Sunday, December 18, 2022

The End of Checks and Balances ~~ CLARK T. SCOTT

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/12/the-end-of-checks-and-balances/

~~ recommended by newestbeginning ~~


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As we are raised and schooled in the so-called USA we are indoctrinated to believe that the government was wisely constructed to insure against any one of the three main branches – legislative, executive, judicial – from gaining too much power and thereby becoming tyrannical.  The basis of this belief was that there would be a balance of diverse opinions and, when any one or two of these branches exceeded /threatened that balance and/or began to violate the constitutional guidelines, the other branch or branches could “check” their power and rein them in to restore the healthy balance. If need be, the legislature could vote to override the president and design laws to override the courts, the president could push for the creation of new laws and could veto legislation, and the courts could say the laws or the actions were unconstitutional.

There was/is one major problem with this structure. The designers of this structure seem to have assumed that the USA would always be open to a diversity of voices and their differing agendas would be worked out and result in balancing the desires of the assumed diversity of representation and guidance.

This assumption that there would be representation of diverse beliefs has always been subjected to some variable degrees of skepticism throughout the trials which mark the the growth of this enterprise. The so-called “Civil war” was possibly the most prominent example of how far skepticism and greed could drive people to try to destroy representation of diverse desires. I say “was” because there is today a belief system which is so widespread within the government that it is reducing almost all types of diversity to gimmicks which are used cynically by the members of the government to reinforce a singular predatory religiosity.

There is a distinct change which has become institutionalized since the creation of the “World Wars” and has now become the singular driver of both houses of the congress, the presidency, and the courts. Especially since the end of the last World War, the government of the USA has increasingly promoted a state religion and that religion has now become institutionalized and proudly tyrannical.

The religion has now eliminated checks and balances by infiltrating all of congress, the presidency, and the courts. The two major political parties are increasingly united in their devotion to the religion and together they work to deviously undermine and destroy any infidelity to their religion – not only domestically, but internationally.

The three branches are now united as arms of a single theology. The theology is, like so many theologies, devoted to imposing a hierarchy on both its adherents and all outsiders. The cleverest aspect of this hierarchy is its ability to impose increasingly expanding social inequalities while proclaiming that it is the greatest force for democracy. The cynicism behind this cleverness relies upon the tendencies of its adherents and the rest of its victims to believe that to be self-serving and desperately greedy is the great equalizer among humans. The herd has been taught to believe that they are the exceptional people because they have reduced more of life to monetary indifference than any other empire in the history of such debasement.

To be blunt, the supposed “bipartisan” USA and its allies have settled for the self-serving shallowness and deceitfulness of Reaganomics as if it is the culmination of social evolution. Only superficial pretenses of a balance of powers are now allowed and those are only tolerated in order to maintain the illusion that, by reinforcing the “bipartisan” mechanism, there might be a means of escaping the trap of privatized corporate control of all life on the planet. Private capital is now the controller and the benefactor of the three branches of the so-called government and the republicans and the democrats are primarily playing off of each other to disguise their self-serving, shared devotion to the theocracy of private capital and its subsequent inequal/unequal distribution of power.

Here are some examples of how they operate to insure compliance and submission through deceit and misrepresentation.

Instead of the Senate passing laws based upon how a majority votes, they repeatedly now insist that a majority has to be 60 out of 100. This allows the minority to control legislation while a majority of senators can pretend that they prefer otherwise.

The House of Representatives divides legislation into separate parts so that the more predatory aspects of legislation are routinely advanced successfully while the aspects which have the widest appeal to the citizens are allowed to be eliminated by the Senate in subsequent manipulations. This way they pretend as if they tried to do what has the widest appeal.

Presidential candidates consistently lie about what they will do if elected.

Often before they are elected and definitely after they are elected, they abandon the proposals which have the most appeal to the voters or they work with the congress to undermine and gut them.

Socialistic taxes on the public are overwhelmingly used to benefit private corporations at the expense of public projects and when widely beneficial public projects are proposed they are shot down based upon the accusation that they are socialistic attack on the religion of privatizing corporate capitalism because they are accused of not being able to pay for themselves. The republicans and the democrats shared hypocrisy becomes apparent however if one looks at the money demanded by and for the ever-more-secretive security state. The Pentagon, weapons manufacturers, policing agencies, and the abundance of spy agencies take ever-increasing percentages of the majority of government funding.  These huge drains on the government’s coffers are unquestioningly maintained and expanded through every overwhelmingly supported “onimibus” bill of every year and through socialist taxation. Their seemingly bottomless craving for public money is largely used in globally-wide schemes to crush widely popular socialistic tendencies toward democracy and a healthier environment, both domestic and foreign.

The religion of so-called “Free Market” economics is unable to stand on its own. It is massively propped up by the socialistically funded militarism and agencies of spying while it continues to reduce the social fabric.

The branches of the supposed government have become fused as one big agency of propaganda under and for the private corporate control which is the uniting deceitful state religion of the democrats and republicans. The republicans and the democrats are two sides of a single choir. They contrapuntally  spout layers of sounds to give the illusion that their voices might go in a different direction, but they always end each season by submitting to the designated dominating refrain within their beloved omnibus hymnal which translates as, “trust the powerful god of money.”

Checks and balances have been reduced by the democrats and republicans to being no more than the terms used by bankers and, if it is justice you are seeking, that is now determined by your purchasing power.

By investing your power into the democrats and republicans, you are selling yourself and the environment of the planet short.

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