Friday, October 14, 2016

Installing a President by Force: Hillary Clinton and Our Moribund Democracy

Unless the nation lapses into lunacy on November 8, Hillary Clinton will be our next president.
The prospect raises an alarming question we've never before confronted.
          How can a thriving democracy conceivably elect a president who is dishonest and untrustworthy in the minds of 59% of the people?  A woman shown to be a felon but not prosecuted for want of precedent?  A woman who lies and contradicts herself,  documented in video clips?  A bold hypocrite who solicits and accepts hundreds of millions in campaign contributions from Wall Street banks, the armaments industry, and Big Pharma, and claims to abhor Citizens United which enables her to do so? 
          The answer: we live in a moribund democracy, not a thriving one.  A conjunction of corporate political power and immense wealth is forcibly installing a president.  We haven't confronted this before, either.  We will cast our ritual ballots in November, but not in a free election: the Democratic nominee was imposed upon us by the corporate and the wealthy.
          No, we have not been finessed by a patrician coup d'etat  nor a secret cabal in sinister conspiracy.  Instead we are victimized by systemic corruption in five institutions of public practice, and it is subverting our democracy.
          Of immediate concern is the corruption in the Democratic Party.  Directly violating the requirement for strict neutrality throughout the primaries, the Democratic National Committee intervened in the process at every opportunity, handicapping the Sanders campaign to assure Hillary Clinton's nomination. The effort was covert, but it was suspected, finally exposed, and ultimately successful.  
          This was the engine of coercion, the denial of democracy, and the reason we will likely suffer a president unworthy of our trust.   The corruption was not an aberration, nor  was it unique and isolated:  it flourished in a matrix of decadent institutions in which democracy cannot survive.

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