Chris Floyd has written a compelling article responding to the anger of Robert Parry (revered liberal journalist who had broken important stories involving the Iran-contra scandal, the history of Bush family crimes, American betrayals of Central America, etc.) at liberals who are balking at voting Democratic out of conscience this November.
An important and highly painful issue for some of us voting in this upcoming election.
Chris Floyd writes:
Parry believes he is preaching a tough, gritty doctrine of "moral ambiguity." What he is in fact advocating is the bleakest moral nihilism. To Parry, the structure of American power -- the corrupt, corporatized, militarized system built and sustained by both major parties -- cannot be challenged. Not even passively, not even internally, for Parry scorns those who simply refuse to vote almost as harshly as those who commit the unpardonable sin: voting for a third party. No, if you do not take an active role in supporting this brutal engine of war and injustice by voting for a Democrat, then it is you who are immoral. You must support this system. It is the only moral choice. What’s more, to be truly moral, to acquit yourself of the charge of vanity and frivolity, to escape complicity in government crimes, you must support the Democrat.
Floyd inventories the present administration against Parry’s stance:
If the Democratic president orders the "extrajudicial" murder of American citizens, you must support him.If he chairs death squad meetings in the White House every week, checking off names of men to be murdered without charge or trial, you must support him.If he commits mass murder with robot drones on defenseless villages around the world, you must support him.If he imprisons and prosecutes whistleblowers and investigative journalists more than any other president in history, you must support him.If he cages and abuses and tortures a young soldier who sought only to stop atrocities and save the nation’s honor, you must support him.If he "surges" a pointless war of aggression and occupation in a ravaged land and expands that war into the territory of a supposed ally, you must support him.If he sends troops and special ops and drones and assassins into country after country, fomenting wars, bankrolling militias, and engineering coups, you must support him.If he throws open the nation's coastal waters to rampant drilling by the profiteers who are devouring and despoiling the earth, you must support him.If he declares his eagerness to do what no Republican president has ever dared to do -- slash Social Security and Medicare -- you must support him. For Robert Parry, blinded by the red mist of partisanship, there is literally nothing -- nothing -- that a Democratic candidate can do to forfeit the support of "the left." He can even kill a 16-year-old American boy -- kill him, rip him to shreds with a missile fired by a coddled coward thousands of miles away -- and you must support him. And, again, if you do not support him, if you do not support all this, then you are the problem. You are enabling evil.
THEN YOU ARE THE PROBLEM? YOU ARE ENABLING EVIL?
We seem back to the “lesser evil” rationalization of all good Democrats. But “lesser evil” seems to have jumped the proverbial shark for some of us tragically.
Floyd goes on:
Given this wildly askew moral compass, what would Parry make of that great American refusenik, Henry David Thoreau, who went to jail rather than pay taxes to support a deadly militarist adventure in Mexico and the government-sanctioned system of slavery, and whose thoughts on civil disobedience and disengagement with evil inspired Tolstoy and Gandhi? Thoreau said: “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” What would Parry say to that? “Enough of your vain moral posturing, Thoreau. Forget the Mexican War; get out there and support James K. Polk. He’s a Democrat, for god’s sake! Do you want someone worse to get in there? It’s a disgrace not to associate yourself with this government!”
Floyd explains that Parry has accused the left of failing the Democratic Party in the elections of 1968, 1980 and 2000. In these crucial years the Democratic Party lost control of the White House.
In 1968 Floyd blames LBJ primarily not the leftists:
What’s more, the real abandonment of the party that year came not from disaffected leftists, but from the Democrat’s own leader: LBJ, who simply dumped the party, and the presidency, out of hurt feelings at being challenged in the primaries. He didn’t stand up and fight for his social programs and Civil Rights measures, he didn’t end the war (which Parry tells us he was “seriously” contemplating – and which he could have done with a snap of his fingers).
Nor did he give more than the most tepid support to Humphrey until the very end of the campaign, when he knew it was too late. He just quit and walked away, with the nation reeling in turmoil from the war he had escalated, and from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. If any one person could be said to have given us Richard Nixon, it was LBJ.
