Massive Sioux Indian Reservation Battles Snow with 3 Ploughs
By Denis Campbell
As we have seen in the blizzards in Washington and New York 100s of crews of snowploughs and front-end loaders work feverishly to open roads, airports and railway tracks. But, what if you lived in the Cheyenne Sioux Indian Reservation of South Dakota and there were only three snowploughs to clear an area nearly the size of Connecticut?
Most of the reservation is covered with rural 2-lane asphalt and dirt roads that even this meagre snow removal equipment cannot reach because of the drifts. Their only hope is for the temperature to rise above freezing.
If 8,000 telephone poles snapped in Potomac, Westchester, or Greenwich, crews would work 24/7 to restore power. Yet many in the Cheyenne Sioux Reservation have been without power or heat for more than five days. They daily brave temperatures and wind chills of -19◦.
“Many people have died, not only of exposure but of complications from sugar diabetes,” said Russell Means, Chairman of the Lakota Republic. “Diabetes is an epidemic on Indian Reservations,” he continued “and in rural areas of Sioux country the reservations are very isolated.”
We take for granted that the snowploughs will be there to clear our roadways, yet those living on the reservation died because they could not get out of their driveway to transport loved ones to kidney dialysis centres. Heart attacks and exposure claimed even those with cars to transport loved ones, because the snow trapped them in their homes. And forget 911, it does not exist. Nearly everyone is without heat or electricity. Russell Means’ daughter called from her home 200-miles away asking to borrow a generator, but it was stolen.
When asked what the most pressing immediate needs were, his reply was: “come out, come on out, the whole Congress should come and check. We definitely need the funds, The Bureau of Indian Affairs needs the funds, the tribes need the funds just for snow removal and emergency equipment. THAT WOULD SAVE LIVES. Then we need adequate healthcare.”
Generous Americans sent millions to Haiti, New Orleans and Texas when disasters struck sending shockwaves through the media. Yet here is an ongoing, some would say daily, tragedy that affect millions of Americans. They live under the control of a broken federal agency, The Bureau of Indian Affairs, with 85% unemployment, record levels of alcoholism, Type 2 diabetes and unspeakable poverty.
As Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s Countdown said, “this tragedy is 450 miles from Minneapolis.” Russell Means described it more aptly as “genocide of the Indian people.”
It certainly is, at minimum, gross neglect that entire tribes across massive state-sized territories have people freezing inside their paper thin walled and ill-equipped homes, dying from both exposure and CO2 asphyxiation from bad propane heaters.
Massive Sioux Indian Reservation Battles Snow with 3 Ploughs
Posted on 10 February 2010 by Denis Campbell
Denis Campbell is the American Editor of UK Progressive. He is a political and business pundit contributor to both BBC television and radio. Denis specializes in translating the American electoral and governing process for UK and EU audiences and vice versa, contributing regularly on UK elections and issues to the Huffington Post. He has contributed to newspapers and magazines around the globe. In his “spare” time, he is managing director of Target Point Ltd focused on social media, communication strategy, leveraging technology, corporate change and building world class selling organisations. Denis has lived in the EU since 1998.
Denis Campbell Talks With Russell Means About Severe Conditions: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadNobel Update
“Hello my relatives. Today is NOT a good day…”
Russell Means speaks about Obama’s recent award of the Nobel Prize and the meaning of the prize, as well as its history.
1971-Henry Kissinger awarded Nobel Peace Prize after the conclusion of an 18 month B-52 bombing campaign of Cambodia, where an estimated 600,000 villagers were killed. The subsequent destitution and displacement were major factors in the rise of the Khemer Rouge, which the U.S. supported through continued arms sales.
The Mask Slips, for Those with Eyes to See: Preparing for the Real Pandemic
by Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div.
Last week, many of the aboriginal people in the remote west coast village of Ahousaht were innoculated with the tamiflu vaccine. Today, over a hundred of them are sick, and the sickness is spreading.
In the same week, body bags were sent to similarly remote native reserves in northern Manitoba that have also received the tamiflu vaccine.
On the face of things, it appears that flu vaccinations are causing a sickness that is being deliberately aimed at aboriginal people across Canada, and this sickness will be fatal: a fact acknowledged by the Canadian government by their “routine” sending of body bags to these Indian villages.
