In this interview with Paul Jay of The Real News Program, Gravel argues that there is no appreciable difference between the Democrat and Republican parties. Both parties are controlled by what we have come to call the 1% –– the small number of billionaires, wealthy families, corporate and banking interests all characterized as Wall Street, which control our culture, society and the polity to include the Congress, the Presidency, the Judiciary and these same institutions at both the state and local levels of government.
American imperialism executed through our self-appointed role as the world’s policeman is sustained by the military industrial complex (MIC), which profits from wars. NATO is the globalization of the MIC.
Radical right Republicans are closely aligned with Evangelicals who are interested in wedge issued like abortion and homosexuality. The Democrats are aligned with the Republican neocons and the liberal interventionist. Both groups accept without reservation that the United States is the world’s hegemon and seek to maintain that role through the unrestricted use of our military power.
As concerns individual candidate for public office Gravel makes the case that they are hypocrites. Political candidates tell the people what they want to hear and make promises they know they can’t possibly keep in order to get elected. Either they are too dumb to know they are lying to the people or they know it, which makes them hypocrites.
Campaigns unfortunately raise voter expectations that change without the possibility of meeting those expectations, the effect of which breeds cynicism in the people undermining their civic maturity
