US presidency poll: Don't Americans deserve a multi-party system?

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

2016 February  05

President Barak Obama not just continues with the terror wars in Arab world launched by his predecessor Republican Bush as part of Israeli agenda in West Asia, but even escalates the essentially anti-Islam war further. They jointly advance illegal agenda of Neocons terror nuts.

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Political system of any modern nation is expected to provide for multiple choices for the voters to choose from.  As it is known,  stronger the candidature choices, the greater the options for the people to decide their options. USA that champions only two parties - Democratic Party (DP) and Republican Party (RP) - deliberately denies  that option to its citizens who are now increasingly under state surveillance and  subject to state human rights violations. 

Those who drafted the US Constitution seem to have opted for a two-party system in order to promote monopoly capitalism, denying equal rights to citizens.

America, known as a nation meant for “absolute” freedoms and liberty” necessary for human and societal development, has got just a limit democracy as it provides for just two political parties to contest the presidential poll. Both parties, democratic and republican, have similar ideology and agenda while in order to advance the so-called national interests, secretly coordinate their operations globally.

President Barak Obama not just continues with the terror wars in Arab world launched by his predecessor Republican Bush as part of Israeli agenda in West Asia, but even escalates the essentially anti-Islam war further. They jointly advance illegal agenda of Neocons terror nuts.

Unfortunately, Americans have no other option but to choose one of the two by watching how the primaries are enacted by the state apparatus. Had there been at least one more party people could think of   reposing trust in it. The US corporate media plays havoc by playing one party (RP) against the other (DP).

Fundamentally speaking, today in the post Sept-11 hoax era, these two polities do not have serious differences in any respect. They just pretend to be rivals and fighting for power to control the world. The Sept-hoax has removed all minor differences, if at all any, between Republicans and Democrats as they speak now with one voice – the super power American military voice.

This American voice promotes capitalism and imperialism with military back up as American and global duty. This voice has no sympathy for the poor and common people. Both of them are ultra right-wing and essentially anti-people, controlled by corporate monopoly interest. It shields the corporate crimes against the common people.

Today Americans are  have no faith in both the parties as they pursue terror-militarism policies that only harms life patterns of  ordinary citizens, for,  people have no idea as to  what exactly the leaders are doing putting them at perpetual risk.

How can a country like USA with a mere two parties to represent people of a large nation like America really talk about democracy?

The millions of dead, wounded and displaced Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans and Syrians are the victims of this endless and escalating US war drive, with many millions more to follow. By taking due cue from US imperialism, Israel and India attack Muslims in the neighborhoods The carnage will not be stopped by mere negotiations but USA and Israel are not ready even for the talks.

Spending too much on US military equipment has cost welfare schemes for the poor and less privileged ones very dearly as only the corporate lords and rich can fully enjoy life, US policy of militarism as a key tool for invasions, has enabled the pentagon to invade or attack many Arab nations like the global fascist leader, destabilizing them and killing millions of Muslims. The resultant refugee crises have made life of people difficult tin neighboring nations. In fact, entire West is in distress, except Israel, the main ally of USA in the region and a terrorist state killing the Palestinians by regular terror attacks for fictitious reasons.

Democracy is defined by the number of political parties and political freedoms the people enjoy. Multiple political parties provide a high level democracy and allow all possible many freedoms of expression to the citizens and others living in a country.

Conversely, lesser the number of political parties the weaker the democratic foundations of a given society where people suffer for want of availability of channels of expression. Under such weak democratic arrangement, people must suffer.

Constitution must provide for space for freedom of speech so that people enjoy it as their fundamental right rather than as a privilege or generosity of the state apparatus.

Communist countries do not allow any scope for more than one party and the Communist party remains the ruling party forever, until the people remove that from power and replace it by another by promulgating a multiparty system. Erstwhile Soviet Russia and China, many other communist/socialist governments did not let a second party, other than Communist party, to emerge in the country.

America and its allies in the West had called communist system as being totalitarian and authoritarian and monopoly enterprise. They boasted too much about the virtues of capitalism and imperialism as opposed to communism. Denial of certain basic rights in Soviet Union and China were used by the west as a useful tool to boost the image of western nations. However, if one looks at how far genuinely democratic the USA is, one would know Americans also do not enjoy basic political rights.

Americans are “enjoying” the 2016 US presidential election campaign now under way in the form of primaries that eventually select the final candidates for the Democratic and Republic parties. The party candidates are keen to win the party nomination of the respective party first to contest the presidency. The US electoral system is the least democratic and the most subject to manipulation of any major capitalist country purporting to be a democracy.

