“All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.” Gandhi
The majority of American voters compromised on fundamentals on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. They returned Obama to the seat of presidential power.
The Obama machine even managed to get Daniel Ellsberg and Bruce Springsteen to crony up for Obama.
Obama the war criminal. Obama the white collar corporate criminal.
Obama deserved impeachment long before this 2012 election. But we are living in what David Brooks labeled Post-Morality America.
A majority of the electorate, “Good German” Americans, let the blood on Obama’s hands spread onto their own with this election of 2012.
Even in non-swing states, most so-called progressives wouldn’t give up their votes to third party candidates to enhance their democracy-repairing voices or enable them eligibility for federal funding for the next election.
Of course not!
Re-mythologizing of Obama, of course, happened pre-election.
With ostrich-like others the myth never tarnished despite the economic and military horrors of the last four years under a corrupt and incompetent Obama regime.
Still others held their noses and voted for Obama.
Well, we are saved from Romney and the even more horrifying Ryan. The Great American Ethical Freakshow Corporate Overlord Squeeze Play really worked well. The faux-good cop Obama seduced not the perpetrators into giving it all up, but the VICTIMS. The U.S. citizens.
What are we promised from Obama? Nada. Well, yes, more betrayals. His assembly line of betrayals will simply continue. Worsen, as they have been.
I call this a Pyrrhic victory for those self-congratulating “pragmatic” progressives.
We’ve come a long way from MLK’s “I Have a Dream” sensibility of empathy to Obama’s “I Have a Drone” dictatorial one.
This is what Patrick Martin of wsws had to say about the results of the 2012 election:
The Democrats will, as always, interpret their own victory in the most restrained and conservative terms. The last thing they want is a mandate to oppose the plutocracy, since they serve the same corporate interests. They will extend the olive branch to the Republicans, allowing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to set the agenda in Washington, as it has for the past two years.
According to Billy Wharton of Dissident Voice on the health care front “four more years of Obama will mean that the terms of Obamacare legislation will be frozen into place.” Forget single-payer universal health care. Obama trashed that good and early.
Wharton, incidentally, discloses that Kaiser Permanent, major health care company donated $500,000 to Obama’s campaign and not a single dollar to Romney. Yeah, Big Pharma and Big Insurance are Obama’s BFFs after their colossal windfalls with Obama’s first term.
I guess we have to wait until millions die under shoddy Obamacare before there will be the next wave of reform for universal health care as a right of Americans. But even then, will citizens simply “play dead” once again, those who won’t have actually died? I’m thinking the longer “learned helplessness” goes on, the stronger (as in, weaker) it gets.
Obama soon will be slashing Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. These used to be sacred and protected by our representatives of BOTH parties. It took a popular, unscrupulous Democratic Trojan Horse to take the ax to them. All in the name of “austerity” which is a cover for the same corporate elite criminality that robbed the citizenry of $10 plus trillion tax dollars already.
They are back at the public trough for more. They want it all.
Obama is just the guy to give it to them. After all, he wouldn’t be re-elected in corporate-captured America if he weren’t, I suppose. It doesn't matter that much any more if we have machines or paper ballots. The system is rigged from the get-go in our banana republic sham election.
So much for the plight of the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, troops, prisoners, immigrants, union workers, teachers, students, etc., etc., etc.
As for human rights violations, national and international? Obama will continue to persecute whistleblowers. Will continue to criminalize dissent. Obama will drone on. Obama will wage more wars. Obama will destroy more countries. The military industrial security prison complex will mow down everyone and anything they deem a “threat”. And the criteria will expand to include more and more innocent foreign peoples and innocent American citizens.
Obama is no friend to the planet either. The BP fiasco of course went down the American memory hole.
Obama did say something that sounded like concern about the impact of superstorm Sandy, right?
I forgot. That is all we need.
Rhetoric over reality. The fog of “truthiness”.
Ruthlessness with an amiable smile for another four years.
Here is a statement posted on Jill Stein’s website. Supporting Green Party’s Stein and her program would have been exercising the "politics of courage". But the American crony-cowardism majority went another way for the next four years. Damn them and damn all of us doomed by their surrender.
If it has accomplished nothing else up to now, the 2012 election campaign has proven that America’s two establishment parties are hopelessly paralyzed when it comes to addressing these life-and-death realities the American people face today. Instead, Democrats and Republicans cover their moral and political bankruptcy by refusing to even admit that there is a problem. Not a single time have either of the establishment candidates even mentioned the word “poverty” or “homelessness” in any of their campaign appearances.
Desperate times require desperate measures. The hour has come to break with the dying two-party system and begin building the new political parties that over half of Americans now say are needed. The Green Party presidential campaign of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala is the best opportunity we have today to make that move.
Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala are running on a platform called the Green New Deal, which is a comprehensive program to address America’s economic, environmental, financial, and political crises (see http://www.jillstein.org/green_new_deal). The Green New Deal calls for an Economic Bill of Rights similar to those proposed by Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr.
It calls for the immediate creation of 25 million new jobs, mainly in projects to meet human needs – housing, health care, education, and transportation – and to protect and restore our environment. It calls for an immediate halt to evictions and foreclosures, and a federal bank to restructure the housing market and make it affordable for everyone. The Green New Deal will also rebuild our entire economy around green technologies and sustainable practices; thoroughly reform the financial sector, abolish student debt, end bailouts, and reorganize failed banks as public financial institutions; and restore our democracy and the full democratic rights of our people.
It is time to end the destruction, the austerity, and the needless suffering. A moral government would honor the sacredness of human life by ensuring jobs, housing, health care, and education for every family. Martin Luther King once said America has the resources and the technology to end poverty; the only question is whether we have the will. It is up to us to start creating that will by taking decisive action right now.
People, peace, planet? Not priorities for those lost to the politics of fear. The politics of crony-cowardism.
Why would anyone vote for an advocate for their own needs and rights?
Not in Post-Morality Great American Ethical Freakshow America!
[cross-posted on correntewire]
-------------
libby
I have some thoughts on "Post Morality" America. I believe that the current Federal Gridlock may be the cause we need to form grass roots parties of Community, communities of conscience and morality in spite of our Federal Government. We may start out with the impeachment of Obama over Benghazi, ( A failure to execute his power to Kill- hows that for Irony?) My hope is that the ensuing National crisis will allow all of our local communities to realize what a useless and pernicious puppet show the Federal Government has become. Me? I've decided to run for Judge.
I have some thoughts on "Post Morality" America. I believe that the current Federal Gridlock may be the cause we need to form grass roots parties of Community, communities of conscience and morality in spite of our Federal Government. We may start out with the impeachment of Obama over Benghazi, ( A failure to execute his power to Kill- hows that for Irony?) My hope is that the ensuing National crisis will allow all of our local communities to realize what a useless and pernicious puppet show the Federal Government has become. Me? I've decided to run for Judge.
Hang in there gurl... with any luck at all at some point in the next twenty years the Republicratic Corporate Welfare Pigs will end up facing the hard truths and come to Jesus... Green is the only color that works for the future. R&R ;-)
Libby, you fought the good fight and I'm sorry for your loss. But, as expected, realpolitik prevailed once again.
There's a great deal w which I agree here; I continue to believe, however, that voting for a nationwide third-party candidate does more harm than good, on balance, to most of my political commitments and places my son's young adulthood in jeopardy when my vote would, in effect, helpncreate openings for the appointment of more Justices Thomas and Scalia.
rated
rated
It is some compensation for a terminal cancer patient to learn he is not going insane. But it doesn't help a hell of a lot.
I failed to mention that I, too, would prefer a government not controlled by oligarchic interests, one actively dedicated to halting our headlong rush to the self-inflicted demise of our planet. But, as with Jon, I see our progress to that state as incremental, requiring compromise with our own core principles and with diverse and often diametrically opposed interests at each step, and I see last nite's results as one of those positive steps. Wanting it all at once is unrealistic. If we truly want to win, we must -- we must -- take it a step at time. I think that is a realistic approach, especially considering the newly emerging demographic electorate of young people and minorities that is given much if not most of the credit for an election that kept us from returning to the economic environment of Reagan/Bush and subsequent tightening of the oligarchy's tourniquet on the middle class.
The Green Party has a messaging problem. They would have scored a significant victory if more Americans knew they were Bloody-Handed Good Germans. It's not too late to get that message out and begin aiming for 2016. Start with informing Obama's Jewish voters.
See you in 4.
See you in 4.
Just to add...America never does sea-change. Our revolution was wholly political, not economic. I see no real alternative to the kind of change Matt here describes.
No compromise to me -- thank goodness Obama won!!!
I call it a wonderful morning this morning.
I say he's a good man, a good president and much much better than the Romney alternative, which was the only other alternative that was ever going to happen this election.
I call it a wonderful morning this morning.
I say he's a good man, a good president and much much better than the Romney alternative, which was the only other alternative that was ever going to happen this election.
You seem upset, Libby. And you seem to need to imply that those of us who do not agree with you are freaks, cowards, immoral, that we abate war and war crimes, that we are unintelligent.
You, of course, in your mind are none of those things. You are someone "fighting the good fight"--standing up to the fascists who run this country and have taken our freedom from us. You are, in your mind, courage personified...willing to put your personal freedom on the line by speaking out so forcefully, despite the terrible dangers, about our government and the people who govern.
Sad to tell you this, Libby, but you and the Jill Steins of the world will NEVER do anywhere near as much as Barack Obama to try to make this country a more decent place in which to live...and a more decent neighbor to other countries on the planet.
You, of course, in your mind are none of those things. You are someone "fighting the good fight"--standing up to the fascists who run this country and have taken our freedom from us. You are, in your mind, courage personified...willing to put your personal freedom on the line by speaking out so forcefully, despite the terrible dangers, about our government and the people who govern.
Sad to tell you this, Libby, but you and the Jill Steins of the world will NEVER do anywhere near as much as Barack Obama to try to make this country a more decent place in which to live...and a more decent neighbor to other countries on the planet.
Justice, virtue, honesty, integrity and truth are not a popularity contest as you so eloquently note. I find it a great irony that a supposedly Judeo-Christian nation is bargaining with a system that endorses murder, violence, predation, torture, exploitation, misogyny, looting and the like.
To compromise with evil is to abandon virtue. To compromise with evil is to become evil. There can be no compromise when the issues at hand involve virtue, justice, honesty, integrity and truth.
I see my buddy Frank is back to gloat. So many people rationalize their behavior as "realists". They most certainly believe that incontrovertible timeless human values of community, compassion, love, kindness, acceptance and the like are less important than winning a popularity contest. Hitler also won a popularity contest. So did slavery. And, by the way, so did the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Just thought I'd throw that in there for all of the rationalizing hypocrites who outsource their responsibilities to evil. It's all about winning. Right Frank?
To compromise with evil is to abandon virtue. To compromise with evil is to become evil. There can be no compromise when the issues at hand involve virtue, justice, honesty, integrity and truth.
I see my buddy Frank is back to gloat. So many people rationalize their behavior as "realists". They most certainly believe that incontrovertible timeless human values of community, compassion, love, kindness, acceptance and the like are less important than winning a popularity contest. Hitler also won a popularity contest. So did slavery. And, by the way, so did the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Just thought I'd throw that in there for all of the rationalizing hypocrites who outsource their responsibilities to evil. It's all about winning. Right Frank?
No "gloating" here, TL. That was something you manufactured for whatever reasons.
I merely called attention to the fact that Libby has intimated that those of us who do not agree with her view of reasonable governance...with her view of what an effective, reasonable president of this country must do...are freaks, cowards, immoral, that we abate war and war crimes, that we are unintelligent.
I do not think we are any of those things...and I mentioned so.
If you see some gloating, please point it out and I will apologize for it.
I merely called attention to the fact that Libby has intimated that those of us who do not agree with her view of reasonable governance...with her view of what an effective, reasonable president of this country must do...are freaks, cowards, immoral, that we abate war and war crimes, that we are unintelligent.
I do not think we are any of those things...and I mentioned so.
If you see some gloating, please point it out and I will apologize for it.
So much I agree with you on - "Post-Morality America" - I never heard that before...where have I been? It's suprising to me that Brooks would have said it though. Anyway...well-stated. "Good German Americans" "Re-mythologizing of Obama" "ruthlessness with an amiable smile" and so much more. You really wrote and organized so much that is true and that I believe. I will admit that my outrage has become exhausting at times. So, I'll often look at it all from a distance or try to be amused by it (although the way things are aren't funny at all). But, at heart, at soul and at the morality that is the center of who I am - I agree with you.
So much I agree with you on - "Post-Morality America" - I never heard that before...where have I been? It's suprising to me that Brooks would have said it though. Anyway...well-stated. "Good German Americans" "Re-mythologizing of Obama" "ruthlessness with an amiable smile" and so much more. You really wrote and organized so much that is true and that I believe. I will admit that my outrage has become exhausting at times. So, I'll often look at it all from a distance or try to be amused by it (although the way things are aren't funny at all). But, at heart, at soul and at the morality that is the center of who I am - I agree with you.
