Media Worried Too Many Americans Will Question Legitimacy of 2016 ElectionBy Nick Bernabe But the corporate media has come out in defense of Americas democracy and political elites are defending the system, too. In the wake of Trumps recent rhetoric regarding the rigged system, the ruling class of the United States is peddling the fiction that somehow Trumps irresponsible sensationalism is solely to blame for the newfound feelings of illegitimacy plaguing our elections. Take, for example, Mondays POLITICO piece entitled What if Trump wont accept defeat?: Trumps [rigged election] words are having an effect. Just 38 percent of Trump supporters believe their votes will be counted accurately, and only 49 percent of all registered voters are very confident their votes will be tabulated without error, according to a Pew Research survey last week. You see, according to the corporate media, the only reason Americans think their elections are rigged in one way or another is because Trumpsaid so. It has nothing to do with the explosive DNC email leaks that showed the Democrats manipulated the corporate media in favor of Hillary Clinton. It has nothing to do with superdelegates who get to override the voters. It has nothing to do with the Republican establishment choosing to shut down Colorados primary, handing all the delegates to Ted Cruz. It has nothing to do with now-former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz admitting the role of superdelegates is to fend off grassroots political challengers. It also must have nothing to do with an RNC committee member openly wondering why the Republican Party has primary elections to begin with since the party chooses the nomineeanyway not the voters. That makes sense, right? And while Bernie Sanders fades into the matrix with his endorsement of Hillary Clinton andrecent decision to hit the campaign trail for her, many of his supporters feel the same way Trump supporters feel. The Democratic primary was rife with inconsistencies, voter suppression, andsuspect voting machines all of which have culminated into several high-profile lawsuits alleging wrongdoing by the DNC. Coincidentally, Shawn Lucas, the man who was spearheading one of the lawsuits, was recentlyfound dead on his bathroom floor. But this is all Trumps fault, right? Ormaybe Russias? But rest assured, as POLITICO notes, even though voting inconsistencies became famous in the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential election, Gore was a good boy and didnt bother questioning the findings. He did the right thing and conceded defeat despite vocal cries from his ardent supporters that he contest the election. Whats interesting is that according to the Emmy-nominated HBOdocumentaryHacking Democracy, which followed the trail of investigators in Florida in an attempt to get to the bottom of the voter inconsistencies, the Gore campaign was made aware of verifiable issues with the vote counts but still encouraged the investigators to drop their cause and shut up. They were silenced by the candidate they were trying to help. This is what Trump should do if there are any questionable results in November, POLITICOsuggests. And boy, does Trump hate the media. He says it all the time. So much so that POLITICO thinks Trump could single-handedly do irreparable damage to the institution of mainstream media this election. This is yet another fiction being peddled by the self-serving corporate media. Instead of owning up to its waning trust among the general public, they would rather play the blame game. You see, long before Trump hit the 2016 political circuit, Americans had already started to lose trustin the corporate media. In September of 2014, Anti-Media reported, Americans trust in the media had reached an all-time low. As of October of 2015, only 7 percent of the country had a great deal of trust in the mainstream media but this must be Trumps fault. Or maybe we can pin this on Russia, too. Another recent development that in my opinion doesnt prove the elections are rigged per se but rather, that they are illegitimate is the overwhelmingly small turnout of voters who nominated both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The two of them combined only attracted nine percent of the general public to vote for them in the primaries, meaning less than a tenth of the U.S. population anointed the nominees, one of whom will eventually be ruling over all Americans. Americans are hardly excited to get out and vote in elections nowadays possibly because after years of believing unrepresentative politicians empty promises, they think the whole process has become futile. But none of this really matters, anyway, since the U.S. is no longer a democracy or constitutional republic. Its an oligarchy. In short, as a 2014 Princeton University study concluded, economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. But again, as POLITICO notes, its not the actions of the oligarchy or the corporate media that have led voters to question the legitimacy of the system its Trumps words. [M]any Republicans [elites] fear that Trumps efforts to diminish peoples confidence in mainstream media, fair elections and politics itself will have a lasting impact, POLITICO observes. The damage this is going to do to various institutions is going to be long term, said Charlie Sykes, a prominent conservative radio host in Milwaukee who has been one of the countrys most outspoken and consistent anti-Trump voices. How do you restore civil discourse after all of this? He is a postmodern authoritarian whos in the process of delegitimizing every institution the media, the ballot box that can be a check on him. But what if its the oligarchic political system and the corporate media that have delegitimized themselves, and not some manufactured Trump conspiracy that has suddenly turned half the country into skeptical anti-establishment rebels? Maybe the corporate medias collusion with the corporate government is the real conspiracy. Or maybe we should stop complaining and just blame Russia and Julian Assange that seems a lot more convenient to the New York Times. This article (Media Worried Too Many Americans Will Question Legitimacy of 2016 Election) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe andtheAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org. I know it moral and ethical to abstain from evil. I have no moral, or choose having no confidence in false authorities to govern. My vote is for America. I vote for America, yet not the one we have presently. In my humbled view, we need to get America back prior to the mid 1920s to mid 1930s. The point being we need to repeal having to pay taxes, even before we paid taxes, we had schools, hospitals, roads, food, housing, health care. Of course, taxation is only one aspect of the cumulative evil/s foisted on America. We need to start by getting rid of the Zio bankster owned Fed and its collection agency the IRS. Nothing short of this will give America a chance. Nothing will change until we get rid of the Rothschild owned Fed and issue our own debt-free currency. Most people dont understand that the Fed is privately held not even American-owned So you saying the holier than thou wing is willing to abstain from voting to put the greater evil in power. Do you really believe your own BS? No, that is not what I am saying at all despite your effort suggesting that as the case. What I am saying is the system has become so corrupted to its very core that I no longer have confidence in it and refuse consenting to evil at all, even if offered an illusion of a choice. No matter your vote, my vote, those with power will do whatever is needed to retain power, money and their greed. That is not belief, it is knowing what it is from seeing it for what it is. Do you really believe the BS that your vote counts? (or that they even count your vote?) LOL After 20 years of never voting for a winning candidate or proposition, I came to the conclusion that my vote was meaningless and stopped voting. I would like to see a poll conducted to see how many other people feel the same way. Mark Twain knew and stated that if voting made any difference, would they let you do it? Its been a dog and pony show to select one side of a coin. More Americans are waking up to the fact that our entire political process is nothing more than a scam designed to let us think this nation is a republic The fact is we are controlled by Zio banksters and wealthy corporate oligarchs whose aim is to keep us dumbed down and enslaved under their Satanic agenda of world domination and control. Lets face it, they plan on stealing this election. They will use all the dirty tricks that they used to steal nomination from Bernie and then some. They will even have fake exit polls. Trump is way ahead right now with 60-70% if you look at non-MSM polls. What would happen if we all wore red to the polls? If 70% of the voters are wearing red its going to show up in all the pictures and media coverage. If you dont want to wear red all day, take a red t-shirt along and wear it over your regular clothes when you go to vote. Lets have a color revolution against the people who ionvented color revolutions No sane person would elect and re-elect most of the people that are the bad guys. The vote HAS to be rigged. Who would re-elect Pelosi and her ilk? No one sane. If Hillary gets installed.Im done. only the bigots will question the legitimacy because of their denial of what Trump really is The machines are overly complicated programing the fractal decimal sure can be counted any way the programmer is instructed. Elections have been rigged easily since 2000. 