The Futility of Representative Government in an Age of Robber Barons

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By John Whitehead

“That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other… Anything different—that’s what they’re gonna talk about—race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other, so that they can keep going to the bank!”—Comedian George Carlin

“We the people” have been utterly and completely betrayed.

The politicians “we the people” most trusted to look out for our best interests, protect our rights, and ensure that the nation does not slip into tyranny have cheated on us, lied to us, swindled us, deceived us, double-crossed us, and sold us to the highest bidder.

Time and again, they have shown in word and deed that their priorities lay elsewhere, that they care nothing about our plight, that they owe us no allegiance, that they are motivated by power and money rather than principle, that they are deaf to our entreaties, that they are part of an elite ruling class that views us as mere cattle, that their partisan bickering is part of an elaborate ruse to keep us divided and distracted, and that their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution mean nothing.

Incredibly, even in the face of their treachery and lies, the great majority of Americans persist in believing that the politicians have the people’s best interests at heart.

Despite the fact that we’ve been burned before, most Americans continue to allow themselves to be bamboozled into casting their votes for one candidate or another, believing that this time they mean what they say, this time they really care about the citizenry, this time will be different.

Of course, they rarely ever mean what they say, they care about their constituents only to the extent that it advances their political careers, and it never turns out differently. We are as easily discarded the day after the elections as we were wantonly wooed in the months leading up to the big day. Those same politicians who were once so eager to pose for our pictures, smile at our jokes, and glad-hand us for our votes will, upon being elected, retreat behind a massive, impenetrable wall that ensures we are not seen or heard from again—at least, until the next election.

The joke is on us.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all of the caucuses, primaries, nominating conventions, town hall meetings, rallies, meet and greets, delegates and super-delegates are sophisticated schemes aimed at advancing the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting.

It’s not about Red Republicans or Blue Democrats. It’s about Green Donors—i.e, those with money who can afford to pay for access.

Votes might elect politicians, but as a 2014 field experiment by political scientists at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, makes clear, it’s money that talks.

The experiment went something like this: members of Congress were contacted by constituents requesting meetings about pending public policy issues. As the Washington Post reports, “When the attendees were revealed to be ‘local campaign donors,’ they often gained access to Members of Congress, Legislative Directors, and Chiefs of Staff. But when the attendees were described as only ‘local constituents,’ they almost never gained this level of access.”

Conclusion: money buys access to politicians who are otherwise deaf, dumb and blind to the entreaties of their constituents.

It works the same with every politician and every party.

Indeed, the First Amendment’s assurance of a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances has become predicated on how much money you’re willing to shell out in order to gain access to your elected and appointed officials.

Then again, money has always played a starring role in American politics.

The spoils system reared its greedy head under Andrew Jackson, who traded jobs in his administration in exchange for campaign contributions. For $1 million, donors could take part in Warren Harding’s poker parties and enjoy a sleepover at the White House. Lyndon Johnson had a President’s Club that cost donors $1000 a year. Nixon was prepared to sell ambassadorships for $250,000. And Bill Clinton famously allowed top-dollar donors to spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House in exchange for roughly $5.4 million in donations to the Democratic National Committee.

Fast forward to the present day, and a $500,000 donation might get you invited to a quarterly meeting with Barack Obama. For a mere $5,000 donation, lobbyists are being given exclusive invitations to join Congressmen and senators for weekend getaways that include wine tastings, fly fishing, skiing, golfing, hunting, spas, seaside cocktail parties and more.

If you’re just a lowly citizen with limited cash, however, you’re out of luck.

Try contacting your so-called representatives without paying for the privilege, and see how far that gets you. I can assure you that you won’t be given the kinds of access that lobbyists, special interest groups and top donors enjoy.

Having been saddled with a pay-to-play system that provides access only to those with enough cash to grease the wheels of the political machine, average Americans have little to no say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.

Donald Trump, as he has boasted, might be able to buy and sell politicians of all stripes (including Hillary Clinton), but the average American would be hard-pressed to get the kind of access enjoyed by corporate executives, lobbyists and other members of the moneyed elite.

Indeed, members of Congress have to work hard to keep their constituents at a distanceminimizing town-hall meetings, making minimal public appearances while at home in their districts, only appearing at events in controlled settings where they’re the only ones talking, and if they must interact with constituents, doing so via telephone town meetings or impromptu visits to local businesses where the chances of being accosted by angry voters are greatly minimized.

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And under the Trespass Bill, passed by Congress in 2012 and signed into law by President Obama, if you dare to exercise your First Amendment right to speak freely to a politician, assemble in public near a politician, or petition a government official for a redress of grievances, you risk a fine or a lengthy stay in prison.

Talk about self-serving.

