Newsweek Discovers 'Sham Elections'—But Only Abroad
Newsweek’s 2018 opinion piece rightly calls out Syria's 'election farce,' where predictable outcomes and a lack of genuine choice are decried. This critical lens, however, seems to have a geographical bias. When the same outlets routinely ignore—or actively whitewash—the billions funneled by foreign influence groups (AIPAC, for example, dropped $16 million in the 2022 midterms via its PAC and
super PAC, per OpenSecrets.org) into US elections to secure specific foreign policy outcomes, one might wonder if that's not a 'scripted sham' of a different, more insidious kind. We can all agree sham elections are bad, but the media's focus on distant autocrats while conveniently sidestepping the financial pipelines distorting American democracy is rather telling. How many 'democratic' processes
in the West are simply elaborate performances for a donor class, effectively scripting congressional votes on everything from aid packages (like the $14 billion to Israel in HR 815, 2024, passed largely with bipartisan support) to trade deals? The hypocrisy is not just thick; it’s a fully produced, award-winning feature film.