UNCOUNTED: The True Story of the California Primary
When Hillary Clinton claimed victory in California, a staggering 40% of the total ballots had not been counted. Why? because they were “provisional.”
What does a “provisional ballot” mean? Non-US citizens need to venture into the labyrinthine nature of the presidential electoral process to understand that. But put simply, as worst case scenario it’s a way of allowing people to vote while being able to ensure their votes almost certainly will not count.
Given this, it may not be surprising that US elections are ranked lowest among all western “democracies” for fairness and transparency.
Do watch this documentary and ask yourself the following…
– How would the “international community” and the mainstream media react if this level of chaos, confusion, incompetence and open fraud had been reported during the 2012 Russian presidential election?
– How many articles would you have seen by now in the Guardian, NYT, WaPo et al condemning Russian “tyranny and corruption”?
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California puts the ‘mock’ in democracy.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
Refer readers to Greg Palasts ‘California Primary: Returning to the Scene of Crime’ for further understanding. To quote Mr Palast, America does have the best Democracy money can buy.
Even if the vote tabulating process wasn’t the “shit show” that it is, if, to quote a line from P.C. Roberts, “the military-security complex, Wall Street, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness and the extractive industries of energy, timber and mining, have long exercised more control over government than the people,” you would still not have a process that is democratic. Not only does ‘capital’ purchase the allegiance of politicians, “it” decides from among whom the electorate get to elect their so called representatives as well as the “issues” on which the representatives campaign. The real issue is whether or not you can possibly have anything like a democracy under conditions wherein you have a ruling class that is in every way economically and politically ascendant over every other class in society. You cannot. To my mind, then, although this documentary does a good job of demonstrating what a logistical farce American elections are in their substance, it tends to miss the crux of what I take should be the focus of any analysis about the democratic nature, or lack thereof, of elections under the dictatorship of capital.
One needs to ask, for example, whether at the end of the day, it would make any substantive difference to anyone living in America, or in the shadow of this global imperialistic hegemon, whether it is Hillary or Bernie or the Donald who sits in the Oval Office. Whatever differences may exist, if any, they are of merely a tactical kind, the ultimate end remaining the same: to maximize profits for the transnational industrial and financial cartels. That’s the defining executive purpose of the presidential office and nothing else besides.
Of course, you are quite right to suggest that if the sort of “shit show” that is the spectacle of American elections found its analogue in Russia, there would be no end
to the stream of denunciations and exposures of Russian “tyranny and corruption,” and not because by sheer coincidence that would in fact be the truth of the matter, but rather that by a stroke of sheer good luck the truth would have aligned to the purpose of demonizing Russia in preparation for war.
On the other hand, the question might well be worth pursuing: is Russia indeed more democratic than the West? To my mind, the answer depends on the degree to which its economy privileges or curtails the prerogatives of ‘capital, of private ownership in the means of production, of the pursuit of profits at the expense of a working class utterly expropriated in those means of production. That the West seems to be prepared to gamble everything and go to war with the Russians, I think, is in this respect telling.
US politics have long been a complete farce. As Gilens of Princeton and Page of Northwestern University showed (and as commonsense and observation verify)the USA is an oligarchy where the interests of the rich elites are the almost total concern of the US Congress, and those of the population are almost completely ignored. And Clinton is the preferred candidate of, among others, the US Israel Lobby, which make 60% of ‘contributions’ to the Democrats. ‘Democracy’ and Free Market capitalism are totally and irrevocably antithetical. The whole farce of primaries, debates and elections is just a Bunraku play where we must simply ignore the puppeteers manipulating the political marionettes.
A Bunraku play, indeed, as the puppeteers are in full view.