Before you express your shock and denial at the idea that people are being racially targeted and killed, remember that murdering Indians with vaccinations is not a new or abnormal thing in Canada. Indeed, it’s how we Europeans “won the land”, and it’s one of the ways we keep it.
In 1862, Anglican church missionaries Rev. John Sheepshanks and Robert Brown inoculated interior Salish Indians in B.C. with a live smallpox virus that wiped out entire native communities within a month, just prior to the settlement of this native land by gold prospectors associated with these missionaries and government officials.
In 1909, Dr. Peter Bryce of the Indian Affairs department in Ottawa claimed that Catholic and Protestant churches were deliberately exposing native children to smallpox and tuberculosis in residential schools across Canada, and letting them die untreated. Thousands of children died as a result. (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007)
In 1932, B.C. provincial police attempted to lay charges against Catholic missionaries who had sent smallpox-laden Indian children back among their families along the Fraser river near Mission, BC. The RCMP intervened and protected the church, even though whole villages were wiped out as a result of the church’s actions.
In 1969, native children who escaped from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital on Vancouver Island described being inoculated with shots that caused many of them to die “with bloated up bodies and scabs all over”, to quote one survivor.
Knowing this history, it’s not surprising when Indians on isolated Canadian reserves start sickening and dying en masse from sudden illnesses, after receiving flu shots. After all, it’s still the law in Canada, under the apartheid Indian Act, that no on-reserve Indian can refuse medical treatments or experimentation. So it’s small wonder that these reserves are the places being targeted first to be injected with untested, unsafe and potentially lethal flu vaccines.
As an entire race of involuntary test subjects, Indians in Canada are a weather vane for what will befall all of us, and very soon. For the very techniques and weapons of genocide perfected against aboriginal people are now being deployed against “mainstream” Canadians.
Under Bill C-6, which is about to pass third reading in Parliament and become the law, no Canadian will be allowed to refuse inoculations for the swine flu, despite the fact that it is relatively benign and mild, and has killed only people who are already immune-compromised. Indeed, it is astounding that such coercion and dictatorial laws are being employed to deal with what the chief Canadian Health Officer has called a “mild seasonal flu”.
Clearly, another agenda is at work; but the time to ascertain and challenge that agenda has all but run out. This coming month, forced inoculations and imprisonment of those who refuse them may be a reality across Canada. And for what reason? Clearly, not for public health, considering the sickness and death caused by previous swine flu vaccines.
I believe that the real pandemic is about to be unleashed through the very vaccines being pushed by governments and pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Glaxo Smith Kline. The shots will be the cause, not the cure, of the pandemic. Of course, those in power can disprove this by simply being the first people to take the swine flu shot: an event about as likely as these companies forgoing the multi-billion dollar profits they will reap from the mass vaccinations.
It’s indeed ironic that, very soon, many “white” Canadians may be suffering the same fate that aboriginal people have for centuries. Perhaps it’s fitting. For if we are indeed being targeted for extermination, or at the least martial law and dictatorship, we finally can have the chance to shed our complicity in the genocide of other people, and get on the right side of humanity – simply by having to fight the system that is causing mass murder.
…………. ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……… ……….
……… ……… ..
Rev. Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8
250-753-3345
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Kevin Annett is a community minister, educator and award-winning film maker who lives and works with aboriginal and low income people in Vancouver and Nanaimo, BC.
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website:
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
Film Trailer to Kevin’s award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT:
“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“A courageous and inspiring man.” (referring to Kevin Annett)
- Mairead Corrigan-Maguire
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Belfast , Northern Ireland
“As a long time front line worker with the Elders’ Council at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs
to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world.”
Carol Muree Martin – Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation
“I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him.”
Chief Louis Daniels – Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Weekend Update #27: Dying of Racism
In this edition of Weekend Update, Russell Means speaks to the racist portrayals of Indians by Hollywood, the U.S. Government and the media of the left. He speaks as well to the soft racism of exclusion that too often ignores the Indigenous communites of the world and their concerns of their land and their people.
Weekend Update #27: Dying of Racism from Russell Means on Vimeo.
Photos from the funeral of victims of the Acteal Massacre that occurred on December 22, 1997
Acteal Massacre:
On December 22, 1997 paramilitary (state-trained and state-funded pro-governing party civil defense) forces surrounded a Catholic chapel in the pacifistTsotsil Mayan community of Acteal, Chiapas state, Mexico. During a period of several hours, this armed force, with the apparent consent of local Mexican Army units stationed not far away, proceeded to surround Acteal’s chapel, and shot to death those inside, and as many of those who escaped as they could find. A number of residents survived the massacre. Those murdered on that day included 15 children, 21 women (four of them pregnant) and 9 men.
