Before Alexander Cockburn passed, he was tossing words into the tumbril and guillotining them without mercy. As another election is finished it is time to do so again, mostly to disabuse Democrats of the reason they believe they lost.
The term “dark money” needs to be tossed into the tumbril, and then ran rough-shod quickly to the guillotine to be forever prohibited from entering public discourse again. It symbolizes a ludicrous premise that up until Citizens United American elections weren’t actually all that corrupt. And I have a unicorn in my backyard.
Elections have been the elite’s game since the beginning of America, except for a brief respite from elected aristocracy after World War II when unions had some power. Otherwise, it is the investment theory of politics. Citizens United just lets more be spent, a matter of degree and not of kind.
If the American public knows it is all rigged and still goes along with it, then what the hell does it matter if there is “dark money”? What, now it is more rigged? Who cares! Americans complain about Republicans, vote in Democrats, then complain about Democrats, and then vote in Republicans.
They did the exact same things before the “dark money”. They will do the exact same thing with “dark money”. Hell, they would probably do the exact same thing if we went back to no “dark money”. Because you know what, “dark money” is the way the system always worked. It is a moniker for nothing new, a made up term to give creepy connotations to something considered novel that is really just the normal, rational operations of our political system.
Sadly, I may want “dark money” in the tumbril on its way to meet a fitting fate for such idiocy, but it will not die. Everywhere it will continue its slow drudging march and produce more and more nihilism.
At least, maybe here in the safe haven of CounterPunch we can decapitate it. It’s a start. So, into the tumbril and off to the guillotine goes “dark money”.
Andrew Smolski is a writer based in Texas.
