How The U.S. Dictatorship Works

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

A recent article in the Washington Post described how the current US tax-‘reform’ bill is being shaped; and it describes, basically (at least as far as tax-law changes are concerned), the operation of a US dictatorship by the super-rich.

First of all, however: there is no longer any realistic question as regards whether the US in recent decades has been a dictatorship, or instead a democracy. According to the only scientific analysis of the relevant data, that has been done in order to determine whether the US is a dictatorship or a democracy, the US is definitely a dictatorship that’s perpetrated by the extremely richest, against the public-at-large; in other words: the US Government functions as an aristocracy, otherwise referred-to as an oligarchy, or a plutocracy, or a kleptocracy; but, in any case, and by whatever name, it’s ruled by a tiny number of the extremely wealthiest and their agents, on behalf of those few super-rich, against the concerns and interests and needs of the public (everyone else). So: instead of being rule by the public (the “demos” is the Greek term for it), it’s rule on behalf of a tiny dictatorial class, of extreme wealth — by whatever name we might happen to label this ruling class.

That study, by professors Gilens and Page, explained that it examined “1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question about a proposed policy change,” and it compared those public-policy preferences, by the public, versus the public-policy preferences regarding those same issues, by the super-wealthiest; and, it found that only the public-policy preferences by the super-wealthiest and their paid agents, made any discernible difference, at all, in the likelihood that a given public policy ultimately became enacted into law, in the United States. Whereas the public-policy preferences of the wealthiest do, at far higher than mere random chances, become enacted into laws, the public-policy preferences of the public are (except in political rhetoric and promises — frauds perpetrated to deceive the public) ignored, in the United States.

Here is an excellent six-minute video describing the methodology and findings in that landmark study...

And here is a commentary by former US President Jimmy Carter, in which he says that he knows it’s true.

He said this not on the basis of examining thousands of cases and doing the statistical analysis of the data, like Gilens and Page had done, but just on the basis of his observations of how the US federal government has been functioning in recent decades. And, of course, the scientific study is vastly more reliable than is any individual’s mere opinion about the matter.

Furthermore, there exists evidence that even in some local or state governments in the United States, considerable corruption exists, and therefore an extreme slant prevails in favor of the rich. During June 2016, I headlined about this, “Here Is How Corrupt America Is”, and opened:

The best reporting on the depth of America’s dictatorship is probably that being done by Atlanta Georgia’s NBC-affiliated, Gannett-owned, TV Channel “11 Alive,” WXIA television, its “The Investigators” series of local investigative news reports, which show, up close and at a cellularly detailed level, the way things actually work in today’s America. Although it’s only local, it displays what meets the legal standards of the US federal government in actually any state in the union; so, it exposes the character of the US government, such that what’s shown to be true here, meets America’s standard for ‘democracy’, or else the federal government isn’t enforcing federal laws against it (which is the same thing as its meeting the federal government’s standards).

What was exemplified in this reporting by that excellent investigative team could be called “corporate organized-gangsterism,” and this gangsterism was being led by an operation, “ALEC,” that was founded by politicians whose careers are funded by the Koch brothers and some other US billionaires.

Furthermore, as was mentioned briefly at the opening here, a recent issue of the Washington Post’s “PowerPost” section was titled "The Finance 202: Tax overhaul"s big test comes now”, and it described in detail what was shaping the Trump Administration’s tax-overhaul bill. This article reported that the lobbyists were shaping it 100%. It’s a superb nitty-gritty, down among the weeds, description, of the monetary deals, the horse-trading, that were being made, not only for corporations, but for the wealthiest non-business lobbies, including ‘nonprofit’ ones, but almost all of these lobbies, too, depend overwhelmingly upon billionaires for their funding. What’s being carved-up and served, is being carved-up from governments, and being served to the super-rich. (After all: conservatives say “Government bad, business good,” and Republicans are the conservative Party; so, it’s taking from government, and going to business.)

So: is it any wonder why Gilens and Page found what they did? They found that "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” (By “mass-based groups” was being referenced what the left often calls “movements” or “grass-roots” organizations. After all, what happened from “Occupy Wall Street”? Nothing. It was a big waste of time and effort. Authentic movements get marginalized, because the billionaires’ ‘news’media despise them. Fake ones, such as the Kochs’ “The Tea Party ‘movement’,” get weaponized, because the billionaires’ ‘news’media treat them extensively, and often grant them respect. Top-down’s the way, in any dictatorship. That includes in America.)