Regarding Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980, Floyd has this to say:
Parry also seems to think that if Jimmy Carter had not been “abandoned” by “leftists" in 1980, in his second term he would have not kept supporting the Afghan religious extremists he himself had loosed on the Soviets (to the world’s everlasting betterment, as we see each day around us).
Or that Carter would not have continued supporting murderous Latin American dictatorships and surrogate wars in Africa as he had done throughout his term. Or that he wouldn’t have continued the massive arms build-up he had launched, or continued saber-rattling at the Soviets, or proclaiming the American right to launch pre-emptive war if anyone threatened the vicious tyrants in the Middle East who supplied us with oil. And so on and on.....
Carter lost primarily because of a poor economy (not helped by his avowedly conservative economic policies), his own tepid ineptitude, and because of the Iran hostage crisis -- which occurred after his boneheaded mismanagement of the American reaction to the Iranian revolution, including his decision to allow the ousted Shah into the United States, and other measures which aided the revolution’s most radical elements and undercut the secular moderates at every turn. (A practice that has been faithfully followed by every American president since.)
When it comes to the election of 2000, Floyd asserts “Gore actually won that election, of course, which moots Parry’s point about leftist lethargy robbing worthy Dems of the big brass ring.” It was Gore and the Democratic Party that did not pursue a constitutional challenge that could have been made to Congress.
Floyd also quotes Gore’s distant cousin, Gore Vidal, from The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2001:
“In order to be re-elected in 1996, the Clinton-Gore administration adopted a series of right-wing Republican, even protofascist, programs, with lots more prisons, death penalties, harassment of the poor, cries of terrorism, and implicitly, control by government over the citizenry.”
Floyd goes on:
Gore’s tenure at the top also saw the stripping of the financial controls on high finance – a surrender of Democratic (not to mention democratic) principles that ushered in the casino royale that led to the current – and increasingly permanent – economic crisis.
And there was also the little matter of the deaths of at least 500,000 children from the US-UK sanctions on Iraq. (And half a million – a vast mountain of child corpses – is just what the Clinton-Gore administration were happy to admit to on national television, to show how tough and savvy they were. The real figure is certainly much higher.)
Would Gore have launched the war against Iraq the way Bush did? We certainly assume not. Though the military industrial security complex seems an unstoppable ever devastating and/or traumatizing monster. Gore did pick Joe Lieberman as his Vice Presidential running mate who is a rampant war-mongerer. Gore’s own senator father was against the Viet Nam war which ended his political career but young Al Gore aligned himself, according to Floyd, with the militarist wing of the Democratic party during his years in office.
Floyd admits to heinous Republican atrocities:
None of this is to exonerate the Republicans of the monstrous crimes they have most assuredly committed –and/or continued – during their turns at the top of the bipartisan helter-skelter. It is simply to note what the historical record clearly shows: first, that lack of ‘leftist’ support did not cost the Democrats the presidency in any of these years. And second, that the Democrats’ own crimes and atrocities and follies are part and parcel of a system of corporatist/militarist rule that has become so abominable that no one can without disgrace be associated with it. To see this clearly and say it plainly is not “vanity” or “perfectionism.” It is reality. And to deny this, distort it, and denounce those who no longer wish to legitimize it with their votes is not a courageous grappling with “moral ambiguity;” it is a self-infliction of moral blindness.
Floyd concludes:
Yes, I know the United States in 2012 is not the USSR or Hitler’s Germany. And Parry would doubtless say, “Of course they [political activists] were right to disassociate themselves from such monstrous systems.” But where do you draw the line? How much evil is acceptable? Is there a certain number of victims that a system must reach before one is allowed to disengage from it honorably and morally? To murder six million in death camps or millions in purges is obviously unacceptable; but to kill 500,000 children – is that OK? A million innocent people in a war of aggression – is that beyond the pale? Or can you work with that, can you accommodate that, should you swallow these mountains of dead, washing them down with a big swig of moral ambiguity?
