Rigged American Democracy and its Two-Headed Beast

True democracy in the United States is today but an empty, lifeless crater scarring our land, a stark remnant of the searing ball of fire that is the Corporate Leviathan and its legions of unscrupulous puppets and leaches that occupy American politics. The halls of Washington and those of our state capitals have been besieged by the scum of the Earth, the lowliest form of humanity whose virtues are vices and morals but passions of disintegrating integrity. Our most sacred institutions of democracy have been overrun by pimps and turned into bordellos where a legal form of prostitution has spawned the most decadent years in the great history of our political system.

Today, the US government is run with the sole interests of the Leviathan in mind, by elected representatives who care not an ounce for the well-being of the masses or the future of our progeny. Instead, that breed of humankind with an insatiable addiction to power and wealth pursues agendas with their own survival and prosperity in mind. More and more, this means the eventual and shameful selling of their souls to the demons that are condemning us to the fires of Hades.

Love of the almighty dollar and her sister greed has created a system where the chosen, privileged, wealthy and powerful – that like a malignant virus walk freely through the revolving doors of Washington – cater only to those interests capable of assuring even more power, wealth and electability, thus allowing for the continuation of the status quo and their continued success and prosperity. Thus, it is in the best interest of the puppets and leaches that are our representatives to continue feeding the same system that enables them to thrive. As a result, government has turned toward protecting the hand that feeds it. In America, and increasingly throughout the globe, this is the corporate Leviathan.

The Leviathan has evolved into a most ominous creature, its sheer power and size growing unimaginably by the day at the expense of the world’s masses. Those who control the giant monolith, the elite oligarchy, have as a goal the maximization of profits and power, the accumulation of shareholder wealth, the consolidation of the methods of control and the continued and ever-expanding dominance of world governments and by consequence hegemony over the peoples of the planet. Elected officials have become the conduit by which the Leviathan assures itself of growing power and control, of expanded carte blanche authority in running its activities and in exploiting both people and land.

The vicious circle of elected officials helping out the Leviathan and the Leviathan helping out elected officials breeds a most ignoble association of cronyism, favoritism and downright corruption and debauchery. It fosters the abdication of democracy and the morphing of government and big business. It is corporatism and the intentional destruction of the idea of putting the interests of the constituency first.

In today’s world, the only constituents that matter to “our” elected officials are those entities that can legally corrupt governments through contributions, fundraisers, re-election assistance, lobbying activities, special favors and increasing power vacuums. Only those creatures that assure election and re-election through financial corruption are seen as constituents whose interests are worth fighting for. More and more, this entity is the brotherhood of corporations and the elite that control and own them.

Those with money and power, the so-called “special interests,” get access and favors from our representatives along with laws, regulations and policy decisions in tune with their interests. As we can see with the Bush administration, special interests can also get an entire domestic and foreign policy in their hands, not to mention an unmoral and unjustified war along with self-created wars against the environment and the masses. With the perpetual “war on terror” that has been forced down our throats through the politics of fear, vast interests in many industries have assured themselves of perpetual profit as well. Government policy today is created and approved by those whose decisions control the Leviathan.

And, more and more, the Leviathan and its minions are distorting and determining what is left of democracy through the purposeful manipulation and fabrication of fictions and fantasies that present a world that in reality does not now exist.

The reality that we live in and the fiction that is rammed into our conscious cannot be more different. Democracy as we perceive it has been made extinct, replaced by a mirage and a smoking mirror that in the real world does not exist. Democracy is now a system rigged by those in power who through their vast array of brainwashing tools have fooled us all into believing that we actually have a say in who is elected to office. The truth is altogether different.

Mechanisms at work by the powerful meticulously and clandestinely manipulate the masses from the start, in essence having the effect of selecting only those candidates the few at the top want running through massive media manipulation, the ever-increasing cost of financing a campaign and by supporting a candidate through selective contributions, endorsements, power and control. Usually, only those the Leviathan deems worthy – meaning those non-threatening insiders already in their pocketbook – are given access to the highest levels of American politics, in essence chosen to continue doing the work of those who now rule over government and society.

The Leviathan, after all, controls the two-headed beast that is the Republican and Democratic parties, the only parties privy to what constitutes American democracy.

From the very beginning of an election cycle, the system assures that only the “chosen ones” will run in the two-party system that has corrupted politics. Only those who the establishment believes will move forward the interests of the Leviathan and the powerful are green-lighted to continue in the election process. Usually, this comes in the form of financial backing that bankrupts those other candidates who are not supported and that cannot compete with the bundles of cash given to the chosen ones. With money gushing out of the chosen ones’ pockets, democracy is erased before it begins, eliminating from the race those not anointed by the powerful.

The two-headed beast squashes competitors, dissidents and speakers of the truth. It guarantees to itself and the establishment a two party system that has become for all intents and purposes one and the same, with only minor deviations that act more to solidify the base than to differentiate themselves. Both parties are in essence prostitutes to the Leviathan, competing only for the power and control of government that helps bring in corporate money. The battles between donkeys and elephants are struggles for winning over the favors of the Leviathan. The winners fight tooth and nail in order to eventually unbuckle their belts and bend over backwards to the dictates of corporate power.

