by Stephen Lendman

US elections mock legitimacy. Farcical by any standard. Meaningless kabuki theater.

Entrenched duopoly power alone represented. Big Money controlled. Debauched beyond repair.

Candidates bought like toothpaste. Interchangeable pre-selected, pre-packaged cardboard cutouts.

Mindless of popular interests. Shamelessly ignored. Disappearing in plain sight.

No matter which duopoly power wing controls things. Both replicating each other. On issues mattering most.

Including corporate empowerment. Advancing America's imperium. Waging permanent wars. Enforcing police state harshness.

Redistributing wealth to corporate crooks and super-rich elites already with too much. Making the world safe for monied interests.

At the expense of ordinary people struggling more than ever to get by. One missed paycheck from homelessness, hunger and despair.

Mocking democratic legitimacy. Pure fantasy and then some. The world's greatest scam. None whatever exists. For sure not now.

America the beautiful works for privileged elites alone. Wealthy powerful interests own it. Lock, stock, government, media, markets, and money supply mattering most.

In complete charge of running things. Choosing presidents, governors and other public officials. Puppets serving their interests.

We the People entirely shut out. With no say whatever on issues mattering most.

The Constitution's general welfare clause (Article I, Section 8) is meaningless. Stating "Congress shall have power to.provide for (the) general welfare of the United States."

Meaning everyone equitably and fairly. What never was, isn't now, and won't ever be under a system beholden to wealth, power privilege alone.

Crime bosses run things. America's criminal class is bipartisan. Complicit with Wall Street and other corporate crooks.

Accountable to themselves alone. Stiff-arming responsible governance. None whatever exists.

Governing extrajudicially. Elections legitimizing the illegitimate. Phony by any standard.

Fascism masquerading as democracy. Wrapped in the American flag.

Representing unprecedented concentrated wealth and power. Repressive Big Business/Big Government/Big Brother collusion.

Novelist, political/social critic Sinclair Lewis saw in coming. During the Great Depression. Recounted in his novel titled "It Can't Happen Here."

About Merzelium "Buzz" Windrip's rise to power. Obama's fictional equivalent. A charismatic, self-styled reformer/populist champion.

A con man writ large. Serving entrenched interests. Exploiting human misery. Capitalizing on hard times.

Establishing militarized unconstitutional governance. Making state terror official policy.

Calling opposition elements traitors. Trying them in military tribunals.

Destroying democracy. Usurping dictatorial powers. The equivalent of Obama's diktat rule.

Institutionalizing tyranny. Putting political enemies in concentration camps. The equivalent of today's US gulag.

It can happen here, said Lewis. Rule of law principles don't matter. Obama exceeds the worst of his predecessors. His rap sheet is long and loathsome.

Presiding over a homeland police state apparatus. Rubber-stamped by Congress and courts. Including the nation's highest. Legitimizing fascist governance.

Tuesday's electoral results change nothing. Business as usual persists. Same old, same old one-sidedness. Ruthlessness. Lawlessness. Dark side policymaking.

Including permanent wars. Without mercy or restraint. Against invented enemies.

Making the world safe for monied interests. Carving up whole continents for profit. Controlling world resources.

Exploiting people at home and abroad. Seeking unchallenged global dominance. Believing genocidal mass slaughter and destruction are small prices to pay.

Making America's dark side darker. Reflecting might over right. Means justifying ends.

The supreme law of the land is farcical. Meaningless. The Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper," said George Bush.

Declaring himself a "unitary president." A "bald-faced assertion of presidential supremacy dressed up in legalistic mumbo jumbo," explained the late Chalmers Johnson.

Obama operates the same way. Usurping diktat powers. Superseding rule of law principles. Making Murder, Inc. official US policy. With secret kill lists.

Appointing himself judge, jury and executioner. Summary judgment writ large. Indefinite detentions or assassinations.

No Miranda rights, due process or judicial fairness. Guilt by accusation suffices. Designated state enemies marked for elimination.

