Capitalism functions very efficiently without democracy. --Chris Hedges
You'll never stop depraved agendas as long as propagandists can manipulate a critical mass of people into consenting to those agendas. Propaganda is enemy #1. --Caitlin Johnstone
Who’s
Really In Charge?
by C.A. Matthews
Americans worry about a lot of things that they have no control over.
They also worry a lot about other people of whom they have no control
over.
One
recent example of this excessive worrying for naught can be seen in
the numerous attempts to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives. In the end, will it really matter to you personally
who’s put into that position? Be
honest with yourself. If
the Speaker is either a Republican or a Democrat, then it won’t
make much of a difference to you and yours, assuming you’re a
member of the bottom 90% of Americans, a.k.a. the “working class.”
Your life will continue along similar lines tomorrow as it did today
no matter who is made Speaker.
Don’t
believe me? Read our end of the year review The Year Nothing
Fundamentally Changed—Again.
The
federal minimum wage hasn’t changed. COVID-19
is still spreading, and we still don’t have universal health care
in the US. The
migrant kids are still in cages. The hideous Title 42 and “Remain
in Mexico” anti-asylum policies are still being enforced. Cops are
still shooting people of color at an alarming rate and not reporting all of these shootings. There were only
12 days in 2022 where a police officer did not shoot someone in the
US. Twelve whole days working class Americans didn’t
receive a phone call telling them about the police killing one
of our loved
ones.
Looking at how things remained the same or worsened for the working class or bottom 90% of Americans, one could come to the conclusion that
no real change occurs whenever a member of either faction of the
corporate uniparty (a.k.a. “the duopoly”) sits
in that top seat in the House of
Representatives or the White House.
Both
“major parties” accept (some say they demand) corporate
cash through
various lobbying organizations and
PACs or political action committees. PACs are a fantastically
clever way to hide “dark money” or money that no one knows where
it comes from. It could come from a foreigner, gangster, or banker—which could all be the same person.
“Who
cares where
it comes from?”
say American
politicians.
“Our bank accounts certainly don't!”
It has
become apparent in
recent times that
politicians
are essentially being hired to do the bidding of those who
have given them the biggest checks. And
they don’t seem to have any moral qualms about accepting money with
strings attached, since they are often rewarded with big book deals
and swanky board memberships with perks upon retiring from office.
So,
who’s really in charge? It’s easy. Follow the money.
“It
can’t be that simple!” some of you are screaming at this point.
“Just because politicians accept huge sums of cash from PACs,
corporations,
and lobbying groups for corporations, it doesn’t mean they’re
simply puppets for those who paid them that money.”
Are
you certain about that? The infamous “Princeton Study” demonstrates that American politicians only listen to
and
do the bidding of those who give them the most money. That excludes those of us at the bottom. Unless you’ve
been giving a politician regular sums—very large sums—of cash,
the statistics prove what you as an ordinary American
worker have to say to that politician is of no consequence whatsoever. They
will do as their real bosses, the corporations, tell them to do anyway.
Face
it—money is
speech.
Corporations are
people. The US Supreme Court deemed it so in the oddly named Citizens United case. Since Citizens United became law in
2010, money has
been firmly equated to speech
in
political realms. Until the law is repealed, corporations
will continue
to be
the richest and most influential of all people in the United States
of America.
Americans
have really got to stop worrying about who won this or that election
like it’s somehow going to be the end of the world if their
preferred candidate doesn’t win. If the race is “won” by either a
Republican or Democrat,
we poor
folks of the
working class have essentially lost out to the fat cats of the corporations. We
have
no control to begin with since we don’t have the billions of
dollars needed to buy that candidate’s allegiance, and now that the corporate-owned candidate is in office, the Princeton Study tells us that they'll completely stop listening to us.
Game
over. The billionaire CEOs
won the contest right out of the starting gate.
If
you’re starting
to feel
anxious because you realize now that
we little guys can never have the control over our destinies that we desire under this corrupt political-economic system,
take a deep breath. Let’s repeat the Serenity Prayer together:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s
time now to get wise and learn about the things we can change.
The
real power on
this
planet
is wielded not by so-called “elected officials,”
but
by those who run the massive corporations, most
of
them multinationals. (Yes,
other countries are in the grips of Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big
Agriculture, Big Chemical, and the like, too. May Americans
take some small comfort in the fact we aren’t the only humans on
the planet being screwed over by
billionaires.)
But
what
are these
corporations’
motives for
co-opting our governments? Let’s follow one
particular
money trail
to
see what’s happening.
The
US spent over $858 billion dollars in military spending this past year. Possibly it was
closer to $1 trillion dollars (that’s
trillion
with a “t” not a “b”), but we may never know the
exact amount since
the Department of Defense has never passed any of its audits in the past five years since they first started doing them. Plus,
most experts count money that is credited to other agencies like
the Department of Energy
as
being
part
of the US military spending as well, because
money that goes toward
nuclear power includes
the
making of radioactive materials to construct nuclear
warheads
for bombs.
The
total sum going towards the manufacturing, perfecting, maintaining,
storing,
and
then using of
these
weapons
is
probably
unknowable in any given year. It’s
mind-boggling how great
a bookkeeper’s nightmare the
US DoD
accounting system is and
how confusing the actual costs of hidden expenditures (such as
nuclear bombs) are.
Is
this
done on
purpose or
by accident? You tell me. The CEOs of
the military industrial complex that
gladly accept US taxpayers’ money don’t discuss it with us—and
why should they? It’s their
money
in their opinion, and it’s their
puppets who are foisted upon the American voters every
election via
a really cool trick called propaganda.
