US Midterms: Split Decision
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The disturbing reality is when things change electorally in America, they remain the same.
Dirty business as usual always wins, the underlying reality of Tuesday’s midterm voting like all earlier “elections.”
Mark Twain was right saying: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
Social justice champion Emma Goldman explained US “elections” the same way, saying: “If voting changed anything, it would be illegal.”
Ordinary people have no say over how they’re governed. America is a democracy in name only, the nation’s founders assuring things would be run by and for privileged interests exclusively.
The first US Supreme Court chief justice John Jay arrogantly said America should be run by the people who own it. The nation’s second president John Adams said the rich, well born and able alone should rule.
The notion of “Equal Justice Under Law” adorning the Supreme Court’s west facade is just a meaningless figure of speech – the way things have been in America from inception.
Political and judicial fairness don’t exist. Things are polar opposite under one-party rule with two money-controlled extremist right wings.
Independents are shut out. Dominant media are in cahoots with a hugely debauched system – self-serving governance by America’s privileged class, pretending to be otherwise.
The rights, needs, and welfare of ordinary people don’t matter. They’re consistently disserved and betrayed by Republicans and undemocratic Dems alike.
Democratic values and egalitarian principles exist in name only.
Executive, congressional, and judicial officials systematically lie, connive, and pretty much do what they please for their own self-interest.
With rare exceptions, they’re unprincipled, unethical, immoral and amoral, deferential to powerful monied interests alone.
It’s the longstanding American way. A previous article explained the results of Tuesday election as follows:
The only thing possibly positive about the outcome is if Dems retake one or both houses, they could block some of Trump’s most extremist policies – for political, not ideological, reasons only.
Both extremist wings of US duopoly governance are in lockstep on issues mattering most – notably the nation’s imperial agenda, its endless preemptive wars of aggression, supporting corporate empowerment, and cracking down hard on legitimate resistance for equity and justice denied ordinary people.
The main difference between Republicans and undemocratic Dems is rhetorical, not ideological.
No matter how often ordinary Americans are manipulated and betrayed, they’re easy marks to be duped again because they’re ill-informed and dis-informed by major media.
They’re victims of the fabricated official narrative and state-sponsored propaganda fed them by dominant print and electronic media.
They reflect what the late Gore Vidal and Studs Terkel called the United States of amnesia, public betrayal on vital issues passing through their collective consciousness like water through a sieve – understanding something today, erased from their memory later on.
For what it’s worth, below are the likely results of Tuesday “elections,” some races too close to call:
Undemocratic Dems are projected to retake control of the House with a 229 – 206 majority. (CNN estimated Dems winning 238 seats.)
Republicans are projected to retain Senate control by a 53 – 47 margin, gaining two seats over their pre-election 51 – 49 advantage. (CNN estimated a 52 – 48 GOP margin of victory.)
The only certainty about what’s ahead once the 116th Congress is sworn into office on January 3, 2019 is no change whatever in how America is governed on issues mattering most.
Same old, same old will continue like it always does. Americans believing otherwise will learn soon enough how they were duped again – like every time before.
Today’s America is the United States of I Don’t Care for its least privileged citizens and residents.
Federal, state, and local governance dismissively ignores what they care about most.
That’s what governance in America is all about – a fantasy democracy, not the real thing.
The only solution is nonviolent revolution for constructive change – achievable no other way, never through the ballot box assuring continuity, the way it’s been throughout US history.
A Final Comment
Former Massachusetts governor, GOP 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney defeated Dem Jenny Wilson to succeed retiring Senator Orrin Hatch in Utah.
Some observers believe he’ll be more a Trump antagonist than supporter, during the 2016 campaign, saying:
“I’m going to do everything within the normal political bounds to make sure we don’t nominate Donald Trump. I think he’d be terribly unfit for office. He doesn’t have the temperament to be president.”
Based on his record as Massachusetts governor and alliance with GOP politics, he’ll surely go along with the dirty system like the vast majority in Congress.
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
