Elections Are A Scam

satanmcnugget

Well-known member
the US election has very little to do with most on this board...and ii know Oliver already touched on this subject...but i thought this was a great lil rant and worth sharing:


Elections Are A Scam








As in every election we’re now being bombarded with propaganda about how “your vote makes a difference” and associated nonsense. According to the official version ordinary citizens control the state by voting for candidates in elections. The President and other politicians are supposedly servants of “the people” and the government an instrument of the general populace. This version is a myth. It does not matter who is elected because the way the system is set up all elected representatives must do what big business and the state bureaucracy want, not what “the people” want. Elected representatives are figureheads. Politicians’ rhetoric may change depending on who is elected, but they all have to implement the same policies given the same situation. Elections are a scam whose function is to create the illusion that “the people” control the government, not the elite, and to neutralize resistance movements. All voting does is strengthen the state & ruling class, it is not an effective means to change government policy.

If a party wins the elections but implements policies that go against the interests of big business then profits will go down and businesses & investors will withdraw their investments. This capital flight will cause the economy to crash. If the ruling party does not change its policies to appease big business then they'll lose the next elections due to the bad economy. In practice most parties change their policies to appease the corporate elite in order to avoid losing power.

This is not merely theoretical, it has happened repeatedly. It happened in India a few months ago. The left, lead by the Congress party, won the elections, leading to a coalition government with the Congress party and the Communist party. This caused the stock market to crash because investors feared a change in economic policy that would hurt their profits. Sonia Ghandi, who was originally going to be the next Prime Minister, chose not to take the position and the new government was forced to adopt policies virtually identical to the previous government. Their rhetoric is different, but policy is basically the same.

Usually the mere threat of capital flight is enough to keep potentially recalcitrant politicians in line (although most politicians never even consider policies that conflict with the corporate elite/state bureaucracy). For example, Bill Clinton won election on a mildly liberal reformist platform. Once in office he was forced to abandon his campaign promises because if he continued them the bond market wouldn’t react well and the economy would go down the tubes. Clinton’s famous statement to his advisers upon realizing this was, "You mean to tell me that the success of my program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?" He was thus forced to abandon his program before it even started, instead implementing one virtually identical to Republican proposals. He complained to his aides:

“I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans. We're Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?”

In theory the government might be able to combat this by nationalizing industry but neither the Democrats nor Republicans (or most prominent third parties) are willing to do this. Even if they were, the Supreme Court would strike it down. If some way were found to get around this then the CIA and/or Pentagon would overthrow the government in a coup (or through less dramatic means). The CIA has overthrown many governments for nationalizing industry, or even just implementing policies not sufficiently favorable to US corporations, including Chile, Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, Greece, the Congo and many others. Doing the same on their home turf would be a piece of cake.

Once elected representatives are isolated from the general public but surrounded by bureaucrats and other politicians. They therefore have a tendency to see things from the perspective of politicians and bureaucrats, rather than from the perspective of the general public from which they are isolated, and are much more susceptible to pressure from government bureaucracies.

Elected representatives’ dependency on the state bureaucracy for information makes them very susceptible to manipulation by the bureaucracies they are officially in charge of. For example, in the late ‘50s the CIA secured approval to launch an uprising in Indonesia by feeding a series of increasingly alarmist reports to their superiors in the National Security Council, who otherwise might have shot the proposed uprising down. This shows how government agencies (especially secretive ones) can pressure politicians and influence policy in preferred directions. This is enhanced by the fact that individual politicians come and go but the bureaucrats are permanent, which makes it easier for bureaucrats to manipulate information and ensures that politicians have less experience with such manipulation. Because the state bureaucracy is permanent while politicians are transitory state bureaucracies tend to accrue more power than elected representatives.

State bureaucracies can also manipulate the political process by leaking damaging information about politicians they don’t like or by harassing parties or movements they don’t like (such as COINTELPRO or the recent harassment of anti-war activists by the FBI). This gives an advantage to politicians favorable to the interests of the state bureaucracy.

State bureaucracies, especially the military and intelligence services, have a considerable degree of autonomy from elected representatives and so aren’t truly controlled by those representatives. When New Zealand intelligence began secretly participating in Echelon, an international electronic spying system, New Zealand’s Prime Minister didn’t even know about it. Most of the CIA’s covert actions (including coups) were done without Congressional approval and some, like CIA participation in Ghana’s 1966 coup, didn’t even have Presidential approval. Entire wars have been fought in secret, including Russia 1918-1920, Laos 1965-1973 and Cambodia 1970-1975. When Congress cut off funding for the Contras (US-backed terrorists in Nicaragua) in the mid-80s the CIA (and other parts of the state bureaucracy) just kept doing it in secret, disregarding Congress’s wishes...


All of this puts many state bureaucracies (especially the military and intelligence services) beyond effective control of elected representatives, let alone the general public. Their secrecy, manipulation of budgets and complexity (there are too many bureaucrats for representatives to effectively keep track of them all) gives government bureaucracies a considerable degree of autonomy. They go off and do whatever they want, either keeping things secret from elected politicians or pressuring them into going along with it.

