Dysfunctional America

[Fednatic]

October 31, 2014

Dysfunctional America

By Paul Craig Roberts

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.

::::::::

Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts

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 paid
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 McVeigh 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."

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.

[John Doe]

see also:
John Doe <always.look message.header>
Fednatic <fednatic gmail.com>
acoustic panix.com (lo yeeOn)
nym-shifting no-archive racist stalker off-topic imposter troll

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