Surreal demonstration of how a pseudo-democracy works

What I am thinking is that this whole election has been and continues to be a surreal demonstration of how a pseudo-democracy works.

Voters are pawns in an electoral system that is largely controlled by wealthy individuals, large corporate campaign contributors and propagandists of all political stripes who will tell any lie and commit any illegal or underhanded act to defeat their political enemies and elect their candidates to office.

Yes, Obama pulled in a huge number of contributions from small donors, but he basically launched his campaign with the money he raked in from fat cats in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. He has curried favor with these fat cats throughout the campaign by making bland policy pronouncements that never put their vital interests at risk.

He has used all sorts of well-known grassroots organizing techniques, gimmicks and platitudes to build a winning base of supporters without ever actually letting his supporters play any major role in formulating his platform. We still don't know what policies he will actually implement if elected. Same can be said for McCain.

So how democratic is an election if voters have no real input into the candidates' platforms and never get the chance to pin the candidates down on any policy specifics in any authentic debate forum?

The most frightening thing is that if it had not been for the chronologically fortuitous financial meltdown occurring just before the election, McCain and Palin might well be headed for the White House (which they still might be if there is an "October Surprise" of a military nature).

That's because the GOP has perfected the art of converting the electoral process into a propaganda exercise where the biggest lies are the most effective strategies for getting votes from low-information undiscerning voters who might well be numerous enough to swing the election.

Trying to link Obama to bin Laden and Muslim terrorists because of Obama's middle name and to Ayers because both served on a board and live in the same neighborhood are outrageous examples of using lies to undermine the democratic electoral processes.

When a video of unknown allegedly foreign origin on the subject of terrorism is sent to 30,000,000 Americans just before the election, we have plumbed new depths of turning democratic processes into propaganda exercises.

When upwards of 1,000,000 voters are purged from voter lists in states across the country, a number sufficient to change the outcome of the election, we can no longer claim that our system of government is a fully functioning democracy.

Yeah, voters can choose between two candidates running on platforms over which they have virtually no control, who have spent 18 months avoiding getting down to brass tacks on the major policy issues and crises that are dismantling the economy and destroying the quality of life in America.

But that's nothing more than being pawns in an election in a pseudo-democracy.