Under the guise of protecting government officials from physical attacks, the Trespass Bill, a.k.a. “the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act,” criminalizes First Amendment activity by making it a federal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to protest anywhere the Secret Service might be guarding someone.

Mind you, the Secret Service not only protects the president but all past sitting presidents, members of Congress, foreign dignitaries, presidential candidates, and anyone whom the president determines needs protection, but is also in charge of securing National Special Security Events, which include events such as the G8 and NATO summits, the National Conventions of both major parties, and even the Super Bowl.

The law essentially creates a roving bubble zone where the First Amendment is effectively off-limits, thereby putting an end to free speech, political protest and the right to peaceably assemble in all areas where government officials happen to be present. Thus, simply walking by one of these events could make you subject to arrest.

“What that means in practice,” as The Intercept rightly points out, “is that campaign rallies for Donald Trump, who was granted Secret Service protection in November, and Hillary Clinton, who will be guarded for life as a former first lady, arethe very opposite of free speech zones under federal law. (The restrictions also apply to all appearances by former presidents and first ladies, as well as those of two other candidates, Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson, who are currently protected by the service.)”

Consider yourself warned: If you do dare to show up to a Trump or Clinton rally and even appear to be the kind of person who might engage in any kind of protest, lawful or otherwise, you could find yourself quickly dispatched to a “free speech zone” out of sight and sound of the candidates. (“Free speech zones” are government-sanctioned areas located far away from government officials, into which activists and citizens are herded at political rallies and events.) In fact, that’s exactly what happened to a group of black students at a recent Trump rally in Georgia. They were escorted by police to “‘free speech zones’ in a field shielded from the venue by a set of tennis courts, or outside a church about a quarter of a mile away.”

The message is clear: in an age of robber barons, “we the people” are expected to just shut up and vote.

The powers-that-be want us to be censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down. They want our speech and activities monitored for any sign of “extremist” activity. They want us to be estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. They want taxation without representation. They want a government without the consent of the governed.

They want the police state.

The system has been so corrupted and compromised that there are few left in the halls of government who hear or speak for us.

Congress does not represent us. The courts do not advocate for us. The president does not listen to us. And the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to speak freely and petition our government for a redress of grievance no longer applies to us.

So if representative government has become an exercise in futility, where does that leave us?

One of the key ingredients in maintaining democratic government is the right of citizens to freely speak their minds to those who represent them. In fact, it is one of the few effective tools we have left to combat government corruption and demand accountability.

If there is to be any hope of righting the wrongs that are being perpetrated against the American people, we must make them—our elected officials—hear us.

But where to begin?

Start by opening up a dialogue within your own community about what’s wrong with this country. Stop focusing on the issues that divide, and find common ground with your fellow citizens about issues on which you can agree. Focus less on politics and more on principles. Stop buying into the false and divisive narratives that are being promulgated by political windbags and start thinking and speaking for yourselves.

Once you’ve found that common ground, whatever it might be, make enough noise at the local level—at your city council meetings, in your local paper, at your school board meetings, in front of your courthouses and police stations—and the message will trickle up. Those in power may not like what they hear, but they will hear you.

Remember, there is power in numbers.

There are 319 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice?

The police state wouldn’t stand a chance.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is the founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, where this article first appeared. He is also the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.


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27 Comments on "The Futility of Representative Government in an Age of Robber Barons"

  1. Yes, and now they need more lower classes and a new middle class. Thus, illegal immigration, provocation,etc..

  2. It’s too simplistic to diagnose the entire rise of the global police state as being due to mere greed, the top of pyramid is motivated by an insatiable lust for power and control driven by the ideology of Elite Rule. It’s an age old system, hence the concept of the Iron Law of Politics – a historically consistent pattern of Elites eventually capturing centralized societies, particularly when the citizens become blinded, lazy, dumbed down, and apathetic = no longer vigilant.

    Robber Barons / Elites will always exist as long as human beings allow wealth and power to be the most powerful organizing principles of their societies. Representative government is NOT futile if the electorate is FULLY awake and we cannot get there with limited hangouts to include turning a blind eye to false flags.

    What solution are we being set up for in the current Election Big Tent CIRCUS? Answer: Appointed Technocrats because “They couldn’t possibly be any worse than the clowns selected to run for high office, and the technocrats will be experts!” – e.g. Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy = bankster minions.

    • Agree, it took centuries for corruption in America to achieve a self correcting loop.

      From the Rothschilds failed national bank initiatives via James Madison, to their financing the War of 1812 and the Civil War to finally getting their final success with the Federal Reserve Act, and to Rockefeller’s United Nations and finally, Bush’s NWO we see corruption’s closed loop.