Romney might well prove to be a “worse” president than Obama. (Although Parry does not address the realpolitik argument that a Romney victory would likely wake the ‘left’ from its slumber and cause it to oppose heinous crimes and vicious policies – aggressive war, murder programs, safety net slashing – that it is now happily supporting because a Democrat is doing them.) But that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not one gives legitimacy and justification to a brutal and unjust system by actively supporting and empowering it – and thus perpetuating its bipartisan evils far into the future.
I am still reeling from Obama’s Department of Justice giving Goldman Sachs a free pass on all of its vast financial criminality last Thursday in spite of a Senate report of over 600 pages serving up serious evidence to the contrary. A Senate committee was actually fighting on behalf of the citizens rights against the bank cabal and Eric Holder snatched financial criminality from the jaws of justice. Something I am sure the Romney administration would have done, also.
I am also reeling from the alignment of covert CIA operations in Syria with Al Qaeda and other fundamentalist jihadist mercenary terrorists for the sake of overthrowing the Assad government (ends justifies the means military group-think?), setting up thousands and thousands of innocent citizens to be killed in the crossfire and as of now displacing 2.5 million Syrians. Think of it. Faux-humanitarian intervention to be asserted late in the game via UN and media manipulation when the dirty work of covertly foreign supported shock and awe terrorism has made disaster capitalism and occupation easy for pirate imperialists.
I am voting for third party Green presidential candidate Jill Stein. I think both corporate-captured legacy parties are profoundly amoral in terms of both domestic and foreign policy and we as citizens need to stand up to them. I side with Chris Floyd on this one, not Robert Parry.
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The "Obama is Jesus" crowd is just like the "Bush is Jesus" crowd was. As long as you believe you got Jesus in office you can sleep well at night. It's all about the lies we want to tell ourselves, to pretend hope where there is none.
Btw, Kennedy was assassinated in '68. That might have had something to do with Nixon getting into office.
Btw, Kennedy was assassinated in '68. That might have had something to do with Nixon getting into office.
Libby
I favor the green "Grass Roots" of both T-Party and Occupy
The real I ty to me is that the grass roots will only grow again when the federal government and it's crony capitalist owners come grinding to a halt. To that end I will vote Romney, not because I like him, but in the interest of turning the current rascals out and putting in a less experienced, more "Gritty" ( as in sand in the gearbox") set.
I prefer grinding to a halt and the possibility of local solutions to the explosion of civil war. Each must do as conscience dictates- If Thoreau didn't say that, he probably said something very much like it.
I favor the green "Grass Roots" of both T-Party and Occupy
The real I ty to me is that the grass roots will only grow again when the federal government and it's crony capitalist owners come grinding to a halt. To that end I will vote Romney, not because I like him, but in the interest of turning the current rascals out and putting in a less experienced, more "Gritty" ( as in sand in the gearbox") set.
I prefer grinding to a halt and the possibility of local solutions to the explosion of civil war. Each must do as conscience dictates- If Thoreau didn't say that, he probably said something very much like it.
Libby, I am wishing all the best to Jill Stein, seems to me such a hard work, to even run when such interests are in the way. And I want to thank you one more, for sharing these works with all of us. As I have told you, I have studied history, and these kind of articles are of the kind that we as students had to analyze for our exams. And to me this is one of the strongest issues...
'...But where do you draw the line? How much evil is acceptable? ..'
I think when one has to deal with humans, must first be human and there is a strong need of objectivity and civilized thinking on the absolute need of war to end, in all of its forms.
So rated.
'...But where do you draw the line? How much evil is acceptable? ..'
I think when one has to deal with humans, must first be human and there is a strong need of objectivity and civilized thinking on the absolute need of war to end, in all of its forms.
So rated.
An excellent post -- rated!
In spite of a few principled democrats in lower-level offices, the Democratic Party as a whole is a cesspool of hypocrisy and betrayal of its base. As long as this base keeps on supporting the Party through all these betrayals, clever career opportunists like Obama have no reason to change their rightward drift. That's what support for the national Democratic leadership will guarantee.
The effect of the Paul Ryan entry is that Obama can move even further to the right -- as long as he's not quite as extreme as Ryan, there will be a chorus singing, "we must support Obama, because he's not as bad as Romney/Ryan."
