Stephen Lendman

Candidates attacking each other goes with the territory. Trump and Clinton appear heading for new mean-spirited lows.

The race for the White House promises perhaps to be the nastiest in memory - back-and-forth ad hominem bashing in lieu of straight talk on issues mattering most.

America is a hugely corrupted money-controlled one-party state with two wings, governance serving everyone equitably a nonstarter, democracy pure fantasy.

Voters in November get to choose between the most widely ever reviled presidential aspirants in US history - unfit for any public office. However things turn out, America’s deplorable state will worsen. Pure evil best describes it, humanity’s greatest threat. Endless wars will continue, wealth, power and privilege exclusively served, popular needs and interests be damned - likely more than ever before, nonbelievers facing police state harshness.

Dueling Trump and Clinton addresses bashing each other (he on Wednesday, she on Tuesday) showed what voters can look forward to during summer/fall campaigning, everything carefully pre-scripted, designed to deceive.

Candidates worthy of support discussing real issues are nowhere in sight - both presidential aspirants self-serving, seeking power and greater wealth, assuring four more deplorable years whoever wins. Ordinary people already lost.

Does anyone with any sensibility believe Trump claiming he’s “running to give back to this country which has been so good to” him. He spent his entire business career amassing super-wealth without concern for popular interests.

All candidates hype jobs creation - full-time industrial and other high-pay, good-benefit ones largely gone, rotten part-time/temp ones replacing them.

America increasingly resembles Guatemala, thirdworldized, privileged few benefitting at the expense of most others. Protracted Main Street Depression conditions exist by design, popular needs going begging, bipartisan complicity ignoring them.

Poverty is a growth industry, households one missed paycheck away from homelessness, hunger and desperation.

Trump is wrong saying “it’s not the political system that’s rigged.” He’s right saying “(i)t’s the whole economy…rigged by big donors who want to keep down wages…businesses…leav(ing) our country…bureaucrats…trapping kids in failing schools.”

He’s right calling Clinton “a world class liar,” failing to explain all politicians and would-be ones operate the same way.

Claiming he’s running to put American workers first is pure rubbish. The less they’re paid, the fewer their benefits, the more corporate predators profit, his businesses like others.

“This election will decide whether we are ruled by the people or by the politicians,” he ranted. “If I am elected president, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, DC.”

Does anyone take him seriously? Billionaires aren’t ordinary people. Special interests run America. Clinton bashing followed, “politics of personal profit and theft” her specialty, he said.

True enough, Trump right saying she cashed in big from government service, she and husband Bill making millions - at the same time, ignoring their high crimes, waging war on humanity at home and abroad, an agenda he’ll continue as president.

He won’t explain. I just did, he and Clinton cut out of the same cloth, differing largely in style. No one becomes presidential material without being part of the dirty system.

Trump claiming he wants to “mak(e) America great again for all Americans” belies his dirty business as usual intentions. He’s like all the rest, making promises he’ll break straightaway if elected.

Clinton attacked his economic agenda, ignoring her own deplorable record, beholden solely to Wall Street, war profiteers and other big monied interests, calling his ideas ill-considered, offering none of her own beyond rhetoric without substance.

She’s been bought over by special interests too many times to count throughout her public life.

“We cannot put a person like this, with all his empty promises, in a position of power over our lives,” she ranted. “We can’t let him bankrupt America like we are one of his failed casinos.”

The nation was morally, ethically and politically bankrupt from inception, a democracy in name only.

Today we’d call its founders a Wall Street crowd - including self-serving bankers, lawyers, politicians, as well as wealthy land and slave owners - conditions since the 1990s worst of all.

Trump or Clinton succeeding Obama assures four more years of war, greater corporate favoritism at the expense of popular needs and interests, along with ending what remains of constitutional protections.

The state of America already is too deplorable to bear, a nation unfit and unsafe to live in, threatening world peace and stability - worse ahead whether Trump or Clinton succeeds Obama.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Networkns with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.