The establishment have pulled out all the stops with the 2016 election, which presents the two most hated candidates in American history. Convincing the American people to accept the old game is no easy task for the establishment. The latest round of propaganda includes the creation of a new super PAC in support of Clinton which was kicked it off with a video featuring wealthy celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, Don Cheadle, Keegan Key and others, edited together to berate the viewer with a very simple message: “We’re rich so our opinions are more important than yours.” The video is entitled Save The Day and if you’ve seen it, you probably weren’t aware that it was a Super PAC created by Hollywood director Joss Whedon.

“But what is a Super PAC?” you ask? Super PACs are a type of independent Political Action Committee (PAC) that are legally permitted to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals. You might remember that one of the touchstones of the Bernie Sanders campaign was the fact that it did not accept money from Super PACs.

But the Save The Day propaganda video wasn’t the only helping hand Hillary received from her friends in Hollywood, as her subsequent appearance on the mock celebrity interview show “Between Two Ferns” with Zach Galifianakis further exemplifies the extent to which moneyed interests are willing to go in their vain attempt to distract Americans from their awakening to the realization that there are no political solutions, that the elections are merely a spectacle, and that it doesn’t matter who is elected – continuity of the status quo marches on regardless of whose face is on it. Those who see the corruption but fail to understand the meaninglessness of the presidential circus understandably favor Donald Trump because of his appearance as a political outsider, and to express their fury at America’s dwindling economic status (that took perhaps one of its hardest blows from NAFTA during the administration of Hillary’s husband).

Meanwhile the media have granted Trump billions of dollars in free television coverage to constantly push a message of fear: the Donald is going to usher in an era of Fascism. But doesn’t America already resemble a fascist state? Look around. You ever hear about this endless string of police murders (more Americans have been killed by police since 9/11 than soldiers killed overseas)? You ever hear about the use of slave labor in our massive prison industrial complex that houses nearly two-and-a-half million prisoners (most of whom are there for the victimless offense of drug possession)? Have you been following the violent treatment of peaceful protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline? And how about the NSA’s egregious dragnet surveillance programs that constitute the most invasive obstruction of the Fourth Amendment in US history? Or the elimination of due process and Habeas Corpus through the extraordinary rendition (or kidnapping) of American citizens made legal under section 1021 of the NDAA? Have you watched the slow, institutionalized normalization and justification of torture programs? And what about the unprecedented war against the whistleblowers who have sought to make the American people aware of these simple truths? All of this constitutes the actions of a kind of fascism. We’re there already. So Donald Trump is not the problem. We’re there.

The most recent murders of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, illustrate the out-of-control nature of America’s particular brand of inverted totalitarianism, which is faceless fascism under a corporate umbrella, and make it all the more obvious that we’re already there. Donald is not our problem.

It’s not just the incremental militarization of police agencies around the country through programs that “donate” unnecessary military gear to the cops with increasingly ridiculous equipment, such as the 8 Apache Gunship helicopters outfitted to brandish anti-tank capabilities that are now in the possession of the law enforcement agencies of Brevard County, Florida.

What’s perhaps most amazing about the string of horrifying police killings is why they’re happening. We’re made to believe that these are random individuals. They’re not. So many of these people are described as neighborhood peacemakers, political activists and community organizers, and they’re being assassinated in broad daylight in exactly the same fashion that the US government carried out the systematic elimination of Black Panther leadership throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. Part of the reason that this is happening has to do with the United States law enforcement community’s relationship with Israel – former Israeli soldier Eran Efrati has exposed the incestuous relationship that American police departments share with the Israeli military; that NYPD has offices in Tel Aviv and that Metro officers are regularly sent to Israel to be trained in the art of suppression, vis-à-vis the Palestinians. This is why the justice system refuses to prosecute the officers responsible for these murders – the murders are not exactly accidental as much as they are coincidental to present day policy. The police are not there to protect you. They exist to protect the oligarchy from the masses. The courts are not there to uphold justice. The courts exist to maintain the subjugation of the masses. So if the purpose of the police and the courts isn’t what we were told, what then is the function of elections?

What is perhaps most ironic is that this has all happened under the auspices of an administration that’s headed up by America’s first African American president, because there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in the 1850’s, and every single week we’re bombarded with yet another string of videos showing militarized police unnecessarily murdering African Americans or their SWAT counterparts suppressing the ensuing protests that invariably follow. Is Obama simply apathetic about African American lives, or is it simply that presidents do not have any of the authority or power that most Americans ascribe to them?

As outlined by Douglas Adams in the lat 1970’s, “The job of the president is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.” The President is only a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever, and our electoral circus is no different. We get so caught up in it as if elections determine the country’s socioeconomic or geopolitical trajectory – and as if we could even influence them – as if the Electoral College doesn’t determine the outcome, as if the candidate with the most Super PAC money doesn’t always win, as if electronic voting machines in swing states have repeatedly proven to favor the establishment candidate – even when Exit Polls reveal that the machines are counting the votes incorrectly, as if our elections aren’t decided years in advance at the Bilderberg Meetings of the world’s most powerful oligarchs, and as if the founding fathers actually desired a popular democracy in the first place (their idea of a democratic Republic did not grant the power of the vote to women, or Native Americans, or African slaves, or even white men who didn’t own land).

