Practicing Democracy

Question: Why are we trying to install democracy in the Middle East at the point of a gun when we are not practicing democracy here at home?

Taking bribes and legislating for the benefit of those who provided you with those bribes is not democracy. That remains true even when you call those who tender the bribes “lobbyists” and the bribes “campaign contributions.”

Why are none of the presidential candidates, Republican or Democrat, talking about a national, universal, single payer healthcare system to put us on a par with the rest of the developed world? Because Hillary Clinton has accepted more money from the health insurance and healthcare provider business in the form of bribes campaign contributions than the average working man or woman will ever see in his/her lifetime.

Why are mine safety reforms and safety enforcement stalled by government while mine workers are dying in the course of providing for the nation’s energy needs? Because George Bush has accepted more money from mine owners in the form of bribes campaign contributions than the average mine worker will earn total in his/her lifetime.

Why can the wage earner no longer find financial relief in bankruptcy when devastated by a medical crisis, while a deliberately mismanaged business can still bail out of their illicit debt? Because Nancy Pelosi has accepted more money from banks and credit card companies in the form of bribes campaign contributions than the average wage earner can imagine.

Dianne Feinstein, Democrat from California, is objecting to enforcement of laws against hiring of illegal immigrants. She claims that doing so will be harmful to the food and farming industry. Why is she really against enforcement? Because she has accepted huge amounts money from producing farms in the form of bribes campaign contributions and such enforcement would force those producers to pay wages sufficient to make those jobs attractive to legal workers.

The Democratic Congress bloviates about ethics reform, about how it is magnanimously surrendering the free dinners and trips which are worth pennies, while they are keeping the right to continue receiving bribes campaign contributions which amount to millions of dollars.

The Democratic Congress investigates Republican corruption ad nausuem, but calls no one to actual account and mitigates the corruption to no discernible degree. They are careful not to interfere with their ability to feed from the same trough.

To listen to the presidential “debates” is to know for sure that democracy is well and truly dead in this country, that the noble experiment of our founding fathers has failed. A pallid collection of untruthful parrots stands before us and mouths platitudes that are notable only in the degree to which they are unresponsive to the question asked. They lie to us unabashedly, and insult us with their preening, posing and posturing. “I’m your girl.”

Hillary Clinton even has the brass to state that “a presidential candidate ought not to say everything that they think.”  How can we reasonably choose a leader if they have not said what they think?

To say that switching our government from Republican to Democrat is like putting lipstick on a pig is to insult a beast that has far more value than a government gone rotten and corrupt to its core.

When both Democrat and Republican candidates espouse causes that you find repugnant, when both are openly corrupt, bought by moneyed interests, and the two parties of power have forced all others off the ballot, how is one supposed to vote one’s conscience?

Whatever that is, democracy it is not.