Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
American Democracy
"What we think we have is not necessarily what we practice"
The Greeks have been credited with creating Democracy.
Whether that's true, the question now is "What kind of political system are we really practicing, and how is each major party using that system to their advantage?" American conservatives don't seem to believe that decisions by the majority are binding if they disagree with the decision of that majority. How will democracy work under these conditions?
Donald Trump said, "I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes." And many believe he was right about that. The reason he could possible do this is because Trump supporters don't back him because he's a good guy, a smart guy, a truthful guy, or even a rich guy. They're behind him because he's NOT a traditionalist, and they believe that he will keep them at the top of the food chain within their own country and throughout the world. These people aren't concerned about democracy; they want superiority and supremacy.
The key principles of conservatism are so very well suited for the racist element within our society that, for the most part, conservatives are labeled racist, especially by African Americans and many Latinos. Republicans have conceded that they cannot outvote Democrats, so they've decided to try and outsmart them. They've decided to gerrymander congressional districts and state legislative districts. They've packed majority-minority districts and other Democratic districts that they consider unwinnable, and they've complicated and impeded the voting process for those who historically vote against them. They pass legislation that they say is tough on crime but ends up just being tough on people of color. Street drug use was attacked with high priority, while corporate white drug users were given a pass. When the crack cocaine epidemic was ransacking the black community, the answer was "aggressive arrest, minimum sentencing, and three strikes and you're out." When heroin, meth, powered cocaine, and prescription drugs started sending too many white kids to the emergency room with overdoses, the answer was "Let's get them the medical and mental health help they need."
The black community had been devastated by punishment and criminal records resulting from drug use. Blacks were sent to long jail sentences, charged with felonies, and removed from the voting roles, while whites were given passes. Other voter-suppression methods included requiring voter's ID, moving precincts, eliminating early voting, eliminating same-day registration, and ratcheting up voter intimidation, such as falsely communicating to voters of color that they could be arrested at the voting polls if they were found to have just one unpaid parking ticket. They also hired private groups to comb the voter files to remove (purge) people from the rolls who didn't meet the prerequisites to remain on the rolls. Quite often, people of color (blacks and Hispanics) were removed from the rolls that should not have been removed. Conservatives were counting on these tactics to shore up their chances of winning in the November general election, and it did just that in 2016.
The working definition of democracy is "a system of government managed by the whole population, or all of the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives." Using this as a working definition, let's see how the system currently practiced by the United States of America fits and if there are some other ancillary definitions and identifiers that may be a better description of our political system than the word "democracy." First of all, the USA has never practiced pure democracy, a form of democracy wherein there are no eligibility criterion except that of being a member of the group to be governed, and everyone has a vote but only one vote. "Democracy is the worst form of government if you believe in racial privilege and racial supremacy."
From its beginning, the USA has had considerable eligibility conditions that authorized electoral participation. Initially, only white male property owners could vote. It seemed as if America wanted to be recognized as a democracy but craved and preferred the oligarchy that existed in Europe. In America, conservatives have always been on the side that denied voting rights. They were against the expansion of voting privileges to poor whites, men of color, women, and youth under twenty-one years old. And when laws were changed to recognize the voting rights of these various groups (Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments), conservatives began voter-suppression campaigns that were second to none. And before voter suppression, there was voter intimidation. Voter intimidation could, and often did, mean violence and sometimes murder. Some of the more notorious suppressions and intimidations were poll taxes, where selected voters (usually black voters) were assessed a tax they normally couldn't pay to qualify to vote. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed poll taxes, but ingenious conservatives replaced poll taxes with other economic measures in their attempt to keep black people from voting. Requiring a photo ID in many cases could result in a cost. Relocating voting precincts could result in a cost. Disallowing early voting was a very useful tool for conservatives. When we disallow early voting, we mandate that all voting is done on the same day, making it harder for workers (especially low-wage workers) to work a full day, negotiate city traffic, and get to the polls before they closed. Taking the day off to vote was a cost that low-wage workers could not afford.