So much I agree with you on - "Post-Morality America" - I never heard that before...where have I been? It's suprising to me that Brooks would have said it though. Anyway...well-stated. "Good German Americans" "Re-mythologizing of Obama" "ruthlessness with an amiable smile" and so much more. You really wrote and organized so much that is true and that I believe. I will admit that my outrage has become exhausting at times. So, I'll often look at it all from a distance or try to be amused by it (although the way things are isn't funny at all). But, at heart, at soul and at the morality that is the center of who I am - I agree with you.
So much I agree with you on - "Post-Morality America" - I never heard that before...where have I been? It's suprising to me that Brooks would have said it though. Anyway...well-stated. "Good German Americans" "Re-mythologizing of Obama" "ruthlessness with an amiable smile" and so much more. You really wrote and organized so much that is true and that I believe. I will admit that my outrage has become exhausting at times. So, I'll often look at it all from a distance or try to be amused by it (although the way things are isn't funny at all). But, at heart, at soul and at the morality that is the center of who I am - I agree with you.
What I know about the Obama administration is that my sister-in-law is alive because Obama started some kind of healthcare in this country -- alive, thanks to needed surgeries she only received because of Obamacare.
Without Obama's pushing for at least some kind of national healthcare, we'd have nothing in this country for healthcare for the poor and uninsured, and my sister-in-law would be already dead. DEAD.
That's the reason I voted with my conscience and feel good about my vote --
The willful ignoring of national healthcare by every other president we've ever had (Hillary wasn't even president, but at least she tried), and the thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of Americans DEAD from lack of healthcare in a country as wealthy as ours has been could be called murder too, I suppose.
Obamacare has already saved thousands of American lives, many of them poorer children's lives -- how could one *not* vote for keeping him in office just for that?
How could your conscience live with Romney decimating Obamacare on day one of his win, contributing to thousands of more "murders" from neglect of our own people's health needs?
I couldn't.
My conscience is clean.
Without Obama's pushing for at least some kind of national healthcare, we'd have nothing in this country for healthcare for the poor and uninsured, and my sister-in-law would be already dead. DEAD.
That's the reason I voted with my conscience and feel good about my vote --
The willful ignoring of national healthcare by every other president we've ever had (Hillary wasn't even president, but at least she tried), and the thousands upon thousands, if not millions, of Americans DEAD from lack of healthcare in a country as wealthy as ours has been could be called murder too, I suppose.
Obamacare has already saved thousands of American lives, many of them poorer children's lives -- how could one *not* vote for keeping him in office just for that?
How could your conscience live with Romney decimating Obamacare on day one of his win, contributing to thousands of more "murders" from neglect of our own people's health needs?
I couldn't.
My conscience is clean.
Allow me to start with your remarks out of order, TL. You wrote:
The fact of the matter is, Frank, you are a coward. And, a pussy to boot.
I am neither…and mostly people who would say something like that to another person at a distance probably are projecting their own characteristics. I do not know you, so I cannot say. But I do know I am man enough not to ever say something like that to anyone unless that person is standing in front of me.
Frank my man, there is a concept of higher good that is involved in all religious and spiritual beliefs as practiced by people all over the world for thousands and thousands of years.
Yes, there are. And I guess you feel comfortable supposing you are possessed of “justice, virtue, honesty, integrity and truth” and “ values of community, compassion, love, kindness, acceptance “…and are comfortable supposing that I am not possessed of those qualities. You also are comfortable suggesting that folk who think differently from you are guilty of endorsing “ murder, violence, predation, torture, exploitation, misogyny, looting, and such.”
Dream as you will; pat yourself on your back as you will; judge as you will. But that kind of talk does you no more justice than the insult of calling another man a coward and a pussy from afar.
There is a cuteness to it though, TL…and I am enjoying a good laugh at your expense.
You seem rather glib. I may be wrong but I can't imagine why you would even bother to post your rationalizing and derogatory remarks other than for that fact.
For you to talk about “derogatory remarks” to me is laughable almost beyond comprehension…although I am beginning to comprehend how you can do it and feel comfortable with it. You just do not get it.
What kind of person would even utter such nonsense to another person that they will never do as much good as someone else?
Not even sure what you were trying to say here, but you did not succeed.
@ Just Thinking
Excellent response, JT. I voted for Obama with enthusiasm.
The fact of the matter is, Frank, you are a coward. And, a pussy to boot.
I am neither…and mostly people who would say something like that to another person at a distance probably are projecting their own characteristics. I do not know you, so I cannot say. But I do know I am man enough not to ever say something like that to anyone unless that person is standing in front of me.
Frank my man, there is a concept of higher good that is involved in all religious and spiritual beliefs as practiced by people all over the world for thousands and thousands of years.
Yes, there are. And I guess you feel comfortable supposing you are possessed of “justice, virtue, honesty, integrity and truth” and “ values of community, compassion, love, kindness, acceptance “…and are comfortable supposing that I am not possessed of those qualities. You also are comfortable suggesting that folk who think differently from you are guilty of endorsing “ murder, violence, predation, torture, exploitation, misogyny, looting, and such.”
Dream as you will; pat yourself on your back as you will; judge as you will. But that kind of talk does you no more justice than the insult of calling another man a coward and a pussy from afar.
There is a cuteness to it though, TL…and I am enjoying a good laugh at your expense.
You seem rather glib. I may be wrong but I can't imagine why you would even bother to post your rationalizing and derogatory remarks other than for that fact.
For you to talk about “derogatory remarks” to me is laughable almost beyond comprehension…although I am beginning to comprehend how you can do it and feel comfortable with it. You just do not get it.
What kind of person would even utter such nonsense to another person that they will never do as much good as someone else?
Not even sure what you were trying to say here, but you did not succeed.
@ Just Thinking
Excellent response, JT. I voted for Obama with enthusiasm.
The general feeling of relief that the re-election of Obama has generated is based on the concept that maintaining the status quo is a viable choice and a delight that the total insanity proposed by the Republicans puts us in an area of safety which has the remote possibility of moving toards better things. But as the recent hurricane dramatically demonstrated, and as other world and domestic events clearly show, there is no safety in clinging to a milder disaster when current agendas can promise almost unimaginable destruction to morality, economy, ecology and almost every other aspect of civilized decency and stability. If radical action in dealing with impending major disasters is not initiated reasonably quickly overwhelming disaster is inevitable. Obama promises no such vital changes and, in most of his agendas, merely slows slightly the approach of frightful catastrophes. To settle for that with a victorious grin is beyond stupidity and worthy only of contempt.
The false morality is certainly getting thick. One man says, "We must have ten concentration camps!" Another says we must never have any. Then a "uniter" comes along who says, "Let's compromise and have 5 concentration camps."
Then false moralists come along saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!" or "Compromise is the only realistic course of action!" or "Now we are saved from evil!" or "Thank God there was an adult in the room to bring us together."
One thing all these people have in common: none of them are the ones sentenced to the camps. Amazing to hear the high and mighty talk when it comes to compromising someone else's life but when that person's life is on the life they cry out the loudest!
Then false moralists come along saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!" or "Compromise is the only realistic course of action!" or "Now we are saved from evil!" or "Thank God there was an adult in the room to bring us together."
One thing all these people have in common: none of them are the ones sentenced to the camps. Amazing to hear the high and mighty talk when it comes to compromising someone else's life but when that person's life is on the life they cry out the loudest!
lib, most americans save their serious thinking for making a living. so they should, for there is no visible connection between voting and results.
while you vote in america, you authorize the winner to do as they think best, for their only legitimate claim to power is, 'i won the election.'
should they be moral people while holding great power? why? because you wish they would? that has never worked before. is it enough to elect a saint? where to find them? how to get them elected? how to keep them saintly?
you have to work with humans. if you are unwilling to demand democracy, and struggle for that evolutionary step, then you either calmly choose your lesser evil, or waste your vote on an unelectable person who would be useless if elected.
my own choice was 'a pox on your house' and various foreign addresses. not a social solution, but at least my taxes don't fund napalm, uranium shells and drone bombs.
while you vote in america, you authorize the winner to do as they think best, for their only legitimate claim to power is, 'i won the election.'
should they be moral people while holding great power? why? because you wish they would? that has never worked before. is it enough to elect a saint? where to find them? how to get them elected? how to keep them saintly?
you have to work with humans. if you are unwilling to demand democracy, and struggle for that evolutionary step, then you either calmly choose your lesser evil, or waste your vote on an unelectable person who would be useless if elected.
my own choice was 'a pox on your house' and various foreign addresses. not a social solution, but at least my taxes don't fund napalm, uranium shells and drone bombs.
@TimingLogic
The shoe fits --> Pussy and coward.
The shoe fits --> Pussy and coward-->Said using an alias rather than a real name and while far, far away-->Projection.
Yup!
The shoe fits --> Pussy and coward.
The shoe fits --> Pussy and coward-->Said using an alias rather than a real name and while far, far away-->Projection.
Yup!
Negotiation and compromise are what separate us from animals? Um.. did they teach you that in law school or did you read that on the back of a Cracker Jack box?
Did Martin Luther King compromise? Did Jesus of Nazareth compromise? Did Mahatma Gandhi compromise? Does your belief system encourage you to compromise when it comes to evil? I'm just curious and I would like a serious answer.
As far as Oskar Schindler, he was romanticized in a movie. We have no idea what his intent was. Was it self-interest that was afforded him by running a slave labor camp and making untold riches serving the Nazi state? Or was it the romanticized Hollywood depiction? Or was it something else?
I don't know if compromise with evil is what makes you human, but I clearly know what makes humanity human. It isn't compromise. It is the higher power that resides only in the human mind. It is an ability to connect to a place that resides only in the human mind that is able to consciously experience selflessness, empathy, dignity, equality, acceptance and love.
No other sentient being on this planet has that ability. Has the mirror neurons and conscious awareness to be able to consciously embrace all of these abilities over the instinctive reptilian brain. Other mammals most certainly experience sentient capabilities but not consciously with an awareness that their mind is consciously connecting to another living being. That is what makes us human. That is what differentiates us from animals. And, science can measure it and prove it. Not negotiating with evil.
To the contrary, I reject the idea of accepting a little bit of evil for a greater good as morally-bankrupt rationalizations that, in fact, interrupt that which makes us human. It is dissonance that is only able to take place by rejecting our human values.
Did Martin Luther King compromise? Did Jesus of Nazareth compromise? Did Mahatma Gandhi compromise? Does your belief system encourage you to compromise when it comes to evil? I'm just curious and I would like a serious answer.
As far as Oskar Schindler, he was romanticized in a movie. We have no idea what his intent was. Was it self-interest that was afforded him by running a slave labor camp and making untold riches serving the Nazi state? Or was it the romanticized Hollywood depiction? Or was it something else?
I don't know if compromise with evil is what makes you human, but I clearly know what makes humanity human. It isn't compromise. It is the higher power that resides only in the human mind. It is an ability to connect to a place that resides only in the human mind that is able to consciously experience selflessness, empathy, dignity, equality, acceptance and love.
No other sentient being on this planet has that ability. Has the mirror neurons and conscious awareness to be able to consciously embrace all of these abilities over the instinctive reptilian brain. Other mammals most certainly experience sentient capabilities but not consciously with an awareness that their mind is consciously connecting to another living being. That is what makes us human. That is what differentiates us from animals. And, science can measure it and prove it. Not negotiating with evil.
To the contrary, I reject the idea of accepting a little bit of evil for a greater good as morally-bankrupt rationalizations that, in fact, interrupt that which makes us human. It is dissonance that is only able to take place by rejecting our human values.
Obama's legacy: "I have a drone..." Ouch!
Well, I did my part in this election, voting for peace and the environment, not that it is likely to do any good. What gobsmacks me is that after years of campaigning, billions of dollars of campaign propaganda, and millions of articles, blog posts, talk shows etc., in the end... everything remains the same, and all that came before goes straight down the memory hole. Certainly one of the greatest runarounds in history, the perfect virtual democracy. Hats off, corporate dictatorship! In the meantime, all hail the great Obama, whose drones are coming soon to a town near you!
Rated - with bitterness.
Well, I did my part in this election, voting for peace and the environment, not that it is likely to do any good. What gobsmacks me is that after years of campaigning, billions of dollars of campaign propaganda, and millions of articles, blog posts, talk shows etc., in the end... everything remains the same, and all that came before goes straight down the memory hole. Certainly one of the greatest runarounds in history, the perfect virtual democracy. Hats off, corporate dictatorship! In the meantime, all hail the great Obama, whose drones are coming soon to a town near you!
Rated - with bitterness.
One can compromise when there is a possibility of more good being gained over temporary evil. The evil approaching is not temporary, it is definitive and overwhelming. How much compromise did New York have to extend to save itself from the recent hurricane? And that is only a slight foretaste of the overwhelming destruction that is marshaling itself to overwhelm not just much of civilization but a huge amount of all living things. Humanity can only wreak so much destruction on the stasis of what makes life possible on the planet before that stability cracks and shatters. And it is cracking right now at this very minute. Listen! that faint sound will soon turn to thunder.
