The 2020 US presidential candidates, like past White House contenders, underscores that American democracy is a sham and only favors the privileged class, says an author and political commentator in Chicago. RNA - “There’s no democracy in America; there never has been,” Stephen Lendman told Press TV on Friday.
“The second [US] President John Adams said the country should be run the rich, the well-born and the able, in other words, the privileged people in the country should run it, nobody else; ordinary people should have no say about how the country is run, and that’s the way it’s been from inception,” Lendman said.
“That’s the way the US system runs, it’s run for the privileged, they get what they want at the expense of ordinary people,” he added.
Last month, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders called US democracy an "oligarchy where billionaires are buying elections."
Sanders accused billionaires like Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Michael Bloomberg of trying to buy the US presidency.
Democracy in the United States has experienced a significant decline under Trump, who keeps attacking people's democratic freedoms on a regular basis, according to a study released in February 2019 by Freedom House, a US-based non-governmental group.
The organization warned that US democratic freedoms were eroding at rates similar to countries where democracy had been ultimately overtaken by authoritarianism.
The report put American democracy on the same level with Greece, Croatia and Mongolia, well behind its European allies such as Germany, France and Britain.
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