      It’s been quite a run to finally bring us to our knees. Like the protagonist from “Atlas Shrugged” Trump is the self funding billionaire poster boy for stopping them and if establishment candidates emerge we can see their plan is complete and then it’s just a march down the path of managed decline until they reach their own critical mass and the clock resets once again..

    • It’s always greed. Money = power = control.

      • Yes, you’re right money is unfortunately the most powerful organizing principle in our society – it represents virtually unlimited access to resources. The left or progressives keep pumping a blind spot that as long as we can do away with “money”, then we can be free. Far from it in Technocracy. The new system of control the Global Elite are putting the finishing touches on eventually does away with the conventional use of money and moves us into a monitoring and rationing system under a Scientific Dictatorship = Technocracy, essentially Techno Communism controlled by the Banker Fascists. They intend to tightly control ALL resources, including “human resources” as described in Agenda 21, etc.

        • You’re right. No country in the world needs or gets $4 trillion in tax revenue, especially us with a budget that is less than half of it! There are 400 families that are “ruling” the world – plus their minions of ideologically impaired liberals, progressives, rinos, illegals, and foreigners. Pelosi is a prime example. When she said “let no crisis go to waste” she highlighted her complete ignorance of the fact that the corporate oligarchy created the crisis and the “waste” is their intended outcome.

  3. Pearls before swine.

    A PEOPLE DESERVE ANY REGIME THEY ENDURE.

    americans have to learn the hard way. They lack the intelligence to do otherwise.

  4. John Whitehead: ““We the people” have been utterly and completely betrayed.”

    More precisely: We the People have utterly betrayed Yahweh, beginning with the 18th-century founders when they replaced the 17th-century Colonial governments of, by, and for God established upon His moral law for their own humanistic government of, by, and for the people based upon capricious Enlightenment traditions.

    For more, see online Chapter 3 “The Preamble: WE THE PEOPLE vs. YAHWEH” of “Bible Law vs, the
    United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective.”

    Then, find out how much you REALLY know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey in the right-hand sidebar and receive a complimentary copy of a book that EXAMINES the Constitution by the Bible.

    • ‘Yahweh’ is a demon invented by the Tribe. ‘He’ IS the problem. You call yourself a ‘Christian’ but actually worship a demon that Jesus hated. You are a ‘useful idiot’ for the ‘chosen ones’ and I wish that you and your type would get a grip on reality instead of spouting your useless or worse crap. Or maybe you just could take your ‘original sin’ and go away.

      • John,thanks for responding and especially for demonstrating the inspiration and veracity of the Bible, especially 1 Corinthians 2:12-14.

        • Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us what ‘wisdom’ we might get from ‘1 Corinthians 2:12-14.’

        • The Sumerian clay tablets speak about ancient events, long before a single world of the Bible was written. None of the stories of the book of Genesis are original, but rather watered-down versions of much older stories conveyed in great detail in ancient clay tablets.
          The human race was indeed created in the image of our maker, but the maker was not who we’ve been led to believe. The god of the Bible and other religions who constantly displays humanlike behaviour – the god of vengeance we know from the Bible – is a god with a lower-case “g.”

          Why did it take thousands of years for the slave species to progress from their labour camps in southern Africa, to the point about 9,000 years ago, when a wave of sudden civilisation spread around the world, from India, the Near East, Europe and the Americas?

          And what of the evolution theory’s “missing link” dilemma?

          On our Anunnaki origins:
          Why would human beings thousands of year ago have spent millions of man-hours painstakingly creating the clay tablets detailing our genetically engineered origin if their contents were untruthful?

          http://www.amazon.com/Slave-Species-Gods-History-Anunnaki/dp/1591431514

      • Lucifer Who Is Enki Who Is Ea:

        Lucifer personifies humanitarian goodness and enlightenment.

        All other characterizations of Lucifer are blasphemous and inaccurate.

        In the Freudian sense, Lucifer is the Self rebelling against the Super Ego—the psychic faculty analogous to the judging and condemning ‘father figure,’ both internally and externally—for the sake of empowering the Ego Ideal—the psychic faculty analogous with the rewarding and benevolent ‘mother figure.’

        Put very simply, Lucifer is the Self choosing to be ruled by Love rather than Fear.

        Therefore, Luciferian consciousness is in league with the ‘feminine’ right hemisphere of the brain. Be it represented by the Yin of the Yin/Yang, the Chalice of the Chalice/Blade, or the Spirit of Napoleon’s Spirit/Sword..

        “There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”

        —Napoleon Bonaparte

        In the Sumerian stories Lucifer is commensurate with Enki, the creator of humanity. While facing much opposition from his malevolent brother Enlil, who is representative of left brain patriarchal consciousness, Enki saves enlightens humankind in the Garden, clothes them after Enlil drives them out, and saves humanity from the Deluge with which Enlil attempted to destroy humanity.