You people think you can turn off the spigot.
An Obama win presages four more years of a government wrecking crew demolishing what’s left of the America we knew – but, sickeningly, it clears the path for an era of Socialism. Obama’s win signals America’s entry into the Dark Ages and, arguably, the end of the values, institutions and essence of what made us America and Americans.
You’ve witnessed an Obama mitigated by the prospect of answering to voters in another election. No more.
I am also sorry that my country did not maintain it’s values; that it has devolved over the last 100 years into a place where people believe they are owed something, and that it’s ok for the government to take from others to give them a little bit of what they believe they are ‘owed’; that it fails to recognize the puppet masters on Wall Street and the Corporatocracy who really run this joint; I’m sorry the right can’t accept that our warring and maintenance of ‘American Exceptionalism’ through our global bullying is bankrupting us, and not something to be proud of; I’m sorry that the left can taste their Marxist dreams, or can see the bleak darkness of state capitalism within their grasp; I’m sorry that neither side gives a damn about liberty, respects our Constitution, and has everyone snowed into believing the status quo MUST be maintained or…
My very best wishes to you and yours
An Obama win presages four more years of a government wrecking crew demolishing what’s left of the America we knew – but, sickeningly, it clears the path for an era of Socialism. Obama’s win signals America’s entry into the Dark Ages and, arguably, the end of the values, institutions and essence of what made us America and Americans.
You’ve witnessed an Obama mitigated by the prospect of answering to voters in another election. No more.
I am also sorry that my country did not maintain it’s values; that it has devolved over the last 100 years into a place where people believe they are owed something, and that it’s ok for the government to take from others to give them a little bit of what they believe they are ‘owed’; that it fails to recognize the puppet masters on Wall Street and the Corporatocracy who really run this joint; I’m sorry the right can’t accept that our warring and maintenance of ‘American Exceptionalism’ through our global bullying is bankrupting us, and not something to be proud of; I’m sorry that the left can taste their Marxist dreams, or can see the bleak darkness of state capitalism within their grasp; I’m sorry that neither side gives a damn about liberty, respects our Constitution, and has everyone snowed into believing the status quo MUST be maintained or…
My very best wishes to you and yours
@Jay Richer
"I’m sorry that the left can taste their Marxist dreams, or can see the bleak darkness of state capitalism within their grasp..."
Dream on, sir, I see very little Marxism on the horizon, and a great deal of capitalism, both state and private, which is the American way.
To those justifying voting for Obama as a compromise with evil to create some good: Okay, I might agree with you under different circumstances, and perhaps we sometimes do need to compromise with the Devil to drive out Beelzebub, but I genuinely see no good coming out of Obama. I see no vision, no change, no hope. Or is gay marriage and a phony corporate-run healthcare scheme your gold standard, while Obama continues to drone the Middle East and, soon, us too to submission? If it is, if that's really all this is about, then gawd help us all.
"I’m sorry that the left can taste their Marxist dreams, or can see the bleak darkness of state capitalism within their grasp..."
Dream on, sir, I see very little Marxism on the horizon, and a great deal of capitalism, both state and private, which is the American way.
To those justifying voting for Obama as a compromise with evil to create some good: Okay, I might agree with you under different circumstances, and perhaps we sometimes do need to compromise with the Devil to drive out Beelzebub, but I genuinely see no good coming out of Obama. I see no vision, no change, no hope. Or is gay marriage and a phony corporate-run healthcare scheme your gold standard, while Obama continues to drone the Middle East and, soon, us too to submission? If it is, if that's really all this is about, then gawd help us all.
There is absolutely nothing phony about medical needs getting met when they were not before -- nothing phony about living instead of being dead, thanks to assistance in healthcare *that was not there before.*
The drones are frightening. They began with Bush and would have continued with Romney. They do need to be abolished.
Write your President.
Protest.
Oh, you're in Germany -- getting healthcare.
Or Finland -- getting healthcare.
Now there's healthcare in our own country, even in Tennessee.
Lives are being saved because of it.
That is a better legacy than any other president has bothered with.
The drones are frightening. They began with Bush and would have continued with Romney. They do need to be abolished.
Write your President.
Protest.
Oh, you're in Germany -- getting healthcare.
Or Finland -- getting healthcare.
Now there's healthcare in our own country, even in Tennessee.
Lives are being saved because of it.
That is a better legacy than any other president has bothered with.
One place to protest drones:
rootsaction.org
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
rootsaction.org
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
One place to protest drones:
rootsaction.org
Click on news and views.
You can even protest Obama there.
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
rootsaction.org
Click on news and views.
You can even protest Obama there.
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
One place to protest drones:
rootsaction.org
Click on news and views.
You can even protest Obama there.
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
rootsaction.org
Click on news and views.
You can even protest Obama there.
You can protest while sitting at your doctor's office -- getting healthcare.
Thanks all for comments! Sorry to leave such a provocative post and disappear for so long. The snowstorm hitting NYC knocked out my cable and internet for the day (though thankfully still had lights and heat). Just getting the connections back now! I will be back in a while to address comments! THANKS! best, libby
Rudy, thanks for commenting. I think you are absolutely right about grassroots involvement! I love the idea of you being a judge, with your incredible savvy with group dynamics!!! Bravo. What a big smile that gives me today!
I am stymied as to why Obama's PROFOUND AND ANTI-DEMOCRACY anti-civil rights choices (not restoring habeas corpus for one) are not being responded to by so many who were so incensed with GWB and Cheney!
You write:
"My hope is that the ensuing National crisis will allow all of our local communities to realize what a useless and pernicious puppet show the Federal Government has become."
Pernicious puppet show is right! Given the craven corporate media stage.
What troubles me is that the gas and economic crisis will create attention and mostly inspire pain and confusion in citizens, but MURDEROUS corporate wars for control of the legitimate resources of other countries, granted that do not get honest corporate media coverage, but even to those whom some are reaching with the facts, can so easily turn off their consciences or minimize the significance of and not connect the dots to the welfares of not only those poor people being killed and displaced but it is coming out of our own struggling budget? Our tax dollars going for deadly weapons and illegitimate wars and droning instead of to our own social and physical infrastructure's RIGHTS AND NEEDS here at home!
And this so rocks!
" Me? I've decided to run for Judge."
You go for it, man!!!! can't wait to witness and celebrate that adventure!
best, libby
I am stymied as to why Obama's PROFOUND AND ANTI-DEMOCRACY anti-civil rights choices (not restoring habeas corpus for one) are not being responded to by so many who were so incensed with GWB and Cheney!
You write:
"My hope is that the ensuing National crisis will allow all of our local communities to realize what a useless and pernicious puppet show the Federal Government has become."
Pernicious puppet show is right! Given the craven corporate media stage.
What troubles me is that the gas and economic crisis will create attention and mostly inspire pain and confusion in citizens, but MURDEROUS corporate wars for control of the legitimate resources of other countries, granted that do not get honest corporate media coverage, but even to those whom some are reaching with the facts, can so easily turn off their consciences or minimize the significance of and not connect the dots to the welfares of not only those poor people being killed and displaced but it is coming out of our own struggling budget? Our tax dollars going for deadly weapons and illegitimate wars and droning instead of to our own social and physical infrastructure's RIGHTS AND NEEDS here at home!
And this so rocks!
" Me? I've decided to run for Judge."
You go for it, man!!!! can't wait to witness and celebrate that adventure!
best, libby
Thanks, jmac. And God Bless Jill Stein for presenting an alternative and getting as far as she did! I just get really depressed with another 4 years of Obama's particular brand of mendacity and the ENTHRALLMENT of so many of our citizens who seem to give him a BLANK CHECK for doing amoral acts. It was cool to stand in line at the polling place and know of some definite Jill Stein votes cast from special friends here at open salon!
I did not want Romney/Ryan -- I of course wanted the 90 million non-voters to step up and vote for Stein magically. cough cough.
I of course wanted and assumed Jill would get her 5% -- and I wanted an electorate who would have had more spine and consciousness and conscience to be OUTRAGED by Obama's anti-democratic choices and to give marching orders to sell-out Congresspeople, mayors and governors long before this November election! Sigh.
I don't get why basic EMPATHY is so tough for members of our society. Empathy for each other and empathy for innocent people in foreign countries.
I like this expression:
"Green is the only color that works for the future."
Yes, let's hope the Greens get more and younger joiners to add vitality and hope and serious momentum. Onto 2016!
Thanks for commenting and supporting me once again! best, libby
I did not want Romney/Ryan -- I of course wanted the 90 million non-voters to step up and vote for Stein magically. cough cough.
I of course wanted and assumed Jill would get her 5% -- and I wanted an electorate who would have had more spine and consciousness and conscience to be OUTRAGED by Obama's anti-democratic choices and to give marching orders to sell-out Congresspeople, mayors and governors long before this November election! Sigh.
I don't get why basic EMPATHY is so tough for members of our society. Empathy for each other and empathy for innocent people in foreign countries.
I like this expression:
"Green is the only color that works for the future."
Yes, let's hope the Greens get more and younger joiners to add vitality and hope and serious momentum. Onto 2016!
Thanks for commenting and supporting me once again! best, libby
Hey, Matt, thanks for commenting.
I am disappointed that Jill Stein didn't have a bigger showing but she did get 750,000 of us. And that matters. And as she assured me when I had the honor of speaking with her on one short but powerful occasion she had been through five elections and she wasn't going away. That was comforting. Because we need leaders with gumption.
God, I was wondering how many times Stein was gonna end up roughed up and arrested by election day. So many fronts there are! And she was somehow getting to so many. And everything pouring out of her mouth and her vp mate were things not being addressed by either Romney or Obama. And corporate media would not cover any of her adventures with Obama's police state re dissent.
I hate to be manipulated as a citizen and the election was a manipulation. You really see it clearly when you are looking in from the margins supporting a third party candidate who is speaking for the disenfranchised and the craven corporate media and the power brokers are so thoroughly monopolizing EVERY channel in terms of mass communication and MANIPULATING the 24/7 viewers.
It is like the harsh crisis in a Frank Capra movie -- you know, all the little red wagons with the newsletters of truth are turned over and the kiddies knocked down by the thugs from the machine and all seems lost -- a Capra movie but without the happy ending coming! at least not soon.
The fight continues. I don't know why the election upset me so much. I was already so disgusted with the parties and saw the down side from either of those candidates.
I want people to take seriously the dark things Obama has done and is doing. And too many still don't imho. I wanted an "intervention" some kind of intervention to stop that! Instead, I see more of the same selling out of Obama to the corporate overlords at the expense of people everywhere and even the planet! One more blank check for lies and abuse and institutionalized murder and due-processless detention and citizen obtuseness, tragically.
best, libby
I am disappointed that Jill Stein didn't have a bigger showing but she did get 750,000 of us. And that matters. And as she assured me when I had the honor of speaking with her on one short but powerful occasion she had been through five elections and she wasn't going away. That was comforting. Because we need leaders with gumption.
God, I was wondering how many times Stein was gonna end up roughed up and arrested by election day. So many fronts there are! And she was somehow getting to so many. And everything pouring out of her mouth and her vp mate were things not being addressed by either Romney or Obama. And corporate media would not cover any of her adventures with Obama's police state re dissent.
I hate to be manipulated as a citizen and the election was a manipulation. You really see it clearly when you are looking in from the margins supporting a third party candidate who is speaking for the disenfranchised and the craven corporate media and the power brokers are so thoroughly monopolizing EVERY channel in terms of mass communication and MANIPULATING the 24/7 viewers.
It is like the harsh crisis in a Frank Capra movie -- you know, all the little red wagons with the newsletters of truth are turned over and the kiddies knocked down by the thugs from the machine and all seems lost -- a Capra movie but without the happy ending coming! at least not soon.
The fight continues. I don't know why the election upset me so much. I was already so disgusted with the parties and saw the down side from either of those candidates.
I want people to take seriously the dark things Obama has done and is doing. And too many still don't imho. I wanted an "intervention" some kind of intervention to stop that! Instead, I see more of the same selling out of Obama to the corporate overlords at the expense of people everywhere and even the planet! One more blank check for lies and abuse and institutionalized murder and due-processless detention and citizen obtuseness, tragically.
best, libby
As an abstract observation of the representative democratic process it is darkly fascinating that a voter who endorses a candidate with mixed feelings about the presumed actions of his choice can divorce his or her sense of responsibility for the subsequent violations of decent government and basic brutal inhumane results. One cannot conclude a basic bargan with Satan, to use mythical terminology, without accepting full responsibility for consequences. This is what makes a vote such a precious thing. It gains total value from the full acceptance that what the chosen representative achieves and that blame must lay heavily on the conscience of the voter. This is why not voting gains very large significance, for a responsible citizen as a non-voter accepts that he or she cannot acquiesce to a misuse of granted power. A vote is not a cheap giveaway for a temporary gain, it is a donation of personal responsibility to a trusted representative. When a voter ceases to be casual about endorsement then true democracy takes hold. Without that, there is no democracy.
jonathan, I appreciate your stopping by and commenting!
