Prison Radio
Mumia Abu-Jamal

It seems almost unbelievable, once more a Bush or a Clinton aspires to the highest political office in the land, President of the United States.

It is a measure of the decadence of American politics, with its privileged place for the wealthy, that one or two families of former presidents can be so close to returning to the White House based more on shear name recognition than true merit.

Of some 320+ million Americans, are these the only families able to field seemingly serious candidates?

To be sure, these are families of extraordinary wealth, millionaires to say the least. Where the law, a la Citizens United has defined money as speech, and opened the door to the sale of politicians to the highest bidder, it is a small step for a wealthy politician to cut out the middleman and buy power for him or herself.

Why should this surprise us in a nation where the Senate is overwhelmingly a millionaire’s club?

America, which boasts incessantly of the freedoms of average Americans, is in fact for sale to those who can afford offices of prestige and power.

For average Americans this is little more than a mirage. We dwell, all of us, in a post-industrial, post-NAFTA, post-manufacturing world.

Most Americans try to get by on dreadful service economy wages, fighting to survive economically. They can barely dream of political office. That’s for the American dynasties, the rich and the super rich, to buy as new glittering baubles for the family tree.

From Prison Nation this is Mumia Abu Jamal.