Dynasty: The Politics of Spectacle
It seems almost unbelievable.
Once more, a Bush or a Clinton aspires to the highest political office in the land: President of the United States.
It is a measure of the decadence of American politics, what with its privileged place for the wealthy, that one or two families of former presidents can be so close to returning to the White House, based more on sheer name recognition than true merit.
Of some 320-plus million Americans, are these the only families able to field seemingly serious candidates?
To be sure, these are families of extraordinary wealth. millionaires, to say the least.
Where the law (ala Citizens United) has defined money as speech, and opened the door for the sale of politicians to the highest bidder, it is a small step for a wealthy politician to cut out the middle man and buy power for him (or her) self.
Why should this surprise us in a nation where the Senate is overwhelmingly a millionaire’s club?
America, which boasts incessantly of the freedoms of average Americans, is in fact for sale to those who can afford offices of prestige and power.
For average Americans, this is little more than a mirage.
We dwell, all of us, in a post-NAFTA, post-manufacturing world.
Most Americans try to get by on dreadful service economy wages. Fighting to survive economically, they can barely dream of political office.
That’s for the American Dynasties, the rich and the super-rich, to buy as new, glittering baubles for the family tree.
—PrisonRadio.org, June 14, 2015
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