Timothy Gatto

All of us really need to stop getting involved in distractions and look at what has happened in the last few

months. When I talk about distractions, I'm talking about the Zimmerman trial, the royal baby in England and the Republican attacks on women in Texas and other States. I'm not saying that these issues are not important (except for Kate's baby), some of them are. The point I'm making here is that these events are monopolizing the news while important issues are being hidden from the public by the mainstream media.

This is known as distraction and the government has been using it for a long time. The idea is to keep the people occupied with issues that may be sensational and important, but in reality they are hiding events that are occurring that the powers that be don't want the people looking at. I'm going to present some things in this article that the government doesn't want the people dwelling on.

One of the most important issues that the government wishes would go away is the fact that the NSA is monitoring every phone call. tweet, email and online communication of every person in America. This isn't all, they are also eavesdropping on communications of other nations, even their closest allies. The government doesn't want the people dwelling on the fact that we have absolutely no privacy. They also don't want people reading about how outraged other nations are over U.S. clandestine activities. The truth is that the government would like everyone to be involved in issues such as gay marriage, abortion, celebrity worship and forest fires.

Americans are slowly accepting the idea that the government is recording and storing every form of communication made electronically. Still, this is not the only thing they wish to keep from becoming front page news. Recently Chris Hedges and others have lost their suit over the NDAA. This means that not only can the government intercept and monitor every electronic communication in the nation, they can now legally send the military to a citizen's house and arrest anyone that they believe has ties to terrorists and detain them indefinitely, with no formal charges, until the end of this "War on Terror". This in itself should horrify people but since the mainstream media is ignoring it and they haven't made a movie about it, most Americans don't know about what is happening and most of the people that do know are accepting it.

Meanwhile, except for the outrage over the Zimmerman verdict that did a great job in polarizing people in America, people continue to believe that they live under a benevolent democracy. They refuse to believe that this President and his Administration have nothing but kind words and good intentions, Democrats rail against the Republicans and Conservatives while the so-called right demonizes Democrats and leftists. Democrats believe that if they could only elect more Democrats and gain control over the House of Representatives and maintain control of the Senate, that all will be well.

Another distraction is the possibility of Hillary Clinton making a bid for the presidency in 2016. There are people who believe that this tough, no-nonsense woman will bring back an era of real democratic rule. Nothing could be further from the truth. The facts are that Clinton is cut from the same cloth as almost every politician in Washington. She supported and endorsed the war in Libya that was waged by Sunni Jihadists against the government there and turned Libya into a bombed out shell of a country that is for all purposes (except oil extraction by the Western powers), a failed state. Clinton managed to threaten Russia and China on numerous occasions and has ties to the World Bank and the IMF. Hillary Clinton is no shining example of Democratic virtue.

Today, former President Jimmy Carter proclaimed that the United States has ceased to be a Democratic nation. "America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time." Carter said speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel. Carter also criticized the NSA's domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation's principles.

This is not a hot-headed leftist making this charge, it is a former President of the United States! Still, most people in America are content to try and change the direction of this country by voting for the corporately financed politician that they choose to run for office. When it comes to electing a President, people will be asked to choose between someone with extreme views and someone that is slightly more palatable. The lesser of two evils. The other political parties will be invisible to the electorate compared to the heavily financed corporately run duopoly. Americans will still believe that they have a choice when in reality, they have no choice at all.

The question of the 21st Century is when will the American people realize that their government that they portray as a shining example for the rest of the planet has morphed into an oligarchy that is run by the wealthy on the backs of its citizens? We are being watched and recorded. We have no defense against arrest and incarceration if the government deems that we are terrorists or support a terrorist organization. The people that designate exactly who or what is a terrorist organization is unclear. Perhaps the government will publish a manual of who it is we are to avoid. God forbid we talk we talk about such things.

Distractions are on the menu for the mainstream media. CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX and MSNBC will delve into them in detail. They have told us who Edward Snowden is, where he lives and everything about his personal life, but they have failed to tell us what he actually revealed. News outlets such as the Guardian, Press TV (Iranian) and RT (Russian) have informed the American people, just as they have told us that it is the "Rebels" in Syria using Saran gas, and it is the "Rebels" that are cutting out the hearts of soldiers from the secular Syrian government and eating them.

The sad part in all of this is that the American people are being victimized as never before in our history. At no time has so much wealth been held by so few. America's Middle Class is ranked something like 27th in wealth. The top 400 families hold as much wealth as 155 million people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Protests like the Occupy movement are stamped out by police dressed like battlefield soldiers with armored vehicles. There is no room for real dissent in America because as Former President Carter said, "America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time."

-###-

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.