Americans can be quite arrogant (obtuse?) in accepting how others view us, especially in our political behavior. Here is one distinguished English journalist's perspective that Americans "...have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties -- which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of 'experts'..."
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Robert Fisk has it right but incomplete. Yes, there's the partisan "I've always voted Republican," but also "I dunno, he just appeals to me," and "I'd never vote for a Mormon," and "I like his wife better," etc. By such standards we select the person to serve for four years as the Most Powerful Person in the World -- the one person who can pick up the red phone by his bedside at Three A.M. and command the destruction of a continent. Yes, this "better looking" person or "good Christian" or "solid party man" can do this.
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Oh, yes, some Americans rise above such specious standards. Why some of my best friends (one of our higher standards of credibility) will advise that they see through such charades of qualification and therefore must resort to the "only practical expedient" of supporting the "lesser-evil" choice, never for a nanosecond suspecting that perhaps such a determination has been engineered from elsewhere.
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When I ask the "lesser-evil" persuaded "why?" they choose such a course, they do in fact sometimes admit to a sense of helplessness or offer that they would not choose to waste (?) their vote. But when I ask them why not seek out a candidate of Intelligence, Integrity, Courage and Goodwill, their response is quite likely to be the wordless deer-in-the-headlights aspect, or if enunciated, something on the order of there being no other practical alternative. But they seem simply to wither if I then advise that their choice of the "lesser-evil" does in fact constitute their endorsement in advance of a certain (?) amount of evil to be not only perpetrated in the future but apparently condoned.
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On rare occasion, someone will question what can a person do when there seems no alternative to the "lesser-evil" perspective. The response is usually stunned speechlessness to my advice that they should then rather seek the "greater-good."
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All of this frankly leaves me in bewilderment over why -- for instance -- an intellectual giant and eminently decent person such as Noam Chomsky has never even been rumored as a possibility for the World's Most Powerful Office, while such as an intellectually and morally challenged George W, Bush actually took the prize twice!
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Or why is the physically slight, but of abundant political courage, Congressman Dennis Kucinich not more prominently considered as the presidential candidate of his major party (too short?) or Senator Bernie Sanders a candidate (uh-oh, socialist?) or the articulate, crusading Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (like Bush, Yale grad with Harvard masters, but wait: black and female!) or why was people's champion Alan Grayson rejected by "the people" for a second term? Do they lack the comprehension that subservience to the now secret-to-the-public financial masters is the major prerequisite for entitlement in today's American political cesspool? It would seem that they are forever to be ineligible even for "lesser-evil" status but rather to suffer the political abyss of the "better-good."
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I will frankly admit to having many more questions about the continuing political descent of America, rather than answers and solutions, but I cannot help but to wish that my fellow Americans would recognize that our government and most conspicuously our highest public officers are indentured to big-money interests, and that the public interest and such even as peace trail a sorry pace behind.
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I recall my outstanding (he authored the text) freshman algebra teacher in Philadelphia's Central High School -- as we foundered for a solution -- time and time insisting: "Read the problem!" And later in life, my sailing teacher lecturing on the First Law of Navigation: "Know your position!" And now these past ten or twelve years, I find myself relating to the wisdom and the benefit offered by these instructions as they relate to our sorry political situation. I can only hope that more will join in recognizing America's leadership problems and the people's position in foundering for a solution or in charting a corrective course.
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And may heaven forfend some latter day Nathan Hale to stand and declare: "I regret that I've wasted my one life for my country!"
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