I’m
certain you’ve been a victim of propaganda before. The US is well
known for its propaganda tactics. If
you have ever been told that you had to vote for Blue Candidate
because Red Candidate is the devil himself and
Blue is marginally better because he doesn’t have a Twitter
account,
then
you’ve
probably been a victim of propaganda. Because
when the truth is revealed, the
voters will discover that both Blue and Red accepted large sums of cash from the very same corporations. The corporations tricked you into thinking somehow
these
two candidates were actually different when the only meaningful
differences were superficial ones.
Taxpayers’
money keeps flowing into the coffers of the military industrial
complex. Corporations such as Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the like made record profits in 2022. And why is
that? Could it be something to do with whatever particular Red or
Blue person is in office? Or could it simply be because the US
political-economic system is set up to allow our
tax money to continually flow into the coffers of military industrial
complex machine because corporations in reality own and run our
government?
I
go
with the second conclusion. Why? US
government policy
toward private corporations hasn’t
changed in any significant way since the last century (except to collude more closely with them), so
whoever holds office is immaterial.
But
I’ve
analyzed the proxy war propaganda over the past year and concluded that if ordinary Americans actually understood how the Minsk Agreements were violated by the US and NATO in order to start another endless war to
generate even more business for the arms manufacturers, investment firms like BlackRock,
and Big
Oil/LNG,
they would have never been supportive of throwing billions of dollars
worth of weapons into
the hands of
a corrupt political puppet whose name appears in the Pandora Papers over and over again.
The U.S. power alliance could very easily have prevented this
war with a few low-cost concessions like enshrining Ukrainian
neutrality, rolling back its war machinery from Russia’s borders and
sincerely pursuing detente with Moscow instead of shredding treaties and ramping up Cold War escalations. --Caitlin Johnstone, Unprovoked!
Read Caitlin's entire article and click on the links. It's amazing how clear you see things when you blow the dust of propaganda away. Feel better? Let’s
repeat the last line of the Serenity Prayer together:
And
the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s
time to wise up to
how
you’ve been played. The system is rigged against you if you’re a
working class American, in
the bottom 90%. The politicians/puppets use propaganda and lies to
make you feel like you have some modicum of control when, in reality,
you don’t. The corporations of the military industrial complex
and
Big Oil
are pulling the strings and reaping the monetary benefits from
sanctions and endless wars that starve, kill, and maim our fellow workers in far away places. The
corporations don’t care how blood-stained the reputation of the US
becomes as long as they continue to profit from it.
Now
that you’re wiser,
it’s time to start building up your
courage
to fight back against these inhuman
injustices
like the civil rights activists of the 1950s and 60s did. You're going to speak out boldly like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did, even if does cost you dearly because you know our children deserve better.
You're going to fight like hell for the positive change you want to see. You have to in order to exert some control over what
goes on in this world. Stand up so that ordinary, working class, little guys
like yourself don’t keep getting lied to and hurt by sociopathic
CEOs
who will
never
have our best interests at heart. You realize now to sit on the sidelines and let the corporations win is to sign your own death sentence.
Related Articles/Videos:
McCarthy Finally Elected House Speaker https://www.commondreams.org/news/mccarthy-elected-house-speaker
The Year Nothing Fundamentally Changed--Again https://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2022/12/2022-year-nothing-fundamentally.html
Biden's Expansion of Title 42 Takes Us Further From Humane Border Policy https://truthout.org/articles/bidens-expansion-of-title-42-takes-us-further-from-humane-border-policy
More Than Half of Police Killings are Mislabled, New Study Says https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/police-killings-undercounted-study.html
OpenSecrets--find out how much and where your elected officials are getting their money from https://www.opensecrets.org/
Princeton Study: Congress Literally Doesn't Care What You Think https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
Move to Amend (How to fight Citizens United) https://www.movetoamend.org/
Why the US is Losing the Fight to Ban Toxic Chemicals https://www.propublica.org/article/toxic-chemicals-epa-regulation-failures
US Now World's Top LNG Exporter as Europe Boycotts Cheaper Russian Gas https://popularresistance.org/us-now-worlds-top-lng-exporter-as-europe-boycotts-cheaper-russian-gas/
The High Cost of Blowing Up the World https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/high-cost-blowing-world-ukraine-2023-ndaa
Pentagon Can't Account for Half Their Assets, Fails New Audit https://youtu.be/Jkb-pTQLERw
Proof Twitter Censored Anyone CIA & FBI Told Them To https://youtu.be/Vyva84KG-nA
Dems Demanded Twitter Find Phony Russiagate Evidence https://youtu.be/tWleLq4h4qk
Silencing the Lambs. How Propaganda Works https://www.mintpressnews.com/john-pilger-silencing-lambs-how-propaganda-works/281884/
Europe and the Legitimization of Deception https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/08/patrick-lawrence-europe-and-the-legitimization-of-deception/
Unprovoked! https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/09/caitlin-johnstone-unprovoked/
Despite Outcries about Inflation, Major Arms Makers Are Doing Just Fine https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2022/10/28/despite-outcries-about-inflation-major-arms-makers-are-doing-just-fine/
BlackRock Accused of "Trying to Cash in on the Disaster..." https://www.commondreams.org/news/blackrock-ukraine
Ukraine Prepares to Give Free Rein to Property Developers https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/03/ukraine-prepares-to-give-free-rein-to-property-developers/
Revealed: "Anti-Oligarch" Ukrainian President's Offshore Connections https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy
US Spreads Misery Across the Globe Imposing Sanctions on a Third of Humanity https://popularresistance.org/u-s-spreads-misery-across-the-globe-imposing-sanctions-on-a-third-of-humanity/
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