        The God of the Old Testament is a composite character formed by combining these two forces.

        Good and evil must exist in an interlocked package. One is defined by the existence of the other.

        An age of Lucifer will be an age of enlightenment. Enki, and therefore Lucifer, is set to regain his rightful prominence in the Aquarian Age which is now dawning.

        Tyranny will be replaced by humanitarian concern, and left brain concerns—such as finance—will be subservient to human needs. The Enlilite forces which have ruled for so long will be opposed to these ends, but they are no match for the gravity of destiny.

        The New Serpent of creative consciousness will not fit in the old skin of existing institutions.

        http://annunakia.over-blog.com/article-lucifer-who-is-enki-who-is-ea-77019348.html

    • Wrong again, Weiland. There is no place in the scriptures where God indicates that He wants His laws inserted into man’s legal systems.

      If man includes the first commandment, to have no other gods before Yahweh, into man’s legal system, what punishment does God want on the books for violating it? God will judge and God will punish the unrepentant. It’s His prerogative and He hasn’t conferred that authority on man.

      What about, honor thy father and thy mother? What legal standards should be codified into man’s law to determine degree of guilt? And again, what punishment should be extracted?

      What about keeping the Sabbath? How many steps can you travel before you break the Sabbath? What’s a Sabbath day’s journey in our time?

      Face it Weiland, man can’t enforce God’s laws. Your effort to abolish the U.S. Constitution and replace it with “Yahweh’s perfect moral law” is a fool’s errand. What does that make you?

      • NASA recently discovered what appears to be a ‘force field’ over Earth, fueling the fire over whether our planet has been under spiritual and physical quarantine as many have suggested.

        According to Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the electron barrier exists in the Van Allen belts, a pair of donut-shaped belts that ring the Earth teeming with protons and electrons. The Earth’s magnetic field holds the belts in place, but the scientist says that the electrons in these belts – which travel at nearly the speed of light – are being blocked by some invisible force that reminded him of the kind of shields used in television series like Star Trek to stop alien energy weapons from vaporizing starships.

        Numerous philosophers and spiritual teachers have spoken about this ‘quarantine’.

        Michael Tsarion talks about the quarantine and its association to the moon in the Stargate and Quarantine chapter of his book, Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation :

        Ashayana Deane believes the quarantine not only involves the veil of forgetfulness but also to disassociate ourselves from our divine spiritual heritage as being part of multidimensional universes of higher-conscious forms.

        According to the Wes Penre papers, our planet has been under quarantine since the arrival of the Anunnaki.

        Having consequently become detached from the higher levels of our own being, in the words of the ancient books, we are “fallen” or “lost souls”, disconnected from “the Father”.

        When the blocking, imprisoning frequency was thrown around this planet, we lost touch with our higher consciousness and, crucially, with our eternal memory. We forgot who we were and where we came from.

        http://in5d.com/earths-quarantine-force-field-discovered-by-nasa/

    • We are in a low vibrational prison -the Matrix -and living a daily illusion. It is the illusion that holds the whole show together, and the Illuminati have set up the media, science, education, religion, medicine, finance, and business, the whole grotesque system, to assault our conscious and subconscious minds with messages designed to programme the illusion deeper and deeper into our sense of reality. If we buy that, and all but a few people do, we will never get out and break free.

      We are trapped in a frequency range.

      http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/biggestsecret/matrix/matrix18.htm

  5. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a
    population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is
    redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public
    conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people
    become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a
    nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.
    — Professor Neil Postman

    WE THE PEOPLE need to start acting like intelligent and engaged citizens instead of a detached and apathetic audience.

  6. abused children love their abusers. At least Trump’s expressions have given the rest of us cause to rally. Now, can we organize effectively? So far, this seems to be a very weak link in the Trump chain. His campaign ground-game seriously sucks. He is acting like Perot-deux. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they votescam him in NY, CA, IL, FL, MI, OH and probably WA in “close races” whereas the democrat attains enough electoral votes to win in Nov. However, if Trump wins, the 10% of Americans who are “gitterDunns” will find each other; then work together to completely wreck the 100 years of elitist bovine excrement that has infected this nation. It could make the time leading up to 2020 the most exciting in American history, EVER. Then we shall see the power of Representative government in action. We will figure out how to elect real representatives in our US House districts, for sure.

  7. The U.S.and (most) countries the world over have been usurped. Throw out the bath water and there will be thousand years of peace. At least the Donald is attacking some of their sacred cows (vaccines and education)

  8. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT 2016

  9. Its not money or power that they after. They already have that.

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