Bagua Shootings:
On June 6, 2009, Police, supplied by the U.S. ‘War Against Drugs, shot dead more than 38 people. The government of Peru ordered for the National Police to attack the Amazonian Indigenous peoples. Civilians were shot from building roofs and helicopters.
Indigenous peoples in Peru were on strike for the previous 52 days protesting against free trade policies that would allow multinationals to take over their territories. The attack occurred around 5:00 AM in the morning, a day after the Congress of Peru decided not to debate one of the most important decrees that allow the sale of Indigenous land. The number of casualities is according to a Twetter sent by a Peruvian journalist who is in the area of Bagua, a city located in the Amazonas region of Peru.
Columbia:
In the first week of February, according to indigenous witnesses, Columbian FARC rebels massacred up to 27 Awa people in the southern Narino province, including women and young children (from ages 3 to 6), bringing the total number of murdered Native people to 50 since the national march in the fall.
FARC press statements have only acknowledged the “execution” of eight indigenous due to their alleged assistance of Columbian military, but witnesses deny that figure and the assertion that the Awa willingly assisted anyone.
The National Indigenous Organization of Columbia, ONIC and regional UNIPA, Indigenous Unity of the Awa People, issued a joint statement the week after the massacre, decrying the murders.
“The UNIPA and ONIC denounce the grave violation of human rights and the collective rights of the Awa people of Narino, which is nothing new. … in the last 10 years [in the AWA territory] there have been four massacres, approximately 200 murders and 50 people affected by antipersonnel mines (land mines). … and now 1,300 Awa people are trapped in the area due to confrontations between the army, the guerillas and the para-militaries.”
Guatemalan Civil War:
In its final report, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH- Guatemalan Truth Commission) concluded that army massacres had destroyed 626 villages, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, 1.5 million were displaced by the violence, and more than 150,000 were driven to seek refuge in Mexico. Further, the Commission found the state (funded largely by the United States) responsible for ninety-three percent of the acts of violence and the guerrillas (URNG-Guatemalan Revolutionary Union) responsible for three percent. All told, eighty-three percent of the victims were Maya and seventeen percent were ladino.
Sources:
Acteal: http://www.libertadlatina.org/Crisis_Mexico_Chiapas_Acteal_Massacre.htm</em>
Bagua:
http://peruanista.blogspot.com/2009/06/alert-massacre-in-peru-police-shoots-at.html
Columbia:
Guatemala:
http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guatemala/TextforDatabaseCharts.html
Weekend Update #19: Crooked Histories
In this edition of Weekend Update, Russell Means talks of the guaranteed freedom of Iroquois Great Law of Peace, the many gradations of slavery in the past & present, as well as the true dangers of the frontier. He speaks as well of languages without war and the missing pieces of the tales, often told as ‘history’.
Weekend Update 19: Crooked Histories from Russell Means on Vimeo.
Weekend Update #18: Myths and Missed Histories
In this installment of Weekend Update, Russell Means talks of the continual perpetuation of false myths concerning Indians. From the static stereotypes put forth by Hollywood movies, to the ignored histories of abundance and disease-free living never mentioned by supposedly balanced documentaries or historians, Russell Means works to tell the untold stories. He speaks as well to Cortez’s darkness, and to the misrepresentation and outright, on-going oblivion of the American populace to the Indian people in this 14 minute video.
Weekend Update 18: Myths and Missed Histories from Russell Means on Vimeo.
Reconciliation Forum – Russell Means speaks of the Indigenous Struggles
Russell Means speaks of Matriarchy, the Indigenous struggles, and of the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere at the Reconciliation Forum in Washington D.C..
