Do we live in a democracy?  Well,  yes and no.   We don’t live in a true democracy.  In a true democracy, governmental policies that affect the majority of citizens are voted up or down by the majority of citizens. We live in a Republic.  In a Republic, citizens vote periodically for an agent — the so called representatives (congress, senate) — who decides on the best policy, (law) for all the people.  We also vote for a president to faithfully carry out those laws. The president proposes, and congress approves other agents, the supreme court where in conflicts between actions and laws, the intent of congress is  interpreted and enforced.

These governmental agents of the People are supposed to enact, carry out and enforce laws in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, according to the preamble to the Constitution.

This (Republic) is also called a Representative Democracy. These laws are supposed to benefit all the people.  Not just some. Not just the wealthy, the 1%.

How has that worked out?   Well, not so good for the Native Americans, slaves and their descendants, immigrants, sweatshop workers, farmers, small businessmen, the laborer.  In short, the 99%.

Have our agents, the politicians done a good job representing our interests?

Clearly … NO!

How does this happen?  During election season, the candidates often tell us lies.  The old joke, “How do you tell if a candidate is lying?  His mouth is moving,” mostly, is not a joke.  Your interests are not his hidden interests, which usually are the interests of his financial backers.

Question. Why does the public keep sending the Rascals back into public office? Easy.  We are all zombies, the walking dead.  How did we get that way? Propaganda!

Six giant corporations provide 90% of everything we hear, see, and read. Their two purposes are to siphon our wealth and create factions.  We are subjected to round the clock massive advertising and embedding of disinformation into our psyche.

Propaganda is the spreading of information in support of a cause. It’s not so important whether the information is true or false or if the

cause is just or not.  Propaganda was weaponized by Edward Bernays in 1929, who later served on President Woodrow Wilson's "Creel" committee that used every communication method available to drum up support for sending American Soldiers to World War 1, after Wilson's slogan "He'll keep us out of War" helped win him the election.  320,518 Americans were killed or wounded as a result of propaganda.

Bernays described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.

I am old enough to remember watching westerns on the old black and white television sets.  Episodes featuring Bank Robbers often had the Robber creating a diversion a couple of blocks down the street.  A robber would set fire to a building.  The fire brigade and citizens would rush to put out the fire, leaving the bank poorly defended.  The robbers then plundered the bank with ease and safety.

A similar propaganda operation occurs today, using today’s electronic and print media.

The Wall Street Banksters  and Cabal of 400 CEOs who sit on interlocking boards have people who are experts in mass advertising and propaganda. This effort manipulates us into conservative and liberal camps. For decades we have heard these psych embedding phrases: “party of the rich,” “party of the people,” “they don’t have the intelligence of …,” “abortion as birth control,” “right to life, but not health and dignity,” “they are rapist and murderers,” “we’re gonna cage their kids  and ship them home,” “family values,”  “nobody likes women more than I do,” “maga,” “The Virus will magically disappear,” “build-back-better,” “ communism, socialism, socialism, socialism.”

“Socialism is a scare word they've hurled at every advance the people have made. Socialism is what they called public power, social security, deposit insurance, and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all people.”   — Harry Truman, 1952

Meanwhile, as we argue till the cows come home,  the Wall Street Banksters and Modern Day Robber Barons are busy doing their filthy work behind the scenes.

They are privatizing the commons, the governments, institutions (i.e. post office), the regulations to protect people and the environment that the people have installed after much blood, sweat, tears, even deaths.  Destroying unions, holding down wages, evading taxes, price rigging, no prosecution of large financial crimes, antitrust annulment, repeal of Glass/Stegal, repeal of fairness doctrine, perpetual wars, all precipitated by capturing the legislative, executive and  judicial branches for their own rapacious greed.   The corporate controlled Republican and Democrat parties, instead of serving the people, facilitate all of this.  They serve the 1%, not me, not you, just the rich.

There is a better way than to blindly follow the two-part duopoly off the cliff. There is a better way than to be willing participants in our self destruction.

James Madison believed factions were most dangerous to any government. But, to limit their power, here is what he proposed. “Extend the sphere,” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.” More factions would mean less likelihood of any faction being a majority. Making laws would require broad compromise. Broad compromise would prevent tyranny.

That better way, in this nation, in this election and pandemic season  is to vote for  those not rich, nor in the pockets of the rich and their lobbyists.

Vote 3rd party.

But 3rd parties have no chance for success in this country, you say. A-hah!  Another phrase the corporate propagandist has embedded in our minds.

For decades, the puppet masters have worked  to make this true.  The main stream media, has colluded with the corporate duopoly to blacklist any

third party from having its principles disseminated widely.

The League of Women Voters sponsored the first televised debates from 1976 through 1984.  They chose the format and tough questions that would benefit the nation as a whole. Then, in 1988,  the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and was presented to the League as "a done deal, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation.  Most objectionable to the League, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. The League called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questions, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues.

Ralph Nader, a member of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential Men of the Century" ran for President in 2004, 2008, 2012.  I helped set up his Washington Campaign Office and served as Tennessee Coordinator for Ballot Access.   Oh, what a more perfect union this country would be today had he become president. Ralph's campaigns addressed the same issues creating the dystopia we live in today.   But due to the giant corporate two party propaganda machine, the repeal of the fairness doctrine whereby all candidates must receive equal time in the media, obscene ballot access rules, voter suppression, the blacklisting of national exposure by the mainstream media, and the Presidential Campaign Debate Committee,  the nation lost  its  opportunity to throw off the oppressive  knee on its neck by the Oligarchs.

Today, in November 2020,  the Green Party US offers a lifeline to those suffering under those same oppressive regimes.  The globalist corporate regimes. I urge you to go to GP.org and review the party's platform.  Greens address the issues that plague us today:  rigged elections, a  rigged economy, 40-year wage and union repression, environmental destruction, climate change, racism, police brutality, perpetual wars, corporate domination and massive propaganda. The Greens have a program that when enacted will heal this nation.

You won't see/hear the Green Party   mentioned in the mainstream media. You won't see the Green Party as a section on your Tennessee presidential ballot.

The Republican and Democrat parties get a free ride on all state ballots. All other parties must turn in petitions.In Tennessee it's 53,000 signatures. Independent candidates only need 275 signatures.  Look for independent candidate Howie Hawkins.  He is the Green Party nominee.

Stop voting for the “lesser of two evils.”  Get the privileged corporations off your neck.

• Kenneth Clark is a retired CPA, software developer and college instructor. He was the Tennessee Ralph Nader-2008 Campaign Coordinator. He lives in Unionville.