He who controls Washington controls the flow of money. This most sought after prize has been contested for decades by the two-headed beast, at the cost of the masses who vote and at the price of politicians surrendering once cherished principles of honor and integrity. Like a pack of wolves the two-headed beast voraciously fights each other for the crumbs and bones provided by the Leviathan and the oligarchy. Determined to stay in office and grow in power the scum of the Earth forgets about the people, instead enabling the continuing decimation of land and man by the Leviathan. Accordingly, the Leviathan rewards loyalty and subservience by helping to maintain the elected slave in office and by doing everything in its power to increase his or her power.

This most symbiotic of relationships results in a win-win situation at the expense of the lowly plebeians who comprise the electorate and the nation’s citizens. We are ignored, our rights and freedoms are curtailed, our health made worse, our children’s education eviscerated, our pockets gouged, our loved ones sacrificed in war and our lives ensnarled in ever-increasing stress and work. Yet our elected representatives are made blind and deaf to the growing exploitation of the American people. In the brave new world of corporate dominance where the oligarchs have become rulers and those in Washington their proctors and high priests, a clandestine war has been unleashed against two-hundred eighty million people who have no more say in how their nation is run. We have become the serfs made ignorant through television and acquiescent through corporate media conditioning. The people have become sheeple.

The role of the Leviathan-owned corporate media in the rigging of American democracy cannot be ignored. Media has the ability to influence society through its opinions and biases, its sponsorships and coverage, its camera angles and microphone decibel levels. It can manipulate reality to its liking, in essence making or breaking a candidate with its coverage or lack thereof. Those it ignores stand not a chance; those it anoints grab the attention of a nation.

Those seeking office who champion change and truth are oftentimes ignored and abandoned by a media opposed to or critical of both. Diversity of opinion and thought is not important when the two-headed beast offers the Leviathan the only choices it wants. When the Leviathan owns corporate media and its lowly minions, we are assured of having only the two candidates those in power have chosen. He who controls the media controls the masses, after all.

Outsiders to the system, those who seek betterment for society and those who threaten the establishment stand no chance at getting fair and balanced coverage by the corporate media. Thus, they will never be elected to the office they seek. Such is the power of television and the few elite that control what we watch. Any opinion detrimental to the Leviathan or the establishment is quashed, never seen or heard by the vast majority of the country. Anything deemed a threat to the system, a truth that might awaken the slumbering mind of the sheeple is hidden from ever seeing light.

This way, only the chosen candidates of the two headed beast are introduced to the consciousness of the people while seekers of change and truth disappear over the horizon of lost opportunity. Fresh voices with great ideas that might revolutionize society are lost in time as the status quo remains, with voters having to decide between the lesser of two evils. This year, it is the choice of voting either for a grave and growing menace capable of dastardly deeds that is sending the nation into the sewers of fecal matter or a much lesser evil preserving corporate control over our lives. Unfortunately, the system run by the two-headed beast leaves us only two choices of similar parties, corruption and morals subservient only to the rich and powerful.

The indelible rise and fall of Howard Dean is a case study in corporate media and Leviathan interference and decimation of a candidate. Dean, through his beliefs, speeches and policies represented a growing threat to the Leviathan, its corporate media, the establishment in Washington and to the Democratic party itself. He had hit a chord with millions of dissatisfied and pessimistic Americans, waking in them a flame long made extinguished by the mediocrity of the two-headed beast. Dean started a movement that threatened to unseat the establishment and create a new dawn in American society. This movement could not and would not be allowed to survive.

As a result, he was assassinated by the corporate media and its army of spineless so-called “journalists.” Distorting reality , hyping fiction, promoting negative stories and pushing the biased opinions of hit men-like pundits and political commentators into the national limelight, the corporate media targeted Dean until he became a mere shadow of his former self. The nation was bombarded with negative images and commentary of Dean, blitzkrieged into our homes before the Dean movement could monopolize the momentum that instead went to John Kerry, the establishment’s “anointed one.”

The scream heard around the world was manipulated from what it really was, shown over 700 times on national television, each time with negative comments and opinions, helping push the national conscious away from supporting Dean and his movement. An outsider was left to hang on the gallows of television; the threat of change and of awakening the masses was finally and forcefully executed. Dean went from front runner to also-ran overnight, thanks to a complicit corporate media that pushed every single negative angle, every single negative observation and piece of bad news onto the American people. The threat could not survive past Iowa, it could not be allowed to gain momentum. The outsider, critical of the Washington establishment, telling us certain unalienable truths that those in power preferred better left unsaid was torn apart by the powers that be. Democracy, rigged and manipulated.

Hidden in the bottomless pit of lies and deceptions lay the truth, secured in its chains for at least four more years. The dungeons of destruction have claimed yet another victim, serving as an example to anyone else who dares question authority and those with the power and control. He who boldly takes on the establishment is through carefully placed firewalls rendered impotent. The symbiotic relationship of the Leviathan and the two-headed beast has been made safe, and 280 million Americans have been made worse as a result.

