rights and the Constitution....to make the world safe for profit,
privilege, and pillage." It's called democracy-American-style.
Who Governs? For Whom? Who
Has No Say?
Who else? Those controlling
society's wealth "exercise trusteeship over educational institutions,
foundations, think tanks, publications, (and) mass media" as well
as having political and economic power over the nation's business. The
ruling class is comprised mainly of wealthy white, Judeo-Christian corporate
elites whose mission it is "to secure the interests of the wealthy
class."
That means relations with
labor are quite the opposite and quite successful with union membership
currently around 12% overall and only 7.4% in the private sector. That's
down from its post-war 1950s peak of 34.7%. Today, organized labor is
at its lowest ebb since the beginning of the mass unionization struggles
of the 1930s and in the private sector in over 100 years. It's because
of Democrat and Republican hostility to organized labor as well as corporations
threatening plant closures and outsourcing forcing pay and benefit cuts
and unions to lose out overall. The situation is grim with wealth and
power firmly in charge and ordinary working people losing out. There's
no mystery about how to fix the problem. But it can only happen through
mass collective action by organized people confronting organized money.
There's a lot more of us than them.
It's not easy, however, in
an age of glorified globalization promoting the phony notion it lifts
all boats. Ralph Nader explains the rising tide only lifts all yachts
at a time corporate giants' power is immense. It exceeds the rights
of all sovereign states they operate in making them the ones that rule
the world. They do it with one-sided unfair "free trade" agreements
like NAFTA and DR-CAFTA. They and the World Trade Organization (WTO)
super-state have power to "overrule or dilute any laws of any nation
deemed to burden" corporate capital. WTO rules deny their sovereignty
when it conflicts with corporate-mandated trade rules written for them.
No sovereign right is sacred and none can interfere even in cases of
harmful products and services member nations aren't allowed to prohibit.
Secret WTO panels alone have the final say in trade disputes that always
side with business because that's where their ruling members come from.
Meanwhile, the Constitution
is null and void even though its preamble nominally states power rests
with the people, not a corporate-run trade body making secret rulings
putting its members above the law of the land. Parenti calls this "a
coup d'etat by international finance capital....a logical extension
of imperialism, a victory of empire over republic (and) corporate capital
over democracy" that our own government does nothing to counteract
because it supports these practices. It's not supposed to be that way,
or so we learned in school. But that's how it is and won't change until
we end "free trade" and replace it with trade that's "fair"
for "the interests of the many rather than the greed of the few."
We have miles to go and haven't even begun the journey.
The Shame of the Mass Media
That's A Mess
Corporate giants rule the
nation, the world and the nation's dominant means of communicating to
the people through the mass media using public airwaves and the large
print publications they control. In that capacity, they're the nation's
thought control police gatekeepers filtering in information they want
reported and suppressing what's hostile to state and corporate interests.
Today, they're more able than ever to do it. Since 1983, the number
of corporations controlling most newspapers, magazines, book publishers,
movie studios, and electronic media shrunk from 50 to six global media
Goliaths - Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, Viacom, Germany-based
Bertelsmann, and Rupert Murdock's News Corporation. Add to them cable
giant Comcast and it's a not so "magnificent seven."
Their owners decide what's
aired and what isn't and news reporters, commentators and so-called
pundits know the rules. If someone forgets, they'll end up in newspaper
Siberia reporting obits or on TV off-camera at best, not on it. Those
playing by the rules aren't cheated, however, even though they cheat
us. On TV especially, many earn handsome salaries, good benefits and
lucrative speaking engagements and book deals. Lying for the state and
corporate bosses pays well. It's why the queue is long with many in
it awaiting their chance for a big payday. Those of conscience and progressive
leanings need not apply. Few get space in print or on-air except as
setup patsies matched against hoards of conservative ideologues preaching
wars are good and corporations free to pillage and plunder will make
the world safe for democracy. Their job is to spread the "proper"
message that excludes lots of ugliness harmful to ordinary people they
ignore.
