The imbalance of power in Washington since the 2016 election and before is a fundamental challenge to democracy in the USA.
This is something that is above and beyond party politics.
Many Dems claimed the 2016 elections were a fraud and many Republicans have done the same in 2020.
Who has won and lost any particular election is not really the central point.
It is clear the election system process is in many ways broken. At least many from both parties have stated this in some detail and done so in a way that is beyond just anger at an election loss.
The election winners and losers have not addressed the previous election failings. This is anti democratic
The power of interest groups to effect elections is clear
Interest groups include wall street, old media, big pharma, big tech, military and industrial groups, the defense intelligence community (FBI CIA NSA and others) the NRA and many others including the Universities
All these groups in some way are trying to influence the outcome of the election either by the actions they take or the delaying of actions or disclosing information or controlling what is discussed and restricting what they dont like even if it is the truth
If the purpose of the elections is for the will of the people of the USA to be reflected then the selecting or influencing or hiding of what information the people of the USA get to enable them determine their will seems clearly to be inappropriate to some degree or other.
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers now seek to support the banning of books. In the old days the lawyers of the ACLU fought for the rights of all to speak and march even when they like most in the USA objected to the views being expressed by those marchers.
It increasingly looks like we live in societies of cronayism.
China is a crony communist system, Russia has Putin, the western world seems to operate an increasingly crony capitalist or socialist system depending where you live which is more about power and control than what is best for the people.
Popularizm may be the reaction to this.
How the state responds to popularizm can be seen in Hong Kong or the Tiananmen Square Massacre follow up.
Today the state response in very multi layered.
In China those with power seek to protect their iron rice bowel. Their income and benefits.
In the west the European Union tries to stop different opinions on its future and expand its role in the world without seeking a referendum from its people about what the EU should be - a United Federal State or an economic bloc
Some group must be making and directing policy. Who that really is no one knows
To help remove the problems in the USA system the funding of all political parties and those seeking public office should be limited to free donations made from public tax funds allocated by each individual registered voter and made via the IRS.
No voter will pay any money they will just make a nomination which the IRS will pay from public taxes
There should be a maximum allowed per person, payments would be nominated by anyone who is a registered voter to a person or party they are allowed to vote for within their state whether they pay tax or not
So it would be a free payment made by the IRS.
If people do not select a payment then the funds would be automatically divided equally amongst each of those they could have voted for allocating the total fixed amount in a percentage system based on the number of people represented by the elected official from the each candidate for President of the USA down to their local area elected posts and candidates.
This system could be modified to include things such as public funding for local meetings at which registered candidates should publicly present their platforms within guidelines.
In general terms politicians should not be able to get any financing other than from Congress mandated public funds and the same rules apply to all
This type of system would liberate voters and politicians and elected officials from interest groups and help bring in politicians who depend on the people not interest groups.
This would help address the imbalance of power in Washington since the 2016 election and before
A failure to address these matters will lead to more control by interest groups.
It seems clear that as the interest groups support politicians financially politicians do what the interest groups want
The difference between different party policies is now getting smaller or zero in many significant areas. That means no real choice
In the end or even now the changing of which party is in power will make little meaningful difference to the key policies that change thinking and society.
Knowledge, information, financing and communication are the keys to power.
Countries in the long term cannot be ruled against their will by military force so states wish to control the information to get people to agree on the state agenda.
But why is the state agenda set and by whom should it be influenced.
We can only base our decisions on what we reasonably know, expect or experience. This information needs to be as balanced as possible to have real meaning
China is a good example of how controlling information and politicians by a central authority works.
In todays world we are all moving backwards towards systems that control what citizens know and what is appropriate for citizens to know.
Who shapes that message changes. In China its the communist party in the USA poweful business groups support both the main parties and shape the policies.
The democrats used to be supported by the Unions and the republicans by wall street and big business. For many years wall street and big business has now supported the democrats
Politicians and government employees need to know they will be held to account for doing wrong.
This in many ways does not happen.
President Bush and weapons of mass destruction is one simple example. The Clintons and their Clinton foundation with financing from foreign Governments around the world which stopped after the Clintons lost political influence is another example of wrong doing not being checked or acounted for. There are many more examples
We need to change the controls before it is too late otherwise we will all be controlled without knowing it even more than already happens, and so suffer regardless of the political view we may currently hold or believe.
