Oligarchy Wins
In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
By Gregg Wall (11-12-2022)
Thank Goddess that’s over. The every other November circus came and went this year, in America, and no surprise, the winners were failed duopoly and oligarchy.
As of this writing… the Senate and House are neck and neck, a tossup between GOP and Dem control (w/ more of an edge to the Republicans in the House). Absolutely perfect for enshrining the failure that is the Holy Grail of American politics, the contrived necessity of bipartisan support (which exists in no parliamentary democracy in the world). The odious bipartisan support, where the only thing that ever passes is trillions and trillions in corporate welfare, Wall St bailouts, tax cuts for billionaire donors and multinationals, and satanic sums of money for the DOD, empire, endless war, the MIC, and wholesale mass murder around the globe.
Drilling deeper, the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, over Dem incompetence: when an arrogant, fascist SCOTUS attacked American women & destroyed federal abortion protections & rights; Senator Graham – the Queen of the Senate (?) - did his part, by pushing forward authoritarian legislation, dictating draconian control over women & their bodies; The Fuhrer also did his part, as the Orange Wonder received saturated national media attention, which reminded Americans as to why they voted him out in the first place; demographics played a key role too… as the GOP boomer base of support has been dying off and is physically being killed off by right-wing media & anti-vax, anti-science conspiracy theories (paint me crazy, but perhaps it’s not a great idea to spread these lies, essentially killing off your political base of support?). Which might explain why the GOP is desperately looking forward to a coup, to save the more rabid & sensitive members of the white race?
Possibly the coup de gras for the GOP’ red tide… was the entire inflation narrative. Seems many Americans, correctly, saw past the GOP lies and did not view a gov check -- that mercifully, saved them & their children during the pandemic -- as the source of inflation; but Americans instead, correctly, saw America’s big oil, billionaires, cartels, monopolies, and Wall St collecting aircraft carrier loads of money, in a price gouging orgy, as the source of the nation’s ‘inflation’ phenomenon.
The Dems too, were at their very worst… having done the classic bait & switch over the last two years, the party is now famous for. BBB was barely even mentioned by Dem party leaders and their boot licking lackeys in the MSM didn’t hold the party to account. Gone missing for tens of millions of Americans, who voted Biden & Crew into office, were the promised: child tax credit; childcare; tuition free college; minimum wage gone with the wind; universal pre-K out; affordable housing gone; Medicare For All option finito; cannabis legalization up in smoke; and long-term healthcare out.
To save themselves, the Dems did the absolute minimum with student loan forgiveness, but Biden did this in such a bungled manner, or deliberate manner (???) … that the entire fiasco is now being held up in the courts (conveniently, right after the election; and also conveniently, right after the youth vote showed up to save the Democratic party’s bacon).
You really can’t make this stuff up.
Some might suggest the American news media and the pollsters failed yet again. But if the corporatist, centrist MSM’ job is to drum up support for establishment Dems, and fear and loathing over MAGA and Trump republicans…. did the talking heads and the punditocracy in fact fail? You decide.
Aside from the failed duopoly and oligarchy, which can’t lose in our rigged system of government, shockingly, the other big winner Tuesday night was direct democracy and by that, I mean referendums. In referendum after referendum, the American people, correctly, chose civil-liberties, democracy, freedom, and their economic interests… over corporatism, centrism, avarice, neoliberalism, and the establishment.
I’m talking cannabis and magic mushroom legalization, elimination of the sub-minimum wage, medical debt crackdowns, abortion rights, workers’ rights referendums, expanded Medicaid, and in Massachusetts, single payer healthcare. Again and again, the people spoke in referendums and the overwhelming consensus… what the MSM call ‘centrist’ is nothing short of fascism and libertarian & corporatist propaganda. The American people overwhelmingly support state solutions, progressive solutions, and dare I say it, socialism and civil liberties.
Which explains why the corrupt two parties hate choice and democracy, and the billionaires and oligarchy flat out fear it (see the incomprehensible sums of money the oligarchy pours into America’s political system to rig outcomes in their favor).
Amidst the fear and loathing, our twisted and moribund political system, corrupt gerontocracy, a fascist monopoly – slave wage - economy in crisis… and the hope & promise we saw in youth turnout and referendum vote … is the failed nature of the duopoly itself. Which brings up questions, why a duopoly? Who does the duopoly serve? Why does the number of unaffiliated American voters (i.e., independents) grow and grow? If America truly is the bastion of freedom and the beacon of light… why in the name of all that is good, would the establishment try to shoehorn the American people into two parties, that increasingly work entirely against the nation’s and the people’s interests?
To answer these questions, let’s look at the nature of economic duopoly, which is hegemonic economic power, between two entities. The two parties collude to set price; the two economic parties collude on setting wages for labor and their offerings to consumers. And most deceptively, the illusion of choice is provided by an economic duopoly. A political duopoly is no different. The two American political parties agree on economic policy, libertarian ideology, the primacy of markets (even as markets breakdown and fail, again and again, propped up by government). The two parties are nearly identical on foreign, fiscal, monetary, tax, industrial, & labor policies. Ignore the rhetoric and examine the outcome and you see, on these issues & policies, the two parties are nearly identical.
To keep the pretense & illusion of democracy and choice alive, in America, we have the endless food fight over women’s & minority rights, civil-liberties, guns, Bibles, theocracy. Issues that in every other G7 nation have long since, for the most part, been put to bed. Please understand, I’m not making light of any of these issues. But as important, who does the political food fight serve? Does the food fight provide cover, smoke, and mirrors for other activities, like the looting of the US government for Wall St bailouts, corporate welfare, and endless war, et al.? Notice carefully, how much time did any of the hundreds of candidates actually spend talking about our failed libertarian economy and bankrupting foreign policies?
Something else came to mind, when I was thinking about our precious duopoly, and it reminds me of the Cold War, Game Theory, and Mutual Assured Destruction… all of which held sway over an East-West world for nearly half the 20th century, in terms of global economics and foreign policy.
The idea that the world’s safety was dependent upon the threat that if either party, in a binary world, launched a nuclear first strike, the other party would respond in massive retaliation (and the world would be destroyed). It seems that America’s duopoly frames the nation in a similar dual construct… both parties, Dem & GOP, frame the other party in the same binary terms, good versus evil. Light versus darkness? Failure to support one party over the other means extinction.
Who does that serve, when half the nation is pitted against the other half in a perennial, political Civil War? If you answered oligarchy, you’d be correct. Americans, however, as we saw with the 2022 referendums, are increasingly beginning to assert their rights and are thinking outside the establishment’s artificial binary paradigm.
And that gives me hope. The two-party system is rancid, well past its expiration date, the anthesis of democracy, and needs to go.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022
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