Why The American Plutocracy Needs Both The Republican And Democratic Parties
By John Spritzler
08 May, 2014
Newdemocracyworld.org
Both the Democratic and Republican parties get their funding from Big Money, as is well known:
"A decade ago, corporate PACs favored Republicans over Democrats by about a two-to-one ratio. By the 2008 election cycle, however, when Democrats were poised to control both chambers of Congress and the White House, contributions from business PACs were split about evenly between Republican and Democratic candidates and groups. During the 2010 election cycle, that parity continued—almost down to the last dollar...."
Why does Big Money fund two parties? Why not just one?
There are several reasons, some more obvious than others. Let's look at the reasons, going from most obvious to least obvious.
#1. Big Money needs two parties to make fake democracy work. Our fake democracy wouldn't fool anybody if there were only one single major political party, would it?
#2. It takes two parties to carry out an effective divide and rule strategy. Big Money uses issues such as same-sex marriage and Affirmative Action to pit the "NPR-listening" demographic against the "non-NPR-listening" demographic. The trick is to create a phony debate orchestrated by the corporate-controlled mass media in such a way that people on either side read about or hear the other side's position framed in such a manner as to exclude the positive values and aspirations that most people share, and to be perceived as hostile in one way or another to those values and aspirations or just plain stupid or bigoted. Once this is done, then it takes two parties to implement divide-and-rule: one party to advocate one phony position and the other party to advocate the other phony position.
#3. There are essentially two categories of people in the American public, with different values and aspirations. One category--the largest--consists of people who want a more equal and democratic society. The other, smaller, category consists of people who have no objection to economic inequality and willingly ally with Big Money, either because they are already rich and want to stay that way or because they aspire to get rich one day. Big Money uses the Democratic Party to keep the first category of people weak and ineffectual, by providing these people deliberately idiotic and incoherent leadership to undermine their self-confidence and keep them in a state of hopelessness. At the same time, Big Money uses the Republican Party to strengthen the confidence and influence of the second category of people by providing them coherent ideological leadership (e.g., "Free market capitalism creates the best of all possible worlds") and encouraging them to ridicule the (purposely) idiotic ideas (e.g., "You're a racist if you disapprove of government-approved racial discrimination") championed by the other political party.
Big Money also employs (or in some cases just approves of them as "useful idiots") pundits to argue how we need to vote for one party and not the other one. They use people like Robert Reich and Bill Moyers for the Democratic Party, and Rush Limbaugh and his clones for the Republican Party.
Big Money laughs all the way to the bank when they see people arguing why "their party" is better than the other one.
The Democratic and Republican parties are like the two blades of a pair of scissors. Neither works without the other; they need and use each other.
Isn't it time to realize that the election system is an integral component of the fake democracy that Big Money uses to exercise its dictatorhip of the rich? Isn't it time to build an egalitarian revolutionary movement, as discussed at PDRBoston.org?
John Spritzler is editor of NewDemocracyWorld.org, PDRBoston.org & Facebook.com/NewDemocracyWorld
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