October 22, 2016
By Dylan Charles
If there’s one thing we’ve learned so far from election 2016 it’s that the American people do not understand their government.
The perception is that we have a democracy, and that in this democracy
we the people have vested power in our government which we exercise through the act of voting. ‘
Throw the bastards out,’
has long since been the war cry of the impotent democrat, yet we no
longer even have a democracy to cling to, and although most people
choose to ignore it, this fact of life has been visible for decades.
An oligarchical government is a form of rule in which a small group
of wealthy individuals have control over the critical mechanisms of
state power, industry and economy. These people are unelected,
unaccountable and they exercise control on behalf of their personal
financial interests, drawing on the productive power of a nation to
support their lifestyles and geopolitical ambitions.
The ruling class in
such a nation is often comprised of dynastic families who pass the
baton of power back and forth between themselves, managing the illusion
of change and evolution while never actually ceding their franchise over
the masses.
The
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton phenomenon is a contemporary example of this exchange.
In 2014, a Princeton study in the academic journal
Perspectives on Politics
published their conclusion that America had officially transitioned to
an oligarchy. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has even recently made
comments to this effect, telling Oprah Winfrey and her audience that ‘
now it’s just an oligarchy.’ These two warnings follow decades of comments and public admissions by
former presidents and
key political figures warning us that our country was being taken over by
shadowy financial interests.
Inarguably, there is an
invisible government running America, yet we are still urged to cast our vote for president every four years.
Why do they allow us to participate in this charade if they know our vote doesn’t make any difference?
Voting as a Tool to Create the Illusion of Consent
Even many true dictatorships hold political elections as tools to
manufacture the illusion of consent for their party. Stalin is perhaps
the most astounding example of this, for, during his rule, while the
people of the nation were being brutalized by
The Red Terror, election results came in
showing over 99% support for the Communist Party.
Saddam Hussein also used this tactic to great effect in a
1995 in a referendum aimed at creating the illusion of public support for his reign, with
99.9% of the population voting in favor.
China’s Mao, arguably the greatest murderer of all time, also
forced his subjects into the ballot booth, using the results as propaganda to support his totalitarianism.
America is not yet a dictatorship, it is but an oligarchy with big dreams of becoming one. As
such, we are still transitioning out of the ideology of personal
liberty and self-rule, and are still dependent on the ritual of voting
as acknowledgment of this heritage, even though selecting a president
does nothing to favorably influence the direction of the nation.
