[Peace-discuss] Irrelevance of the US election

[C. G. Estabrook]

Literally billions of dollars have just been spent on America's quadrennial quadrille - to reproduce the governmental status quo ante: a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, a Democrat-controlled Senate, and the same Chief Magistrate (as the framers of the 1787 Constitution referred to the president). 

Of course, economic and military policy - the USG's killing and looting - would hardly have been affected, even if other candidates had been elected: in America policy is insulated from politics.  

The show is produced for Americans, to convince us that we're deciding political questions, when of course we're not. The rest of the world, with some distance on the matter, seems to realize that more than we do. 

> http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/did-people-outside-the-u-s-care-about-our-election
> 
> Did People Outside the U.S. Care About Our Election?
> Choire Sicha | November 7th, 2012
> 
> While everything stopped here in America to watch the alleged nail-biter, or what the TV told us would be a nail-biter, how did the rest of the world react?
> 
> • "Today’s table topics: Egypt’s constitution-to-be, a proposed restaurant and shop curfew, the need for interior ministry reform. The U.S. presidential election? Not on the menu. 'We’ve got more than enough to worry about with Morsi,' the 42-year-old Somaya says, roughly chopping a bundle of molokheya, bitter greens common in the Egyptian kitchen. 'I didn’t even know about the U.S. election, and I don’t care. Whoever wins won't make a difference to us.'"
> 
> • "I confess to forgetting repeatedly about the US elections today. I was reporting on a mass hunger strike by some 700 prisoners demanding Kurdish education and court rights and an end to the isolation of PKK rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, serving a life sentence on an island jail. It is Day 55. They are surviving on sugar water and liquid vitamins."
> 
> • "Islamabad woke to news of an Obama victory with an unimpressed yawn…. 'The main thing people care about is the drone strikes,' said a TV cameraman, setting up his gear outside the residence of the US embassy’s chargé d’affaires. 'We all know that will not change whoever is in power.'"
>