As the quote from Gandhi declares, fundamentals should not be messed with and when they are, COMPROMISE should not be entertained. One should defend the fundamentals -- their restoration -- to the nth degree. Obama and the Democrats continue to betray our constitution and their mandate to represent ALL citizens of America, not the top corporate layer of 1%.
People who speak of the legitimate worries re SCOTUS and women's choice and the need to back the Dems urgently because of them do not give me satisfactory responses to Obama's illegitimate and amoral assassination program and his not restoring habeas corpus to the laws of this country and the amoral war-mongering and drone usage, so many violations of civil and international rights, RIGHT NOW!! That is a deal breaker for me.
These OUTRAGES message to me that Obama and the Democratic Party are bottom line treasonous. TREASONOUS!!! Obama's decision not to prosecute the horrifying torture program architects from the Bush regime. His ignoring the horror and injustices of the Gazan War. His turning his back entirely on those fighting for universal healthcare was insulting and demoralizing and opportunistic in selling out to corporate cronies at the expense of the welfare of ALL Americans.
The horrors of the middle eastern wars, for US to actually be colluding with al Qaeda after the Afghan and Iraq Wars, supposedly using the same al Qaeda fighters we were opposing but lying about how they are Syrian "rebels" to get them to topple Syria in the same craven way (enabling these terrorists to terrorize the citizens) that was done is Libya is unconscionable. And the humanitarian intervention crap of US and NATO is HEINOUS! And the coverup of lies ... is additionally amoral and abusive to us as citizens.
ALEC and corporate overlords are busily trying to corrupt more and more judges in this country. Judges colluding for example in the dark and dirty privatization of prisons and exploiting prison workers for profiteering at the expense of prisoners without any serious protections as well as jobs that could be going to unemployed Americans. So many fresh and old hells.
I agree the horror of SCOTUS judges to be assigned for decades by bigoted Republicans is a nightmare. It is clear that branch of government is under "corruption assault" and, judges being bribed and blackmailed into submission by and to the corporate overlords! And the horror of having women's choice being taken away is significant of course!
But we can't cherry-pick issues and shove the unignorable ones into the background like they do on MSNBC with heartbreaking consistency for the sake of partisan TEAM morale and momentum! NO!!!! That kind of minimization is evil.
I use the word cronyism a lot because I think there is a dangerous phenomenon in which corruption escalates as everyone joins in the club of lowering the bar further and further of morality and ethics and look all the money being shoved forward to buy the soul-selling. And "everyone's doing it" ... the excuse of adolescents who have an excuse for their arrested development -- they are young.
Gamesmanship and winning and ends justifies the means is what becomes paramount and morality and justice are thrown out the window! And the corporate media is the tool for the propaganda I believe to crony-corrupt the citizenry.
Thanks again for commenting!
best, libby
As the quote from Gandhi declares, fundamentals should not be messed with and when they are, COMPROMISE should not be entertained. One should defend the fundamentals -- their restoration -- to the nth degree. Obama and the Democrats continue to betray our constitution and their mandate to represent ALL citizens of America, not the top corporate layer of 1%.
People who speak of the legitimate worries re SCOTUS and women's choice and the need to back the Dems urgently because of them do not give me satisfactory responses to Obama's illegitimate and amoral assassination program and his not restoring habeas corpus to the laws of this country and the amoral war-mongering and drone usage, so many violations of civil and international rights, RIGHT NOW!! That is a deal breaker for me.
These OUTRAGES message to me that Obama and the Democratic Party are bottom line treasonous. TREASONOUS!!! Obama's decision not to prosecute the horrifying torture program architects from the Bush regime. His ignoring the horror and injustices of the Gazan War. His turning his back entirely on those fighting for universal healthcare was insulting and demoralizing and opportunistic in selling out to corporate cronies at the expense of the welfare of ALL Americans.
The horrors of the middle eastern wars, for US to actually be colluding with al Qaeda after the Afghan and Iraq Wars, supposedly using the same al Qaeda fighters we were opposing but lying about how they are Syrian "rebels" to get them to topple Syria in the same craven way (enabling these terrorists to terrorize the citizens) that was done is Libya is unconscionable. And the humanitarian intervention crap of US and NATO is HEINOUS! And the coverup of lies ... is additionally amoral and abusive to us as citizens.
ALEC and corporate overlords are busily trying to corrupt more and more judges in this country. Judges colluding for example in the dark and dirty privatization of prisons and exploiting prison workers for profiteering at the expense of prisoners without any serious protections as well as jobs that could be going to unemployed Americans. So many fresh and old hells.
I agree the horror of SCOTUS judges to be assigned for decades by bigoted Republicans is a nightmare. It is clear that branch of government is under "corruption assault" and, judges being bribed and blackmailed into submission by and to the corporate overlords! And the horror of having women's choice being taken away is significant of course!
But we can't cherry-pick issues and shove the unignorable ones into the background like they do on MSNBC with heartbreaking consistency for the sake of partisan TEAM morale and momentum! NO!!!! That kind of minimization is evil.
I use the word cronyism a lot because I think there is a dangerous phenomenon in which corruption escalates as everyone joins in the club of lowering the bar further and further of morality and ethics and look all the money being shoved forward to buy the soul-selling. And "everyone's doing it" ... the excuse of adolescents who have an excuse for their arrested development -- they are young.
Gamesmanship and winning and ends justifies the means is what becomes paramount and morality and justice are thrown out the window! And the corporate media is the tool for the propaganda I believe to crony-corrupt the citizenry.
Thanks again for commenting!
best, libby
this from joseph kishore of wsws has interesting statistics re the voting numbers and discusses moral bankruptcy of both parties:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pers-n08.shtml
"In fact, Obama saw a substantial drop in his vote across the board, with millions more Americans choosing not to vote in this election. Little remains of the enthusiasm of 2008, when Obama was swept into power on a wave of popular hostility to the Bush administration.
Obama’s total vote count was approximately 9 million less than what he received in 2008, falling from 69.5 million to 60.5 million, or by about 13 percent. For his part, Romney pulled in only 57.5 million votes, about 2.5 million less than John McCain in 2008. That is, Obama just barely received more votes than his Republican challenger four years ago.
"The elections were characterized by a massive infusion of billions of dollars, with endless advertisements and media commentary over the course of nine months. The past four years have seen a significant growth in the number of eligible voters. However, in the end, the number of people voting fell by about 11 million.
"Particularly striking in California, a bastion of the Democratic Party, the total vote fell from 13.2 million in 2008 to only 9.2 million in 2012, with Obama receiving in that state more than a million fewer votes than the Democratic candidate in 2004, John Kerry.
Turnout declined in every state, according to Curtis Gans of the American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate. “This was a major plunge in turnout nationally,” he noted.
"The sharp fall in Obama’s vote as he won his second term is virtually unprecedented in the history of American politics. It is in fact exceedingly rare for a president to win a second term with less votes than in the first election. George W. Bush, for example, increased his vote from 50 million in 2000 to 62 million in 2004. Clinton increased his vote from 45 million in 1992 to 47.5 million in 1996. Reagan increased his vote from 44 million in 1980 to 54.5 million in 1984."
snip
"As a result, Obama found himself just barely able to defeat a Republican nominee who represents in the most crass and naked form the greed of the financial aristocracy that is responsible for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
"The election result is an expression of not only the political bankruptcy of the Obama administration, but the crisis of the entire two-party system. Both parties are dedicated to serving the interests of a tiny financial aristocracy, which has absolutely nothing to offer the American people but austerity, war and the destruction of democratic rights.
"Regardless of who is elected, the same policies are continued. Obama continued the policies of Bush, and Romney, if he had emerged victorious, would have, in all essentials, continued the policies of Obama.
"Indeed, in the aftermath of the elections, the dominant theme in the media and political establishment, beginning with Obama himself, is the call for “bipartisanship”—which means a joint offensive of both parties against the working class. The elections, it is declared, are a popular “mandate” for the Democrats and Republicans to come together to “solve the nation’s problems.”
"In his own remarks on Tuesday night, Obama declared, “I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together,” beginning with the need to “reduce the deficit.” Obama has declared that his “first order of business” will be to reach an agreement to implement trillions of dollars in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs in response to the “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year. On Wednesday, Republican leaders responded by declaring that they too were committed to reaching an agreement.
"According to the official interpretation of American politics, an interpretation shared by the “left” as well as the right, the population is divided along every matter of identity—race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation. Obama won, according to this analysis, because he was able to get the “woman vote” or the “Hispanic vote.” Class can never be mentioned. Yet this is the most fundamental question."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pers-n08.shtml
"In fact, Obama saw a substantial drop in his vote across the board, with millions more Americans choosing not to vote in this election. Little remains of the enthusiasm of 2008, when Obama was swept into power on a wave of popular hostility to the Bush administration.
Obama’s total vote count was approximately 9 million less than what he received in 2008, falling from 69.5 million to 60.5 million, or by about 13 percent. For his part, Romney pulled in only 57.5 million votes, about 2.5 million less than John McCain in 2008. That is, Obama just barely received more votes than his Republican challenger four years ago.
"The elections were characterized by a massive infusion of billions of dollars, with endless advertisements and media commentary over the course of nine months. The past four years have seen a significant growth in the number of eligible voters. However, in the end, the number of people voting fell by about 11 million.
"Particularly striking in California, a bastion of the Democratic Party, the total vote fell from 13.2 million in 2008 to only 9.2 million in 2012, with Obama receiving in that state more than a million fewer votes than the Democratic candidate in 2004, John Kerry.
Turnout declined in every state, according to Curtis Gans of the American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate. “This was a major plunge in turnout nationally,” he noted.
"The sharp fall in Obama’s vote as he won his second term is virtually unprecedented in the history of American politics. It is in fact exceedingly rare for a president to win a second term with less votes than in the first election. George W. Bush, for example, increased his vote from 50 million in 2000 to 62 million in 2004. Clinton increased his vote from 45 million in 1992 to 47.5 million in 1996. Reagan increased his vote from 44 million in 1980 to 54.5 million in 1984."
snip
"As a result, Obama found himself just barely able to defeat a Republican nominee who represents in the most crass and naked form the greed of the financial aristocracy that is responsible for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
"The election result is an expression of not only the political bankruptcy of the Obama administration, but the crisis of the entire two-party system. Both parties are dedicated to serving the interests of a tiny financial aristocracy, which has absolutely nothing to offer the American people but austerity, war and the destruction of democratic rights.
"Regardless of who is elected, the same policies are continued. Obama continued the policies of Bush, and Romney, if he had emerged victorious, would have, in all essentials, continued the policies of Obama.
"Indeed, in the aftermath of the elections, the dominant theme in the media and political establishment, beginning with Obama himself, is the call for “bipartisanship”—which means a joint offensive of both parties against the working class. The elections, it is declared, are a popular “mandate” for the Democrats and Republicans to come together to “solve the nation’s problems.”
"In his own remarks on Tuesday night, Obama declared, “I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together,” beginning with the need to “reduce the deficit.” Obama has declared that his “first order of business” will be to reach an agreement to implement trillions of dollars in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs in response to the “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year. On Wednesday, Republican leaders responded by declaring that they too were committed to reaching an agreement.
"According to the official interpretation of American politics, an interpretation shared by the “left” as well as the right, the population is divided along every matter of identity—race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation. Obama won, according to this analysis, because he was able to get the “woman vote” or the “Hispanic vote.” Class can never be mentioned. Yet this is the most fundamental question."
gotta go, but be back soon. best, libby
Here's part of a really strong analysis from Linh Dinh at Dissident Voice-- article entitled "Ass Won":
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/ass-won/#more-46341
"Once again, the world has witnessed the passion and faith American voters have for war criminals and protectors of banksters. It is remarkable, really, the continuity of the American looting and mass murdering project. The US military has turned the Persian Gulf into its own bloody bath tub, in fulfillment of the Carter Doctrine. Democratic Carter cited the Soviet threat, but he was also aiming to keep the Arabs in line, to prevent another oil boycott that would cripple this country. It doesn’t take much of a gas disruption to sow chaos here, as shown by Hurricane Sandy. A gas junkie will kill and rob to feed his habit, then become even more apeshit should his supply run dry. He’ll shoot you before, during and after, and call it love for you, god and democracy.
"According to the corporate shill that’s the US President, America is well on its way towards energy independence, though gas is up, up and up, and we’re wringing oil from rocks and brewing it from maize, neither one a cheap or energy efficient proposition, but don’t worry, just keep driving those SUVs and pack the NASCAR grandstands as the sea rises to your neck.
"As we enter de yo mama of all depressions, partly caused by the job outsourcing started by the Democratic Clinton, the corporate shill du epoque is also promising more jobs, but where will these be found in this deliberately de-industrialized nation? We make nothing anymore except guns, corndogs, bombers and pornography, so well endowed guys and gals with strip mall implants can still go down, strut or pole dance for a few years, before they get on food stamps like a record number of their fellow citizens. That or joining the “services.”
