Why do Americans elect such awful Presidents? For the same reason they elect so many awful Congressmen, Senators and Governors: because they refuse to ask the right questions. Allow me to explain.
I think most of those reading this would agree that there's a world of difference between "being your own leader" and being a
cheerleader for someone else. And most people, unfortunately, are always looking for excuses to be the latter, that way they can go on treating politics as just another
spectator sport. But in doing so, they ignore
(a) the fact that feel-good platitudes designed to elicit cheers and applause from the already-converted are no substitute for specific ideas on how key governmental policies can actually be made conducive to securing a truly just, prosperous and free society;
(b) the fact that, although ideas themselves are indeed bullet proof, the political leaders who espouse them are not; and
(c) the consequential fact that, the more a
nonviolent revolution is driven by the force of a particular person's popularity instead of by the force of ideas, the easier it is for the banker-owned political establishment to neutralize that revolution through either character assassination or -- if the political leader in question becomes
too popular and/or advocates policy reforms that are too
threatening to the institutionalized
privileges of the parasitic ruling class -- literal assassination (as the anti-war followers of RFK and MLK all found out the hard way).
Now, that's not to say that an
idea-driven
nonviolent revolution is incompatible with supporting and promoting a particular candidate, just that the latter must be a mere
supplement of, rather than
substitute for, the former.
With regard to elections, aside from institutionalized election-rigging, the primary reason why establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans continue to get elected -- even when there are third party candidates on the ballot -- is that voters continually ask the wrong questions.
Instead of openly asking where the candidate in question actually stands on key issues, most voters -- both liberal and conservative alike -- silently ask to themselves meaningless questions such as...
* Does this candidate seem like someone I'd like to have a beer with?
* Does he pay lip service to preserving and defending the Constitution?
* Does he pay lip service to the importance of "freedom" and "liberty"?
* Does he pay lip service to the importance of feeling "safe" from evil terrorists?
* Does he pay lip service to the need for "change"?
* Is he able to read from a teleprompter more skillfully and articulately than his main opponent?
And so on and so forth, ad nauseum.
Corporate-whore Republicans like George Bush and corporate-whore Democrats like Barack Obama have repeatedly proven that they're able to answer such questions to the satisfaction of the easily-duped voters who ask them. This is why our government continues to be a government of, by and for
parasitic robber barons instead of a government of, by and for "the people," and hence why things continue to get worse and worse regardless of which of the two banker-owned major parties is in charge.
Bottom line: an answer is only as good as the question that elicited it, so if either corporate-whore Democrats or corporate-whore Republicans seem like the "answer" on election day, then we're asking the wrong damn questions!
Thus, if the American people are truly interested in changing things for the better, they must start asking better questions. It's as simple as that.
Instead of asking, "Is this someone I'd like to have a beer with?" or, "Does this candidate pay lip service to empty platitudes about liberty?" we must ask, "Does he advocate the right
policy positions?"
To get a more specific idea of what I mean, here are the questions I ask when assessing a particular candidate:
On election reform, does this candidate support or oppose the reform measures listed at the beginning of this thread?
On monetary reform, does this candidate support or oppose
-- putting all
derivatives-infected
mega-banks through Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, in the reorganization proceedings, wiping out all derivatives;
-- liquidating all of the ill-gotten assets of criminal scam artists such as Henry Paulson and Bernard Madoff, and using the resultant proceeds to help replenish whatever retirement funds they raided;
-- replacing our current debt-based money system with a
debt-free "Greenback" money system, whereby all new money -- instead of being loaned into circulation at
interest -- is
spent in at
no interest; and
-- instituting
a new round of international agreements modeled on the Bretton Woods Accords, with an aim towards replacing the current “floating” exchange rates for national currencies with a
fixed rate that, as such, is pegged to the value of either an agreed-upon standardized price index or an agreed-upon “basket” of diverse, widely available, everyday commodities?
On foreign policy reform, does this candidate support or oppose
-- bringing an immediate end to our
imperialist,
terroristic,
hornets' nest-stirring wars of aggression; and
-- abolishing the
CIA?
On civil liberties, does this candidate support or oppose
-- repealing the
"Patriot" Act;
-- repealing the
Homeland "Security" Act;
-- repealing the
Military Commissions Act;
-- repealing
Presidential Directive 51;
-- repealing the
Establishment of the Council of Governors; and
-- abolishing
FEMA?