Here is another excellent video - this one 10 minutes long - summarizing the Gilens and Page study...

The only major difference between Republican politicians and Democratic ones, then, is that, whereas Republican ones don’t even need to pretend that they oppose limitless greed (since limitless greed that’s carried out by frauds instead of by outright physical violence — which latter type of coercion is the type that’s employed more by lower-class crooks, anyway, and those are the type of crooks who fill our prisons, not the type who fill our boardrooms — is, essentially, supported by Republicans’ ideology, as ‘being entrepreneurial’ and ‘competitive spirit’), Democratic politicians do need to make that pretense (since their voters are liberals, and liberals don’t share the conservatives’ “Greed is good” libertarian faith). But the outcomes, even when Democrats are in power, are vastly more helpful to the billionaires, than to the public. 

Does this mean that Democratic (or liberal) politicians are necessarily more hypocritical than Republican ones are? No. Whereas Democrats pretend to be opposed to the system’s favoring the super-rich, Republicans pretend to be opposed to “sins” and other religious-based shiboleths. Both Parties can win and retain power only by deceiving (defrauding) the public, and serving the billionaires, though in different ways — some conservative, and some liberal. Virtually everything else than that service to billionaires (and to centi-millionaires) is just frauds by politicians, because, at least after around 1970, only the richest 1% or (usually far) less are actually being served by the US federal Government. It’s not the billionaires that are defrauded by politicians; it is clearly the public that is being defrauded by them.

The public are served only to the extent that the public’s interests are the same as the billionaires’ interests. And the Gilens and Page study found that the public’s policy-preferences are simply ignored — not ignored in the political rhetoric, but ignored in the political outcomes.

The US Government, thus, is of a few people (the policymakers), by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. And that’s just an established fact.

Never Forget: The US Government Has A Known History Of Using False Flags

Authored by Caitlyn Johnstone via Medium.com,

When it comes to 9/11, there are two groups of people: those who don’t know exactly what happened, and those who orchestrated it.

Nearly everyone on earth belongs in the former category, but a lot of folks like to pretend they have a rock solid understanding of the events which transpired on that fateful day in 2001. Scoffing mainstream adherents like to pretend they’re confident that the official narrative is accurate, but they aren’t. A lot of hardcore conspiracy analysts like to pretend they know the real story, but they don’t. There’s simply not enough publicly available information for anyone to be certain exactly how things went down that day; all we can know for sure is that (A) the official story is riddled with plot holes, and (B) the American power establishment has an extensive and well-documented history of using false flags and propaganda to manipulate the public into supporting evil acts of military interventionism.

If you think you know for a fact that the official story of what happened on September 11, 2001 is the true account and that all conspiracy theories have been “debunked”, you are ignorant.

If you think you know the precise details of how what really happened differs from the official story, you’ve spent way too much time diving down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and should probably ease off the weed. There’s no need to get all defensive and go bedding yourself down to one hard doctrine of certainty when the US power establishment has already discredited itself so thoroughly. It’s unnecessary to plunge deep into theory when these people’s track record is so firmly established in fact.

Here are just a few of the times the US government is known to have distorted the reality of events in order to manufacture public support for military intervention, which is per definition what a false flag is:

The False Nayirah Testimony

On October 10, 1990 a 15 year-old girl known only as Nayirah testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus about the horrors that Iraqi troops were inflicting upon the people of Kuwait. Her testimony that hundreds of babies had been taken out of their incubators and left to die on hospital floors was repeated as fact by Amnesty International, the mass media, numerous senators, and President H. W. Bush, tugging at the heartstrings of America and manufacturing support for American action in the Gulf War.

It was a lie. Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US, and her TV-friendly “removing babies from incubators” testimony was false. It never happened.