For those paying attention, it was obvious who the oligarchs would crown as the next leader of the American empire as early as June of 2015 when Hillary Clinton’s top advisor attended the annual conference of the global ownership class known as the Bilderberg group in Telfs-Buchen, Austria. If you’re unfamiliar with the Bilderberg group I implore you to explore the investigative reporting of Daniel Estulin and Jim Tucker. But the point is, whenever a political hopeful or their associates attend a Builderberg meeting, it’s a clear signal that the owners endorse them as a candidate who will serve the interests of the corporate machine, and the oligarchs therefore do whatever is necessary to put those candidates into power with their money, muscle and influence. Obama, for example, attended the 2008 Bilderberg meeting in northern Virginia prior to his presidential debut.

So it comes as no surprise that longtime Clinton friend and ally Jim Messina of The Messina Group attended the 2015 globalist conference. Messina also heads up the super PAC Priorities USA, which supported Obama and is now firmly in the Clinton camp. Messina also spearheaded Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, and has just come back to the US after leading the deeply unpopular UK prime minister David Cameron to a surprise majority victory in British elections (of course, David Cameron resigned following the UK’s democratic decision to leave the EU).

Savvy journalists called it like they saw it, reporting that the globalist favorite for United States 2016 election would surely be decided in Austria, where there was little doubt the ownership class would stack 100% of their chips behind the Clinton camp.

The question for the oligarchs since then has been how best to convince an American constituency – who have become increasingly suspicious of corporate power – into accepting an establishment candidate like Hillary as the next Führer of the American Empire. This has proven especially difficult considering the Clinton’s sordid history with pay-to-play politicking through the infamous Clinton Foundation. Despite public awareness of the truth, television personalities like John Oliver continue to signal establishment support for the Clintons by glossing over the most disturbing aspects of the Clinton Foundation, such as:

• The siphoning of Haiti relief money following the 2010 earthquake that prevented millions of homeless and starving Haitians from receiving aid
• Profiting from the mowing down of Colombian Rain Forests through the petroleum giant Pacific Rubiales, whose founder Frank Giustra sits on the board of the Clinton Foundation
• Protecting an African Warlord on behalf of a Swiss mining company called Lukas Lundin that violates international law to exploit Africa’s natural resources and paid the Clintons $100 million to keep the international community off their back for violating international sanctions in Sudan and elsewhere
• Selling Nuclear Weapons technology to the Chinese to finance Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in what has become known as the Chinagate scandal that resulted in the indictment and arrest of many top Clinton officials

When it became clear that many liberal, American women weren’t taking the bait of accepting another corrupt Clinton as the “historic milestone” to follow up the disappointment that was the nation’s first African American president, Hillary’s campaign managers resorted to gender shaming women with Madeline Albright’s abominable declaration that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support Hillary. This is the same Madeline Albright who calmly justified to a bedazzled 60 Minutes television audience in 1996 while serving as Bill Clinton’s UN advisor that the half-million dead children who perished as a result of America’s economic sanctions in the Mid-East was “worth it”. The owners have exposed their arrogant hand by parading a genocidal apologist onto the stage in yet another attempt to hypnotize Americans into accepting our new “Great Leader.” And if there ever really was a special place in hell for women who don’t support each other, then where-oh-where is Madeline Albright’s support for Jill Stein?

So when Albright’s declaration about “women who don’t support each other” backfired, the owners resorted to the one tried-and-true tactic that has worked like a charm in just about every presidential election in our collective memory; the lesser of two evils scare tactic.

This strategy is simple – scare the bejeezes out of the people with an opposing nominee to pressure everyone into supporting the person who has already been granted the palace by the real power players. This is why the media have given so much air time to Trump while practically blacklisting Bernie and outright ignoring Dr. Jill Stein. And let’s not forget that voting machines are designed, programmed and manipulated by the very corporate elites who own the system, and seek to preserve their power by rigging apparently democratic elections; this is why swing states are plagued by voting machine glitches, gerrymandering, prohibitive voter ID laws and even conspicuous acts of outright fraud. Presidents are not elected. Presidents are selected, and not by you or I.

In many ways, Donald Trump is the trump card for the elites – he demonstrates the worst of the worst that this decaying empire is capable of producing. He’s perfect for scaring Americans into accepting Hillary. Moreover, Trump reinforces the faux-feminism of the Clinton Cartel by demonstrating his very own brand of bona fide chauvinism with his beauty pageants and constant mouth-diarrhea. The media have worked hard to turn the 2016 electoral farce into a men-versus-women circus. The problem is that women don’t automatically support Hillary just because she’s a woman any more than men support Trump just because he’s a man. In fact, Hillary’s disingenuous bombast has been described by many as bourgeois feminism – a particularly vile brand of ideological feminism that neglects millions of immigrant women, poor women and the women under America’s bombs.