"The college basketball season will open with a game on an aircraft carrier, I kid you not, and one in an Air Force hangar in Germany. Hoopsters will wear camouflaged uniforms designed by Nike. The militarized corporate monster has infiltrated every aspect of American life, so don’t be surprised if you wake up tomorrow next to traumatized and amputated hero, or corpse, or a million corpses. Millions of corpses.
"Most Americans are blind to corpses, however. They don’t see any corpses, not even those draped under their own flag. Ask people you know how many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, for example, and I’d be very surprised if one in ten could chance into a close guess. Do you know? Ask these same people the number on Kobe’s jersey, the record of the New England Patriots or the birth year of Lady Gaga.
"Education is the answer, Obama and Romney both stressed, especially higher education, though more than half of recent American college graduates can’t find work, though most are burdened with life-wrecking debts. Our banks, universities and bank-run government have colluded to jack up tuitions to unconscionable levels. As with the national debt itself, we’re eating our young...."
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/ass-won/#more-46341
"Once again, the world has witnessed the passion and faith American voters have for war criminals and protectors of banksters. It is remarkable, really, the continuity of the American looting and mass murdering project. The US military has turned the Persian Gulf into its own bloody bath tub, in fulfillment of the Carter Doctrine. Democratic Carter cited the Soviet threat, but he was also aiming to keep the Arabs in line, to prevent another oil boycott that would cripple this country. It doesn’t take much of a gas disruption to sow chaos here, as shown by Hurricane Sandy. A gas junkie will kill and rob to feed his habit, then become even more apeshit should his supply run dry. He’ll shoot you before, during and after, and call it love for you, god and democracy.
"According to the corporate shill that’s the US President, America is well on its way towards energy independence, though gas is up, up and up, and we’re wringing oil from rocks and brewing it from maize, neither one a cheap or energy efficient proposition, but don’t worry, just keep driving those SUVs and pack the NASCAR grandstands as the sea rises to your neck.
"As we enter de yo mama of all depressions, partly caused by the job outsourcing started by the Democratic Clinton, the corporate shill du epoque is also promising more jobs, but where will these be found in this deliberately de-industrialized nation? We make nothing anymore except guns, corndogs, bombers and pornography, so well endowed guys and gals with strip mall implants can still go down, strut or pole dance for a few years, before they get on food stamps like a record number of their fellow citizens. That or joining the “services.”
"The college basketball season will open with a game on an aircraft carrier, I kid you not, and one in an Air Force hangar in Germany. Hoopsters will wear camouflaged uniforms designed by Nike. The militarized corporate monster has infiltrated every aspect of American life, so don’t be surprised if you wake up tomorrow next to traumatized and amputated hero, or corpse, or a million corpses. Millions of corpses.
"Most Americans are blind to corpses, however. They don’t see any corpses, not even those draped under their own flag. Ask people you know how many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, for example, and I’d be very surprised if one in ten could chance into a close guess. Do you know? Ask these same people the number on Kobe’s jersey, the record of the New England Patriots or the birth year of Lady Gaga.
"Education is the answer, Obama and Romney both stressed, especially higher education, though more than half of recent American college graduates can’t find work, though most are burdened with life-wrecking debts. Our banks, universities and bank-run government have colluded to jack up tuitions to unconscionable levels. As with the national debt itself, we’re eating our young...."
Read the news-Physicians are opting out, the rich will be fine as there are more and more boutique outfits popping up but, the greatest healthcare system in history for the middle class is going away. Equal suck for all will be the new norm -wonderful until you need it.
"It is some compensation for a terminal cancer patient to learn he is not going insane. But it doesn't help a hell of a lot."
This is a cryptic comment. Jan? best, libby
This is a cryptic comment. Jan? best, libby
so sorry not to have gotten through with more responses thus far! i will have to get back to it later in day. thanks again for commenting, all! best, libby
It is a medical analog to the Obama-Romney choice. The USA and a good deal of the world is facing an inexorable destruction of the ecology that sustains us by the persistent monstrous greed of the moronic corporate-military-fnancial world, a cancerous growth, and to be relieved that Obama condemns us to this yet saves us from the outrageous insanity of the Republicans seems small compensation.
For those defending the current health system under Obama it is worth reading http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/08/wealth-and-health/ which describes how the financial system is robbing the country viciously of the money it needs to care for the sick and how that compares with other countries that control these costs.
Matt, there is incremental progress thru compromising and then there is compromising as Gandhi said on the fundamentals that should be NON-NEGOTIABLE. Being asked to compromise on them reveals that there is not real good will and trustworthiness from those demanding such terms!
I don't see Obama as taking baby-steps. I hear him talking like he is taking bi-partisan baby steps and I see his actions as regressive -- continuing to destroy the welfare of the citizens for the advantage of the one percent and the development of a fascist state. A plutocracy.
Obama scored but considering Romney and Ryan, how disturbing they are, and how many of the citizenry stayed home, it is not a big win. Despite the re-branding many did hold their noses.
Obama's team slickly hit hard "identity" themes for people -- like pushing the women's issues and as for Latinos voting for him big, they fear Romney and Ryan so much and deservedly, but denying Obama's horrifying deportations and he did do that razzle dazzle stuff about letting some immigrant kids register to try to stay in America if they pass a criteria. Obama will give minimal and complicated if it will buy him a sound bite to be elected! And people will project sincerity from his offered policy. Sadly. But they are desperate and hungry people make poor shoppers, as they say.
And we as a people need to look at where Obama and Romney both were coming from ... destruction of an entire class, the "working class" to enhance the profiteering of the corporate overlords!
best, libby
I don't see Obama as taking baby-steps. I hear him talking like he is taking bi-partisan baby steps and I see his actions as regressive -- continuing to destroy the welfare of the citizens for the advantage of the one percent and the development of a fascist state. A plutocracy.
Obama scored but considering Romney and Ryan, how disturbing they are, and how many of the citizenry stayed home, it is not a big win. Despite the re-branding many did hold their noses.
Obama's team slickly hit hard "identity" themes for people -- like pushing the women's issues and as for Latinos voting for him big, they fear Romney and Ryan so much and deservedly, but denying Obama's horrifying deportations and he did do that razzle dazzle stuff about letting some immigrant kids register to try to stay in America if they pass a criteria. Obama will give minimal and complicated if it will buy him a sound bite to be elected! And people will project sincerity from his offered policy. Sadly. But they are desperate and hungry people make poor shoppers, as they say.
And we as a people need to look at where Obama and Romney both were coming from ... destruction of an entire class, the "working class" to enhance the profiteering of the corporate overlords!
best, libby
Whatever hierarchy a person may possess as to basic rights, there is a line one cannot cross as to the right to life itself and how that fundamental right is dealt with in society. There is no doubt whatsoever that the USA as well as other declared democracies in practice has a definite class system wherein the rich and powerful repeatedly currently and throughout history are granted legal privileges not available to the less well off. Nevertheless the hypocrisy in dealing with its declared ideals has deserved a certain official respect which is something of a safeguard for the the average citizen in dealing with matters of life and death. Obama has blatantly shattered that safeguard in taking upon himself the immense power to anyone that to his mind may constitute what he terms is a terrorist with no legal recourse to his absolute decision. This is unprecedented and totally in violation of the declared nature of a democracy which claims to be a government of laws. That this is glossed over by Obama enthusiasts so easily indicates without question that these individuals have completely lost their way in understanding the nature of a lawful democracy. That line must not ever be crossed as it is the final fatal step in the death of a democracy and the establishment of a dictatorship. By that acquisition of power Obama is no longer a president, he is a dictator.
Paul, that is not the Green Party message it is my own, that comparison. The irony is not lost on many that the Zionist leadership as the American leadership is becoming more and more Nazi-like. This is not hyperbole. Obama's "disposition matrix"? His assumption of the right of assassination of Americans. These wars which certainly have genocidal results. The prisons flooding with black prisoners, also a form of genocidal prosecution I'm thinking.
The Manhattan Greens are profoundly compassionate about the plight of the Palestinians, btw.
When citizens deny and minimize Nazi-leadership I'm thinking they are inviting a comparison with the "Good Germans" in Hitler's day.
But you are talking not honesty and tough love truth, but the advantages of public relations seduction, which is where the Green Party parts company with the slick operatives of the Obama machine!
best, libby
The Manhattan Greens are profoundly compassionate about the plight of the Palestinians, btw.
When citizens deny and minimize Nazi-leadership I'm thinking they are inviting a comparison with the "Good Germans" in Hitler's day.
But you are talking not honesty and tough love truth, but the advantages of public relations seduction, which is where the Green Party parts company with the slick operatives of the Obama machine!
best, libby
Frank, it brings me no pleasure calling out a stunning lack of conscience among people I want to respect and I can't considering their unconditional endorsement of Obama with his ever escalating crimes against the constitution and humanity. I stand by my code of morality. And I do question yours and others who are willfully blind to evidence that is not hidden of, again, unethical and unconstitutional and anti-human rights behavior perpetrated on a massive scale by this President and his administration. best, libby
TL -- this is well said:
"Justice, virtue, honesty, integrity and truth are not a popularity contest as you so eloquently note. I find it a great irony that a supposedly Judeo-Christian nation is bargaining with a system that endorses murder, violence, predation, torture, exploitation, misogyny, looting and the like.
"To compromise with evil is to abandon virtue. To compromise with evil is to become evil. There can be no compromise when the issues at hand involve virtue, justice, honesty, integrity and truth."
I thank you, TL, for pointing out the Gandhi quote to me long ago.
I am mourning that we have to have another cycle of a destroyer of democracy as leader and someone so strongly committed to handing over everything to oligarchs at the serious expense and welfare of the citizenry. I am mourning the capture of America by the corporate-captured politicians and especially the capture of America by the corporate propaganda tv!
best, libby
"Justice, virtue, honesty, integrity and truth are not a popularity contest as you so eloquently note. I find it a great irony that a supposedly Judeo-Christian nation is bargaining with a system that endorses murder, violence, predation, torture, exploitation, misogyny, looting and the like.
"To compromise with evil is to abandon virtue. To compromise with evil is to become evil. There can be no compromise when the issues at hand involve virtue, justice, honesty, integrity and truth."
I thank you, TL, for pointing out the Gandhi quote to me long ago.
I am mourning that we have to have another cycle of a destroyer of democracy as leader and someone so strongly committed to handing over everything to oligarchs at the serious expense and welfare of the citizenry. I am mourning the capture of America by the corporate-captured politicians and especially the capture of America by the corporate propaganda tv!
best, libby
kate! thanks so much for your comment. yeah, David Brooks is the last guy I want to bring up but he was the one who said "Post-Morality America" on the NewsHour and my ears perked up. I have also heard the expression Post-Truth America and Post-Law America, though can't remember the originators.
I agree with you how exhausting it is. Being in a culture that normalizes evil and lets evil be institutionalized -- what should not be normalized and institutionalized -- does require vigilant consciousness to combat the sirens of cognitive dissonance -- a crazymaking surreality with the grotesque denial and minimization going on in the media and from fellow citizens of evil -- along with the threat of being seduced into numbing out one's own conscience to get along with a comfortable provincial "cronyism" or to escape the horror of how critical and frightening things really are.
yes, kate, i seriously agree -- it does come down to morality. beginning with the "thou shalt not kill" principle. "Do unto others", etc. We are an amoral country and with this election and endorsement of a war criminal and a corporate criminal those citizens voting for Obama are accessories to this criminality.
Doesn't mean I am for Romney. The alternative was a third party candidate in my mind. The alternative really should have been Obama's impeachment long ago. If we did not have such a corrupt Dem party we could even have primaried Obama in a timely way.
best, libby
I agree with you how exhausting it is. Being in a culture that normalizes evil and lets evil be institutionalized -- what should not be normalized and institutionalized -- does require vigilant consciousness to combat the sirens of cognitive dissonance -- a crazymaking surreality with the grotesque denial and minimization going on in the media and from fellow citizens of evil -- along with the threat of being seduced into numbing out one's own conscience to get along with a comfortable provincial "cronyism" or to escape the horror of how critical and frightening things really are.
yes, kate, i seriously agree -- it does come down to morality. beginning with the "thou shalt not kill" principle. "Do unto others", etc. We are an amoral country and with this election and endorsement of a war criminal and a corporate criminal those citizens voting for Obama are accessories to this criminality.
Doesn't mean I am for Romney. The alternative was a third party candidate in my mind. The alternative really should have been Obama's impeachment long ago. If we did not have such a corrupt Dem party we could even have primaried Obama in a timely way.
best, libby
I will be back soon! best, libby
Just Thinking, thanks for sharing. I am seriously thrilled for your sister-in-law and glad there is some good in Obamacare which I know is true.
Its just after following the sanity and brilliance of physicians for a national health care and other leaders of the universal health care movement, as well as getting the message from Michael Moore's SICKO movie that we are the only industrial nation that does not treat universal health care as a citizen right Obamacare falls short for millions and will for milliions more! What are we listed, a shameful #37 by the World Health Organization?
