On July 4, the U.S. celebrates the 235th year since U.S. independence was declared. In this time the U.S. has grown from a small collection of states on the Atlantic coast to the most powerful country in the world, a country that takes liberties to impose its order, called democracy, on others.
Can the U.S. be considered a democratic state? Heydar Jemal, the chairman of Russia’s Islamic Committee, answered this and other questions in an interview with Pravda.ru.
In his novel “The Iron Heel,” Jack London, the eminent American writer, refers to the U.S. government as a plutocracy, meaning it hides behind various masks of oligarchy. How are assessments like these applicable today? If all of this is presented as democracy today, how has the American reality changed so much for the better over the last hundred years since the novel was written?
Jack London deserves to be called a great writer just for writing this one single novel. In fact, it was a visionary book, a book of predictions. In “The Iron Heel,” written in 1907, he not only aptly described the system of the U.S. plutocracy, but also predicted its future development and other related events. Among them are the Chicago uprising; World War II, including the exact date and defeat of the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor; and the staging of a “terrorist act” by the U.S. Congress, which was equivalent to the measures the U.S. resorted to after September 11, 2001. What I mean is the Patriot Act and its subsequent development in the form of permission for special services to carry out uncontrolled wiretapping without starting a criminal case, as well as searches on private property even in the absence of the owner.
So, from the moment that the novel was written, the U.S. has not only failed to progress toward democracy, but has also done its best to prove how right the description Jack London gave to America was. This isn’t democracy but the same old plutocracy, albeit operating in different circumstances.
Today, however, the U.S. promotes its democratic model as a role model.
What kind of democracy is it? In classic understanding it sounds like “power of people.” But where is it? At least, they had the Areopagus in ancient Athens. They don’t have it in the U.S. There is only a two-party system, in which either Democrats or Republicans take turns winning.
In fact, those and the others represent the interests of an oligarchy. Therefore, in reality, this system is a swing. One party wins, the swing rocks to one side. The other party wins, the swing goes the opposite way. But there’s nothing to worry about. Next time the swing will go back in a familiar way.
It is also important, for example, that the president isn’t really elected by a specific number of millions of voters but by some chosen electors. What kind of democracy is this if it always takes the back streets? There are so many of them. Why not make it a popular vote?
Pay attention to the way that all of this happens. In fact, here we are looking at the census voting system that was abolished in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. A system like this is nowhere to be found but the U.S.
In order to understand the hype, it is enough to look at the most interesting moments. Candidates are elected strictly among the members of the two parties, Democrats and Republicans. But don’t rush too far ahead because now, the election takes place inside of these political organizations. They’re not ostentatious but real differences between the two that can be found. In any case, these parties are as much alike as two pieces of fruit on the same tree.
So initially, plutocracy pushes through proven people only. There is no place for outsiders. And again, as an additional precaution, the only electors chosen are those who could be easily controlled and there is a strictly defined number of them. There are also so-called indicator states where electoral votes are originally valued higher than in other states. Once the voting is finished in one of those states, they impose their opinion on others. Add up all of the above. If 75 percent of the people, say, voted for John, Michael could still be elected, even though he only got the support of a quarter of the votes.
Later the American people are told, “So, we’ve decided here who you want. Now, choose one of the two.” That’s how George W. Bush won over Al Gore.
Thus, in essence, we see ordinary deception of the American people by those that govern them. Compared with a “democracy” like this, even Kazakh democracy with its two boxes (one for honest votes, the other stocked with ballots filled out in advance) looks more decent. In this case, why is the American system better than the Chinese or the Soviet method? The Chinese system, at least, ensures that the Secretary General will be replaced every few years. The Soviet system, without any deception or resourcefulness, gave the people the ruler. Here, there is nothing but a show.
The Americans say that nothing prevents a new party from fighting for power.
Nominally, such a right exists. Legally, you can form a new party. But, I repeat, it’s possible only nominally. There are indeed other political organizations in America apart from Democrats and Republicans. But the latter two are the chosen ones who are destined to make a pleasing plutocracy nominee president.
If you try to do something from the outside, it’s not going to work out. First, the presidential campaign in the U.S. is built in such a way that your candidate just won’t be able to get ahead with their champagne, even if you have a truckload of money. After all, the media there is controlled by the very same plutocracy. They publish and broadcast only what ordinary Americans need to know from a point of view of the oligarchy.
They simply won’t notice your candidate, who won’t be able to announce themselves to the electorate. You may say that now, in the era of the Internet, nothing is impossible. You can register thousands of websites and try to create an image for your candidate via social networks and millions of blogs. Your attempts will remain fruitless.
That’s the way it’s worked in the U.S. for decades. There are certain “mouthpieces of truth,” kinds of mastodons like New York’s Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. They are recognized voices of authority. Compared with them, smaller caliber editions will look even less attractive than “The Beep” would look to “The Truth” during the Soviet era. After all, look at the today’s famous WikiLeaks! It’s been publishing thousands of exposures for almost three years and, on the global scale, it remained a little known website. It received the fame and prestige only after it drew the attention of a reputable British newspaper, the Guardian. In fact, the Guardian played a PR role for it. So you can’t call it a pure accident.
