The Zionization of American politics and how it could be terminated
On 11 August last year he denounced the Democratic Party and resigned his membership of it. In his letter to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said: “Until the Democratic Party shows some spine and draws a line in the sand – that an end to the tax breaks for the wealthy needs to be part of any debt/budget bill – please take my name off your list… I’m done with the Democratic Party. As I said on Amy Goodman’s show a couple years ago, I’ve put my proud Democrat coffee mug in storage. I think now I’ll just throw it in the garbage and have done with it… The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.”
I was inspired by Amy Goodman’s interview with Anderson for Open Democracy very shortly after his announcement of the formation of the Justice Party.
The great thing about television is that it gives viewers the opportunity not only to listen to what speakers are saying but also to study their body language as they are speaking and listening to the questions. In other words, television gives viewers the opportunity to ask and answer an important question – Do I believe this guy or gal? With Tony Blair, for example, my answer was always “No”. And I regret to say it has become “No” when I listen to President Obama and watch his body language. Anderson’s body language told me he is a man I can believe and that makes what he had to say more than important – even though he has no chance of becoming president in 2013. (After that…?)
Here is what he said in answer to one of Goodman’s questions.
“We launched the Justice Party because the entire system is so corrupt. It’s so diseased. We know that the public interest is not being served by anyone in the system right now, particularly the two dominant parties who have sustained this corrupt system and who are sustained by it… Obama received more money from Wall Street than any presidential candidate ever. And they got a great return on their investment… We need people in public office who are pledged not to just represent the people’s interest in the same system, but to change the system and get the corrupting influence of corporate and other concentrated wealth out of our electoral system and out of our system of governance.”
Common sense says that the only way to end the financial corruption of American politics is by the people, the voters, demanding that it be ended.
A real clean-up would require legislation giving effect to the proposition that all elections will be funded by only one source – public money raised from taxation, with the revenue ring-fenced so that it could only be used for elections. There are about 100 million voters in America and ten dollars added each year to their tax bill would provide enough money for all election funding. Ten dollars a year is surely a very small price for each voter to pay for something approaching real democracy.
Given that Congress’s approval rating is closer to 10 percent than 20 percent according to the latest polls, organizing a rolling and rising tide of people power to demand the necessary constitutional amendment or amendments to get the corrupting influence of lobby funding out of the electoral system ought not to be a mission impossible.
In other words, if enough American voters were aware of how corrupt their political system actually is, and if then they cared enough, they could cause the corruption to be terminated. What a demonstration of real democracy in action that would be!
In an opinion piece for The Electronic Intifada on 27 December, Ilan Pappe wrote the following.
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