The circus owner and operator P.T. Barnum once remarked that he didn't care what you wrote about him as long as you spelled his name right. He was a man of questionable character and less than scrupulous, but he billed his circus as "the greatest show on earth". Whether it was the "greatest", or whether it was just more colorful, louder and gaudier than all the others, I don't know. It doesn't matter, he was a shameless peddler of illusions, but I'd bet even he'd be gob-smacked by the even greater circus going on in his home country right now: that circus we Americans call our presidential primaries.
The jig is up. You've been found out. All that prattle about democracy and democratic process and the people's choice and even government by and for the people has been exposed for what it is: prattle: loud, hollow, foolish talk. America has just shown that by all reasonable standards, it has about as much to do with democracy as the old Soviet Union had to do with rule by the peasants and workers. Empty assertions, like lies, if repeated often enough, sooner or later are held to be true, but eventually, the truth will out, and when it finds its way to the light, the clowns of that particular circus reveal themselves to be Chuckys not Clarabells.
It's not just that they've turned a serious undertaking (the selection of public leaders) into a an adolescent popularity contest (I can't remember the last time I heard my fellow countrypeople actually discussing or debating an issue ... well, come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I heard them discussing or debating anything), and it's not just that they've scraped the bottom of the personality barrel (Trump and Clinton, just to name the most front-running mispicks) ... no, it's the shameless, disregard for the whole notion of democracy and democratic process that makes me ask myself whether it might not be something in the water in America that has blinded the whole country to what they are doing.
OK, I know that the United States was never intended to be a democracy, and that's fair enough, considering when it was established. I know that Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have told one of his local constituents that they had been given a republic, if they could keep it. But even a republic is a representative form of government, so it's supposed to represent someone, and I know as well that the likes of people like James Madison, one of our oh-so-revered founding fathers did his utmost to ensure that it would be the elite who's be represented. After all, the common folk are just to pesky, fickle, if not downright unfit, to govern themselves. Madison and his ilk have been patronizing that common folk ever since, but this time, it could just be that they went to far.
I mean, Citizens United should have been a tip-off, but apparently it wasn't. How can money be declared free speech? It boggles my mind, that is true, but I don't have access to the same water supply as my back-home compatriots. Money calls all the shots in American politics, and the few "independents" (by which I mean independent of major corporate campaign funding) are allowed to exist to "prove" to the world that Americans are still "free" to choose.
And now we watch how one of the most eminently unqualified candidates conceivable has secured the necessary delegates to gain the nomination, and his party is now scrambling and wringing their hands and distancing themselves from the man because he's unsavory even to them. It should be interesting to see how they are going to handle this in Cleveland next month. And just yesterday we have the other party prematurely declaring the front-runner the winner, even though all the votes haven't been counted. How is this considered even remotely democratic? Oh ... I almost forgot: in America you don't have to count all the votes, only the ones you want to count; just as the Supreme Court confirmed when Bush the Lesser was anointed president in 2000. It would appear the exception became the rule. But, I'm wondering how all those feeling the Bern are going to behave in Philadelphia next month as well?
I suppose I should be grateful, even thankful. The mask is finally off. All that pretense that you have to wade through when talking about anything political in America has vanished. It has become blatantly obvious, at the latest yesterday, when Clinton was crowned queen that both mainstream political parties in the United States have nothing but desultory disregard for anything democratic.
Emma Goldman got it right: if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal (which the Republicans are still working on, quite openly, to be sure), but yesterday at the latest, all other illusions were shattered. America isn't a democracy and isn't democratic. Its true oligarchic face has been revealed. But, I know there are still quite a few fellow country people who will refuse to acknowledge that they have been exposed. Unfortunately, these people simply need more hope than the rest of us can give them. And the oligarchs apparently don't care. It seems that they have recognized that they don't even have to put on a show any more.
What would P.T. think? And what happens next when there's no show to go on?
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