People unfurl an American flag during an event marking Memorial Day at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, the United States, on May 30, 2022. (Xinhua/Liu Yanan)
"Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy," reported U.S. news portal Salon.
NEW YORK, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- There is a fatal disconnect within a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in grotesque income inequality and political stagnation, reported U.S. news portal Salon on Wednesday.
"Decades in the making, this disconnect has extinguished American democracy," said the article titled "Can we stop pretending that America is a functioning democracy?"
"Corporations and the billionaire class have won. There are no institutions, including the press, an electoral system that is little more than legalized bribery, the imperial presidency, the courts or the penal system, that can be defined as democratic," said the report.
"Only the fiction of democracy remains," it noted, adding that the facade of democratic institutions and the rhetoric, symbols and iconography of state power have not changed, and the Constitution remains a sacred document.
"The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war," the report added. ■