I could tell you the opposite kind of story about my sister-in-law's sister who practically was deposited critically ill -- CRITICALLY ILL -- on the sidewalk outside a hospital hanging from a thread for not having coverage.
I am glad your sister in law is one of the lucky ones. My sister in law's sister is still alive, btw. I pray she will continue to heal DESPITE how despicable conditions are to those not covered in an employee-based health care in Obamaworld of unemployment!
I am one of those pie in the sky ones who thinks that not covering over 21 million US citizens with insurance AT ALL and under-insuring millions of others because the vendor fat cats of big insurance and big pharma have to get 7 figure salaries, and will be willing to finance small margin national elections of big fat hypocrits and sell-outs from both parties. This is more amorality!
Obama is not doing ENOUGH by a HUGE long shot. Yes, we can point to specific cases for the good, but there are plenty of cases for the bad! There is little regulation in Obamacare of the pricing of health care, Obama would never presume and he can get a good sound bite out of a policy meanwhile the small print loopholes advantage back to the corporate rat bastards. So the health care will be inadequate. I read somewhere the life expectancy of Americans has already dropped 4 years! Sorry, I don't have the link handy.
Wait til Medicaid and Medicare get their Obama slashing!
Thanks for commenting and I appreciate what you said.
best, libby
Its just after following the sanity and brilliance of physicians for a national health care and other leaders of the universal health care movement, as well as getting the message from Michael Moore's SICKO movie that we are the only industrial nation that does not treat universal health care as a citizen right Obamacare falls short for millions and will for milliions more! What are we listed, a shameful #37 by the World Health Organization?
I could tell you the opposite kind of story about my sister-in-law's sister who practically was deposited critically ill -- CRITICALLY ILL -- on the sidewalk outside a hospital hanging from a thread for not having coverage.
I am glad your sister in law is one of the lucky ones. My sister in law's sister is still alive, btw. I pray she will continue to heal DESPITE how despicable conditions are to those not covered in an employee-based health care in Obamaworld of unemployment!
I am one of those pie in the sky ones who thinks that not covering over 21 million US citizens with insurance AT ALL and under-insuring millions of others because the vendor fat cats of big insurance and big pharma have to get 7 figure salaries, and will be willing to finance small margin national elections of big fat hypocrits and sell-outs from both parties. This is more amorality!
Obama is not doing ENOUGH by a HUGE long shot. Yes, we can point to specific cases for the good, but there are plenty of cases for the bad! There is little regulation in Obamacare of the pricing of health care, Obama would never presume and he can get a good sound bite out of a policy meanwhile the small print loopholes advantage back to the corporate rat bastards. So the health care will be inadequate. I read somewhere the life expectancy of Americans has already dropped 4 years! Sorry, I don't have the link handy.
Wait til Medicaid and Medicare get their Obama slashing!
Thanks for commenting and I appreciate what you said.
best, libby
TL -- I can't believe you stooped to the word you used in addressing, Frank! Insulting to Frank and insulting to women in general!! Geeeez!!!!!! I am going to delete that comment, because of that unfortunate word choice at the very end. I didn't catch it at first. libby
TL! You did it again! So much eloquence and then WHAM! Sorry, TL, this rocks my sensibility! libby
I'll be back! best, libby
It sounds so very simple minded, so childish, so naive that the squirming little bloody Gordian knot at the root of all the problems in the USA can be so simply said. There are wonderful things in this blue planet that delight the inner being, there are sea winds with the smell of iodine and salt pushing clouds through a blue, blue skies, herds of antelope grazing on green savannas, deep mysterious jungles festooned with vines hung from huge trees where bright parrots chatter and zoom, tall snow capped mountains and clear streams and rushing waterfalls that descend in white steam mists and there are children, curious and full of wonder at it all. And what stands to obliterate it all is the vicious callous cruel endless love of money and that sounds so unbelievably impossible and wildly insane and yet, and yet.........
jan, sorry to be so slow in commenting. thank you for reminding us how SNAFU'ed the status quo is! INSANE says it better.
You got me with this line:
"But as the recent hurricane dramatically demonstrated, and as other world and domestic events clearly show, there is no safety in clinging to a milder disaster when current agendas can promise almost unimaginable destruction to morality, economy, ecology and almost every other aspect of civilized decency and stability. If radical action in dealing with impending major disasters is not initiated reasonably quickly overwhelming disaster is inevitable. Obama promises no such vital changes and, in most of his agendas, merely slows slightly the approach of frightful catastrophes. To settle for that with a victorious grin is beyond stupidity and worthy only of contempt."
You said it, Jan! There are so many horrifying fronts, but the climate change front Obama is not even trying to APPEAR involved with. And then people say storm Sandy helped Obama win because Romney is even worse apparently on climate change, though Stein said back in MA he did give it better attention before he sold out for the farther righters. Sigh. ANYWAY, PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY CORPORATE LEGAL PERSONS don't give a you know what about climate change since it ain't got anything to do with the bottom line and that is where our pols take their marching orders from. Psychopathic corporate mandates. Will Mother Nature wait around until the supposed "lesser evil" addresses the crisis -- look at the cavalier way BP disaster was handled, Obama protecting the corporation and the hell with the Gulf and the citizenry!
Thanks for commenting! I am glad this thread is getting some serious action! best, libby
You got me with this line:
"But as the recent hurricane dramatically demonstrated, and as other world and domestic events clearly show, there is no safety in clinging to a milder disaster when current agendas can promise almost unimaginable destruction to morality, economy, ecology and almost every other aspect of civilized decency and stability. If radical action in dealing with impending major disasters is not initiated reasonably quickly overwhelming disaster is inevitable. Obama promises no such vital changes and, in most of his agendas, merely slows slightly the approach of frightful catastrophes. To settle for that with a victorious grin is beyond stupidity and worthy only of contempt."
You said it, Jan! There are so many horrifying fronts, but the climate change front Obama is not even trying to APPEAR involved with. And then people say storm Sandy helped Obama win because Romney is even worse apparently on climate change, though Stein said back in MA he did give it better attention before he sold out for the farther righters. Sigh. ANYWAY, PSYCHOPATHIC PERSONALITY CORPORATE LEGAL PERSONS don't give a you know what about climate change since it ain't got anything to do with the bottom line and that is where our pols take their marching orders from. Psychopathic corporate mandates. Will Mother Nature wait around until the supposed "lesser evil" addresses the crisis -- look at the cavalier way BP disaster was handled, Obama protecting the corporation and the hell with the Gulf and the citizenry!
Thanks for commenting! I am glad this thread is getting some serious action! best, libby
ANFSCD! thanks for commenting. You know there are two sayings that inspire reactions in me that parallel the 3 Stooges "Niagara Falls" rage schtick. One is "lesser of two evils" and the other is "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!" from the days of all the public option bullshit that managed to postpone universal health care for America for another generation or more or never.
"False Morality" is a good way to put it. Or as Gandhi said, "compromising on the fundamentals!"
This was chilling but makes your point VERY WELL!
"The false morality is certainly getting thick. One man says, "We must have ten concentration camps!" Another says we must never have any. Then a "uniter" comes along who says, "Let's compromise and have 5 concentration camps.""
"Then false moralists come along saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!" or "Compromise is the only realistic course of action!" or "Now we are saved from evil!" or "Thank God there was an adult in the room to bring us together.""
end of your quote
Where is the sense of the common good and the public trust? Just cuz the pols have eliminated those concepts and refrences from their vocab doesn't mean we should do the same as peers and fellow victims of them and their corporate overlords!!! Stress causes narcissism necessarily, but we must fight that narcissistic slide and try to push back while we still have leverage. Though what has broken so many hearts of those of us who put down the kool-aid is that every four years we have an increased measure of leverage and we didn't use it this election, so many still manipulated and taking the duopoly bait thanks to corporate media.
90 million people didn't bother to vote in our banana republic election set up. demoralized, disenfranchised, depressed psychologically and economically!
best, libby
"False Morality" is a good way to put it. Or as Gandhi said, "compromising on the fundamentals!"
This was chilling but makes your point VERY WELL!
"The false morality is certainly getting thick. One man says, "We must have ten concentration camps!" Another says we must never have any. Then a "uniter" comes along who says, "Let's compromise and have 5 concentration camps.""
"Then false moralists come along saying, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!" or "Compromise is the only realistic course of action!" or "Now we are saved from evil!" or "Thank God there was an adult in the room to bring us together.""
end of your quote
Where is the sense of the common good and the public trust? Just cuz the pols have eliminated those concepts and refrences from their vocab doesn't mean we should do the same as peers and fellow victims of them and their corporate overlords!!! Stress causes narcissism necessarily, but we must fight that narcissistic slide and try to push back while we still have leverage. Though what has broken so many hearts of those of us who put down the kool-aid is that every four years we have an increased measure of leverage and we didn't use it this election, so many still manipulated and taking the duopoly bait thanks to corporate media.
90 million people didn't bother to vote in our banana republic election set up. demoralized, disenfranchised, depressed psychologically and economically!
best, libby
rw! thanks for commenting. Appreciate your comments on Lincoln. Is it Spielberg with the new Lincoln movie to make those points? Ah, I see you are mentioning it, too.
And LBJ. Schindler. I am not against compromising. I know about Congressional sausage-making so to speak.
But rw, we are talking about the loss of habeas corpus. We are talking about genocidal wars for corporate interests. We are talking about dictatorial assassination of fellow Americans. We are talking about defying climate change to produce more and more fossil fuel and to hell with the future of the planet. Destroying regional water supplies with hydrofracking. We are talking about nuclear disasters because nuclear corporations bribe pols to stay in business, even if Fukushima has influenced many other countries to reduce not escalate nuclear energy production. We are talking about letting an institutionalized torture program go unpunished. We are talking about white collar criminality of a massive and global level go unpunished. We are talking about more deregulation or pretend toothless regulation. We are talking about health care being engineered to profit the vendors at the life and death or sustained suffering of many of our citizenry. We are talking about the exploitation of the education system for profit. The prison system for profit not to mention racism and home grown genocide! The arms industry, supplying 75% of nation's weaponry to promote more and more war and thus more and more opportunism for illegitimate colonial exploitation, forget how many people are killed and displaced, maimed or poisoned by radioactive weaponry. I could go on, you know I could. We are talking about the slashing of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because might makes right, and they will just keep taking, the upper class from the lower classes, because THEY CAN! THEY BRIBED THE POLS FOR THAT RIGHT!
I am glad Jill Stein committed civil disobedience three times despite mainstream media willfully ignoring it and the police state roughing her up. Saying NO to CORRUPT AUTHORITY. That is what we have here-- corrupt authority.
Bradley Manning was witnessing full out murder of civilians by our troops and did something about it. He did not obey EVIL AND CORRUPT AUTHORITY and he is threatened with treason and execution and not only do the pols vilify him but the electorate also does or simply doesn't give a sh*t what risk he was taking!
You write:
"I'm just trying to say that you need to look at the facts of any given situation. You can't lead life, or rule a nation, according to general maxims and slogans and sayings. Circumstances and nuances matter. Negotiation and compromise are what differentiate us from the animals."
I am looking at the facts. I think most of the Obama ENABLERS are limiting their vision to what they want to see. What do you call "lesser evil" as you cite me for slogans? That certainly carpets over a lot of ugly evilness.
To keep democracy going it had to be further destroyed, this time by a colluding electorate? To keep the Dem Party competitive the Dem Party got destroyed thanks to the corporate overlords.
You don't think, rw, that some of the reform and progress had anything to do with those people who took a moral stand in our history and now? You don't think their courage, people like Manning, Assange, Stein, the whistleblowers getting prosecuted, have something to do with achieving morality in a culture? MLK, RFK, Rosa Parks? Those inconvenient types who at times refused to compromise. MLK was pushed to leave off criticizing LBJ for Viet Nam. He did it anyway! Think of those people who were blacklisted in the McCarthy era and gave up successful careers to stand by principle! Do you give them credit? The abolitionists? The suffragettes? The Vietnam protesters? The early union organizers what they went through and the union organizers now being actually gunned down by the corporate mafia bffs from the US and other countries. Yeah, Obama made a deal with Colombia without using any leverage to get the government to prosecute the death squads from corporations snuffing out union activists. I suppose Obama can just call the victims of those death squads " insurgents" not union activists, especially if they are military age.
You give credit to the pragmatics and the sausage-makers? I give credit to those exercising the politics of courage. It is walking the walk. It is not just a shallow slogan but something that real heroes and heroines do! It is proactive and it is courageous and it is saying NO TO AMORALITY!!!!
I think it is time morality became part of the national conversation.
best, libby
And LBJ. Schindler. I am not against compromising. I know about Congressional sausage-making so to speak.