There is hope, however, and
it shows up in alternate media spaces - on progressive web sites, like
the one you're on now, and on small and independent radio and some TV
in cities throughout the country where this writer airs a weekly "News
and Information Hour" that tells the truth in-depth with noted
guests. They need support and space to grow, and that's where the listening
public comes in. They and we also need to join the struggle to save
the last frontier of press freedom - to preserve Net Neutrality and
keep this space out of predatory corporate media hands that want to
control. They can't be allowed to get it nor will they if enough people-power
unites to prevent it. At stake is what remains of a free, open and independent
media. We can't afford to lose it to corporate giants wanting to take
away what belongs to us.
Our Corrupted Electoral Process
It almost understates the
problem saying our "electoral process is in need of serious rescue
and repair." In large measure, it's on life-support barely hanging
on and is now little more than theater in a nominal democracy serving
the privileged alone. They make the rules in a dominant two-party duopoly,
effectively keep out interloper alternative choices. While differences
between both sides exist, on one issue they're united. They're both
committed to waging imperial wars for predatory corporate capital's
right to exploit workers, gain new markets, control the world's resources,
and rule it without challenge. Unless that changes, whichever party
wins elections won't matter. Neither one will serve popular interests,
only privileged ones.
Our electoral system is structured
to make it near impossible for both dominant parties to lose to a third
party surprise. We have "winner take all" elections artificially
magnifying major parties' strengths. Whichever party gets a plurality
of votes (even if not a majority) wins 100% representation so parties
on the short end getting lesser vote totals in congressional districts
get no representation for their supporters. If we had a proportional
representation system, it would be different as party representation
would match the percent of votes it won.
Redistricting, as a function
of decennial reapportionment, rigs the system as well especially when
its most extreme gerrymandering method is used to maximize party strength
in how district lines are drawn. Then there's the issue of campaign
funding and where most of it comes from. It's not from the public supporting
people-oriented candidates. It's from powerful corporate donors for
candidates supporting their interests, and the amounts contributed are
huge. They're in unrestricted soft money amounts to parties and evasions
of the $5000 limit per candidate by donating in names of other family
members, relatives, staff, the corner grocer or anyone else for the
multi-millions needed for federal and many state elections today. All
donations come with strings. We all know what they are and what's expected
of winning candidates.
Then there's the issue of
who gets to vote most people thought was settled long ago, but tell
that to adult citizens in poor black and Latino districts and they'll
say otherwise. Many are peremptorily stricken from the rolls the way
many black voters in Florida were cheated in the 2000 elections. The
same thing goes on in many states, it's illegal, but it happens anyway,
and if discovered ex post facto it's too late to matter - case closed.
In addition, 4.5 million Americans can't vote because of past criminal
records, or they're currently in prison.
Then there's the issue of
election theft in a nation where foxes now guard the henhouse under
a system of privatized elections with more than 80% of 2004 votes cast
and counted on corporate-owned electronic voting machines. Three Republican-supporting
large corporations own, program, operate and count the votes using machines
with no paper ballot receipts. The process makes it impossible to verify
vote totals through recounts that will only produce the first total
gotten, real or corrupted. It also makes a mockery of free, fair and
open elections.
The process now is secretive
and unreliable run by private interests with everything to gain if their
candidates win. Based on clear evidence, that's exactly what's happening
and will continue to until these machines are banned and independent
civil servants run elections free from outside interference and do it
with paper ballots counted by hand and saved. The way elections are
run now, it's easy rigging the outcomes threatening to make our two-party
monopoly "an even worse one-party tyranny" the way it's been
under George Bush Republican rule with Democrat complicity helping out.
The Best Congress Money Can
Buy with Its Members Having Plenty of Their Own
Parenti explains our founders
created a system of checks and balances by separating government into
executive, legislative and judicial branches, even though the idea sounded
better than it actually was. Today it's barely noticeable with two branches
overtly supporting the chief executive's right to do as he pleases with
no effective check on his power or lawlessness. One reason is because
of who gets to Congress and the courts. They're mostly plutocracy members
in good standing there to take care of their own. Half of Senate members
are millionaires, and one critic believes the lower body is more "a
House of Lords" than a House of Representatives.
They're connected in an incestuous
relationship with business and high-powered influence peddling lobbyists
offering "succulent campaign contributions, fat lecture fees, easy-term
loans (sometimes forgotten), pre-paid vacation jaunts, luxury resorts,
four-star restaurants," choice seats at major sporting events and
other monetary and other inducements for easily corrupted officials
quick to sell their votes and integrity for the office they want to
win and hold onto. It's all legal so long as explicit promises aren't
made in exchange for money or monetary favors. Even when they are, few
offenders are caught with exceptions like lobbyist Jack Abramoff and
Representative Duke Cunningham and others long forgotten in the past.