Deploying special forces death squads in over 130 countries. CIA agents operating everywhere. Licensed to kill, torture and/or make political opponents disappear.

Militarizing America. At federal, state and local levels. Targeting dissenters for elimination.

Former White House chief of staff/current illegitimate Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel calls it "cold-blooded (thinking) about the self-interests of your nation."

Longstanding Washington rules apply. Superseding inviolable international, constitutional and US statute laws.

Anything goes is official policy. Ends justify means. Promises are made to be broken.

Wars rage without end. New ones are planned. Killing like sport continues daily. No one is safe anywhere.

Expect business as usual to continue. Seamlessly when the 114th Congress convenes on January 3, 2015. For Obama's final two years in office.

Succeeded by someone worse than him in January 2017. Republican or Democrat doesn't matter.

Each largely a replica of the other. Meaningless rhetoric alone separating them. Representing governance of, by and for wealthy powerful interests only.

Making America unfit to live in. Dark times keep getting darker. Nothing in prospect looks promising.

Rule of law constraints don't apply. Anything goes persists. Accountability a figure of speech. Things a hair's breadth from full-blown tyranny.

Media scoundrels pretend otherwise. More on this below. On November 5, Obama repeated one Big Lie after another. Commenting on Tuesday's elections.

Saying he has "a unique responsibility to try and make this town work." Claiming he "want(s) (voters) to know (he) hear(s) them."

Despite nearly six years in office stiff-arming them. Betraying them. Breaching every major promise made.

Waging war on freedom at home and abroad. Serving monied interests at the expense of popular ones. Assuring more of the same ahead.

Ludicrously saying he'll spend "every moment of the next two-plus years doing my job the best I can to keep this country safe and to make sure that more Americans share in its prosperity."

Governing polar opposite since day one in office. Saying one thing. Doing another. Lying to the public claiming otherwise.

Taking credit for nonexistent "real progress." Ignoring protracted Main Street Depression conditions.

Waging war on humanity. At home and abroad. Planning more death and destruction ahead.

"America has big things to do," he said. Hugely destructive ones he didn't explain.

His dirty hands bear full responsibility. Complicit Washington policymakers share it.

Threatening humanity's survival. World peace hangs by a thread.

On November 5, New York Times editors headlined "Mr. Obama's Offer to Republicans," saying:

"He (won't) sit around doing nothing…(He'll) continue to demand a higher minimum wage and new spending on public works, and expansion of early education programs."

"Republicans ran on no message," said Times editors. Mindless that both parties are two sides of the same coin. Deceptively pretending otherwise.

Calling Obama "justified in sticking with 'the principles that we're fighting for,' which got him elected twice…"

"Creating job opportunit(ies) by expanding the economy." Wrecking it to serve Wall Street and other corporate favorites.

Causing protracted Main Street Depression conditions. Nightmarish for growing millions.

Eliminating vital social benefits when most needed. Don't expect Times editors to explain.

Or Washington Post ones. Saying Obama should seize nonexistent "moral high ground…" Work cooperatively with Republicans.

Pursue "deals on trade, taxes, infrastructure and other policies…" Mindless that bipartisan policies serve special interests alone. Not popular ones.

More so now than any previous time in modern memory. WaPo editors didn't explain.

Nor Wall Street Journal ones. Reveling in Tuesday's Republican electoral "shellacking."

Calling the new 114th Congress a "growth and reform" one. "(U)p to Republicans to drive the policies to lift economic growth and reform government," they said.

Mindless that so-called reform is deform. Polar opposite what's needed. A total makeover.

Real democracy. Not plutocracy like today's governance. Don't expect media scoundrels to explain.

In lockstep with entrenched interests. Against popular ones. More than ever now.

It bears repeating. Nothing in prospect looks promising. Dark times keep getting darker.

Monied interests run things. Ordinary people have no say.

Unrepresented in Washington, state capitals and local municipalities. On their own out of luck.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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