They know they can't lose. They know that people will vote to authorize them to continue the war against us. Okay, so only half the electorate still votes, but that's enough for them to claim legitimacy, the consent of the governed. And that half will never give up their vote because it is their precious right to vote for people who won't represent them. It is their voice in government to vote for people who will not allow public opinion to influence policy decisions. Why, if they didn't vote, the bad guys would win--never mind that no matter how often they vote and no matter who they vote for, the bad guys always win anyway.

What would happen if the corporations spent their usual billions of dollars to get their puppets elected and nobody except the 2% who benefit from corporate-run government voted? Would anyone still believe that the government is still legitimate and still has the consent of the governed? But then we'd lose our credit rating and no other country would loan money to us. We'd be bankrupt. Well, we are anyway. But as long as that credit rating holds, the government can continue to borrow money with which to wage profitable wars abroad, all the while moaning that it is too broke to provide jobs here at home.

If we didn't vote, the government would fall. Then we could write a new Constitution that vests power in the hands of the people instead of in the hands of "representatives" who don't represent us. We could institute honest elections where the popular vote in the final say and cannot be overruled. We could renounce any debts incurred without our consent and put the crooks who fleeced us in prison. We could send the war criminals to the Hague to be tried.

Not that there's the slightest chance that this will happen. The 50% who vote will always turn out to do their civic duty to a state that is destroying them. They'll continue to vote to empower the 2% because they believe that some day they'll win the lottery and will be in that 2%. They know the odds, but it's the only hope, the only chance they've got. And politicians know this, so they sell themselves as agents of hope and change. And it doesn't really matter how many of us stop voting because there's another sucker born every minute who will sell their grandchildren's future for the right to cast a ballot that doesn't even have to be counted for somebody they won't be able to hold accountable until long after the irreparable damage is done and cannot be undone.

The act of voting is the act of declaring oneself incompetent and appointing guardians to manage one's affairs. What's tragic is that no matter how many times those guardians steal the funds they were entrusted to manage on our behalf, that 50% will keep voting to authorize them to do so because THEY REALLY ARE INCOMPETENT. Oh sure, they can pay their rent and taxes if they happen to be lucky enough to have a job, but they're incompetent to make decisions about how their tax money should be spent. If they had power, they'd do exactly what our politicians do because they, like the representatives they vote for, care only about themselves and have no concern for others. Lacking social consciousness and guided solely by greed, they sympathize with the crooks they elect because they aspire to be crooks like that, or at least admire those who achieve that goal.

Great article, as usual, Michael. Of course having repeated the same things over and over for years, we do get better at saying it. The problem is that the few who can understand what we're saying are not the majority. The majority will continue to support predatory capitalism even while it roasts them, eats them, and picks their bones. To put limits on capitalism would not only be socialism, but it would put limits on their dreams of becoming greedy crooked pigs like the people they vote for. I agree with everything you say, except the last part of your comment responding to Robert. Our politicians are exactly like the people they represent. If voters weren't every bit as evil as the people they vote for, they wouldn't be voters, they'd be revolutionaries.

Anyone handicapping negotiations knows that it matters not a whit where they begin or what the score is in the 6th inning; it's where it's going to end up, and about that there's been, or should have been, no doubt at any point:

Cheshire cat smiling ubercynic Mitch McConnell (who is one right-winger who I have 0% doubt knows all about the electoral rigging done and to come) was going to write the plan with Grover Norquist, it was going to have Zero on the revenue end and crippling cuts to the hated New Deal programs (finally), it was going to be all about "drowning government in the bathtub," and Obama wasn't even going to be given enough 'cover' to survive in 2012 (when the 'disaffection of his base' will be the cover story explaining his defeat as well as the demise of the Democratic senators riding his negative coattails).

The Democrats in the Senate will be insane to pass the McConnell "compromise" but, being insane, they will, leaving Obama a choice whether to sign and seal his own electoral doom or veto and plunge the world into a financial tailspin. Now all this was politically preordained when the GOP netted a spectacular 125 House seats (mostly for Tea Party wingnuts) on a modest Generic Congressional Ballot lead of 9% last November (By way of comparison, the Democrats' 26% Generic Congressional Ballot advantage netted them only 58 House seats in 2006, the last off-year election. That's 125/9 vs. 58/26 and that's statistically impossible in the absence of wholesale rigging.) and essentially everything in between was Kabuki and not worth paying the slightest attention to.

Yes it is a war on you, as Michael puts it, and they're slipping blanks in your guns and dum-dum bullets in theirs each November. We won't even begin to be able to fight back until we take over the vote counting process, make it public and observable with Hand-Counted Paper Ballots. Period.

Didn't you forget to mention how the corporate rulers bring in cheap labor to do those jobs they can't export? I know it is considered right wing and racist to be against uncontrolled immigration, but I disagree. All over the world they are bringing in immigrants from poorer countries to work cheap in better off countries - lowering wages and causing huge unemployment suffering - that's how they get and stay rich, by exploiting people. These immigrants are their pawns, the workers their victims, the countries they come from still suffer but someone comes out of all this unscathed, indeed rather better off - the rich ruling class who get their profits up and their pound of flesh. It's time the left and the right united against our true enemy - not each other, but the rich ruling class.

With some $1.2 Trillion being spent this year alone on wars, defense and the national security state apparatus, with unjustifiable tax breaks for the wealthiest, and egregious tax loopholes for corporations, it seems that there's quite a bit of money that no one in DC wants to talk about, let alone touch. Instead of cuts in health and welfare, instead of sacrificing the commonweal to the idols of militarism, wealth and the corporatocracy, perhaps, just perhaps, our government might balance their books on the backs of those who benefit the most from government policies, instead of the working poor and what's left of the middle class. Nah

Paul Krugman is correct – “It’s now impossible to deny the obvious, which is that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery.” (NY Times, 8/5/11) This so-called Great Recession is a long term economic downturn that has all the signs of an economic collapse that will outdo the Great Depression. And nothing is going to change that. University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff has a great DVD lecture called "Capitalism Hits the Fan" that succinctly explains the economic forces at work during the past 3 decades that have led to this sorry state of affairs. Anyone who accepts the ‘official’ narrative that this economic situation is temporary and we’re on the road to ‘recovery’ needs to view this and Chris Martensen's DVD called "Crash Course".

Economists who have a grasp of history know that we are driving off the cliff with no brakes, and that the trillions the Fed handed out to national and international banks and investment houses was just a stop-gap measure. Corporate profits are up, unemployment and homelessness are up and wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The governmental attacks on labor and the social safety net is not going to end because there is no incentive for the ruling plutocratic corporatocracy to end it. ‘It’ is living high on the hog while government domestic spending will continue to be slashed. The only real winner is the war mongering military industrial complex.