The Pathology of the American Voter
By Luke Hiken and Marti Hiken
March 13, 2012
What is going on in this country? Have the citizens of the U.S. gone totally mad?
The U.S. Congress has an approval rating of less than 10%. Greedy, unprincipled billionaires own virtually all of the
wealth of the nation, and pay a lower percentage for taxes than the poorest worker. We imprison a greater percent of our
population than any nation on earth. We spend more on vicious, unwarranted wars than the 15 top military spending
countries combined. We are the greatest purveyor of murder and destruction internationally than anyone else.
Our public school system is under attack, and becoming obsolete. A college degree has become so expensive as to be
unavailable to middle class families. The safety net for the old and infirm is being torn asunder. Our immigration
policies are so degrading and inhumane that there is a mass exodus from the U.S. by peoples who used to flock here.
Health care is a national disgrace, and is fast becoming unaffordable to any person in need of hospitalization. Homeland
Security looks more like the German Gestapo every day.
The list of failures and problems facing the country is unparalleled, and the public knows it. Everything from cartoons
to serious news shows bemoan the catastrophic decline in this country’s standard of living, and recognize the
incompetence and inhumanity of those in power. This is so, even though the public media is little more than a propaganda
tool for the oligarchy.
What is the most astonishing fact, though, is that there are no candidates or possibilities for new leadership on the
horizon anywhere! Obama is the best of the pack of wolves and thieves who are actively destroying this nation. 95% of
those in Congress who are running for re-election are virtually certain to retain their status. How in the world is that
possible? Any rational person would expect the electorate to throw these pandering, posturing politicians out on their
keesters, and elect a set of representatives who would radically change the picture. But instead, we are about to
re-affirm the failed, dying programs that have transformed this country into a violent, disrespected second-rate nation.
What a contradiction in logic and reality!
What kind of national pathology is causing the electorate to allow the oligarchy to engage in this unadulterated rush to
destroy everything of value in this country? Like lemmings, rushing into the sea to commit suicide, the voters will once
again endorse the same fools who have immobilized Congress for decades, will do nothing to control a run-away Pentagon,
and its maniacal weapons manufacturers, and will accept Wall Street’s unregulated destruction of our wealth and
resources. There is simply no rational explanation for the inability of the American people to find alternatives to the
elected gangsters who bow to every billionaire that comes before them.
It is apparent that the voting public in the U.S. feels so disenfranchised from the process that it has for all intents
left the spoils to the thieves. By abandoning any process by which there can be meaningful change in the policies of
this government, the people have accepted the fact that there are no meaningful differences between the Democrats and
the Republicans. The wars will continue, the repression will expand, the rich will get richer, and the rest of us are on
our own.
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Marti Hiken is the director of Progressive Avenues. She is the former Associate Director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy and former chair of the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force.
Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.
The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html