The scoundrels come from Congress, the administration, states, police
and one vice-president.....so far.
Richard Nixon got off by
resigning and getting Gerald Ford to pardon him as part of a shameless
deal likely struck in advance with a willing seeker of the nation's
highest office. So did Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra scandal and
his vice-president, GHW Bush. Future judgment awaits the son for his
crimes, far exceeding the father's that alone were pretty egregious
as part of the Bush crime family's way of operating and, so far, getting
off scott free.
It makes it hard imagining
legislators will hold him or others accountable that's made no easier
by the way Congress is structured. It's in about 20 standing committees,
numerous subcommittees and chairmen of each with enough influence to
make or block things from happening unless they goes against congressional
consensus. So deals like NAFTA, "welfare reform," and the
1996 telecom giveaway were pretty much baked in the cake, and no committee
chairman dared try blocking them.
Parenti explains how the
"legislative labyrinth" affects the work of Congress, how
staggered Senate terms of office blunt sweeping sentiment changes, and
how the very structure of Congress keeps it conservative and supportive
of privilege, not the electorate. He notes "legislative democracy
(is) under siege," held virtual hostage by "the entire corporate
social order" with its control of the nation's wealth, mass media,
and whole network of powerful figures working for its interests. Under
Republican/Bush neocon rule, it's even worse today from "reactionary
forces within the legislature itself." Secrecy prevails, public
interest is discarded, the rule of law is what the chief executive says
it is, and free, open and fair elections are an illusion under a system
where wealth and power choose the candidates and often determine who
wins before voters go to the polls.
Hail to the Chief Executive
Along with his other roles
as chief executive and commander in chief, the president is also the
lead "promoter and guardian of global corporate capitalism,"
not democracy as we're made to believe. In this capacity, he surrounds
himself with a coterie of corporate leaders and advisors from industry,
Wall Street and other key areas of business with a dog in the fight
to keep the world safe for capital.
Another key presidential
role is being the nation's "chief liar." It involves preaching
restraint while supporting extremes, saying tax cuts benefit ordinary
people when they're earmarked for the rich and corporate giants, professing
to be a peacemaker while preparing for war, and claiming to be an education
president and friend of the earth while slashing funding for both to
give big handouts to corporate friends who don't care about societal
betterments.
Parenti covers much more
in this section including "a loaded Electoral College" overriding
the popular vote when the two disagree and individual Electors free
to vote against the candidate "to whom they had been pledged."
He also notes how presidents today are "would-be kings." They
usurp powers far beyond what the Constitution allows like taking the
nation to war when its Article I arrogates that authority solely to
Congress. He freely uses executive privilege as well through executive
orders, signing statements, emergency war powers and more that for George
Bush means claiming "unitary executive" authority (unmentioned
in the Constitution) to ignore the law and do as he pleases.
Parenti sums it up saying
"executive power....advances the process of 'free-market' capital
accumulation." Whoever occupies the White House, there won't "be
much progressive change from the top....unless there is also mass social
unrest and mobilization for fundamental reforms at the (grassroots)
base. Until then, presidents will pursue their prerogatives and their
(imperial) wars."
Bureaucracy in American Politics
Bureaucracy exists in all
parts of society, public and private, but the government kind we're
told is inefficient and should be minimized. It's so private interests
can run everything because they supposedly do it better. Baloney. Unmentioned
is private interests represent themselves, not society. That's why we
need government in place serving everyone in ways private business won't
because doing it hurts profits. The record makes the case. HMOs and
other health insurance providers love healthy customers but discard
the seriously ill; privatized, unregulated water and other utilities
gouge their customers as much as they can get away with; and government-run
Social Security is the most effective of all retirement programs for
most people compared to private pension plan promises made and now abandoned
by growing numbers of companies to save money.
Government also does what
private business can't or won't like running the "much maligned
post office" delivering first class mail anywhere in the country
for 41 cents an ounce. It used to run a more efficient military until
it privatized services in it, including 100,000 hugely overpaid paramilitary
mercenaries, not the 30,000 phony number told the public. The changes
accomplish nothing besides running up a big bill for taxpayers in a
massively bloated and growing military budget that includes tens of
billions off the books and mostly out of sight.
