Dysfunctional America. “An Unaccountable Government, Released from Constitutional and Legal Constraints”
If you require more evidence
that the United States is a dysfunctional society, observe American
elections. Election season is slander season. Each party’s attack teams
focus on misrepresenting, defaming, and ridiculing the opposing party’s
candidates. Attack ads have replaced debates and any discussion of what
the issues are, or should be, and how candidates perceive the public’s
interest. Each attack team tells lies designed to enrage various voters
about the other team’s candidate.
Whoever is elected is indebted
not to voters but to the special interests that provided the campaign
money. Once elected the official serves the private interest groups that
put the official in office. In America the government can be bought
and sold just like everything else. In its Citizens United ruling, a
Republican Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the right of
corporations to purchase the US government.
Each state has its own dominant
interest groups that win every election. In Florida real estate
developers routinely defeat the environment and local communities.
Developers have even been known to form organizations that pose as
conservation supporters in order to misrepresent and defeat conservation
measures.
Yet, despite their long string
of losses to special interests, voters still participate in elections. I
once read a theory that elections are a form of entertainment.
President Clinton’s encounter with the young woman on MTV–”boxers or
briefs”–is one indication of the lack of seriousness that Americans
bring to politics.
Perhaps the lighter moment of a
young woman’s interest in the president’s underwear should be
cherished. The Clinton years will be remembered as scandal after
scandal with dark events unresolved and covered up. The Clinton years
were transformative. For those who don’t remember and those too young
at the time to be aware, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories (1997),
will be an eye-opener. Perhaps the Democrats should read the book
before nominating Hillary as the party’s presidential candidate.
Evans-Pritchard was Washington
bureau chief for the Sunday Telegraph, one of the main British
newspapers. He was stunned by how the American media ceased to function
during the Clinton years. The Clinton years gave us such events as the
federal government’s murder of the Branch Davidians in their Waco
compound and subsequent coverup, the Oklahoma City bombing and coverup,
and the coverup of the apparent murder of White House counsel Vincent
Foster.
Almost everyone who paid
attention saw coverups, not investigations, of these extraordinary
events. Evans-Pritchard was one who payed attention, and what he saw
did not pass muster. Yet, there was no press asking questions.
For example, the official story
was that Tim McVeigh was the “lone nut” responsible for blowing up the
Murrah Federal Office Building with a truck bomb. Yet, at McVeigh’s
trial the prosecution did not call a single witness who could place
McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the day of the bombing. “This is a rather
astonishing fact,” writes Evans-Pritchard, and indeed it is. The reason
the prosecution could not provide a witness to place MvVeigh at the
scene of the crime is that the many witnesses all reported seeing
McVeigh in the company of other men, and the prearranged official story
was that McVeigh was alone. The FBI and the prosecution had to make
this case, not conduct a real investigation and discover what really
happened.
Experts who have examined the
Oklahoma City bombing have concluded that the truck bomb was cover for
explosives set inside the building. For example, US Air Force munitions
expert General Benton K. Partin provided an extensive and detailed
study and wrote to the US Senate: “The attached report contains
conclusive proof that the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was not caused solely by the truck
bomb. Evidence shows that the massive destruction was primarily the
result of four demolition charges placed at critical structural points
at the third floor level.” http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/PARTIN/ok8.htm
Miquel Rodriguez, the associate independent counsel assigned the
investigation of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster’s mysterious
death resigned after four months convinced that he was dealing with a
FBI coverup and that his investigation was being sabotaged by personnel
within his own office. The FBI’s official story differed completely
from the story of the witness who discovered Foster’s body. Again, as
in Oklahoma, the FBI’s case required the creation of a make-believe
scenario at odds with the evidence. With no interference from a silent
press, the FBI created the story that was needed. Evans-Pritchard
wrote that the Foster case was “taboo for American journalists. In
private, many concede that the official story is unbelievable, but they
will not broach it in print.”When Americans think of Clinton era scandals, they recall “Whitewater” and Clinton’s sexual escapades with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Evans-Pritchard writes that these two scandals were small potatoes compared to the Waco, Oklahoma City, and Vincent Foster coverups. Evans-Pritchard concludes that these minor events were used by the press to distract the public and perhaps Congress from inquiring into FBI coverups of criminal acts.
I remember asking my Wall Street Journal colleague Robert Bartley why he put so much energy and editorial ink into Whitewater, a minor scandal involving some real estate payoffs to the Clintons that did not pan out. Serious events were ignored while Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky became a matter of impeachment.
From Clinton to George W. Bush
and Obama was another transformative change. The crimes of the Clinton
regime were not acknowledged and covered up. The crimes of the Bush and
Obama regimes are openly acknowledged by the presidents themselves and
by their attorneys general who assert that the “war on terror” is a war
during whose course presidents are freed from the Constitution and from
domestic and international statutory law. Thus, we have indefinite
detention, torture and loss of protection against self-incrimination,
destruction of privacy, and execution of US citizens without due process
of law.
Almost overnight the US
government became unaccountable, released from constitutional and legal
constraints. Elections serve only to validate the unaccountability of
government.
No comments:
Post a Comment