Literacy tests were administered throughout the South. Oftentimes, they were administered by individuals who could barely read themselves. These tests were administered to black would-be voters primarily, and the results were always secret and uncontestable. After the administration of the test, black college graduates, black military officers, and black businessmen were told that they were ineligible to vote because they had not passed the literacy test. Poor, uneducated whites were not required to take the literacy test, or if they did, they passed at almost a hundred percent pass rate. In the 1980s in North Carolina, Republican U.S. senator Jesse Helms's campaign sent a letter to black voters in Durham, North Carolina, who were registered as Democrats. The letter stated that "the expectations are that the coming general election will be one of the most popular in North Carolina history. We therefore suggested that voting days be split. Republicans should vote on Tuesday and Democrats should vote on Wednesday." Additionally, conservative goons were sent to black precincts with orders to question those standing in line about any outstanding warrants or parking tickets they may have and to warn them that there would be an officer at the registration table to check police records.
The United States of America has required, demanded, and forced other countries to accept democracy as their form of political governance. We've also used democracy as a pretext to outright "land grab." We've enlisted the help of the so-called economic hit men to arrange for the attainment of land because of country's inability to repay a debt. The repayment was never expected because the terms and agreements of the contract were constructed in such a fashion to ensure that the country in question could not repay the debt. The country was therefore offered a way out of her untenable debt.
Give the USA land, minerals, forest, and fishery rights in exchange for debt forgiveness. And the final condition was to allow teams of American advisors to come to their land and setup the framework for transition to a democratic form of government with branches of government similar to that of the United States of America. Once these things were in place, the country effectively belonged to the USA; with our private sector reaping the financial benefits, and our government controlling their political operations.
All the while these things are going on overseas, we're bragging to one another here at home about our American exceptionalism. Sometimes I wonder how we'd fair as a nation if some of our overseas actions were put to a vote here at home. I wonder if we would have voted to overthrow the democratically elected Pres. Salvador Allende in Chile and replace him with a brutal dictatorial despot named General Pinochet. And this wasn't the only time we favored despotism over democracy. We did similar things in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Haiti, Iraq, Vietnam, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. We've been led to believe that we're about democracy when we're really about unbridled, predatory capitalism. It's just that democracy is much easier to sell than unbridled, predatory capitalism when you're selling to low-information poor people.
But the most disturbing thing about American democracy is the 53519 "for sale" signs hanging from offices in the U.S. Capitol Building and U.S. Senate offices. American lawmakers are literally for sale. They appear to go along with whatever issue or position has the largest campaign contribution. And yet I contend that it's not their fault. The blame should be placed on the voters. If we allow our representatives to pretend and purport to be one thing, only to find that they're entirely something else, it's our fault if we send them back to Washington to continue the same behavior. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me more than twice, shame on the system. It seems not to matter with some voters if the candidate keeps his word, and the reason this is true is because voters don't vote for candidates anymore; they vote against the candidates' opposition. This also explains why we see so many negative media advertisements. Opposition research has become a very lucrative business in Washington and throughout the various states. Officeholders hold no allegiance to their voters anymore. Since the passage of "Citizens United," they only hold allegiance to their mega donors. This has truly become "American democracy for sale."
We have lobbyist writing checks and writing laws, both of which end up on the desk of representatives and senators who are supposed to be working for citizen John Doe, but citizen John Doe can't even get an appointment to see Representative X or Senator Y. Representatives and senators only talk to people of importance (donors and lobbyists). But they still claim to represent us, the citizens of the United States of America. Something's not right here. Anybody know what it is?
