The voices of those who matter will not be heard in these elections. The marginalized and poor in our internal colonies, the 2.3 million people in our prisons and their families, the Muslims we persecute here and in the Middle East, and the suffering of the working poor are airbrushed out of the discussion. In this Potemkin America there is only a middle class. Our liberties, including our right to privacy, along with the consent of the governed—all of which have been taken from us—are held up in this electioneering farce as sacred and inviolate. We are assured that we live in a functioning democracy. We are promised that our voice will count. And even Sanders will tell you no different. If he stepped forward and spoke the truth, especially about the Democratic Party, he would be banned from the debates, vilified and crushed by the Democratic establishment, stripped of his Senate committee chairmanships and tossed into the political wilderness to which Ralph Nader has been exiled. Sanders, unfortunately, lacks Nader’s moral fortitude. He will, when it is all done, push his followers into the vampire-like embrace of Hillary Clinton. He is a Pied Piper leading a line of children or rats—take your pick—into political oblivion.

Political theater works because many in America have been systematically indoctrinated and severed from reality. Our corporate masters have built a mass culture centered on the cult of the self, unchecked hedonism and spectacle. Neoliberal ideology infects every institution and belief system. Those who suffer deserve to suffer. Victims are responsible for their victimhood. We can all achieve wealth and prosperity with hard work. This mantra permits us to be cruel and heartless to the weak and the vulnerable, especially the poor as well as women and children, whom we discard as human refuse. Our warped neoliberal vision is defined as progress.

America celebrates itself as virtuous and good while it inflicts terrible human suffering at home and abroad on those it deems unworthy of life. The particular and self-centered definition of good that defines the primacy of American imperial and corporate power is presented as a universal good. There are Americans, especially those beset by falling incomes and a dismal future, who find in state power an expression of personal power. They see in the mythical virtue of the nation a personal virtue. Attack systems of power and this American “virtue” and they feel attacked and disempowered. And the state can count on those who cling to this myth to turn with fury against all of us who seek to exist in a reality-based universe. The state will stoke hatred among these “patriots” to incite violence against all who dissent. Standing up to the corporate state, refusing to play by its rules, will be difficult and dangerous.

~snip

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_electoral_farce_20150616 (Emphasis added)