But rw, we are talking about the loss of habeas corpus. We are talking about genocidal wars for corporate interests. We are talking about dictatorial assassination of fellow Americans. We are talking about defying climate change to produce more and more fossil fuel and to hell with the future of the planet. Destroying regional water supplies with hydrofracking. We are talking about nuclear disasters because nuclear corporations bribe pols to stay in business, even if Fukushima has influenced many other countries to reduce not escalate nuclear energy production. We are talking about letting an institutionalized torture program go unpunished. We are talking about white collar criminality of a massive and global level go unpunished. We are talking about more deregulation or pretend toothless regulation. We are talking about health care being engineered to profit the vendors at the life and death or sustained suffering of many of our citizenry. We are talking about the exploitation of the education system for profit. The prison system for profit not to mention racism and home grown genocide! The arms industry, supplying 75% of nation's weaponry to promote more and more war and thus more and more opportunism for illegitimate colonial exploitation, forget how many people are killed and displaced, maimed or poisoned by radioactive weaponry. I could go on, you know I could. We are talking about the slashing of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because might makes right, and they will just keep taking, the upper class from the lower classes, because THEY CAN! THEY BRIBED THE POLS FOR THAT RIGHT!
I am glad Jill Stein committed civil disobedience three times despite mainstream media willfully ignoring it and the police state roughing her up. Saying NO to CORRUPT AUTHORITY. That is what we have here-- corrupt authority.
Bradley Manning was witnessing full out murder of civilians by our troops and did something about it. He did not obey EVIL AND CORRUPT AUTHORITY and he is threatened with treason and execution and not only do the pols vilify him but the electorate also does or simply doesn't give a sh*t what risk he was taking!
You write:
"I'm just trying to say that you need to look at the facts of any given situation. You can't lead life, or rule a nation, according to general maxims and slogans and sayings. Circumstances and nuances matter. Negotiation and compromise are what differentiate us from the animals."
I am looking at the facts. I think most of the Obama ENABLERS are limiting their vision to what they want to see. What do you call "lesser evil" as you cite me for slogans? That certainly carpets over a lot of ugly evilness.
To keep democracy going it had to be further destroyed, this time by a colluding electorate? To keep the Dem Party competitive the Dem Party got destroyed thanks to the corporate overlords.
You don't think, rw, that some of the reform and progress had anything to do with those people who took a moral stand in our history and now? You don't think their courage, people like Manning, Assange, Stein, the whistleblowers getting prosecuted, have something to do with achieving morality in a culture? MLK, RFK, Rosa Parks? Those inconvenient types who at times refused to compromise. MLK was pushed to leave off criticizing LBJ for Viet Nam. He did it anyway! Think of those people who were blacklisted in the McCarthy era and gave up successful careers to stand by principle! Do you give them credit? The abolitionists? The suffragettes? The Vietnam protesters? The early union organizers what they went through and the union organizers now being actually gunned down by the corporate mafia bffs from the US and other countries. Yeah, Obama made a deal with Colombia without using any leverage to get the government to prosecute the death squads from corporations snuffing out union activists. I suppose Obama can just call the victims of those death squads " insurgents" not union activists, especially if they are military age.
You give credit to the pragmatics and the sausage-makers? I give credit to those exercising the politics of courage. It is walking the walk. It is not just a shallow slogan but something that real heroes and heroines do! It is proactive and it is courageous and it is saying NO TO AMORALITY!!!!
I think it is time morality became part of the national conversation.
best, libby
will be back later. best, libby
The examples given of effective action to turn things around, of the people who have made the effort and have been severely punished, imprisoned, or even killed for saying no to the surge of immorality that, in history and currently, are making the very difficult decisions and actions to make the changes necessary may or may not go to a voting booth and punch the right buttons but the progress will not be made, as is evident by the latest election farce, bu such a passive effort as voting when there is little or no possibility of success in mere voting. Surely it is worthwhile to make voting worthwhile in the long run but at present something more dynamic and vital is necessary. What that might be I cannot say but until there is something viable to vote for, merely voting against something is not and will not work. Some sort of righteous sensible beast must be unloosened, and soon, or it will be too late.
To get a clearer concept of the nightmare world the current military is industriously preparing for the future of mankind and how far advanced the maniacs in charge are in their development of a hellish civilization in which each individual will be a possible target for elimination as soon as he or she steps slightly out of line see
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175614/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_super_weapons_and_global_dominion/#more
If this is not stopped I cannot see life worth living for the future of humanity.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175614/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_super_weapons_and_global_dominion/#more
If this is not stopped I cannot see life worth living for the future of humanity.
al, I appreciate what you are saying about how we as Americans are pretty much disconnected from the governance of our country. We leave it to what we hope are trustworthy representatives who have a sense of responsibility -- the ability to RESPOND -- to what is happening to us in this world and will act accordingly.
BUT THEY AREN'T. And now WE as "responsible" -- able to RESPOND citizens -- must RESPOND to this dire situation to fix a democracy whereby our representatives have MUTINIED and opted to turn over our constitutional power to the oligarchs. For whatever reason the mutiny against doing their jobs of representing ALL of the people occurred -- whether they were bribed by lobbyists, blackmailed by an avaricious corporate media on behalf of lobbyists (and media can punish a brave politician in a New York second) or the invasion of privacy that makes everyone vulnerable, or simply our congresspeople and administration and judges slid into corrupt cronyism -- everybody's doing it -- selling out integrity for money and to sustain the job, bottom-line ya gotta buy that advertising to attack your opponent and ends justifies the means and style not substance, etc., --- ALL FOR GAMESMANSHIP even if human lives are at stake and the planet!
I am glad you are not being chauvinistic this time in citing my voting for Stein as my favorite "aunt", by the way. You hit a nerve in your comment on my past thread. That really pissed me off.
You write:
"you have to work with humans. ..."
Let me stop right there.
Yes, HUMANS. But what we have now with this boiled frog corruption in our government -- these people ARE NOT HUMAN. They are subhuman. THEY ARE PSYCHOPATHS BECAUSE THEY ARE SERVING THE PSYCHOPATHIC WILLS of corporations.
Okay, now you piss me off, again, al when you write:
"if you are unwilling to demand democracy, and struggle for that evolutionary step, then you either calmly choose your lesser evil, or waste your vote on an unelectable person who would be useless if elected."
WHO WOULD BE USELESS IF ELECTED? Someone speaking to the heart of darkness -- the astonishing level of amorality in this country? Someone addressing the needs of the people? Someone who actually joined up and followed the laws of this country to enter the race and did the homework and the legwork?
90 million people didn't vote while we had pro-active choices who could have received our citizen mandate? How many people voted and held their noses for Obama while there were other decent choices among the roster of candidates. And those nose-holders decided that the really decent candidates should not be backed because the game was rigged and were willing to abide a rigged game and had no trust in their fellow citizens to do the self-respecting thing and vote for a candidate WHO ACTUALLY RESPECTED THEM AND THEIR NEEDS AND WAS WILLING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR DOING THEIR JOB!
Okay, al, and now you kick back with this comment:
"my own choice was 'a pox on your house' and various foreign addresses. not a social solution, but at least my taxes don't fund napalm, uranium shells and drone bombs."
So, al, you are playing the "ain't it awful" game and when there was a viable solution presented to NOT REWARD the sub-human leaders, you advise voting for the lesser evil sub-human one and cursing the whole country???????
Jill Stein played the game and was ignored by corporate media which kept her platform from the people -- the 90 million who didn't vote -- many. But she did get through thanks to some of us passing her message on. And instead of people recognizing an OPPORTUNITY she is spat upon -- mind you she played the game and also risked arrest and got arrested three times at the end of the campaign in acts of civil disobedience -- BUT THAT IS STILL NOT ENUF TO IMPRESS YOU OR THE TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL WILLING TO ENABLE THE PATRIARCHY and ignore an opportunity for a paradigm shift to humanism.
Yeah, go after the messengers who are trying to create a solution. And call us unrealistic and too goody too shoes. As the country and the planet spirals downward.
Maybe it is about latent misogyny in our culture that won't embrace those espousing humanism not patriarchy?
best, libby
BUT THEY AREN'T. And now WE as "responsible" -- able to RESPOND citizens -- must RESPOND to this dire situation to fix a democracy whereby our representatives have MUTINIED and opted to turn over our constitutional power to the oligarchs. For whatever reason the mutiny against doing their jobs of representing ALL of the people occurred -- whether they were bribed by lobbyists, blackmailed by an avaricious corporate media on behalf of lobbyists (and media can punish a brave politician in a New York second) or the invasion of privacy that makes everyone vulnerable, or simply our congresspeople and administration and judges slid into corrupt cronyism -- everybody's doing it -- selling out integrity for money and to sustain the job, bottom-line ya gotta buy that advertising to attack your opponent and ends justifies the means and style not substance, etc., --- ALL FOR GAMESMANSHIP even if human lives are at stake and the planet!
I am glad you are not being chauvinistic this time in citing my voting for Stein as my favorite "aunt", by the way. You hit a nerve in your comment on my past thread. That really pissed me off.
You write:
"you have to work with humans. ..."
Let me stop right there.
Yes, HUMANS. But what we have now with this boiled frog corruption in our government -- these people ARE NOT HUMAN. They are subhuman. THEY ARE PSYCHOPATHS BECAUSE THEY ARE SERVING THE PSYCHOPATHIC WILLS of corporations.
Okay, now you piss me off, again, al when you write:
"if you are unwilling to demand democracy, and struggle for that evolutionary step, then you either calmly choose your lesser evil, or waste your vote on an unelectable person who would be useless if elected."
WHO WOULD BE USELESS IF ELECTED? Someone speaking to the heart of darkness -- the astonishing level of amorality in this country? Someone addressing the needs of the people? Someone who actually joined up and followed the laws of this country to enter the race and did the homework and the legwork?
90 million people didn't vote while we had pro-active choices who could have received our citizen mandate? How many people voted and held their noses for Obama while there were other decent choices among the roster of candidates. And those nose-holders decided that the really decent candidates should not be backed because the game was rigged and were willing to abide a rigged game and had no trust in their fellow citizens to do the self-respecting thing and vote for a candidate WHO ACTUALLY RESPECTED THEM AND THEIR NEEDS AND WAS WILLING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR DOING THEIR JOB!
Okay, al, and now you kick back with this comment:
"my own choice was 'a pox on your house' and various foreign addresses. not a social solution, but at least my taxes don't fund napalm, uranium shells and drone bombs."
So, al, you are playing the "ain't it awful" game and when there was a viable solution presented to NOT REWARD the sub-human leaders, you advise voting for the lesser evil sub-human one and cursing the whole country???????
Jill Stein played the game and was ignored by corporate media which kept her platform from the people -- the 90 million who didn't vote -- many. But she did get through thanks to some of us passing her message on. And instead of people recognizing an OPPORTUNITY she is spat upon -- mind you she played the game and also risked arrest and got arrested three times at the end of the campaign in acts of civil disobedience -- BUT THAT IS STILL NOT ENUF TO IMPRESS YOU OR THE TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL WILLING TO ENABLE THE PATRIARCHY and ignore an opportunity for a paradigm shift to humanism.
Yeah, go after the messengers who are trying to create a solution. And call us unrealistic and too goody too shoes. As the country and the planet spirals downward.
Maybe it is about latent misogyny in our culture that won't embrace those espousing humanism not patriarchy?
best, libby
TL, another brilliant and eloquent statement:
"To the contrary, I reject the idea of accepting a little bit of evil for a greater good as morally-bankrupt rationalizations that, in fact, interrupt that which makes us human. It is dissonance that is only able to take place by rejecting our human values."
BRAVO AND THANK YOU!!!
best, libby
"To the contrary, I reject the idea of accepting a little bit of evil for a greater good as morally-bankrupt rationalizations that, in fact, interrupt that which makes us human. It is dissonance that is only able to take place by rejecting our human values."
BRAVO AND THANK YOU!!!
best, libby
Alan, so appreciate your spirit and sensibility!!!!
You write:
Obama's legacy: "I have a drone..." Ouch!
You know, Alan, when you start playing with the "drone" for "dream" pun it gets really depressing. "To drone the impossible drone", "drones of my fathers" -- corporate and military I'd say for Obama ... etc. "I'm droning of [on] a White Christmas" ...
You write:
"Well, I did my part in this election, voting for peace and the environment, not that it is likely to do any good. What gobsmacks me is that after years of campaigning, billions of dollars of campaign propaganda, and millions of articles, blog posts, talk shows etc., in the end... everything remains the same, and all that came before goes straight down the memory hole. Certainly one of the greatest runarounds in history, the perfect virtual democracy. Hats off, corporate dictatorship! In the meantime, all hail the great Obama, whose drones are coming soon to a town near you!"
We as a citizenry, the majority of us, blew that every 4 years spot of leverage we have. We squandered it collectively because too many of us have deep-frozen our consciences and are so cynical and "pragmatic" a lot due to the ministry of the corporate-run media and its branding and brainwashing and willing to "take care of our little brains"!
We actually had a choice. Third parties candidates in spite of enormous odds were seriously on the ballots across the country. And what did the large lemming section of the public do? Ignored or disdained them or never even heard about 'em.