In George Orwell's 1984 the power groups of countries changed sides in their wars against each other as the media message was changed.
We are not so far from that type of world in the last 30+ years and still remain there.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall Russia became accepted and eventually so did China then there was a public sweep back of Russian acceptance
I believe neither country probably should ever have been supported as they were until they showed real change and stopped abusing their citizens.
However those in power had other views that went against the public statements and actions
In 2015 a CIA officer published a CIA cleared book see link below setting out the US-China link went back long before Joe Biden back to the senior President Bush and before
How many people know that the CIA worked with China since the 1970s to spy and fight against Russia and got China to send weapons to both the Afghans and the South African backed anti-Cubans in Angola the forces doing the main fighting against Russian backed regimes in the 1980s
Additionslly President Bush sent a high ranking mission to China just after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 to say that the USA wanted to maintain relations with China or effectively the Chinese Communist Party. President Bush lived in China with his wife for some years as a US representative and visited China almost annually after the end of his term as President
See link below
The joint US-Chinese operations included the major electronic spying program in China, code-named Chestnut, that targeted the Soviet Union and now Russia, as well as covert shipments of Chinese arms to Afghan rebels battling Soviet forces and anti-Cuban rebels in Angola.
Most amazingly China, according to the book, supported Afghan rebel attacks inside the Soviet Union until CIA lawyers ended the strikes as overly provocative
The disclosures of clandestine U.S.-China intelligence cooperation dating to the 1970s are likely to embarrass Beijing. China frequently attacks the CIA for allegedly fomenting democratic revolution in China and for supporting the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, whom China designated as a major enemy.
The disclosures that are said to have upset Beijing the most, however, were related to a CIA-led operation to arm 50,000 anti-Vietnam rebels in Cambodia .... jointly conducted with Chinese assistance with Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore......Mr. Pillsbury wrote, adding that the cooperation revealed China’s strategy for weakening a strong “hegemon,” a strategy that is likely being used today against the United States.
The strategy calls for attacking the hegemon’s vulnerabilities, convincing others to do the fighting and attacking the allies of the declining hegemon.
The joint operations included the major electronic spying program in China, code-named Chestnut, that targeted the Soviet Union and now Russia, as well as covert shipments of Chinese arms to Afghan rebels battling Soviet forces and anti-Cuban rebels in Angola.
m.washingtontimes.com
The U.S. Tiananmen Papers
nsarchive2.gwu.edu
Chinese President Xi Jinping has praised George H.W. Bush's role in helping to improve China-US relations, in a tribute to the former president of the United States who died on Saturday at the age of 94.
www.cnn.com
I hope these thoughts help some people consider the world we live in so we can move in a positive way and seek changes to stop the Washington imbalance.
I hope everyone can find a good, honest and peaceful way forward with a government and military working for and defending the interests of people not for some interest group or groups agenda
To show a simple example of how far back in recent times these problems go and to understand why accountability is so important we can look to the JFK assassination.
In one way it does not matter who killed JFK what matters is how the government dealt with it and what files and information were destroyed and altered by those without the authority or legal power to do so
We do now know the Secret Service and others destroyed Kennedy files and hid information related in some way to the the assassination as late as the 1990s
It is stated in the public record that the Secret Service destroyed JFK files for events covering the months around and including the day of the JFK assassination despite being told in writing by the National Archieve it was illegal to destroy any JFK files.
What is more we know the Secret Service destroyed these files 1 week before they were legally obliged to turn over the files to Congressional Investigators.
The Secret Service admitted in writing that files were destroyed and that the files included the information about protection actions taken at events JFK attended before his assassination.
No one was held to account for destroying these files.
These Secret Service actions reflect and are indicative of the deeper long term problem and attitude within government and the agencies of state which needs to be reversed.
No one is held to account even for such an obvious failing and this clearly shows the system is working against the peoples right to know what has been done in their name
For more information on what the Secret Service did and the lack of accountability related to what happened to JFK see the link below
Most conspiracy theories surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination have been disproven. JFK conspiracy theory is debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination : Read more
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