In spite of a few principled democrats in lower-level offices, the Democratic Party as a whole is a cesspool of hypocrisy and betrayal of its base. As long as this base keeps on supporting the Party through all these betrayals, clever career opportunists like Obama have no reason to change their rightward drift. That's what support for the national Democratic leadership will guarantee.
The effect of the Paul Ryan entry is that Obama can move even further to the right -- as long as he's not quite as extreme as Ryan, there will be a chorus singing, "we must support Obama, because he's not as bad as Romney/Ryan."
A Romney-Ryan Supreme Court will poison my 22 yr old son's life for generations. My choice is clear-as-a-bell for Obama.
r.
r.
The amorality of political leadership of both major parties over the last fifty years of American History has been relentless. It's amazing that anyone bothers to vote, but that's the trick: if only true believers and opportunists vote their own interests, they win and we lose.
Another drawn out plea to accept the lie that we should only choose between those preselected for us by the corporations so that they can pull the same trick on us in another four years like they do every time.
As long as we continue accepting this lie then they will continue using it and the choice will be worse every four years.
Breaking corporate control and exposing this lie is as important as defeating Romney who should be easy to beat; even with the lie!
As long as we continue accepting this lie then they will continue using it and the choice will be worse every four years.
Breaking corporate control and exposing this lie is as important as defeating Romney who should be easy to beat; even with the lie!
I think if we are to make any progress with making our government more humane, intelligent, and effective, we will have to start by getting rid of every member of the Tea Party caucus. After that is accomplished, we can start picking away at the rest of the scumbags.
I feel some degree of responsibility for those many deaths because I voted for this President. Parry can hate on me all he wants his anger at me is his problem, not mine. I must vote my conscience and having our kids kill other people is one thing I just can't support. Everything in me says no.
As far as going after SS & Medicare we're all aware that after Obama is re-elected he's going after that. A glance at a simple pie chart makes that clear, it's the only piece of the pie left they can go after. Well there is military spending but they're not going to cut that. There aren't enough physician and hospital groups that are publicly traded. Big Pharma and DME (durable medical equipment) suppliers are stupid because they're going to lose a huge chunk of the pie when Medicare gets cut. But it's that or the defense industry and that's the big enchilada. It is reasonable because he has to first protect the productive members of our society who can pull the economy back up, not those who have outlived their usefulness. It will be one of those hard choices he has to make to protect jobs and our shores, the lesser of two evils to cut funds for the elderly and we always choose the lesser evil.
Hypervigilance from trauma has it's rewards, my mom and I planned well for any crisis. If you study the rich you learn there are many types of baskets to put eggs in, it's always good to plan for some breaking. We're in the process of consolidating our households and should be able to weather it. There is no way to know what will play out, or go under first, in the battle for the last of the pie. In any case there is my cultural heritage and mom and I are both inclined to shrug our shoulders should things go horribly wrong. If we suffer or die it's "Insha Allah." We are old, better we die than children. My attitude baffles my friends but for us that "as God wills it" attitude provides both strength and comfort against fear so we can continue without being paralysed.
It will be heart wrenching to watch formerly middle class elderly people sink into poverty and their families pick up the slack. We have a very large retired population in Idaho because the home dollars went far here and the climate is mild. We have a lot of huge hospitals and medical centers in a small area, it's scary. I guess those who can't make it will be collateral damage. It depresses me thinking about it almost as much as thinking about blown up children so I push it from my mind so I don't sink. It's funny, it just struck me that Insha Allah is the Arabic form of detachment.
Sad thing, we don't see what is before our eyes. Thank you for the post, I know it hurts to write them.
As far as going after SS & Medicare we're all aware that after Obama is re-elected he's going after that. A glance at a simple pie chart makes that clear, it's the only piece of the pie left they can go after. Well there is military spending but they're not going to cut that. There aren't enough physician and hospital groups that are publicly traded. Big Pharma and DME (durable medical equipment) suppliers are stupid because they're going to lose a huge chunk of the pie when Medicare gets cut. But it's that or the defense industry and that's the big enchilada. It is reasonable because he has to first protect the productive members of our society who can pull the economy back up, not those who have outlived their usefulness. It will be one of those hard choices he has to make to protect jobs and our shores, the lesser of two evils to cut funds for the elderly and we always choose the lesser evil.
