American Democracy: A Dead Man Walking
By Paul
Craig Roberts
May 03,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming
on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is
instructive. We have now had a Democratic
president who sold out the people who elected
him and a Republican president who has done the
same thing. This is a very interesting point,
the meaning of which most people miss.
But not
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the
Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western
democracy, which I paraphrase as follows:
In
the West, voters cannot change policies through
elections, because the ruling elites control
whoever is elected. Elections give the
appearance of democracy, but voting does not
change the policies that favor war and the
elites. Therefore, the will of the people is
impotent.
People are experiencing that they and their
votes have no influence on the conduct of
affairs of the country. This makes them afraid,
frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions
that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in
response organize the powers of the state
against the people, while urging them with
propaganda to support more wars.
Obama
promised to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq or
perhaps it was both. He promised to reverse the
police state created by the George W. Bush
regime. He promised to focus American resources
on American domestic problems, such as health
care.
But
what did he do? He expanded the wars and
launched new ones, destroyed Libya and attempted
to destroy Syria, but was stopped by British
non-participation and Russian objection. Obama
overthrew democratic governments in Honduras and
Ukraine. He expanded the police state. He began
the demonization of Russia and Putin. He
betrayed the American people again by allowing
the private insurance industry to write his
health care plan known as Obamacare. The private
interests wrote a plan that diverts public
monies from health care to their profits.
All of
this is forgotten when the ruling elites and the
presstitutes that serve only them refocused the
demonization on Trump. Suddenly, it was the
president-elect of the United States who was the
main danger to the US and the American people.
Trump was a Russian agent. He had conspired with
Putin to steal the US election from Hillary
Clinton and make the White House a partner of
Putin’s alleged reconsruction of the Soviet
Empire.
The
nonsense was hot and furious, and it was
effective. Trump succumbed to pressure and
sacrificed his National Secuity Advisior, who
was supportive of Trump’s promise to normalize
relations with Russia. Trump replaced him with a
Russophobic idiot who apparantly cannot wait to
see mushroom clouds over cities all over the
Western world.
Why did
two presidents in succession completely sell out
the people who voted for them?
The
answer is that presidents are not as powerful as
the interest groups who make the decisions.
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Trump
was going to get us out of Syria, so he
committed an unambigious war crime by
gratuitously attacking Syria with Tomahawk
missiles.
Trump
was going to normalize relations with Russia, so
his Secretary of State announces that US
economic sanctions will stay on Russia until
Russia hands over to Ukraine the Russian Crimean
naval base on the Black Sea.
It is
impossible to normalize relations when the cost
to the other party of the normalization is
national suicide.
Despite
Trump’s complete surrender to the powers that
be, today (May 2) on NPR I heard raw propaganda
dressed up as “expert opinion” that Trump is
biased against the media, when what all of us
have seen is massive media bias against Trump,
including the program to which I was listening.
For
example, NPR had accumulated “experts” who said
that Trump had slandered Obama by accusing him
of intercepting his comunications. NPR said
nothing about the Obama regime’s charge that
Trump conspired with Putin to steal the election
from Hillary Clinton.
If
anything was slander, this was, but all the talk
was about how Obama could sue Trump.
But, of
course, both are public figures, and neither can
sue the other.
I
wonder why NPR’s “expert” didn’t get around to
this point.
Why is
the ruling oligarchy still using its
presstitutes to campaign against a president who
has surrendered to them?
Perhaps
the answer is that the real powers that be are
going to make an example out of Trump so that
never again does a person running for elected
office make a populist appeal to the electorate.
Dr.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