Things will become even more urgent and dire and distracting in America and take us even farther away from the truly IMPORTANT AND CRITICAL THINGS. We chose this time around not to work together, too many of us.
On the other hand, there is a movement. There are pro-humanism people pushing hard and bravely against the bullshit and the corruption and that is something to celebrate and acknowledge.
And Alan, there were some of us who were pro-active and did not collude with evil. Maybe we didn't save the country, but we acted in respect of our own morality and our spirituality. We honored our hearts and souls!
best, libby
You write:
Obama's legacy: "I have a drone..." Ouch!
You know, Alan, when you start playing with the "drone" for "dream" pun it gets really depressing. "To drone the impossible drone", "drones of my fathers" -- corporate and military I'd say for Obama ... etc. "I'm droning of [on] a White Christmas" ...
You write:
"Well, I did my part in this election, voting for peace and the environment, not that it is likely to do any good. What gobsmacks me is that after years of campaigning, billions of dollars of campaign propaganda, and millions of articles, blog posts, talk shows etc., in the end... everything remains the same, and all that came before goes straight down the memory hole. Certainly one of the greatest runarounds in history, the perfect virtual democracy. Hats off, corporate dictatorship! In the meantime, all hail the great Obama, whose drones are coming soon to a town near you!"
We as a citizenry, the majority of us, blew that every 4 years spot of leverage we have. We squandered it collectively because too many of us have deep-frozen our consciences and are so cynical and "pragmatic" a lot due to the ministry of the corporate-run media and its branding and brainwashing and willing to "take care of our little brains"!
We actually had a choice. Third parties candidates in spite of enormous odds were seriously on the ballots across the country. And what did the large lemming section of the public do? Ignored or disdained them or never even heard about 'em.
Things will become even more urgent and dire and distracting in America and take us even farther away from the truly IMPORTANT AND CRITICAL THINGS. We chose this time around not to work together, too many of us.
On the other hand, there is a movement. There are pro-humanism people pushing hard and bravely against the bullshit and the corruption and that is something to celebrate and acknowledge.
And Alan, there were some of us who were pro-active and did not collude with evil. Maybe we didn't save the country, but we acted in respect of our own morality and our spirituality. We honored our hearts and souls!
best, libby
I wish I could continue right now responding to the rich comments! again, thanks and I'll be back later! best, libby
There is an extremely bitter but very astute analysis of how Obama and his 1% backers totally scammed suckers like Frank Apisa, Mr. Wolfman and Koshersalaami and the millions of others into panicking to vote for him in this recent total fraud masquerading as an election. It can be found at http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/09/by-their-fruits-ye-shall-know-them/ and it clearly pinpoints how the financial puppet masters of the nation and a good deal of the rest of the world are radically screwing the world's population and will continue to do so unless the vicious effects begin to stir up whatever the hell intellect remains in humanity starts to comprehend how they are being royally raped and to react with sufficient counterforce to stop these monstrous idiots from destroying the planet and most living things on it. There is very little if any time left and I cannot see anything sufficiently dynamic and effective to stop this race to human suicide but perhaps there is still a very small chance. I hope so, but it probably will be violent and I do not relish that either.
There is an extremely bitter but very astute analysis of how Obama and his 1% backers totally scammed suckers like Frank Apisa, Mr. Wolfman and Koshersalaami and the millions of others into panicking to vote for him in this recent total fraud masquerading as an election.
I suppose for some people, Jan, the only way to characterize anyone who disagree with them is to call them suckers or to insult their intelligence, their dedication, their patriotism, and their humanity.
All I can do is to pity people like that. They must be very insecure to have to view the differences in such a dispirited and self-congratulatory way.
In any case, I have not been scammed…I am not a sucker…and I seriously doubt that Jonathan and Kosh are either. We simply disagree with the solutions you and some of the others here offer for the problems we all see. I did not vote for Barack Obama as the result of being scammed…I did it because I saw it as the better alternative…and I am both happy and proud that I did.
Pissing and moaning…and greatly exaggerating the conditions and direction of the country are not helping to solve these problems. Letting Romney win and allowing the conservatives who control the Republican party greater power over the course we are traveling would not have helped solve these problems. In fact, the former makes things worse…the latter would have made things much, much worse.
Said another say, Jan: You ought really to try to become part of the solution rather than remain a significant part of the problem.
I suppose for some people, Jan, the only way to characterize anyone who disagree with them is to call them suckers or to insult their intelligence, their dedication, their patriotism, and their humanity.
All I can do is to pity people like that. They must be very insecure to have to view the differences in such a dispirited and self-congratulatory way.
In any case, I have not been scammed…I am not a sucker…and I seriously doubt that Jonathan and Kosh are either. We simply disagree with the solutions you and some of the others here offer for the problems we all see. I did not vote for Barack Obama as the result of being scammed…I did it because I saw it as the better alternative…and I am both happy and proud that I did.
Pissing and moaning…and greatly exaggerating the conditions and direction of the country are not helping to solve these problems. Letting Romney win and allowing the conservatives who control the Republican party greater power over the course we are traveling would not have helped solve these problems. In fact, the former makes things worse…the latter would have made things much, much worse.
Said another say, Jan: You ought really to try to become part of the solution rather than remain a significant part of the problem.
Have you read the article, Frank? There is no exaggeration, merely a statement of facts. Or are you so convinced of your point of view that no facts can make any difference whatsoever?
Read the article, Frank. It's worth your time.
Read the article, Frank. It's worth your time.
I did read that silly screed, Jan...and although it must have lots of appeal to individuals like you, it provoked a despairing laughter in me...not unlike the despairing laughter I sometimes get when listening to commentators on FOX News.
How sad it is that some people actually consider that "facts" rather than the "pick and choose" partisanship that it is.
As I said earlier to you...some people will always characterize differences as faults in those with whom they differ. Others can see that differences...even significant differences...are a part of logical considerations of complex problems.
It is my considered opinion that Obama did pretty much what he had to do to survive during the last four years. He made some choices I wish he did not make...but I can easily see reasons for those choices. I hope he will be more steadfast this term...I think he chances of success with stronger tactics will work better, but we will see. The conservatives are determined to undermine almost everything Obama does...just as the fringe left is determined to derogate almost everything Obama does.
As I have said many time...perhaps Democracy does not work. But whether it does or doesn't...it certainly seems NOT to be working here. We have become ungovernable...first by the intransigence and pigheadedness of the extreme right, but more and more now by those same qualities in the extreme left. I can only hope that both extremes come to their senses and help make it easier to steer this ship.
How sad it is that some people actually consider that "facts" rather than the "pick and choose" partisanship that it is.
As I said earlier to you...some people will always characterize differences as faults in those with whom they differ. Others can see that differences...even significant differences...are a part of logical considerations of complex problems.
It is my considered opinion that Obama did pretty much what he had to do to survive during the last four years. He made some choices I wish he did not make...but I can easily see reasons for those choices. I hope he will be more steadfast this term...I think he chances of success with stronger tactics will work better, but we will see. The conservatives are determined to undermine almost everything Obama does...just as the fringe left is determined to derogate almost everything Obama does.
As I have said many time...perhaps Democracy does not work. But whether it does or doesn't...it certainly seems NOT to be working here. We have become ungovernable...first by the intransigence and pigheadedness of the extreme right, but more and more now by those same qualities in the extreme left. I can only hope that both extremes come to their senses and help make it easier to steer this ship.
There is, Frank, in your reply, an open assumption that all parties are acting to the best interests of the electorate to their understanding and the frustrations of moving towards decent government are merely those of politicians of integrity with genuinely held conflicting beliefs. But politicians are inherently tied to remaining in office and it is openly evident that their beliefs towards this goal are determined, not by pleasing the electorate but by pleasing those who have the financial means to support and invigorate their campaigns. Money has so corrupted the political process that candidates are no longer responsive to the policies endorsed by the voters. Surveys have clearly indicated this. And if you believe otherwise then you are sadly mistaken. Proper political activity is no longer viable within the context of the formal political system.
There is, Frank, in your reply, an open assumption that all parties are acting to the best interests of the electorate to their understanding and the frustrations of moving towards decent government are merely those of politicians of integrity with genuinely held conflicting beliefs.
There is no such reasonable assumption to be made, Jan. You simply are asserting this for convenience of your argument to follow. The most you can say is that I have (not even here) that neither is “evil.” Not for one second do I suppose any politician is acting in the expressed interests of the electorate…since it is absolutely impossible to act in the interests of “the electorate” because “the electorate” is diametrically opposed on dozens of essential ingredients of social and general interaction.
But politicians are inherently tied to remaining in office and it is openly evident that their beliefs towards this goal are determined, not by pleasing the electorate but by pleasing those who have the financial means to support and invigorate their campaigns. Money has so corrupted the political process that candidates are no longer responsive to the policies endorsed by the voters. Surveys have clearly indicated this. And if you believe otherwise then you are sadly mistaken.
I do not “believe” otherwise…and I am not “sadly mistaken.” I think you have the general situation pretty much in order. We do not disagree on the problem, Jan…I have tried to tell you this on several occasions, but you refuse to accept that to be the case. Where we do disagree is how we, as citizens, ought to react…what best to do in the interests of making things better in our country and the world.
Proper political activity is no longer viable within the context of the formal political system.
I probably agree with that also, but remember, I also think there is a good possibility that “democracy” simply does not work. Perhaps it is my Roman heritage. When Rome got screwed up as a Republic…the people demanded a dictator to straighten things out. They limited the term of office of the dictator, but we all know where that went.
Thank you for discussing this with me in a reasonable and courteous way, Jan. I suspect we will never truly reach accommodation...but that is not unusual. The entire country (and humankind in general) seems unable to do that. In the words of Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"
There is no such reasonable assumption to be made, Jan. You simply are asserting this for convenience of your argument to follow. The most you can say is that I have (not even here) that neither is “evil.” Not for one second do I suppose any politician is acting in the expressed interests of the electorate…since it is absolutely impossible to act in the interests of “the electorate” because “the electorate” is diametrically opposed on dozens of essential ingredients of social and general interaction.
But politicians are inherently tied to remaining in office and it is openly evident that their beliefs towards this goal are determined, not by pleasing the electorate but by pleasing those who have the financial means to support and invigorate their campaigns. Money has so corrupted the political process that candidates are no longer responsive to the policies endorsed by the voters. Surveys have clearly indicated this. And if you believe otherwise then you are sadly mistaken.
I do not “believe” otherwise…and I am not “sadly mistaken.” I think you have the general situation pretty much in order. We do not disagree on the problem, Jan…I have tried to tell you this on several occasions, but you refuse to accept that to be the case. Where we do disagree is how we, as citizens, ought to react…what best to do in the interests of making things better in our country and the world.
Proper political activity is no longer viable within the context of the formal political system.
I probably agree with that also, but remember, I also think there is a good possibility that “democracy” simply does not work. Perhaps it is my Roman heritage. When Rome got screwed up as a Republic…the people demanded a dictator to straighten things out. They limited the term of office of the dictator, but we all know where that went.
Thank you for discussing this with me in a reasonable and courteous way, Jan. I suspect we will never truly reach accommodation...but that is not unusual. The entire country (and humankind in general) seems unable to do that. In the words of Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"
Frank, I appreciate this civil discussion. We are probably both deeply concerned about the state of the country and the world. It seems to be in the hands of people who have little concern for the basic needs of a highly variegated complex of needs and desires but you are wrong about the general views in specific areas having no discernible majority opinions. Surveys have repeatedly indicated that there are large majorities well aware that the USA needs to stop intimidating the rest of the world with its overloaded killing power and dispatching murderous gangs of thugs to wipe out badly identified enemies. It speaks continuously of freedom and democracy and repeatedly undermines popular leaders who are diverting domestic power to sustain the needs of their populace instead of supporting plutocratic adherents to US corporate interests. Global warming has fnally pushed its nose into the popular consciousness and the response to that major concern is negligible by the elected government which is asking for disaster. The response of NY City and East coast governments to the latest hurricane is pitiful and that is just the first beginning of huge untended disasters to come. This is not just bad government, it is viciously idiotically incompetent and that is my problem with Obama. As a New Jersey resident I cannot see how you can find that even faintly tolerable.
When I accused you of being suckered, that was not an insult, it was a diagnosis that needs immediate and strong remedy.
When I accused you of being suckered, that was not an insult, it was a diagnosis that needs immediate and strong remedy.
When I accused you of being suckered, that was not an insult, it was a diagnosis that needs immediate and strong remedy.
Yeah, Jan...it was an insult...and I suspect you know that. In fact, this quote up above was an insult also...one you intended.
Sorry you have to keep doing that, but you must have your reasons. If you want to discuss this issue without the insults, please do so. I will respond.
Yeah, Jan...it was an insult...and I suspect you know that. In fact, this quote up above was an insult also...one you intended.
Sorry you have to keep doing that, but you must have your reasons. If you want to discuss this issue without the insults, please do so. I will respond.
No comments:
Post a Comment