Why do People Believe that the System is Rigged? Because it is!!

So, Donald and Bernie have made a lot of statements about the system being rigged.  Rigged generally towards wealthy people who maintain and increase their wealth. And, rigged politically for those already in power or the wealthy (see above) to control the politicians and the political process.  Just by watching the publicly known activities of the rigged-system's beneficiaries such as campaign finance and lobbying - legal, but better stated as legalized corruption - one should conclude that the system is set up only for a relatively few.  However, unless you are part of the system, mere mortals don't normally get to see the inner workings of that system reflecting exactly how rigged the system really is.  The recent release by WikiLeaks of the Democratic National Committee's emails clearly reflect the elites' coordinated effort to kill off Bernie's campaign for the presidency, but - and even more worrisome - it highlighted the systematic and unabashed effort to sell access to the president and others to donors.  In one sense it is laughable that so many people think that by giving $10,000 or even a $100,000 they are actually being listened to by the party's policy makers; that requires millions that are given by only a few - and they really only want access for business reasons, not to have an effect on policy.  A great example of such ignorance are the fake policy dinners and other events that are held by the political parties to invite such donors to "contribute" to the party's and the government's policy-making process.  I can't imagine people so naive to think that their input at such events matters yet apparently smart enough have made to make the money to begin that they donated in order to be invited to such events.  In any event, now that Bernie's voice is being eliminated from the public space this week through the Democratic Party's Convention and the official nomination of Hillary Clinton, only Donald Trump will be carrying forward the "rigged system" argument.  And, for him, the disclosure of how both parties raise money and rig the system is a gift that will keep on giving because he will be able to use it against Hillary and the Democrats and yet be immune from blowback on him because he was never a beneficiary of such a system on the Republican side (which works in exactly the same way as it does for the Democrats).  If all this resonates with his and Bernie's supporters, I suspect Trump has a very good chance to be the next president.

As a related aside, the WikiLeaks disclosures bring back what I heard Kim Dotcom state last year in an interview on Bloomberg TV about the extradition case against him in New Zealand (the U.S. has requested that New Zealand send Kim Dotcom to the U.S. to stand trial for copyright infringement and other crimes relating to his file-sharing website called MegaUpload).  He said that Julian Assange (the WikiLeaks founder) was going to release so much information about Hillary that she'll likely have to withdraw from the presidential race.  That statement was made before the date of the earliest emails recently released. So, that could mean that WikiLeaks has a lot more (older and more damaging) information to release about Hillary, which could mean even more damage to her campaign and an even greater chance that Trump wins the presidency.

Criminals with a Badge

What is one to think about what is happening in the U.S. with race relations and policing?  I find it incredible that the many, many recent killings of black people by police does not raise even more outrage than it has.  Sure, there have been marches and protests, in particular by the Black Lives Matter movement. And, certainly, some (maybe a large) degree of racism is involved. But, my view is that there is a much bigger problem.  That is, we have way too many policeman who are just "criminals with a badge". 
Only the willingly uninformed will not admit that certain policeman have a character that could have just as easily resulted in them being a street thug.  They have a desire to dominate people and commit violence when someone fails to follow their instructions.  On top of that, many police departments seem to have very flawed hiring practices that allow such persons to become policemen.  And, to make matters worse, some police department training must, obviously, fail to curtail the authoritative and violent nature of such individuals. 
It is not enough to say that the majority (even vast majority) of policemen do not fit into such a category, because there are simply way too many that do.  When you look at the many recent videos of police killings, you cannot not fail to ask why a person, who is following instructions, already detained or otherwise clearly not putting an officer's life in danger, ends up dead. 
Policing is not like military action.  The police should not consider that they are at war with society, or certain segments of society.  If a suspect slips away and is not obviously putting others or the officer in danger, the officer should not be allowed to just shoot the suspect in the back as he runs away.  If the suspect is in handcuffs with multiple officers holding him down, the police should not be allowed to threaten the suspect with a gun and then shoot the suspect because he doesn't stop struggling.  Yet, this type of thing happens way too often.  How to explain these events other than a combination of poor hiring decisions, poor policies and poor training.  Sure, there may be a racism element to these deaths, but a racist police officer doesn't automatically go about killing people.  Bad police officers are who unjustly kill people.  These are essentially just criminals with a badge.