When Is an Election Not an Election?

Iranian farce.
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200506160752.asp

This is an interesting article from The National Review's Michael Ledeen, for reasons that he most surely didn't intend. Mr. Ledeen is discussing the upcoming elections in Iran and condemning them as staged before the fact. While that may be so, some of the terminology he uses can be applied to recent (and past) U.S. presidential elections.

I have always maintained, since becoming politically aware in my teens, that it seems that our "choice" of candidates is dictated by the cultural elite, culled from the herd for us by interested parties and presented as the most worthy of the lot, and therefore the only ones deserving of our attention. While we may have the much-vaunted one man/woman, one vote system (which also has come into serious question of late), those votes go to the pre-selected candidates. Our democracy is only polyarchal at best.

In his NRO piece, Michael Ledeen asks:

Does the president of Iran hold any real power? Has any "candidate" (of which there are eight) been chosen by anyone other than the supreme leader and his cronies?

These are questions that I've asked for decades, albeit about the U.S. system. While many may roll their eyes and suspect that I've gone off the deep end, the results of the election investigation in Ohio so far, while suppressed by the corporate media, has indicated that all is not as it seems here in River City, campers.

Mr. Ledeen goes on to say:

No, and no. Whoever is "elected" (and you can be sure that the outcome is already known, millions of "officially cast" ballots having been manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast) will be an instrument of the mullahcracy.

One of my favorite George Orwell quotations reads, "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them". The above quote from the NRO article indicates that peculiar sort of blindness, especially when there is (or very well should be!) remaining questions over the legitimacy of the 2000 and 2004 elections, the former plainly decided by a majority decision of the Supreme Court.

In any case, go ahead and read the piece. It is always best to be aware of the mindset of the ruling class and its dissemination through its public relations/ consensus-manufacturing instruments, such as The National Review, FoxNews, etc. Forewarned is forearmed.--Pete

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200506160752.asp