What a politician says to win an election and what he actually does in office are two very different things; politicians regularly break their promises. This is not just a fluke but the outcome of the way the system is set up. Bush the second said he wouldn’t engage in “nation-building” (taking other countries over) during the 2000 election campaign but has done it several times. He also claimed to support a balanced budget, but obviously abandoned that. Clinton advocated universal health care during the 1992 election campaign but there were more people without health insurance when he left office than when he took office. Bush the first said, “read my lips - no new taxes!” while running for office but raised taxes anyway. Reagan promised to shrink government but he drastically expanded the military-industrial complex and ran up huge deficits. Rather than shrinking government, he reoriented it to make it more favorable to the rich.

Carter promised to make human rights the “soul of our foreign policy” but funded genocide in East Timor and backed brutal dictators in Argentina, South Korea, Chile, Brazil, Indonesia and elsewhere. During the 1964 elections leftists were encouraged by Democrats to vote for Johnson because Goldwater, his Republican opponent, was a fanatical warmonger who would escalate US involvement in Vietnam. Johnson won, and immediately proceeded to escalate US involvement in Vietnam. FDR promised to maintain a balanced budget and restrain government spending but did the exact opposite. Wilson won reelection in 1916 on the slogan “he kept us out of war” but then lied us into World War One. Hoover pledged to abolish poverty in 1928 but instead saw it skyrocket.

... Who wins the election makes no difference (with rare exceptions) because all politicians must do what the elite want. Elections are a scam whose function is to neutralize resistance movements and dupe ordinary citizens into thinking they control the state.

http://question-everything.mahost.org/
 

gff

Active member
i'd like to hear him talk about these "rare exceptions" then. really this whole site looks like parody (header quote from the matrix, you say?) ...but i've spent the last 10 hours banging on doors and prodding ppl to the polls so i am in no mood.
 

dubplatestyle

Well-known member
haha jokez on you, foolz, because whether you like it or not, the US election affects EVERYBODY this time around, even those tiny little island countries that aren't really countries. (we don't even want to get into brits who complain about bush. curb your own dog, plz.)
 

satanmcnugget

Well-known member
gff...

with all due respect for your obvious committment, isnt it somewhat telling that you had to spend so much time cajoling a sector of the populace to get out and do something that they arent usually inclined to do? the campaign to get people out to vote (which was MASSIVE this year) probably shld tell us political types something, ie. everyday people are smarter than us, as declining voter turnout in most countries attests

to the person who pointed out that the election results affect everybody...i disagree, in a sense...both Bush and Kerry are talking heads...they dont set the agenda...they are lackeys...you arent wrong...what happens in the US naturally affects everybody on the planet...they ARE top-dogz after all...but what is going to happen is what is going to happen, regardless of who is in the WH, Bush or Kerry
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
Of course sitting at home and not getting involved is smarter than going out for 5 minutes and choosing the next leader of the free world </sarcasm>

You forget that representatives and senators as well as local candidates are on the ballot as well. Or does nothing matter?

I think you give the "puppetmasters" way too much credit. While I agree that they will have a large influence no matter who is in the white house they still do not have absolute power over it. For example explain how if Kerry was elected his judicial appointments would be Christian fundies who want to overturn Roe v. Wade and suchlike as Bush's appointments are almost certain to be.

The whole thing is such a mess I doubt there's a group of people who are controlling every governmental move. They could have a guiding hand where their agendas are concerned but not in other realms. For example corn growers will keep farm subsidies around but as a group they coudln't give a fuck whether Patriot Act II is passed.
 

satanmcnugget

Well-known member
\
and choosing the next leader of the free world

who is this speaking---GWB hisself? (joking)

You forget that representatives and senators as well as local candidates are on the ballot as well. Or does nothing matter?

i wld go with nothing matters...call me a nihilist, but i have major issues with the politics of representation in general...i think it's wacko to have somebody else represent YOUR best interests for you...do they usually wind up doing what's best for you or themselves?

they still do not have absolute power over it.

no, you are correct there...nobody has absolute power over anything...but they have enough that it is still largely irrelevant who gets elected into power...power is the problem, not the solution, no matter to which degree who wields it

im not trying to say that Kerry and Bush are the same or that things wldve been exactly the same if Kerry was elected...there will naturally be minor differences...but i still think the fact that people had to be cajoled to vote (as they usually do) shows that average, everyday people arer smarter than us politicos...they know that the more you vote, the more things stay the same :D

and i think the massive propaganda campaign that exorted people to vote will backfire in the future...a lot of people who wld normally not have voted bought into it this time, and Bush still regained power...next time they just arent likely to bother...if you want real changes, youre going to have to look outside the electoral process...most people are startingto see through the sham of democracy and representative politics...i think this is to be celebrated
 
B

be.jazz

Guest
satanmcnugget said:
and i think the massive propaganda campaign that exorted people to vote will backfire in the future...a lot of people who wld normally not have voted bought into it this time, and Bush still regained power...next time they just arent likely to bother...
Why is that? I got the impression (from Bush's % going up as turnout went up) that the "people who wld normally not have voted" voted for Bush more than for Kerry.
 
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