“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” John Adams; modern America is a reflection of its choices in the last decades. Essentially what has taken place is a superficial battle between the Massachusetts Kennedys and Texas Bushes.  Ronald Reagan, John McCain, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney and Dick Cheney   with a dash of Newt,  Buchanan  and Robertson  on the Right, up against the Clintons, John Kerry, Howard Dean and Joe Biden with some Obama, Nader, Gore and Sanders thrown into the mix on the Left. The candidates campaign relentlessly and dumb-down the debate to one-liners; seeking the blood-roar in the crowd. The illusion of Left and Right doing battle between moral black and white is itself a quilt of lies patched together in self-serving litany. Look at all the promises of Obama to prosecute the Bush administration crimes of illegal information-gathering on its citizens and the use of torture on its enemies.

Since WWII, a whole host of white men with big feet walked out into the garden of the political kudza from the legions of the desolate Military Industrial Complex pfumfering mock apologetics about manifest destiny. It has evolved that millions of dollars are needed to be raised to win elections. How handy for the choreography, and no problem. If you’ve got what it takes. What it takes is to become a three-by-five card who stays to the index. Which is? What the big feet walking tell you it is. Is it democratic? Don’t be daft. A serious paucity in real options inside the political arena exists. The systemic devolution into lobby politics and the merger of the state and economy into one authoritarian entity, means for anyone to get into the electoral process in a serious way they already have to have the nod of the big feet before they make their first press conference to declare their intentions to the public or no one will come to listen. The meat-eating Keynesian press have turned the political process into a match about personality, so any ‘weird’ or ‘unattractive’ candidate, like a libertarian for instance, can be ignored with assiduity. They will do the judging for you, no need to worry. They are smart that way. Want a little help to break the ice and get the inside track as a candidate with ideals? It’s doable. Lobbyists have the road map. On your own? You’re a colossal idiot. You have principles, character and a good sense of what society needs in a leader. You can follow the index and still make real change. You’re ready to declare, but it is a horrible length of time to get elected. You decide that you are the right guy to lead but five or six years of campaigning seems unreasonable, 80 to 100 million dollars to raise to run a tad high. In the end, you can’t do it. But no trouble, you’re not the one they were looking for in any case. It is such an invasion of privacy that any decent individual couldn’t survive. This too is no problem, they aren’t after ‘decent. You don’t have the ability to work with the real group who run the day-to-day lawmaking in America, the lobbyists.

If you refuse to oblige yourself to them for “future consideration” – the lobbyists are laughing at you. Naive doesn’t begin to describe it. You’re dreaming if you think they’re not in charge from every issue Right to Left. But it can’t be true, because the meat-eating wolf pack in the press pick the winners. Don’t doubt it for a minute. “It’s not such a bad way to pick a president.” The big feet walking, the meat-eating press and the sachems of the lobbyfest own the modern autocratic paper monetary oligarch that is today’s political system, (not just in America either): see, The New Ancien Régime. You too can play the game, here’s how it works: promise the voters what they want, but never give them the bill. Don’t even mention the cost. Always support form over substance. It’s all about personality and if you don’t look good on television, you’re done like  Dukakis. Can’t afford those government goodies you fed them? Put it on the tab if you have to! Read my lips, read my lips. You hope to move the wall back that America is blindly rushing into, but you’ll do it by accelerating the vehicle. America has been over-leveraged since `Nam and the solution is to spend more. Go with that idea. As far as pay-as-you-go? What are you, mad? America wants all kinds of government goodies – * armed forces, health care, an enormous prison system, excellent public education, etcetera – but doesn’t want to actually pay for them. The American state grew under Reagan just as it did under the wildly right-wing laughable, Contract With America. It can’t happen here in this obloquy of bureaucratic malaise. Do you see anyone’s rights being violated? Crazy glue holds things together, if you don’t know that, perhaps you’re reading too many books and messing up your mind. What are you going to do, start voting for those who have isolated themselves by arguing micro-government? Who wants to pay directly for garbage pick up and road construction? People want nightingale public health care and a balls-for breakfast military.

Libertarians should get over it and get talking to some handlers, put out a black candidate instead of that skinny white doctor or his son. He wants to stop the war on drugs. Do you know how many policemen that would put out of work? (A fifth of all incarcerated criminals in prisons are there for drug offenses, and since there are 2.2 million occupants in the American system, that means over 450 thousand people are there because of drug laws at an approximate cost of over $50,000 for each annually. That’s 23 billion dollars a year). Freedom will not fade away because of a few public government  programs. Besides, they’re here to stay, and so is the big fat government: fodder and feed for the big feet, the press is Everest and the lobby boys are charging up the next hill backwards. The war against drugs? What about the one against poverty . . . terror . . . racism . . . or the next enemy, greed? You wait. Nothing’s too outlandish for the oligarch.

  • U.S.A. spends over 40% of the military worldwide expense 38-40%, 2023.
  • Licensed institutionalized medicine in the U.S.A. was 15% of  GDP in 2008, the highest in the world, 17.9% in 2024.
  • Prison incarceration rates for the U.S.A. (2008) are also the highest in the world at 737 per 100,000 population. To give you some comparison: Canada is 131, China 111, Denmark 59, India 25. Rates for 2023 for the USA: 698.
  • Compulsory public education has moved the U.S.A from first to worst in reading, math and science rankings in the OECD countries in less than a century and a half. (2023).

The triumph of Trump seems to contradict my general thesis; I was disappointed in the Johnston/Weld showing in the 2016 election. The middleclass sure seems leary of libertarianism, although they did receive over four million votes, slightly under the margin of what Biden won the popular vote by in 2020. In 2023 I read Hate Inc., by Matt Taibbi with keen interest and his description of these modern election cycles is most telling; highly recommended as is, Chomsky's brilliant Manufacturing Constent. We can always hope RFK Jr., will beat out both agent orange and the mummified pharoah, but what we are seeing in 2024 is the Democratic Party abandoning democracy altogether.