Much is done secretly with
Congress helping administrations wage illegal wars, practice malfeasance
and get away with all of it untouched because they're all in on the
schemes. It ends up breeding a culture of unaccountability, waste, corruption,
lawlessness, and no one's the wiser unless something important slips
out by mistake. When it comes from whisleblowers, they're condemned
and threatened making coming forward honorably a risk to their careers
or worse in an atmosphere where dissent means supporting terrorism.
Parenti also explains how
watchdog agencies like FDA, FCC, EPA, OSHA and others protect the industries
they're supposed to monitor and regulate more than ever. So FCC supports
further industry consolidation; EPA ignores dirty air, polluted groundwater
and global warming; and FDA allows untested drugs and unsafe foods to
be sold to consumers. These and other watchdog agencies promote profits,
not the public interest or safety, and they're staffed by corporate
foxes guarding our henhouse.
Public authority is also
placed in private hands with federal lands, forests, water and other
resources given to corporate interests. Then there's the so-called Federal
Reserve System created in 1913 by Congress through one of their most
outrageous and disastrous pieces of legislation ever, robbing the public
welfare to enrich greedy bankers.
The System is a privately-owned
for profit enterprise, not a government-run one as most people falsely
believe. It illegally gave bankers authority Article I, Section 8 of
the Constitution arrogates soley to Congress - the power to create and
control the nation's money supply they use to charge government interest
on its own money. In its near-94 year existence, this banking cartel
pulled off the largest ever financial heist in world history by far.
The Federal Reserve Act gave private bankers power to transfer wealth
from government to profiteers with the public paying for it through
taxes. In a 2006 article titled "Dirty Secrets of the Temple,"
this writer explained how they did it, how the system works, and the
horrific consequences.
In it was mentioned what
Parenti covers as well about Jack Kennedy's displeasure with the scheme
that may have cost him his life. He wanted to end the Federal Reserve
System to eliminate the national debt central bankers create by printing
public money and loaning it to the government. On June 4, 1963, he issued
presidential order EO 11110 giving the president authority to issue
currency and ordered the US Treasury to print $4 billion worth of silver-backed
"United States (Treasury) Notes" notes for starters replacing
Federal Reserve (banking cartel) ones. Months later he was dead, and
Lyndon Johnson rescinded his order.
Abraham Lincoln met the same
fate that may have resulted from his getting Congress to pass the Legal
Tender Act in 1862. It empowered the US Treasury to issue paper money
called "greenbacks" so the government had it own money for
the Civil War and didn't have to pay greedy bankers 24 - 36% interest
they demanded for loans Lincoln needed. Right after the war ended, Lincoln
was assassinated, the so-called Greenback law was rescinded shortly
thereafter, and a new national banking act was passed making all money
interest-bearing again.
The US "Supremes"
Parenti calls the Supreme
Court an "aristocratic branch" of government as its member
are appointed, serve for life and have great power for good or ill.
They're also well paid and "enjoy expensive gifts and lavish trips
paid for by corporations and other affluent interests" courting
influence and getting it. High Court justices most always side with
corporate America, and their decisions show it. Today, it's more obvious
than ever with Court ideology conservative to reactionary (no liberals
among them) in support of business and authoritarian government. But
even well into the New Deal era in the 1930s, "the Supreme Court
was the activist bastion of laissez-faire capitalism" that White
House and public pressure finally changed by 1937 to get the Court to
accept New Deal legislation.
Parenti explains how High
Courts "opposed restrictions on capitalist power (overall), but
supported restrictions on the civil liberties of persons who agitated
against that power." In the past and now, "the Court treated
the allegedly pernicious quality of a radical idea as evidence of its
lethal efficacy and as justification for its suppression." So it
was possible to convict communists or socialists under the Smith Act
even though they only advocated a different economic system, not the
forcible overthrow of the government that would be a crime. Dissenting
ideas and beliefs are lawful under the First Amendment's right of free
expression, but often in the past and now people exercising their constitutional
right pay a stiff price, and Supreme and other courts go along.
Parenti points out "the
threat of revolution in the United States has never been as real or
harmful as the measures taken to 'protect' us from revolutionary ideas....
