Our agencies have done this under the illusion of democracy. The client states "elect" their leaders. If unsuitable to US corporate interests, that leader disappears, and the client colony gets to try again.
Likewise the Trump regime now takes power amidst a classic imperial "strip and flip" black op coup.
Leading up to the election, millions of black, Hispanic, Asian-American, Muslim and other citizens were stripped from the voter rolls, as they have been for decades. Where that was not enough, black box electronic voting machines have flipped the final outcome, not only for the presidency, but for the House, Senate and state and local governments throughout the US.
Both tactics were used to eliminate the grassroots leftist Bernie Sanders. When the corporate Democrats refused him the nomination, and then the Vice President's slot, they trashed the youthful activist uprising that put Barack Obama in the White House, and that is the key to our progressive future. The moneyed liberal elite made it clear they preferred having Donald Trump in the White House over a social democrat, even in the second slot.
The election was then flipped to Trump despite his losing the popular vote count by some three million ballots.
The deal was sealed in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Hillary Clinton won the exit polls but lost the Electoral College. The corporate Dems then refused to support recounts while the media heaped abuse on the Green Party's valiant Jill Stein for daring to challenge corrupted outcomes that were obviously illegitimate.
Indeed, Clinton's corporate Democrats sealed Trump's coup by refusing to challenge the nationwide stripping of the voter rolls, or the flipping of the vote count in the key swing states. They haven't even raised the issue of an Electoral College that has now for the sixth time put the loser of a popular election into the White House.
Instead, as they screamed at Ralph Nader after Florida 2000, they now howl about the Russians.
But the real corruption of our elections is right here at home. High atop the list of our real problems are our fake democracy, and a fossil/nuke industry that is destroying our planet.
The social movements needed to win these battles are alive and well. From Occupy to Black Lives Matter to the Green/Bernie campaigns to the Dakota Pipeline to this weekend's mass marches and beyond, we inhabit a vibrant body politic that is firmly committed to justice, social democracy and a sustainable Earth.
With this terrible coup in Washington we shed some tears and feel some fear.
We are mourning. But we are marching, and we are organizing.
And the imperatives are clear. We need to win a true democracy, a Solartopian Earth, equal justice for all, a definitive understanding that we are all created equal, and endowed with an inalienable right to survive on this planet.
Trump reminds us that it will not be easy. We need to remind him that he's just a blip, a tiny toxic bend in the arc of history that bends toward justice -- if we make it so.
In that, we have no choice. See you on the barricades.
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