CHAPTER 2
Constructing the Modern Conservative Sell
The conservative sell began in earnest at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, the beginning of the American Civil War. In 1861, there were 31 million people living in the United States of America (not counting Native Americans not taxed). Of this 31 million, 22 million resided in the Northern United States, leaving the South and the Confederacy with a mere 9 million from which to draw an army. But to make matters even worse, 4.5 million of the people who lived in the area controlled by the Confederacy were enslaved people. Because slaves weren't permitted to fight for the Confederacy until the final couple of months of the war, that left working-class whites burdened with the responsibility of taking up arms and becoming the principal wagers of war to fight for the planter class's right to continue slavery and the outlandish profits that accompanied this "peculiar institution." When the Confederacy began conscription (the draft), plantation owners who owned 20 or more slaves were exempt from service. Additionally, one could buy their way out of conscription for $300 or pay someone $300 to serve in their stead. But if the working class did not share in the outlandish profits garnered by the planters, how would the planter class convince working-class Southerners to fight and die for the planters' cause? These conditions led to the development of the first conservative sell of gargantuan proportions in the United States of America. In the middle of the twentieth century, American (one hundred years after the end of the Civil War) conservatives again fashioned a conservative sell called the Southern strategy. This strategy was used to convince working-class whites to take up the cause of the rich and powerful. And conservatives have been continuously engaged in the conservative sell strategy since then.
* * *
Before the American Civil War, Democrats were the conservative party, while Republicans (known as the abolitionist party) had its beginning in 1854 as an abolitionist party. Slavery was a $30 billion industry in the South, and yet most Southerners lived in abject poverty. This was plutocracy at its worst. Most non-slave-owning whites were subsistence farmers. They shared in none of the $30 billion annual revenue amassed by the plutocrats. And yet they volunteered by the thousands to go off and fight for the Confederacy. Why? It could be argued that the cause was "distractions" but distractions of another kind. Instead of homophobia, and abortion, they were concerned about forced racial equality and all that racial equality would bring about. They were fighting to maintain white supremacy and the way of life that was aff orded them under the conditions of slavery and the resulting white supremacy. States' rights was an abstract notion that they embraced to legally justify their obstinacy. Many uttered the words Tenth Amendment without ever having read the Tenth Amendment or understanding its true meaning. Yet they went off to fight Billy Yank and his darkies. And even now, conservatives have again convinced Americans to support causes that are diametrically opposed to their economic self-interest. In doing so, they have placed the salvation of their political party and their political ideology above the salvation of their country and this planet.
* * *
In 1948, the platform of the Democratic Party took on, and embraced, desegregation. This was too much for Strom Thurmond, the governor of South Carolina, to bear. Governor Thurmond left the Democratic Party and started the Dixiecrat Party and ran for the presidency under his new party banner. He carried four states (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and his home state of South Carolina). And these four states are arguably, still today, the most conservative states in the nation. So from 1948 until the present day, conservatism has constantly been sold, supported, and propelled through our political system. Conservatives, having been on the outside looking in for over forty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, developed keener fighting skills than did their somewhat "pampered" colleagues across the aisle.
It appears that Republicans have better visual acuity than their competitors, the Democrats. Democrats tend to see Americans as they would like them to be, while Republicans tend to see Americans as they are. This huge diff erence plays itself out in the political strategies and tactics undertaken by each party. Republicans are aware that there are many "low-information voters" in America. So Republicans think, Why worry about where they should be? Let's just take them "where they are" and figure out the best way to communicate with them in their own words.
Another grand strategic position implemented by conservatives is the "default victory strategy." This strategy is also called the "no third-party strategy." The no third-party strategy assumes that "if we can sufficiently denigrate the opposition (in this case, the Democratic Party candidate), people will vote for us by default." This could also be termed the media strategy because it is virtually impossible to implement this strategy without the media being a witting or at least an unwitting accomplice. The media is aware that conservatives duck questions about their plans and agenda for the American people and replace it with steamroller criticisms of their opponent, the Democrats. The media is also aware that rarely do conservatives directly answer any question other than the ones they came prepared to answer; instead, they very skillfully pivot into their talking points. The question to the media is "Why do you ask questions that you obviously don't care if your guest answers or not?" The obvious answer is that the media isn't so much about information dissemination as they are about "drama" and ratings. Just in case you've been living under a rock all these years, "drama" increases ratings, and higher ratings mean more money from advertisers. And the media is in the business of making money. Conservatives seem to be fully aware of the media's stance on the issue of making money, while Democrats seem to think that the media is primarily there to disperse factual information to the people. How sad.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Distractions, Distortions, Deceptions, and Outright Lies"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Val Atkinson.
Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
