There is a widely prevalent myth that America is a democracy or republican form of government. The real beauty and redeeming quality of America is its unrivalled freedom of speech, that shames the politically expedient banning of books and criticism of the courts and high office holders, so conveniently used by India. The less well known fact is the misguided prejudice of race that makes lower and middle class voters earning less than fifty thousand dollars a year to vote for Republicans out of the orchestrated fear and bugaboo of terrorist threats and a belief that Democrats are a party, captive to the blacks and willing to hand out undeserved goodies to the much maligned poor. Thus the American people often vote against their own economic interests for Republicans who indulge in the profligacy of huge budget deficits contrary to their pronounced platform and philosophy. They exploit religion, race, abortion and closet gay bashing to appeal to an ignorant and generally stupid electorate by appealing to Christian heritage. Republicans claiming compassionate conservatism in reality practice crony capitalism to enrich their contributors.

They give favorable tax benefits to offshore corporations evading their just dues for the public good. A scam unnoticed by the foolish electorate is the guaranteeing of foreign investments of American corporations by OPIC, that allows risk free profit gouging by contributing corporations, which are insured against loss by the American taxpayer. The lifting of restraints on risky investments by Savings and Loan Associations by the Reagan administration with the resultant debacle and bail out with taxpayer money is a classic example of defrauding the public. The bailout of Mexico some years ago to ensure the reimbursement of imprudent banks indulging in irresponsible lending is another misuse of public funds to bail out favored institutions under the guise of proclaimed largesse to a poor neighbor, to stem illegal immigrants and urgent economic necessity. The sole intention is of using public funds to enrich the chosen few, who finance the Republican Party. In all fairness the Democratic Party is not without sin and plays the same game, especially after Clinton's turn to the center right. The remarkable bamboozling of the manipulated electorate occurred in a recent referendum in the state of Alabama, where a stupid electorate brainwashed by false propaganda from vested interests, voted down a fair apportionment of real estate taxes and a reform of the state income tax favoring the poor, to its own detriment.

The ignorant and apathetic electorate does not realize that the corrupted campaign finance mess makes the self-serving legislators hostage to vested interests. This greed for profit without concern for the national good leads to export of jobs to minimize corporate costs and has led to a jobless recovery and a widening disparity between the haves and have-nots, decimating the middle class, which is the linchpin of a successful and functioning democracy. The vital issue corrupting the public good and causing economic disaster is swept under the rug or ignored by raising the fear of terrorist attacks and worries about security and the economy while concealing from the public the real reasons for a poor economy. The corrupt handouts to corporations and shortsighted policies are obscured from public debate and understanding by a conniving media suborned, beholden and hand in glove with the power elite. There is a great hoopla created by intoxicating the people with tamashas, circuses and patriotic cries of we are the greatest, richest and the best, which prevents honest self-appraisal by the benumbed and confused electorate basking in exuberant euphoria.

Huge tax giveaways to the obscenely rich are touted as removal of the government from the backs of the commoner, even though the average benefit to them is non-existent or negligible. The estate tax is repealed in the name of family farms and small business with the tacit approval of a misinformed populace, unaware that the said tax rarely if ever affects or is paid by anyone except the super-rich with estates greater than ten million dollars, and that also only if they have been stupid, careless or negligent by avoiding any legal loopholes of estate planning. The unreachable grease beyond the reach of licking, applied to the elbow is used to fool the greedy that everyone can become rich in America. Your turn is round the corner and if you permit taxing of the rich, someday you will be rich and be taxed the same way. The gullible fools then think, there with the grace of God and Lady Luck goes I, and gleefully endorse, approve and demand disproportionate benefits to the rich, because of their foolish and unachievable dream of being one of them.

The tragic irony of this brainwashing of the idiots is that there are no willing and cheerfully suffering masochists in the world comparable to average Americans. This earns them the dubious title of the dumbest electorate in the whole wide world and yet they crow like imbeciles about their freedom, democracy and greatness in blissful ignorance of their subtle and clever manipulation by their current dumb puppet leader, who lied to them about the Iraq war. Their infinite gullibility exonerates his duplicity and blames faulty intelligence or some other implausible excuse for his inept crookedness, while using patriotism as a last resort of his scoundrel behavior. Anyone who has the rude audacity to confront this drugged and unthinking electorate by the mirror of truth tends to lose his popularity and appeal as the least tainted candidate Howard Dean has recently. The sorry state is that the culture of celebrity and brainwashing by media is so deeply rooted just as in India, that it skews the election process as it did recently in California by offering a choice between a muscle bound no brainer Republican and a bought and paid for Democrat. As goes California, so eventually goes the nation as a prior choice of a third rate actor by it and his subsequent election to the presidency and setting the nation on the path to national indebtedness and bankruptcy by his ideological dementia has proved. The fickleness, indecisiveness and insecure sheepish mentality to be with the winner at the cost of principle, virtue or reason is the final damning nail to seal the coffin of American democracy and entomb the intellectually bankrupt electorate.