The real danger comes from those at the top who would insulate us from
'unacceptable' viewpoints. No idea is as dangerous as the force that
seeks to repress it." When the nation's courts are part of that
force, freedom is a nominally democratic state is on shaky ground.
Parenti explains the High
Court reflects "the climate of the times and....the political composition
of the justices" although most often the Court leans to the right
supporting the corporate state and conservative issues. It reflects
its ideology in its decisions and by the cases it chooses to hear or
not hear.
The Warren Court was an exception
ruling for the first time ever "repeatedly on behalf of the less
affluent" on civil liberties, reapportionment of legislative districts,
and extending the "economic rights of the poor." The Court
ended state prohibitions against interracial marriage and rendered its
landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 ruling "separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal" that was a first
step toward ending racially separated schools it took until the 1960s
to move forward on.
Parenti continued saying
post-Warren Courts reverted to form leaning "mostly in a rightward
direction" on a variety of crucial issues he lists and discusses
like:
-- abortion and gender discrimination
making positive and negative rulings;
-- affirmation action and
civil rights making it harder to prove discrimination;
-- criminal justice weakening
Miranda rights, giving child abusers more rights than their victims,
weakening unreasonable searches and seizures and much more;
-- the death penalty with
the High Court reinstating it in 1976 but "pruning" it down
thereafter;
-- economic inequality by
upholding laws reducing welfare aid and other rulings against the disadvantaged;
-- the electoral system that
was highlighted in Bush v. Gore ruling against the candidate who won
and awarding it (as it turned out) to the loser;
-- executive power, granting
more of it to the president;
-- labor and the corporate
economy ruling often for business and against working Americans;
-- the separation of church
and state with the Court disregarding the First Amendment to rule for
religious organizations' exemptions to taxation and much more in violation
of the Constitution at a time Christian hard right extremists wield
enormous influence over state policy.
Parenti's book was published
in March, 2007 before the current Court's June rulings came down, but
he surely would have commented on them had he known in time. Overall,
the Court affirmed how hard line it is confirming what progressives
feared most about it. Call it a muscular move to the right on fundamental
issues of free expression, abortion rights and more.
One decision was a 5 - 4
ruling with the Court allowing the political process to become even
more corrupted by corporate money by allowing ads mentioning specific
candidates to appear in the immediate days before an election. It means
funding an electoral campaign just went up exponentially so lesser or
poorly funded candidates have even less of a chance to win. In another
decision, hypocritically, it curtailed the free expression rights of
public school children because they said things the Court didn't like.
Even more troubling was the
effective gutting of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision
affirming segregated public schools denied "Negro children the
equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."
The reactionary Roberts Court disagreed 5 - 4 saying instead public
schools can't seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures
taking explicit account of a student's race. The decision angered conservative
Justice Breyer enough to emotionally denounce it in a 20 minute statement
from the bench calling it a "radical" step and "It is
not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much."
Justice Stevens bristled as well saying it was "a cruel irony (that
the opinion) rewrites the history of one of this court's most important
decisions (and) no member of (the 1975 Court he joined) would have agreed
with (it)."
One other disturbing trend
was the Court's placing limits on plaintiffs' ability to bring suits
or appeal them. It bothered Yale Law School Professor Judith Resnik
enough to label the just-ended term "the year they closed the courts."
Parenti would be bothered,
too, although his book stresses Courts reflect the political climate
of the times and notes justices not only read the Constitution but also
newspapers. When, like today, the Court and president are "militantly
conservative" and Congress is complicit, justices can be inordinately
activist siding against the public interest. Since they have life tenure,
their jobs are secure, and the dominant media hushes up their abuses.
Parenti suggests a way to "trim judicial adventurism is to end
life tenure for federal judges," including those on the High Court.
However, a constitutional amendment is needed to do it, and that's extremely
hard to get.
Democracy for the Few in
America
In our "pluralistic
democracy," most government policies favor the privileged and work
against the great majority of ordinary people. The result is social
inequities and injustices prevail, civil liberties are fast disappearing,
the rich get richer, the middle class is eroding, poverty and human
needs are growing, and our government and dominant media say we live
in the best of all possible countries in the best of all possible worlds
in the USA. The preceding chapters dispelled that notion in disturbing
detail so there's no confusion how things really are, and rosy characterizations
won't change anything for most of us.