CBS Blows the Whistle on Lakotah Electricity Scandal
HARLEY CARNES NOT JUST ANOTHER STORY: 03/02/09
CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE BROADCAST njas-mar-03-09
Date: 03/02/2009 Length: 00:01:29
Families Freezing in Nation’s Poorest County:
PUBLIC UTILITIES “CUT” ON CROW CREEK RESERVATION
(Fort Thompson, SD) Electric company caught “pulling meters” (CLICK TO VIEW THE VIDEO) in the poorest community in the nation, leaving America’s most vulnerable people without power in the dead of winter. Predatory electric companies continue to conduct these atrocious practices amid growing public outcry and damning national media scrutiny. Headlines in newspapers across the country highlight unnecessary tragedies as arctic winter months reveal the electric company’s controversial conduct of shutting off the community’s power, despite the rest of South Dakota having Seasonal Termination Protection Regulations.[1]
CORRECTION: “Central Power Electric Cooperative, Inc” is the wholesale provider, not the retail provider that has been illegally disconnecting the meters on Crow Creek Reservation. The real culprits are at the “Central Electric Cooperative:” We apologize for any confusion caused by this error and our happy to oblige the request of Loren Noess - General Manager of CENTRAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE to post his information here for your convenience. See his e-mail request below.
Loren Noess - General Manager
Text of Mr. Noess’ e-mail with:
To Whom it may concern:
Please change the address of Central you have on your web site. Also if you do some research on this video it was played last June on Utube [sic] and we know they were at Crow Creek last March of 2008 doing taping This video we believe is a year old. Our employees are on this video. They are doing their and should not be explosed[sic].
Please refer to the attached letter that I emailed to Eric Klein yesterday and also sent by mail.
I have sent copies of this letter to all 3 Congressional Leaders in Washington and the South Dakota PUC. The 3 Offices in Washington indicated they haven’t received any calls from the Reservation about disconnects. As you’ll read in our letter we haven’t disconnected any[sic] for the months of Dec. Jan and Feb.
Any questions please give me a call.
Loren Noess
General Manager
PO Box 850
1420 North Main
Mitchell, SD 57301
605-996-7516
Contact Information
Office Hours: Monday – Friday 8 am – 5 pm
E-mail: cec@centralec.coop
Phone: 605.996.7516
Toll Free in SD: 800.477.2892
Fax: 605.996.0869
Office Locations:
Headquarters Office:
PO Box 850
1420 North Main Street
Mitchell, SD 57301 USA
Plankinton Branch Office:
PO Box 130
102 South Main Street
Plankinton, SD 57301 USA
Putting LIVES on the Line:
This winter, the Crow Creek Indian Reservation is experiencing record-low temperatures reaching fifty below zero. Hundreds of families living in government housing have had their electric meters removed by Central Electric Cooperative, the local electric cooperative. When these power meters are pulled the residents are left without power; the propane heaters do not run; pipes freeze; and there is no water for cooking, drinking, bathing or flushing toilets. Many of these households have family members whose lives depend upon electronic medical equipment such as defibrillators.
Ironically these families are paying some of the highest electricity rates in the country even though they live adjacent to the Big Bend Hydro-Electric Dam on the Missouri river. These homes are poorly insulated causing electric bills in excess of $300.00 in the coldest months.
Median income in the region is approximately $5,000 a year (typical of the thirteen Lakotah (Sioux) Reservations in the “Great Sioux Nation” as defined in the Treaties of 1851 and 1868 with the US Government).
“I’ve been to disaster areas around the world including Sri Lanka after the tsunami, hurricane Katrina, and after the Iowa floods, but, I have never witnessed such blatant disregard for human life as I have here in my own country on the Crow Creek reservation,” stated Eric Klein, Founder and CEO of Compassion into Action Network – Direct Outcome Organization (CAN-DO). “Especially now, with the new administration focusing on the development of America’s infrastructure, we need to focus our energies and resources immediately to address this critical situation where such infrastructure is being blatantly misutilized.”
Appalled by the abuse and neglect, one US Marine and Crow Creek resident took action to publicize the exploitation. Using a hand-held video recorder, he documented local power companies physically cutting electricity lines and removing meters in the peak of winter.
Watch the footage at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wIVgpMK5-Jo&feature=channel
Utilizing their proven approach to providing lasting solutions with full accountability, efficiency and results, CAN-DO is addressing the operation at the Crow Creek Indian Reservation on the local level to raise the nation’s awareness of the urgent human right abuses taking place in the South Dakota region.
“We are calling for a collaborative effort by ethical individuals, organizations, schools and political leaders to assure that this damage is reversed,” said Klein. “Together, we can contribute to real change here at home.”
View the complete Crow Creek plan at www.can-do.org. Join in the ‘Call to Action.’
