​Election 2024: What Really Matters

The two political parties which have ruled America for the past two centuries have decided which two politicians we may choose from for the office of president.  They have decided that we once again can pick one of the same two geriatrics as we got four years ago.   The campaign promises to be ugly, with the faithful on both sides angry and believing that our entire way of life hangs in the balance.
 
The Republicans will say that the skyrocketing prices for the basics of life, inflation, and crippling interest rates are the fault of President Biden and that the current instability in world affairs is the result of his mental and moral weakness.  Ignoring the role played by other agencies, congress, our nation’s militarism, and our insane foreign policy, which remains largely unchanged regardless of which party holds the White House.
 
The Democrat party tells us that if Donald Trump wins, it will spell “the end of American democracy.”  This begs the question; if Trump or anyone else wins a free and fair election, how does that “end democracy?”  More significantly, if that is true, and Donald Trump can become a dictator the moment he assumes office, then “American democracy” is already dead. What Democrats are revealing – accurately, but without realizing it – is that the office of president has amassed so much unchecked power as to become a sort of elected dictator.  This is a correct assessment; see my last column for a discussion of the imperial presidency.  American democracy as most of us understand it, died decades ago.
 
Whichever man is elected, he will be able to issue unconstitutional decrees and laws, perpetrate acts of war and assassination around the world, persecute his political opponents via the IRS and Justice Department, spy on Americans without a warrant, detain citizens indefinitely without trial, and control the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars to benefit his friends and donors.  Rather than acknowledge the lawless nature of our government, this election’s central argument will be that whether you elect the nursing home patient or the elderly, swaggering orange man, “Our” guy will use those powers for good, while “Their” guy will use them for evil.
 
The real problem is that no one can be trusted with such power; especially anyone who seeks it out.  Several things will be different according to who gets elected, but the things that are most important and in need of change will remain the same.  While the American people occupy themselves with indignant rage over pronouns, whose lives matter, having abortions, owning a gun, and proper bathroom policies for transvestites, our liberties and our money are being stolen right in front of us and our foreign policy is leading toward war.  Without our freedom and our money, we all will suffer the consequences of the rise of tyranny, no matter by what name your call your political views.
 
Congress & The Deep State
 
The American congress no longer represents the American people.  Each member of the House has about 700,000 constituents; far more than anyone could hope to accurately represent.  They spend vastly more time raising money than crafting legislation and their continuation in office depends upon catering to their donors – not the citizens they ostensibly represent.  Ninety-one percent of congressional elections are won by the candidate with the most money.  Since fully two-thirds of campaign money comes from just 0.2 percent of the population, it is to those very few that congressmen and women owe they fidelity.  A Princeton University study examined twenty years’ worth of data on whether public opinion influenced the chances of legislation becoming law.  The study found that it did not – at all.  The findings read, “…the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”[i]
 
The congress is hopelessly corrupt.  Not only do they shill for whomever gives them campaign cash, they are permitted to buy and sell stocks in the companies that they either oversee, or that their votes directly impact.  A New York times analysis uncovered 97 lawmakers or their family members who, over a three-year period traded in financial assets in industries affected by their work in legislative committees.[ii]   These corrupt politicians come from both political parties.  This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  This insider trading is to say nothing about the legislation that benefits their corporate masters, or the grant money that gets funneled to their donors or to other organizations that then hire their family members at exorbitant salaries and no-show jobs, the “gifts” from lobbyists and conflicts of interest that are rampant in The Swamp.  For a list of just the things they got caught at, click here. 
 
In addition to failing to represent their constituents, and being on the take, congress has ceded nearly all its authority to the executive branch.  Rather than pass laws for which they can be held accountable, the congress has given that power to the dozens of executive branch agencies that are charged with directing our lives.  Federal laws are now issued by decree of faceless bureaucrats at the FAA, FDA, FCC, ICC, OSHA, DOE, EPA, DOA, DHS, EEOC, HUD, DOI, DOL, DOT, and the list goes on.  Together, these agencies have compiled an utterly incomprehensible 163,000-page volume of laws.[iii] There are more than 300,000 federal crimes on the books[iv], and the list grows yearly.  The result is that, in the words of Retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker, “[t]here is no one in the United States over the age of eighteen who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.[v]" Congress has even ceded its authority to print money to a private bank – the Federal Reserve - controlled by an unelected board of governors.
 
