The Anti-Democratic Moral Midgetry of the American Plutocracy

In 1972, George McGovern somehow managed to slip through the cracks in the carefully orchestrated "2-party (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) system" and got himself elected the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the Whole Shebang. This threw a scare into Nixon's oh-so-wonderfully acronymed Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).

McGovern accomplished this feat, amazingly enough, with popular support. Nothing scares the plutocratic ruling class of this country like, um, democracy.

So, the Nixon mafia went into action: the goal was to make certain that the McGovern candidacy take a nose-dive. Watergate was one result. But the CREEPers did not act alone; they had help. Unwittingly, the McGovernites supplied some of that help--bungling the choice for V.P. among other moves that only paraded for all the world their unfortunate naivete (they actually believed that the plutocracy would have to allow them to succeed if they had the votes).

Help came from other places as well. The Humphrey-Meany-Daley axis of evil--the Democratic Party's "old guard"--painted McGovern as a Communist sympathizer. Meany used his position as President of the AFL-CIO to ensure that McGovern was robbed of the support of organized labor--recall that Archie Bunker was a union man. Archie was an archetypal figure.

And there was help from another place as well: that by now familiar figure in American politics, the "lone gunman." In this case, the "lone gunman" was one Arthur Bremer, an unemployed dishwasher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Bremer appears to have stalked both Richard Nixon and George Wallace before settling on Wallace. Out of work and from a working class family, he somehow managed to follow the two candidates to various places in the U.S. and Canada, occasionally staying in posh hotels (like New York's Waldorf) though, by the time he shot Wallace, he was living in his car.

As a 3rd party candidate, Wallace had no chance of winning the Presidency--it is a "2-party system" after all. What he could do, however, was siphon off some of the white racist southern votes that Nixon was counting on to build a comfortable electoral margin over McGovern. Consequently, Wallace had to go.

On May 15, 1972, Arthur Bremer, at point-blank range, emptied his pistol into Wallace's mid-section. Four bullets entered Wallace. Three other individuals in the crowd were also shot.

Assuming six bullets, the math is somewhat curious.

Be that as it may, Wallace was safely out of the race. Nixon is on tape discussing the possibility of having one of his henchmen plant McGovern campaign literature in Bremer's apartment. But it wasn't necessary.

The American "2-party (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) system" works like a casino. You may win a few rounds, but when the real deal is on the line, you will never beat the house.

We need a non-violent people's revolution to force a Constitutional convention that would create a genuine democracy in these Benighted States. But before that happens, there must be a moral revolution because, frankly, the American people today wouldn't know what to do with a real democracy. And why should we? We've never actually had one.