Hypervigilance from trauma has it's rewards, my mom and I planned well for any crisis. If you study the rich you learn there are many types of baskets to put eggs in, it's always good to plan for some breaking. We're in the process of consolidating our households and should be able to weather it. There is no way to know what will play out, or go under first, in the battle for the last of the pie. In any case there is my cultural heritage and mom and I are both inclined to shrug our shoulders should things go horribly wrong. If we suffer or die it's "Insha Allah." We are old, better we die than children. My attitude baffles my friends but for us that "as God wills it" attitude provides both strength and comfort against fear so we can continue without being paralysed.
It will be heart wrenching to watch formerly middle class elderly people sink into poverty and their families pick up the slack. We have a very large retired population in Idaho because the home dollars went far here and the climate is mild. We have a lot of huge hospitals and medical centers in a small area, it's scary. I guess those who can't make it will be collateral damage. It depresses me thinking about it almost as much as thinking about blown up children so I push it from my mind so I don't sink. It's funny, it just struck me that Insha Allah is the Arabic form of detachment.
Sad thing, we don't see what is before our eyes. Thank you for the post, I know it hurts to write them.
I am really disappointed in Parry, who chaired the Multinational Monitor for many years. I thought he got it - that he understood that pro-corporate government was bad news for democracy. Obviously not - if he can support a staunchly pro-corporate, pro-imperialist, pro-militaristic candidate like Obama. I, too, am voting for Stein.
Frankly I don't care who anyone votes for. But please grant me one favor. Please watch the new movie "2016 Obama's America" first. You may love him. You may hate him. But you don't know him.
CG, I remember meeting RFK at an airport in CT when I was doing volunteer work for the Dem Party way way back when. I liked Gene McCarthy but I thought RFK could win and was a more exciting speaker and inspirer.
So much rationalization and apologizing, Obama sold himself as a brand and we are a land of lost to shallow media ostriches. It is a tragedy for the globe and for our progeny. What blood, sweat and tears went into sustaining democracy throughout its history, uneven at so many times in the past, but the citizen complacency in the face of such horrifying dismantling of democracy and the media collusion with it is brutal. thanks for commenting!
best, libby
So much rationalization and apologizing, Obama sold himself as a brand and we are a land of lost to shallow media ostriches. It is a tragedy for the globe and for our progeny. What blood, sweat and tears went into sustaining democracy throughout its history, uneven at so many times in the past, but the citizen complacency in the face of such horrifying dismantling of democracy and the media collusion with it is brutal. thanks for commenting!
best, libby
Thanks, Rudy.
I won't be voting for Obama. I am sure of that. One shouldn't reward betrayal. Colossal betrayal. To me he is not the lesser evil. Romney/Ryan may seem dangerous, but so is Obama and when are people going to face that. Not soon and not enough apparently.
It is shameless that Obama when turning his back on so many assurances won't even bother to respect us enough to explain the turnaround and explain why he is gutting the constitution as if we won't notice and sure enough most people don't seem to.
Everyone is so cynical. Well, of course it is election year so he will promise things and not deliver them. yadda yadda yadda That should not be a given. What about holding his feet to the fire?
What a dirty dirty dirty business politics is. And becoming dirtier and dirtier. We are an anti-empathy society. Call them "entitlements" and justify not having social programs any more. Who cares about the plight of children, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless, etc. Austerity is preached while the incredible amount of stolen wealth belongs in the bank accounts of a theiving ruling and politically bribing ruling class.
There is an old story about when Thoreau was arrested Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him in jail. Emerson yelled in, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau answered, "Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"
We'll see what happens!
best, libby
I won't be voting for Obama. I am sure of that. One shouldn't reward betrayal. Colossal betrayal. To me he is not the lesser evil. Romney/Ryan may seem dangerous, but so is Obama and when are people going to face that. Not soon and not enough apparently.