On national sovereignty, does this candidate support or oppose
-- withdrawing the U.S. from both
NAFTA and the
WTO; and
-- enacting the
American Sovereignty Restoration Act?
On drug policy reform, does this candidate support or oppose
-- ending the
drug war (and with it all of the
corruption,
hypocrisy and police state thuggery it breeds); and
-- abolishing the DEA?
On gun control, does this candidate support or oppose
-- repealing all federal
gun control laws; and
-- abolishing the BATFE?
On health care reform, does this candidate support or oppose
-- repealing Obama's
corporate fascist health care "reform" bill;
-- relegalizing
alternative medicine;
-- making health insurance tax deductible (so long as there's an income tax) for individuals as it already is for business owners;
-- revoking bogus or overextended drug patents granted to
Big Pharma for either "
me-too" drugs or drugs developed primarily at
taxpayer expense; and
-- informing the masses of the extent to which corporate-whore politicians from both major parties have precipitated a tremendous artificial surge in the need for health care services by either imposing or green-lighting such things as
tainted vaccines,
aspartame,
GMO foods and
flouridated water supplies, and by turning a blind eye to the endless regulatory violations of politically-connected
factory farms (i.e., "
Big Agri") while
throwing the book at small family farms for even the smallest and pettiest of infractions?
On energy policy, does this candidate support or oppose
-- using antitrust action to
break up the oil cartel;
-- educating the masses about the
manufactured myth of "peak oil";
-- assuming public ownership of any and all domestic refineries that Big Oil shut down to create artificial scarcity, and bringing them up to full production in order to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil; and
-- revoking any and all patents purchased by the competition-hating oil cartel for alternative energy technologies currently not in use?
On environmental policy, does this candidate support or oppose
-- educating the public about
ClimateGate, about the manufactured myth of
man-made global warming, and about how
Al Gore and his corporate cronies have been attempting to exploit this myth as a means of extorting billions if not trillions of dollars from the American people via the fraudulent "
carbon tax" scheme;
-- passing stricter laws against the use of
depleted uranium, and arresting and criminally prosecuting all former and current U.S. officials who violated international law by authorizing the use of depleted uranium in such countries as Iraq and Afghanistan;
-- levying a
severance tax on oil extraction and devoting part of the resultant revenue to equipping all federal buildings with solar panels, and the rest to an
Alaskan-style oil dividend; and
-- shifting the tax burden to the greatest extent possible off
labor and
capital and onto the
economic rent of land, so as to alleviate (among other things)
urban sprawl, and with it both (a) oil-wasting,
carbon monoxide-spewing traffic congestion, and (b) excess deforestation?
On education policy, does this candidate support or oppose
-- eliminating
federal involvement in so-called "
education" and passing the tens of billions in savings onto the
bottom 90% of income earners?
On the issue of "terrorism" and "national security," does this candidate support or oppose
-- sponsoring and promoting a nationally televised airing of (a) all of the
admitted cases of
false flag terror attacks orchestrated at least in part by U.S. officials, (b) all of the evidence pointing towards 9/11 being an inside job, and (c) all of the evidence pointing towards U.S. government involvement in any other acts of terrorism (e.g., the "underwear bomber");
-- arresting and criminally prosecuting any current or former high-level U.S. official who has admitted to authorizing torture, and/or for whom there is incriminating evidence of being either a participant in a false flag terror attack or an accomplice after the fact;
-- passing a federal law specifically against false flag terrorism in all its guises and variants, with the mandatory penalty for conviction being life in a maximum security prison without possibility of parole for any military person ranked Colonel or higher, and for any U.S. official who (at the time of the offense) either served as President or was seven or less heartbeats away from the Presidency; and
-- enforcing U.S.
immigration laws, while continually reminding those obsessed with political correctness that doing so will in no way apply to the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who immigrate here
legally every year, and that Mexico's restrictions on immigration are
far more exclusionary than those of the U.S. (which, if we apply the same standard to Mexico that the corporate whore "news" media applies to the U.S., means that Mexico is far more
racist than the U.S.)?
On the issue of internet freedom, does this candidate support or oppose
-- repealing any and all "cyber security" laws or regulations that allow for Chinese-style censorship and control; and
-- enacting the
Internet Freedom Preservation Act?
I could go on, of course, but I think you get the idea.
