Certain Americans are doing everything to defame and stigmatize other countries under the
disguise of protecting human rights. However, the more they act like a “lecturer in human rights”,
the more they expose their own problems. For instance, the in-name-only civil and political rights
in the U.S. are no secret for the rest of the world.
China’s State Council Information Office recently issued a report on the human rights violations in
the U.S., illustrating with abundant facts how worsening money politics distorts public opinion
and how money games are affecting U.S. political elections.
At present, the race to raise money for the 2020 presidential election is heating up in the U.S.,
presenting another money-driven political carnival. According to data released on Dec. 29, 2019
on the website of the Federal Election Commission, candidates have raised more than $1.08
billion for the 2020 presidential election and spent $531 million. Besides, spending in the 2018
elections for Congress topped $5.7 billion, shooting past the $5.3 billion spent during the then-
recording breaking 2008 presidential election and making the battle for control of the House and
Senate the most expensive midterm ever.
Statistics suggest that over 86 percent of the largest spenders in the 21st century finally won the
lower house elections. CNBC reported that U.S. presidential elections have turned into a war over
money. America’s self-touted freedom and democracy are nothing but a monodrama staged by the
rich.
Big money in politics has overwhelmed the political process, granting wealthy special interests
more power now than at any time in recent American history, “distorting the voices of everyday
citizens and putting the foundation of our democracy at risk.”
The Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled in 2010 that corporations and independent groups may spend
unlimited funds for or against candidates for president and Congress. This later facilitated the
continuously increasing “purchase power” of the billionaires in elections, and owners of some
corporations even bargained with politicians in public.
In recent decades, a pair of intertwined developments have magnified the influence of money on
politics: The rich keep getting richer, and the Supreme Court has made it much easier for
politicians to tap that wealth, said U.S. press. Political scientist Martin Gilens with Princeton
University concluded that the political policies adopted by Washington in the past 40 some years
showed that the actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent but
bear virtually no relationship to the preferences of poor of middle-income Americans. In the U.S.
political ecology where money outweighs votes, the public will mouthed by politicians is just a fig
leaf for capital.
Money politics in the U.S. is making citizens harder and harder to exercise their political rights. In
2018, Martin Luther King’s cousin Christine Jordan was blocked from voting in Atlanta, 50 years
after the assassination of the U.S. civil rights leader.
The Guardian commented that Jordan’s troubles were not unusual, and there is mounting evidence
of systemic attempts to prevent growing numbers of Americans from being able to exercise the
right to vote. Seven percent of Americans do not have photo IDs, which means they cannot
exercise their democratic right to vote. Ten percent of counties in Georgia only has one polling
station each, and the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck System is also eliminating
registrations arbitrarily.
In the game of the U.S. money politics, civil rights are repeatedly trampled upon by the interests
of politicians and capitalists, which makes “free and fair” election a farce.
Money politics has also led to a proliferation of guns in the U.S. where a total of 39,052 people
died from gun-related violence last year. Though there have been increasingly louder voices for
gun control, political games around the topic eventually faded.
The U.S. has a huge industrial chain centering on the manufacture, trade and use of guns, which
forms a gigantic interest group. In the country where “money is the mother’s milk of politics”, the
fact that a person is killed with gun every 15 minutes is nothing comparable to the huge political
donations made by the interest groups, including the National Rifle Association. Money politics,
which indulges the proliferation of guns, has posed severe threats for life, personal and treasure
security of the U.S. citizens.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter warned that money in politics makes the nation more like an
“oligarchy than a democracy”. Such warning came from helplessness, as the American “lecturers
in human rights” do not care about the human rights at all in their own country. They can never
hide the non-existence of the civil and political rights of the U.S. citizens – a result of money
politics, no matter how ignorantly they defame and stigmatize other countries.
An ancient Chinese proverb might offer some help here – one can never correct the mistakes of
others if he fails to correct his own.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)