LAWS OF SOUTH DAKOTA TITLE 49
PUBLIC UTILITIES AND CARRIERS
49-34A-2. Service required of utilities. Every public utility shall furnish adequate, efficient, and reasonable service.
49-34A-6. Rates to be reasonable and just – Regulation by commission. Every rate made, demanded or received by any public utility shall be just and reasonable. Every unjust or unreasonable rate shall be prohibited. The Public Utilities Commission is hereby authorized, empowered and directed to regulate all rates, fees and charges for the public utility service of all public utilities, including penalty for late payments, to the end that the public shall pay only just and reasonable rates for service rendered.
Source: SL 1975, ch 283, § 16.
THE LIE PROPAGATED BY THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Crow Creek Sioux Tribe:
“Every night, the sun slips quietly away behind the bluffs of the Missouri River. These bluffs flank the western edge of the Crow Creek Reservation in central South Dakota. Located one mile south of tribal headquarters at Fort Thompson is Lake Sharpe, one of South Dakota’s Great Lakes. Water recreation abounds on the 80-mile reservoir created by the Big Bend Dam. Visitors enjoy boating, fishing and swimming as well as picnicking and camping along the water’s edge. The tribe’s wildlife department offers guided fishing and hunting trips. It also maintains a buffalo herd that often grazes north of Fort Thompson. ” http://www.travelsd.com/ourhistory/sioux/tribes/crowcreek.asp
THE TRUTH
… thousands of hectares of Indian land have been lost to dams. In North Dakota, a quarter of the Fort Berthold Reservation, shared by the Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa peoples of the upper Missouri, for example, was flooded as a result of a staircase of dams (the Missouri River Development Project (MRDP), built during the 1950s and 1960s. The land lost included the best and most valuable and productive land on the reservation – the bottom lands along the river where most people lived.105 Five different Sioux reservations also lost land. Again, the impact was quite severe: the dams destroyed nearly 90 per cent of the tribes’ timberland, 75 per cent of the wild game, and the best agricultural lands.106
Ultimately, the Missouri dams cost the indigenous nations of the Missouri Valley an estimated 142,000 hectares of their best land – including a number of burial and other sacred sites – as well as further impoverishment and severe cultural and emotional trauma. A guarantee, used to rationalise the plan in the first place, that some 87,000 hectares of Indian land would be irrigated was simply scrapped as the project neared completion. As researcher Bernard Shanks puts it: “MRDP replaced the subsistence economy of the Missouri River Indians . . . with a welfare economy . . . As a result of the project, the Indians bore a disproportionate share of the social
cost of water development, while having no share in the benefits.”.107
104 Pittja 1994:54.
105 Guerrero 1992.
106 United States v David Sohappy, Snr et al., 477 US 906 (1986), cert. denied. Cited in Guerrero 1992.
107 Guerrero 1992.
About CAN-DO:
Founded by Eric Klein, CAN-DO has set a new standard for humanitarianism and is changing the face of philanthropy. It quickly has become an organization people can trust and depend upon to “get it done” fast and effectively. It is a 501c3, relief organization dedicated to working on the local level to provide lasting solutions, with full accountability, efficiency, and results.
Video footage, photographs and the web site offer documentation of the organization’s efforts at every phase. CAN-DO supporters take pride in watching their generosity directly affect the lives of those in need through the organization’s VirtualVolunteer.TV.
CAN-DO’s successful missions to bring immediate and direct relief to areas in need have captured the attention of renowned philanthropists including Oprah Winfrey and former president Bill Clinton. The organization was recently awarded the Global Compassion Award at the United Nations for its global impact, unparalleled transparency and accountability. For further information, please visit www.can-do.org or email Eric Klein at ek@can-do.org.
About the Republic of Lakotah:
We are the freedom loving Lakotah from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under.
We are continuing the work that we were asked to do by the traditional chiefs and treaty councils at the first Indian Treaty Council meeting at Standing Rock Sioux Indian Country in 1974.
During the week of December 17-19, 2007, we traveled to Washington DC and withdrew from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law.
We do not represent those BIA or IRA governments beholden to the colonial apartheid system, or those “hang around the fort” Indians who are unwilling to claim their freedom.
For further information, please visit www.republicoflakotah.com or call 605-867-1111.