With all its faults, its
defenders say "democratic capitalism" (an oxymoron) evolved
through gradual reform. Though true at times, most often an unempowered
unmobilized public is no match for the power of corporate capital with
government and the military allied with it. Parenti asks:
-- "How can we speak
of the US politico-economic system (reflecting) the democratic will?"
-- What democratic mandate
directed government to transfer wealth from the people to the rich;
-- to lavish huge subsidies
on corporate giants;
-- to fight imperial wars
for greater corporate profit-making opportunities;
-- to endanger our environment;
-- to serve the privileged
alone at the expense of all others it shows contempt for;
-- to roll back democracy
when there's too much of it so there's only enough for the privileged
few. Unless and until that changes America the Beautiful will, in fact,
be George Bush's ugly America for most of us.
As Parenti says in summing
up, it's "no mystery what needs to be done to bring us to a more
equitable and democratic society" citing specifics like:
-- aid needy farmers, not
rich agribusiness;
-- promote conservation and
ecological restoration;
-- promote efficient mass
transit, not inefficient polluting autos, one-fourth of which now are
gas-guzzling, hugely greenhouse gas-emitting, road hogging, behemoth,
dangerous SUVs no one knew they needed until Madison Avenue geniuses
convinced millions they couldn't live without them;
-- reintroduce a fair progressive
tax system and eliminate benefits only the rich get;
-- restore trust-busting
and break up the corporate giants; promote the notion that small and
local are good and big and global bad;
-- abolish the banking cartel-owned
Federal Reserve so the government can print and circulate its own money
and not have to pay private predators interest on it;
-- end powerful monied interests
controlling the electoral process; promote public financing supporting
all candidates; abolish the Electoral College and our winner take all
system; abolish electronic voting and reintroduce paper ballots counted
by hand by civil servants running elections; grant the District of Columbia
statehood and full representation in Congress.
-- establish a minimum livable
wage and guaranteed income for the indigent;
-- promote full employment
and the right to organize and bargain on equal terms with management;
-- institute abandoned or
reduced social services starting with those most important and for those
in greatest need but made available to everyone;
-- guarantee quality national
health and dental care for all and care for the elderly and indigent;
-- establish free education
for everyone to the highest levels;
-- pay for it by ending imperial
wars and promoting peace, slashing bloated military and homeland security
budgets, closing hundreds of unneeded foreign-based military installations
and most at home, ending expensive weapons systems development, and
cutting the size of the military to levels needed for homeland defense,
not imperial adventurism.
-- end gender, racial, ethnic
and religious discrimination and criminal justice inequities;
-- abolish the CIA, NSA and
other secretive, hugely expensive, roguish spy agencies operating outside
the law no democratic state should allow; abolish DHS that functions
as a national Gestapo;
-- return the public airwaves
to its rightful owner - the public and open then up fully to all views
on all issues with no corporate or government censorship;
-- enable seniors, the poor
and disabled to have a minimum living income adjusted for inflation
with an equitable Social Security program for everyone paid for by a
progressively fair tax system, not the regressive payroll tax one now
in place letting the rich off the hook by burdening average and low-wage
earners;
-- establish public ownership
over the major means of production in a true social democracy. Market
forces only work for the ones controlling them assuring they benefit
by exploiting most others. That's not a radical idea. It's plain fact.
Parenti concludes saying
"Our goal should be an egalitarian, communitarian, environmentally
conscious, democratic socialism (or real social democracy), with a variety
of participatory and productive forms, offering both security and democracy"
for everyone, not just the few the way it is now. "There is nothing
sacred about the existing system." Having failed the many, it should
be replaced by an alternative one that works for everyone.
It can happen with a "fundamental
change (to) widespread organizing not only around particular issues
but for a movement" for sweeping democratic change. Perhaps the
time will come, Parenti says, as it did in the past, "when those
who (today) seem invincible will be shaken from their pinnacles"
and revealed to have feet of clay when disrobed and exposed to the light
of day. We'll all then see they represented "democracy for the
few," not the rest of us, but their day is past and replaced by
a new social order for everyone. That can happen if enough people believe
it and mobilize effectively to get it. A later Parenti edition could
then be called "The End of Democracy for the Few - How the Many
Triumphed Over the Privileged."
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information
Hour on The MicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.