by Legitimacy of American elections is being called into question from both side. This follows on the GOP effort to delegitimize President Obama with "birtherism, of which Donald Trump was a chief leader. And after Trump's election, the Resistance barrage to delegitimize the new president. (See Caitlin Johnstone's Politico Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass and The Screens.)The legitimacy of American elections was significantly improved by the Civil Rights Act and then gradually undermined, first by Richard Nixon's Southern strategy. Legitimacy was further eroded by the GOP effort to impeach President Clinton, as viciously attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton as soon as the election was over. Legitimacy was further called into question by the questionable victory of G. W.
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The legitimacy of American elections was significantly improved by the Civil Rights Act and then gradually undermined, first by Richard Nixon's Southern strategy. Legitimacy was further eroded by the GOP effort to impeach President Clinton, as viciously attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton as soon as the election was over. Legitimacy was further called into question by the questionable victory of G. W. Bush over Al Gore in the Supreme Court by a partisan vote of 5-4.
This is the sign of a banana republic, not a mature democratic republic. With this development, American looses more soft power internationally as a "shining city on a hill," a "beacon" and the "leader of the free world."
Add to this the recent research on the US being an oligopoly and even Citibank called it a "plutonomy.
In a country where "money is speech" is legitimized and corporations are accorded the constitutional rights of natural persons, unless there is equality of income and wealth distribution, the outcome is oligarchy, and specifically plutonomy. A corollary is that foreign policy becomes based on transnational corporate totalitarianism and neo-imperialism.
It's over, folks. The great experiment failed. Aristotle is vindicated in his analysis of the outcome of so-called "democracy" not conducted by lottery (chance selection). Otherwise, the selection process becomes corrupted.