So next time you watch your preferred political news outlet; say, MSNBC or Fox News, notice that virtually every piece of “news” is designed to either make you mad or scare you.  The role of the corporate news media is to distract you from your national government’s corruption and criminality.  The next time you find yourself angrily muttering at your television because someone was misgendered or sent home from school because they wore a MAGA hat, maybe think about the money the Federal Reserve is printing that drains away more of your money’s value with every passing day.  You might choose to be outraged that your sons (all of whom must register for the draft) have been pledged to fight wars all over the planet; your government has issued war guarantees to nearly forty countries on six continents.[vi]  Maybe instead of watching two people shout at each other over whether some uptight baker should be forced to prepare a cake for a gay wedding, we should be watching what our federal officials are doing in our name; bombing Syria, Yemen, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, and sending soldiers to fight in Niger, Syria, and Uganda to name just a few.  Perhaps ask MSNBC or Fox News could inquire how a president can invade or commit acts of war against the nations of the earth without the constitutionally required declaration of war from the people’s representatives in congress.  Instead of making national news about a pornographic book in an elementary school library, the “journalists” at these networks could ask why, after 70 years, we have not negotiated an end to the Korean War, and still have 40,000 American troops on the border of North Korea.  How about starting a national conversation about why we and the Russians each still have more than 5,000 atomic weapons[vii] – many on hair-trigger alert – and why our government never speaks of nuclear arms reduction.
 
Predictions
 
No matter who wins in November, the other side will claim the election was illegitimate.  Congress will attempt to impeach the new president in his first term.  The Federal Reserve will continue to print currency not backed by gold or silver and further devalue the money held by ordinary citizens.  The national debt will continue to increase.  Our country will continue to garrison imperial troops around the planet and commit acts of war and assassination without the consent of the people or their elected representatives.  Taxing the incomes of ostensibly free citizens will continue and the tax code will remain an unreformed and incomprehensible 2.4 million-word[viii] abomination.  The federal government will continue passing more laws to further criminalize anything a free citizen might do and will repeal none.  Congress will funnel billions of our dollars to their political backers and to corrupt regimes abroad.  The Justice Department, IRS[ix], CIA[x], and the FBI[xi] will continue to persecute enemies of the regime or of their own choosing.  The state intelligence apparatus will continue unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens.  The United States will continue to lead the world in percentage of its people held in prison[xii].  Congress will continue to run the country for the benefit of multinational corporations over the interests of American citizens.  The military-industrial-congressional complex will continue to thrive.  Government will grow and liberty will shrink.
 
Americans must stop allowing themselves to be divided into separate groups by politicians, competing for special treatment from a morally bankrupt government.  We must reject divisive language; there is no Asian, black, white, Hispanic, or other “community,” There is only our shared human and American experience.  We all share the same basic values, breathe the same air, labor under the same government, emerged from the same history, and cherish our children’s future.  We must unite to reform the government and justice system, dismantle our military empire, impose term limits on congress, and return political power to the citizenry.  Then, perhaps, we can argue about pronouns and bathrooms and wedding cakes.  Until then, to paraphrase President Kennedy, I say, ask not how the government should decide which bathroom people should use; ask what you can do to reform your lawless government.

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[i] Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564–581. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592714001595

[ii] Kelly, K., Playford, A., & Parlapiano, A. (2022, September 13). Stock trades reported by nearly a fifth of Congress show possible conflicts. nytimes.com. Retrieved March 18, 2024, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/13/us/politics/congress-stock-trading-investigation.html

[iii] Crain, W. Mark. The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms. Rep. no. 264. Washington, DC: Small Business Administration, 2005. Small Business Research Summary. Small Business Administration. Web. 31 Jan. 2012.

[iv] John C. Coffee Jr., Does "Unlawful" Mean "Criminal?": Reflections on the Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction in American Law, 71 B. U. L. Rev. 193 (1991).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/527

[v] Fields, G., & Ermshwiller, J. (2011, July 23). Many failed efforts to count nation’s federal criminal laws. wsj.com. Retrieved March  19, 2024, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920

[vi] The United States is pledged to go to war for any of the 32 NATO member states, along with other nations, including Japan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and more nebulous commitments to others, such as Taiwan (Republic of China).

[vii] Federation of American Scientists. (2024, March 8). Status of World Nuclear Forces - Federation of American Scientists. https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/

[viii] Hodge, S. (2023, July 24). The compliance costs of IRS regulations. Tax Foundation. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/compliance-costs-irs-regulations/

[ix] Smith, B. A., & Smith, B. A. (2018, January 19). Remember the IRS targeting scandal? No one ever got punished for it - Washington Examiner. Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/?p=1473032

[x] Friedersdorf, C. (2014, December 23). A Brief History of the CIA's Unpunished Spying on the Senate. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/

[xi] US Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. (2019). Review of four FISA applications and other aspects of the FBI’s crossfire hurricane investigation. In justice.gov (No. 20–12). US Department of Justice. Retrieved March 21, 2024, from https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf

[xii] Initiative, P. P. (n.d.). States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021. Prison Policy Initiative. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2021.html
 
Friedersdorf, C. (2014, December 23). A Brief History of the CIA's Unpunished Spying on the Senate. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-the-cias-unpunished-spying-on-the-senate/384003/