We’ve been told incessantly that this is “history in the making,” since“never before has a woman run for president!” “What an historic milestone!”

It’s amazing how short some people’s memory is – especially now in the acceleration of the internet age – for the historic occasion referred to in this instance has already been achieved many times over; in 1872 Victoria Woodhull ran for president after being nominated with the Equal Rights Party with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Then there was Belva Ann Lockwood in 1884, Grace Allen in 1940, Ellen Jensen in 1952, Charlene Mitchell in 1968 –the list just goes on and on.

But many Americans don’t know that – after all, millions of Americans can’t tell you why the 4^th of July is a federal holiday.

So clearly, this is not history in the making, unless we radically alter the proposed statement: This is the first time in American history that the oligarchy have chosen a woman who is part of their club to play the symbolic, irrelevant, and ceremonial role of President of the United States.

Fortunately, reading the comment sections of the aforementioned videos and articles reveals an inspiring truth; that after decades of broken promises, blatant corruption and political impotence from Washington, many Americans aren’t buying into the BS anymore.

But such territory is unknown. Charting a course through uncharted political wilderness is a wildly uncertain endeavor, and our tendency to retreat to the familiar side of the river is strong when the water’s currents prove scary and cold. For many, a familiar lie is preferable to unknown truths.

We know that the elections are rigged. We know that there are no political solutions. We know that the banks and corporations are infinitely more powerful than the politicians they control. So why do we default back to this bogus idea that, “This time it’s different”? Why do we tell ourselves that, “This time it really matters,” when our experience tells us otherwise? Why do we delude ourselves with the false hope that, “This candidate might be different”?

Remember Bernie Sanders? He only played his role. When America’s confidence in the political process was at an all-time low, he got people excited about it again. He got people thinking, “Gee, maybe politicians can change this slaughterhouse of world we’re all suffering within.” And then he did what those of us who were paying attention knew he would do: he endorsed the Democratic nominee – just like he said he would two years before his campaign even started – before taking a bow and exiting stage left. In the weeks and months since the DNC he has only betrayed the message of his campaign entirely, parroting the politics of fear and peddling the nonsense of lesser-evilism. The same is true of other turncoats like Elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich, whose allegiance to the system outweighs all logic, and certainly outweighs their genuine concern for the American people. The politics of fear predominates the narrative of every election. It’s obtuse ideology paves the way for exactly what we know is the wrong way to go. And the 2016 cycle is no different.

Even if, by some miracle, a candidate who seems to actually have the best interests of the planet and the people in mind (say, someone like Dr. Jill Stein) was allowed into the Oval Office and sworn in as president, their proposed policy positions will always be massively outgunned by the money, resources and lobbyists of the military-industrial-complex, the oil companies, the banks, the prison system, Wal-Mart, the Koch brothers, Monsanto (oops, it’s Bayer now), et cetera.

If Jesus Christ himself somehow became president, with the Buddha as his vice president, and the 12 disciples fulfilling the roles of secretary of state, defense, treasury, interior, and so on, the system would continue right on the way it always has because it’s structure determines its trajectory. It doesn’t matter who the players are.

America’s imperial system is a self-actualizing feedback loop that grants a monopoly of force and authority to the ownership class by siphoning resources away from anyone who refuses to bow at their feet. Distraction from this reality is the explicit purpose of electoral politics.

This is why Chris Hedges has so repeatedly insisted that “getting the right people to rule” is the wrong question. The question is, “How can you make the power elite afraid of you?”

Then again, perhaps we don’t actually want things to change. Perhaps Americans really enjoy the delicious hatred and finger-licking loathing that each election cycle brings to the table. It is, after all, an entertainment spectacle constituting the greatest show on earth. Perhaps Americans are addicted to complaining instead of actually implementing solutions to our problems. Solutions require work. Complaining is a comforting default. It takes less effort to tolerate and complain about our enslavement than it does to alter the underlying foundations of it. Maybe we enjoy being ruled. Self-reliance, after all, requires personal responsibility. Laziness can never grant or maintain liberty. Boundless infinity scares the weak at heart so we’ve constructed cages of complacency justified by fear.

Perhaps we’re just as addicted to pointing the finger “out there” and blaming external personalities of our collective creation for the way things are. We’re too spineless to face our own shadows so we simply project them onto other people, and who better to point our fingers at than people as corrupt as Hillary and Donald?

Personally, I think they both should be deported to Peru and prohibited from reentering the US until they each undergo guided Ayahuasca therapy for at least a year. And yet the country is being led into accepting both of them as worthy of our praise and admiration.

If we want the world to change around us, the first thing we have to change is ourselves. We would do well to heed the wise observation of French Sociologist Jacques Ellul who proclaimed:

There are no political solutions, only technological ones; the rest is propaganda.” 

Gabrielle Lafayette is a journalist, writer, and executive producer for the Outer Limits Radio Show.
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