Timothy Gatto

The political theatre in Washington is nothing but a media show to keep the masses under control in order to keep them ignorant of what the real situation is. This charade that the Democrats and Republicans are delivering to the people makes the masses believe that there is real division and that is the result of electing their representatives to the House and Senate and they come to believe that they have a choice.

They have no choice. They are led to the voting booths by the same people that engineered who will run for office. The candidates are well vetted by background checks and by interviews to make sure that they are going to be “handled” easily. The people running for office are funded by large corporations and lobbies. The candidates are dependent on the groups that got them elected.

The sad truth is…we have no real representation in Congress. The game is fixed, the two political parties in America are corporately owned and we, the 99% that Senator Bernie sanders talked about in his article The Soul of America, have no real wealth compared to the 1% of millionaires and billionaires that truly run this country. We are allowed to vote for the corporately sponsored candidates and we end up voting not for whom we want, but for the lesser of two evils.

Wait a minute you may be thinking, Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders are in Congress and they aren’t corporately controlled. What of that? Well I have to say that Sanders comes from a very left-leaning state and Ron Paul is wildly popular in his district. We lost Ron Paul, he left Congress. We have Bernie Sanders now, one voice in the Senate against 99 others.

A dismal future is ahead for the majority of Americans. The Democrats, for all their bluster about “the middle class” have forged alliances with the rich and the powerful. The nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of State is nothing but an illusion for the masses. The truth about Hagel is that unless he came on board willing to work for and complete the President’s agenda, he would never have been nominated for that post. We will see more military posturing and more military involvement in regional conflicts like the death and destruction rained down on Libya and what is going on now in Syria with the US and it’s “allies” propping up the Salafi-led militias that are using car bombs to kill civilians and using them as human shields when fighting the army that is thoroughly loyal to President Bashir al-Assad. The man Scott Pelly calls “The Dictator” on CBS News.

We hear the mass media jumping on board to castigate President Hugo Chavez as he fights for his life in a Cuban hospital. The man responsible for nationalizing the oilfields of Venezuela which is the real reason he is defamed in America, brought his nation to 100% literacy. That is something we cannot do in the United States! He has delivered national healthcare to all Venezuelans and his Bolivarian revolution has given the peasants and the middle-class in that country hope. But here in America, we are led to believe that he is a dictator and anti-American. This is the truth; Venezuela was the first foreign government to offer aid to victims of Katrina. He also subsidized heating oil for U.S citizens in the Northeast.

I have been silent for a few months. After the election that meant nothing to me, I was out of words to describe the way I felt inside. I needed time to digest what had happened to my country. I think I know now that our Federal government in actuality is meaningless to me. They don’t represent my views and I am confident that they don’t represent 99% of my fellow citizens’ views. The government of the United States no longer represents the will of the American people.

This Administration and the Administration of the previous regime has gutted our Constitutional rights. They have destroyed Posse Comitatus which prevented the President from using the military for law enforcement. The FISA Laws, The Patriot Act, The John Warner Defense bill, and now the NDAA has left all Americans vulnerable. Once a person is declared a “terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer” they have no rights. They can be held indefinitely without a hearing, indefinitely until the end of hostilities, in other words…forever.

We live in a dictatorship of the rich and powerful. We live under a fascist government. This may be the “softer” side of fascism, but the powers that be have are the same powers that the government of Germany had in World War II. We spend 56% of our budget on the military and cry that we have a deficit in the budget. The government works for the corporate interests and the interests of the defense contractors. Obama may publically bewail the state of our infrastructure, but no real funding is forthcoming.

Everything you see and hear on mainstream media is a facade. The news we get is orchestrated and censored by the powers that run this nation. Our whole system of government has collapsed. Grassroots movements like Occupy are infiltrated by government spies and informers and the people in the fusion centers (The CIA, FBI, and NSA, State and Local police, Homeland Security, FEMA and a host of others). Occupy never stood a chance.

Still, the American people are not blind. They may be diverted from the truth by the pop culture that is forced on them much like the Romans were diverted by the games in the Coliseum… the “Bread and Circuses” model of government. As long as the people derive their pleasure from the phony model of life that is presented to them by the heavily censored networks, they will continue to be diverted.

The only way out of this situation is to educate the people of the United States. It doesn’t matter if a person had an MBA or a PHD. Education has nothing to do with ignorance. The word ignorant is telling. They ignore the facts that just don’t add up. Here I would like to point out that NO sailors on the USS Carl Vincent saw any body go overboard the night the government claims to have buried Osama Bin Laden at sea. When things just don’t add up, somebody is lying.

People need to talk to other people. The people that are reading this article know what time it is. They need to inform their friends and relatives about what they know. This is not an easy task. People are so indoctrinated by the mass media and so inured to the dysfunctional government we have that they don't want to hear about the truth. They way to get through to them is by telling them about the disparity between the rich and the poor. Another way to get through to people is by getting rid of any labels you may carry. Don’t let them talk about the current situation between the Republicans and the Democrats. That reality is no reality at all. Congress is a side-show to distract the people from the truth. Tell them that the disparity in wealth hasn’t been this great since 1928.

Tell them about the dictatorial laws that have given the Executive Branch power to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely without trial or representation. Tell them that he has already killed two American citizens without trial. Tell them about Anwar al-Alaki died in a drone strike and the next week his son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, 16 years old and born in America. Robert Gibbs said about this and I quote “that he should have had a more responsible father”. So that was worthy of a death sentence, he was an American, we should all grieve for him. Something is wrong in Washington.

All that this is what is. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. If it is controlled by the corporate structure in collusion with the military and the defense contractors it must be fascist. That, according to Benito Mussolini is the very definition of fascism.

Most people in America are waiting for something to happen. Most don’t know or don’t want to know what the real truth is. One third of the people living in America were for the Revolution, one third was against it and one-third didn’t give a damn, according to the History Channel’s series The American Revolution. We only need to wake up a few more people. That is the next big thing.

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Tim Gatto's new book "Contempt to Outrage" available from Oliver Arts and Open Press.

By Timothy V. Gatto, a retired Army Sergeant and former Chairman of The Liberal Party of America. He can be reached at: timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim's Book "Complicity to Contempt" and his Novel "Kimchee Days or Stoned Cold Warriors From Oliver Arts and Open Press and available on Amazon and all other online bookstores.