Secondly, of course, you just can’t get around the established U.S. system of electors that allow you to vote either for Democrats of Republicans. This automatically gives control to the plutocracy to cut off any alien henchmen.
What is the institution of the presidency for, in that case? Is the head of state just a simple puppet of these groups, a kind of a product of compromise?
This is only partly true. The president is running for money bags. That’s a simplistic Marxist view of the situation. In reality, everything is much more complicated. The institute of the American presidency is not as simple as it seems. Now we are being assured that Obama’s presidency proves that there is no pattern in the arrival of a president and that it’s a mere product of progressive American democracy. However, this “African mark” on the body of the U.S. president is not something outstanding. Just trace his ancestry. After all, it may be distant, but Obama is still a relative of the Bush family on his mother’s side.
Therefore, the only outsider among all American presidents, the Catholic Kennedy, was shot to death. All the others more or less demonstrated an Anglo-Saxon succession with a Protestant spiritual basis and connections with the best names in the UK.
There have been presidents in U.S. history whose political activity was clearly performed almost entirely on their own. But they were the ones who were almost immediately given a slap on the wrist. It’s just that in this case, one should remember that there are regulatory structures in the U.S. that are meant to provide action if a president errs in the wrong direction. They, if necessary, may impeach the president or act more strictly.
At this point I remember Carter, who really wasn’t allowed to do anything. When he started his venture in Iran, he couldn’t spend public funds and had to take the money from another oligarch.
As for Obama, it’s possible that he is only a transition figure like Kiriyenko, who was used to cover for Chernomyrdin after the default. Obama himself has support of the European lobby and, in many ways, plays the role of mediator between the old Europe and neoliberalism.
What is the role of the U.S. Congress?
The U.S. Congress is not a generator of ideas. Decisions are simply sent to them for “approval.” Just trace their steps to see how they resolve the crisis.
As for the Congress-president connection, in this respect, we see no democratic achievement but a specified interchange between collegial structures designed to show a semblance of democracy.
What about the much-vaunted and independent U.S. judicial system?
The American style justice involves a judicial system with the domination of contracting and controlled lawyers and judges. The latter works if you want to play in democracy. When you don’t want it, we witness how CIA prisons operate in other countries, including the infamous “democratic” institution in Guantanamo. The system is nothing but a Kafkaesque mechanism that spins as a meat grinder and spits any specified victim out.
In connection with it, remember the recent story of a Pakistani girl, the mother of six children, who beat up six American warriors in self-defense.
Another thing is sex, which has been adopted by the independent American system long time ago. Actually, not sex as we understand it, but all sorts of sexual offenses, from sexual harassment to abuse. It’s already difficult to remember how many cases of this kind there have been so far. Suffice it to point at the last two cases that received a lot of public attention. I’m talking about the founder of WikiLeaks, Assange, and now the former head of the IMF, Strauss Kahn. They are to blame and that’s it! A real persecution begins. The man is not just removed from his post, if we’re talking about some serious office, but his name gets dragged through the mud. Strauss Kahn is being played off against the people in the street who say that there is no place for such a monster to live anywhere near them!
The famous writer, Michael Crichton, author of the acclaimed “Jurassic Park,” described this out-of-court judicial system of suppression. His other novel, “Disclosure,” is far more important as it refers to American mores. In this novel the author describes how a female boss tries in vain to achieve intimacy with her subordinate. When she fails, she destroys him.
It also tells us about the era of aggressive feminism in the U.S. when some are actually in a state of a war for male extermination.
This is not a complete list of tools to deal with those who don’t want to endure all of it. In order to get under the tree of American democracy you don’t have to speak up against it. Remember the fate of another famous American writer, Stephen King, who was under constant pressure from U.S. intelligence in 1978. What I mean is that he was under constant surveillance by the FBI due to the fact that his works were considered anti-American. They let him know, quite harshly, that more serious actions could be taken against him. He was merely guilty because, being perhaps the only writer and psychoanalyst of America, he saw through the so-called American psychological type and made the uglier features of this topic very public.
As you know, nothing lasts forever. This also applies to the state system. How is the American “public entity” evolving?
The system is quite flexible and variable. It will operate effectively even in times of crisis. Moreover, it was prepared to deal with crises long time ago. A plan of so-called alternative government was developed back during the time of the Cold War. According to the plan, the Constitution is suspended and a secret schedule of the significantly upgraded governmental machine is enforced, run by people who have never been seen before and other shadowy figures. These are the so-called anti-crisis headquarters.
This structure was created for the purpose of dealing with a sudden worsening of the situation in the U.S. and is meant not for democracy but for victory and survival at any cost. This is just the tip of the iceberg that we know of, only because the Americans have allowed us to find out. There was a closed to public access doctoral dissertation written on this subject in 1980s. Our specialized military issues media then reprinted the part that the Americans left on the surface.
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