{"id":57260,"date":"2021-03-26T07:46:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T12:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57260"},"modified":"2021-03-26T10:36:17","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T15:36:17","slug":"us-democracy-is-a-facade-there-are-no-effective-constraints-on-elites-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57260","title":{"rendered":"US Democracy is a Fa\u00e7ade: There Are No Effective Constraints on Elites\u2019 Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

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US Democracy is a Fa\u00e7ade: There Are No Effective Constraints on Elites\u2019 Behavior<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cDo you remember \u201936, we went our separate ways
\nYou fought for Stalin, I fought for freedom<\/em><\/p>\n

You believe in authority, I believe in myself
\nI\u2019m a molotov cocktail, you\u2019re Dom Perignon\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

-Against Me<\/em><\/p>\n

How did the cat get so fat?<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was a public schoolboy, bright-eyed, we sang the anthem every day.<\/p>\n

I believed there was some entity, some unseen guardian angel, that made the literal and figurative trains run on time. I really believed there was some incorruptible backstop to prevent the bottom from falling out.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken years of watching upper-crust decadence and depravity \u2013 in the vein of Caligula \u2014 to realize the truth: there is no bottom to the barrel.\u00a0The elites just do what they want<\/u><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and if they decide they want to hurt you, either through malice or indifference or graft, they will.<\/p>\n

This is when \u201cdefenders of democracy\u201d \u2013 increasingly, from the ostensible, self-positioned \u201cleft\u201d \u2014 will jump in with the well-trodden refrain: \u201cWe choose our leaders to represent us \u2013 we have a choice!\u201d<\/p>\n

You have no meaningful choice. As George Carlin, patron saint of calling out neoliberal bullshit, RIP, put it:<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans are led to feel free through the exercise of meaningless choices. There are only two political parties. There is a reduction of the number of media companies. Banking has been reduced to only a handful of banks. Oil companies. These are important, and you\u2019re given very little choice\u2026. You know what your freedom of choice in America is? Paper or plastic.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

High society is \u201ca big club \u2013 and you ain\u2019t in it<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

Ben Bartee, the daily bell, democracy, ruling class, propaganda, lies, con, government, government policy,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Democracy is a Fa\u00e7ade: There Are No Effective Constraints on Elites\u2019 Behavior \u201cDo you remember \u201936, we went our separate ways You fought for Stalin, I fought for freedom You believe in authority, I believe in myself I\u2019m a molotov cocktail, you\u2019re Dom Perignon\u201d -Against Me How did the cat get so fat? When […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31075,6236,204,379,31076,2864,655,3899,15276],"class_list":["post-57260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-ben-bartee","tag-con","tag-democracy","tag-government","tag-government-policy","tag-lies","tag-propaganda","tag-ruling-class","tag-the-daily-bell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57261,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57260\/revisions\/57261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}