Former CIA Director Bush with the Kuwaiti Ambassador, who watched his daughter’s false testimony before congress

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

In 2005 a declassified historical study by the NSA revealed that one of the two incidents which were used to propel America into the disastrous Vietnam War happened the opposite of the way it was reported to have happened, and the second of the two incidents did not happen at all. The allegation that there were “deliberate” and “unprovoked” attacks upon the US Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and August 4 of 1964 was solemnly affirmed by President Johnson, which led to the swift passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing full presidential authority to commit US military power to the Vietnamese intervention.

In reality the August 2 incident was not in any way “unprovoked”, and it was in fact America’s USS Maddox which fired upon North Vietnamese boats first. On August 4 there was no engagement with any ships whatsoever, with Johnson privately admitting a year later that “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there.”

The USS Maine

“But when the smoke was over, the dead buried and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent?—?that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree?—?it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American War was the price of sugar.”

~ Emma Goldman

This goes way back. The video above describes how the Spanish-American war was brought on by a highly suspicious explosion upon the USS Maine while it was docked at the Havana Harbor in 1898, combined with the anti-Spain narratives of the plutocrat-owned newspapers of that time. Like all US wars, it was extremely profitable and benefitted the very rich.

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This tradition of using lies to rally the unwashed masses behind military endeavors on behalf of the rich and powerful has probably been going on since the dawn of civilization, and it is only humanity’s increasing adeptness at networking and sharing information which has enabled us to begin catching on to the deceitful manipulations of the people who rule us. Our history books are doubtless riddled with countless inaccuracies as to the real reasons underlying violent conflicts between various kingdoms and factions, because the few literate people who were permitted to write the official historic accounts of them had full control of the narrative at the time.

This is why we’ve been seeing increasingly blatant panic from existing power structures about alternative media. Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. It is only by general societal consensus that power exists where it exists, that money works the way it works, etc. At any time the public could stop honoring existing power structures and create an entirely different model for itself, deciding to distribute resources and allocate responsibilities in a way that benefits more people more efficaciously than the current paradigm. It is only by their ability to manipulate and control the mainstream narrative that powerful people have been able to keep this from happening.

If the power elites didn’t need the consent of the public to rule, they wouldn’t have to lie constantly about their reasons for war. The public would never consent to military interventions if politicians were allowed to appear on CNN and say “Yeah well America has become a stronghold for the most powerful plutocracy in the history of civilization and it needs to maintain its status as the world’s only superpower in order to protect the investments of that plutocracy. This is why we have to keep knocking the pillars of support out from underneath Russia and China, and why I get millions in re-election campaign donations.”

My more pessimistic readers won’t like hearing this, but the reality is that Americans are basically good people who generally want what’s best for the world. If they weren’t, the unelected power establishment which rules over them wouldn’t have to keep making up lies about babies in incubators and protecting their family from Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to secure US hegemony. If they ever told the public the truth, they’d be dealing with hundreds of millions of heavily-armed Americans telling them to get their sociopathic asses out of here.

Obama Urged Trump To Continue Neoconservative Foreign Policy#Trump #Obama #letter #neoconhttps://t.co/b4BMZqpof2

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) September 4, 2017

What this means is that those of us who want what’s best for America and the world instead of endless war and economic oppression are necessarily locked in a media war with the plutocracy and its cronies. The populist alternative media owned and operated by ordinary people is the natural enemy of the plutocrat-owned mainstream media designed to prop up the existing power structure with establishment propaganda. Our ability to win this media war increases the more networked and internet-literate our society becomes, which is why the oligarchs have been working overtime to shut us down with corporate censorship.

There is no reason to believe anything these lying sociopaths say, especially not about something that has served such a crucial role in their openly stated agenda to ensure US dominance over the world using its military and economic might. When you’ve got the extremely influential neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century saying in September of 2000 that it would require “a new Pearl Harbor” to advance this agenda, and then getting exactly that one year later in an American tragedy which was used to manufacture support for greatly expanded US military interventionism, there’s no good reason to take all that in with a trusting “Yeah, that sounds legit.”

These people are liars, and they are depraved. They have no problem using lies to kill a million Iraqis and thousands of US soldiers to advance their agendas, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t kill US civilians as well. There’s no harm in familiarizing yourself with all the details about the various conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 if that’s what you want to spend your brainpower on, but really all you need to know is that these people are known liars who have no problem slaughtering countless people to advance their agenda of global domination. There is no reason to trust them and many reasons not to. End of.

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