A country of 330 million people, and a political structure controlled by the top one-tenth of one percent, USA does not claim to be a welfare state to work for the common good for entire population.

American two-party system existing for more than 160 years, controlled by the corporatist elite, is now confronted with an unprecedented crisis of political legitimacy. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are losing their hold on a population that is deeply and profoundly alienated from the war mongering political establishment.

The official media are both oblivious to the reality of declining living standards in USA and deteriorating social conditions or are deliberately covering it up. America is the rising stock exchange and is increasing wealth of the super-rich and a privileged upper-middle-class layer.

The two party system has promoted an America as a deeply class-polarized society, with a vast and unbridgeable gulf between the wealthy and the rest of the population. It is this social reality that underlies the mounting crisis of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

US electorate feels it has been betrayed and bamboozled by the political system.

The Republican fanatic Donald Trump and the Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders have emerged somewhat popular alongside Mrs. Clinton. Contrary to all expectations, both Trump and Sanders have acquired mass support and emerged as the dominant figures in the primary process. The candidacy of Trump, the thuggish real-estate mogul and reality-television celebrity, was viewed as a entertaining sideshow that would soon lose its audience as gradually people would get fed up with religious fanaticism.

While the corporate-financial interests that control the Democratic Party still expect Clinton to win the nomination, the Sanders candidacy is seen as a harbinger of a continuing and uncontrollable left-wing political movement.

The massive economic collapse of 2008, on the very eve of the election of Barack Obama, marked a qualitative turning point in the crisis of American society. The unfolding crisis of the two-party system, like all significant political developments, has deep political and social roots. The protracted decline of US capitalism accumulating for decades has led to contradictions that are now blowing the two-party system apart. The disastrous impact of the economic crisis upon the lives of tens of millions of people is reflected in the growing rejection of two-party political system.

On the extreme right, barrage of insults against his Republican opponents and the media resonates with a section of the electorate that Moreover, Trump’s candidacy is the end-product of a degraded political environment that has relentlessly promoted and legitimized the sort of reactionary backwardness that Trump skillfully exploits.

The primary factor behind the crisis of the two-party system is the growth of political activism and anti-capitalist sentiment, expressed in strikes and contract rejections by autoworkers, steelworkers and teachers, as well as in opposition to police killings and outrage over lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, demonstrates that the ordinary people are waging an open struggle against corporate America.

Bernie Sanders, who is not a socialist but calls himself a “democratic socialist” and has placed economic inequality and Wall Street criminality at the center of his campaign, has moved into a virtual tie with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in pre-caucus polls. The next primary contest takes place on February 9 in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, a poll found that 68 percent of likely Democratic voters thought a socialist president was a good idea, a remarkable figure in a country where socialism has been subjected to endless vilification by the media and the political-corporate elites.

While criticizing the stranglehold of the billionaires over the US political system, Sanders defends the foreign policy of American imperialism- the use of military force, assassination, espionage and political subversion to defend the interests of these same billionaires around the world.

The main function of the Sanders campaign is to appeal to the increasingly radical sentiments among youth and working people in order to divert them back into the political confines of the Democratic Party.

The Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, while dismissing Sanders as a candidate who has raised useful ideas but could not possibly put them into practice. It singles out Clinton’s role as a paragon of identity politics—she would be the first female president and an advocate of black women, gays, etc.

Sanders is focusing on economic inequality and “the corrupting influence of big money” but Mrs. Clinton maintains that “money is the root of some evil, maybe a lot of evil, but racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice are powerful forces in their own right.” The conclusion is that issues of race and gender are just as important, or even more important, than issues of class.

Much of the press coverage of the Iowa caucuses and the broader election campaign concedes that the overwhelming sentiment among millions of people is anger at the existing political system and both parties.

Like in India, communal and overt anti-Islam campaign is beckoning popular in urban centers, although the proponent of this new theme Trump is not that popular. .

Americans keep talking about human rights violations, democracy and regime change but in order to give life to democracy they refer to, they must first opt for a multiparty democratic system. And then see how it works for them.

USA as a limit democracy with a meager two parties, can criticize other systems only in a limited sense.

It is high time American leaders consider a multi-party system for the people of America so that they enjoy the benefits of a true democracy in future.   

Americans should have the right to decide the political (party) system of their nation that war monger parties are put in their places. In order to make the US presidency poll meaningful Americans indeed need a multi-party system. After all, Americans have not  asked the  presidents to keep launching  and escalating  terror wars,  draining their resources that could have been spent on genuine human resource development and  welfare of the poor in and around USA. 

Won't Americans deserve to draw  the benefits from a multi-party system?