– END –
The Beauty, Power & Brilliance of Matriarchy
The Beauty, Power & Brilliance of Matriarchy – A call for a paradigm shift!
As we all sit awestruck in front of the T.V., the computer or the newspaper, Russell offers us a solution to the current Global calamity. In this beautiful forty-five minute FREE video, Russell explains both how the World got into this mess and how we can move towards sanity and wholeness. We must, he says, return to Matriarchy, a balance, respectful way of life where we celebrate our differences, rather than stifle, or even, destroy them. CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO
Illusion of Democracy
THE
ILLUSION
OF
DEMOCRACY
There are three points of view when it comes to the federal government:
1) Everything is more or less going along just fine. Sure we have some problems but we’ll work them out.
2) It’s too cumbersome and intrusive, taxes are excessive, the national debt is a disgrace, and our foreign policy is long on machismo and short on goodwill. The Democrats and Republicans got us into this mess and probably can’t get us out.
3) If you ignore it, it will go away.
Our recent presidential election took place in November of 2008. As usual, our so-called democracy basically gave us two choices.
The Democrats want an extensive, intrusive federal government to engineer social change and redistribute wealth. Higher taxes and more government involvement (intervention), thereby suffocating free enterprise and diminishing individual freedom. Their goal is to nurture (control) their subjects from cradle to grave.
The Republicans want a strong federal government to engineer endless economic growth and support a vast military-industrial complex. Increased military expenditures and more self-appointed international police action, thereby contributing to global strife and tarnishing our relationship with the rest of the world.
Both of these philosophies are extremely costly. Democrats and Republicans have driven our national debt up to nearly $12 trillion, and it continues to rise. Future generations will bear the burden for this insane federal spending recklessness.
If you’re enthusiastic about one of these two options, by all means stay the course.
But if you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to choose the lesser of two evils, perhaps it’s time to unscrew your head back out of the sand and seek an alternative. Even though the media will try to convince you that a vote for anyone other than a Democrat or a Republican is a wasted vote, there are other alternatives.
The election process is meant to give the voters the illusion of a free democracy without actually having one.
The two major candidates for president, one Democrat and one Republican, are basically chosen by a handful of small states (the New Hampshire Primary, the Iowa Caucuses, etc.), then each of the candidates personally selects their respective running mate and potential successor.
To maintain their position of power and control, the two major political parties enacted election laws that have given them a decisive advantage over any emerging alternative philosophies.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress have awarded matching campaign funds to the two major political parties (themselves) while making it difficult for third parties to qualify for them. The candidates of these two parties are automatically placed on ballots in every state, while third party candidates must contend with legal quagmires on a state by state basis to get on ballots. And so on.
To anyone with a brain larger than a pinto bean this doesn’t seem like much of a democracy.
To make matter worse, the mass media focuses only on the two major political parties, as if they’re the only two points of view, further diminishing a free democracy.
There aren’t many choices when there are only two alternatives.
This unbalanced, unfair system wasn’t the result of evil intent. But government operates on endless compromise and those in power tend to manipulate the system to favor those in power. And the mass media goes along with it to maintain a positive relationship with those in power in order to obtain access.
Basically, the system is rigged.
The two parties in power have made it difficult for a third party to compete and the mass media has become their ally by promoting an illusion of a democracy, encouraging everyone to participate in the process under the mistaken premise that the public is apathetic rather than disgusted.
So the masses turn out every four years to do their civic duty and vote for the lesser of two evils. But a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil and an illusion of a democracy is only an illusion.
A two-party system is not a democracy – it’s a closed system tightly controlled by the two parties in power. Anyone who enthusiastically supports such a system is perpetuating a narrow, unjust form of government.
Every citizen has three choices:
1) You can participate in a rigged system, giving legitimacy to that system, by voting for one of the two major candidates as usual. Be sure to pat yourself on the back for doing your civic duty.
2) You can vote for a third party candidate, preferably one that seeks to limit the power and scope of government, sending a message to the two major parties and the mass media that politics as usual is unacceptable. Be sure to pat yourself on the back for having a mind of your own.
3) You can choose to ignore your enslavement by ever increasing government forces and bang your head against the wall. Be sure to pat yourself on the back so you don’t swallow your gum.
Choose wisely. The fate of eternity is in your hands.
___________
Bret Burquest is a former award-winning columnist and author of four novels. Contact bret@centurytel.net