The Dean example proves that a fresh wind of change will not be allowed to fester and grow; it will not be allowed to awaken the drone-like lives of the masses. There is too much money to be made, too much power to be distributed. There is too much control to be garnered. Dean made mistakes, as do all politicians, but when under the intense microscope of the corporate media waiting for any error or opening, those mistakes were multiplied by a million-fold. Dean spoke truths that the establishment wanted to remain hidden among the amalgam of lies, and, in the end, he got burned and sent back to Vermont a defeated man.

In today’s world of politics, only well connected, well financed men and women can hope to attain higher office. Only those willing to sacrifice ethics, morals and virtues in exchange for dishonor and lack of integrity should seek refuge in the cesspool of waste that has become Washington D.C. Catering to the dictates of the Leviathan, taking its money and influence and becoming its string-laced puppet assures the prospective politician of a greater chance at success. With the incredible amount of money needed to run for Congress or the Presidency, only those who can raise millions can run, only those well connected, those born into privilege and those willing to prostitute themselves to the commands of the Leviathan can realistically hope to one day claim victory.

The system we call democracy is rigged; the candidates who will eventually run being chosen many months before the election even commences. Corporate media is used as a conduit to manipulate citizens into falling for and choosing one contender or another. Only those who raise millions upon millions before being nominated stand a chance at being elected. The elite oligarchy must be satisfied with the person running, they must be subservient slaves to the Leviathan, unscrupulous beings willing to throw away the keys necessary to the betterment of the masses. Only those candidates who are part of the establishment, those endowed with the vices of compulsive lying and distortion and with the uncanny ability to mangle truths are selected to run.

Our system of elections and representative democracy is rigged. We are given two preordained options, representing not us but the interests of the corporations. Outsiders are destroyed, diverse opinion squashed. The streets of Washington are infested with the worst of America, connivers and scoundrels, those whose soul has been sold to society’s demons. Our collective future is in the claws of vipers and vampires, thieves and murderers, only caring to maintain themselves in power and prestige not by doing what is right for us but what is wrong for society. Our lives, health and happiness are being sacrificed to the almighty dollar, to the great idol that is the omnipresent Leviathan.

Focus groups and polls decide a politician’s policy and opinion; their thoughts determined not by independent reasoning and analysis but by what their political consultants tell them will garner the most votes. Seeking truth and justice is second fiddle to seeking power and influence. We are being used and lied to in order to elect traveling salesmen to high office. They play with our emotions, they exacerbate our fears. Through the politics of fear they divide us, scare us into voting against our own interests. In the end, nothing changes, we are made worse off, the country continues its decadent fall into the nadir of despoilment and the Leviathan’s powers only continue to grow to the zenith of crony capitalism and debauched democracy.

From the bowels of Hades the negative energy called greed pilfers upwards, reaching our highest offices where the most important decisions affecting our future are made. Our so-called leaders have been infected, becoming the blind worker bees of the Leviathan. The corruption is now rampant; the honor and integrity nonexistent. Democracy rigged and manipulated, the system is now but a microcosm of its former self. The anointed few are placed on a pedestal, our only options in a democracy that has become a façade. One and the same, the two-headed beast roars its approval, knowing that yet another election approaches without threats, awakenings and the truth.

The rigging of our democracy has succeeded yet again, clandestinely and systematically the establishment has assured itself of allegiance and the status quo. Power, privilege, wealth and connections, lack of virtue and morals, egotism, selfishness and greed, using the masses to eventually exploit them; all the ingredients necessary for a successful politician to arrive like a pestilence in Washington and continue the cycle that has been set in motion by past and present elected officials that is leading to the now apparent fall of the great Empire called the United States of America.

In the end we all suffer as the two-headed beast continues its dominance and monopoly. Corporate media manipulates whatever interests it wants furthered and selects who it wants running the country. The growing power of the Leviathan is eviscerating our democracy and way of life. Diverse opinion and discussion is rapidly disappearing, the corporation’s many interests are bombarded into our homes, manipulating us in so many ways, in essence making of us brain-dead automatons complacent to witness the rape and pillage of our treasure and our society.

Rigged American democracy and the two-headed beast today walk freely through the entrails of our country, unhindered and without threats, confident that all that has been will remain, that hibernating primates we will continue to be. The political game of hide and seek will continue, baiting and switching us into voting one way or another, lying and deceiving, cajoling and conniving, promising fictions and concocting what we want to hear but hiding what we are afraid is true, dividing us into groups and subgroups, continuing to rule over our daily lives just as the omnipotent Leviathan has commanded.

We have no one to blame but our ignorant and submissive selves. For those who seek change first look inwards and change themselves. A society that allows itself to be exploited and manipulated eventually finds that its inability to act results in one day awakening from its long slumber only to find broken remnants of a once cherished way of life. The erosion has begun, and the swiftness by which the rock foundations will erode will be difficult to comprehend.

Promises broken and assertions unkept, relegated to choosing the one who lies the best. The conundrum that is the future of American democracy and its two-headed beast is waiting to be answered.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net

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