It is almost time for Americans to once again become numbed by the endless stream of sound bytes and attack ads that have become so commonplace in modern politics. The Democrats will try to find someone with more personality than Al Gore this primary season and the Republicans will seek to enhance the already sizeable "war chest" of the current Terrorist-In-Chief. While the grand spectacle may stir patriotic feelings and convince most Americans that the framework of democracy works, those who are unlearning will no longer fall for a show that insults their intelligence.

You see, most people are under the impression that because one is offered choices, that must mean that one is free. What is not grasped from this rationale is that choices are offered. In other words, freedom comes from someone else's determination of what is possible. A closer look at the American system, and the systems in other Western democracies, will reveal that there is very little difference in the end result of the multitude of choices we have the "freedom" to make.

For instance, there is a strong likelihood that Senator John Kerry will garner the Democratic Party's nomination to run for president in 2004. His role in investigating the Iran-Contra Affair will be trumpeted as an example that he is a "man of the people" who will fight against the roguish Republicans who are ruining this country with their reckless foreign and economic policies. What will not be highly publicized is his membership in the very elite Skull and Bones fraternity. This is the same fraternity that the current president is a member of. A cursory research of this organization will reveal that the interests of the "common man" are of little consequence to its members. The modern aristocracy will continue to take care of its own.

Even if we indulge the wildest populist imaginings by getting Congressman Dennis Kucinich into the presidency, there is little reason to believe he can make a difference. The most well intentioned politician would be surrounded by schools of shark-ish bureaucrats, lobbyists, and policy makers from the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. These unelected representatives slavishly serve the corporate globalist agenda to which all modern governments are now subservient. Any progressive legislation would be critically sabotaged before it got to his desk to be signed into law.

In Europe, it remains to be seen whether the Bildeberger, Mr. Blair will survive another major election in the United Kingdom. But Britons can be rest assured that their next prime minister will not reverse the trend towards greater submission to the European Union.

In France, Germany, Spain, Greece and everywhere else democracy is said to flourish, you can be sure that the common man will continue to feel the tightening of the global economic pinch and that the gap between rich and poor will increase in width and depth.

Critics of this editorial will most likely voice the argument that even if such observations are true, citizens of democracies enjoy personal freedoms that can not be found in countries run by totalitarian dictators. Such a myopic viewpoint has forgotten the lessons of history, where one "great" republic after another devolved into a repressive society and anarchy once its people no longer cared for its collective progress. If the election season reminds us of anything, it is that dictators are always good at staging grand spectacles of little substance.

Furthermore, the trading of true freedom for treats from our corporate oligarchs demonstrates a spirit worthy of animals and not humans. To sell short your divine inheritance only causes the dark cancers of ignorance and fear to grow collectively among us all. While the light of unlearning may provide effective radiation treatment for such a malady, we all would be much better off if we took the preventative measures of growing knowledge and truthfulness in our very souls.

The Institute of Unlearning can not endorse voting in "democratic" societies where the menu of possibilities is read to the voter. As long as such systems are in place, unlearners everywhere must agree that they are TOO SMART TO VOTE. Until there is a society where humans dictate the terms to the governments that serve them, we must encourage each other to spend our energy and resources freeing ourselves from the life draining machinations of this desperately dying worldview.