It is shameless that Obama when turning his back on so many assurances won't even bother to respect us enough to explain the turnaround and explain why he is gutting the constitution as if we won't notice and sure enough most people don't seem to.
Everyone is so cynical. Well, of course it is election year so he will promise things and not deliver them. yadda yadda yadda That should not be a given. What about holding his feet to the fire?
What a dirty dirty dirty business politics is. And becoming dirtier and dirtier. We are an anti-empathy society. Call them "entitlements" and justify not having social programs any more. Who cares about the plight of children, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless, etc. Austerity is preached while the incredible amount of stolen wealth belongs in the bank accounts of a theiving ruling and politically bribing ruling class.
There is an old story about when Thoreau was arrested Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him in jail. Emerson yelled in, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau answered, "Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"
We'll see what happens!
best, libby
Thanks, Stathi! I know Jill Stein will do good things and will be around to keep on leading no matter what happens in November. Good people working hard together can make a difference.
I agree with you on how important that question is that Floyd is asking:
'...But where do you draw the line? How much evil is acceptable? ..'
All the talk about pragmatism during the health care debate, instead of pushing for universal health care. Why not cover everybody? It would have been a cheaper, fairer and more efficient system, but instead the fat cats who should be the vendors not the "deciders" of who lives and who dies, who gets health care and who doesn't are running the store cuz they bribed big time the pols!
We as US citizens are accessories to murder as far as war is concerned and our terrible passivity about that!
Thanks for commenting!
best, libby
xxxx
I agree with you on how important that question is that Floyd is asking:
'...But where do you draw the line? How much evil is acceptable? ..'
All the talk about pragmatism during the health care debate, instead of pushing for universal health care. Why not cover everybody? It would have been a cheaper, fairer and more efficient system, but instead the fat cats who should be the vendors not the "deciders" of who lives and who dies, who gets health care and who doesn't are running the store cuz they bribed big time the pols!
We as US citizens are accessories to murder as far as war is concerned and our terrible passivity about that!
Thanks for commenting!
best, libby
xxxx
toritto, ABSOLUTELY! thank you. best, libby
Bart, thanks for stopping by! I totally agree on this:
"In spite of a few principled democrats in lower-level offices, the Democratic Party as a whole is a cesspool of hypocrisy and betrayal of its base. As long as this base keeps on supporting the Party through all these betrayals, clever career opportunists like Obama have no reason to change their rightward drift. That's what support for the national Democratic leadership will guarantee."
"The effect of the Paul Ryan entry is that Obama can move even further to the right -- as long as he's not quite as extreme as Ryan, there will be a chorus singing, "we must support Obama, because he's not as bad as Romney/Ryan.""
Yes, I agree, this lesser evil default positioning is so craven and cynical and manipulative and betraying. Clinton played it especially his second term and Obama thinks he can be a Republican in Dem clothing (which is the same wardrobe really now) and cakewalk his way into another term giving lazy lip service to those of the 99% who are still locked in bargaining phase of 5 stages of grief and hoping he will do something to help the citizens he was elected to represent, and at the same time Obama's winking at his corporate BFF's who have backed him and use him as a front man to economically rape and terrorize not only us but the world!
best, libby
"In spite of a few principled democrats in lower-level offices, the Democratic Party as a whole is a cesspool of hypocrisy and betrayal of its base. As long as this base keeps on supporting the Party through all these betrayals, clever career opportunists like Obama have no reason to change their rightward drift. That's what support for the national Democratic leadership will guarantee."
"The effect of the Paul Ryan entry is that Obama can move even further to the right -- as long as he's not quite as extreme as Ryan, there will be a chorus singing, "we must support Obama, because he's not as bad as Romney/Ryan.""
Yes, I agree, this lesser evil default positioning is so craven and cynical and manipulative and betraying. Clinton played it especially his second term and Obama thinks he can be a Republican in Dem clothing (which is the same wardrobe really now) and cakewalk his way into another term giving lazy lip service to those of the 99% who are still locked in bargaining phase of 5 stages of grief and hoping he will do something to help the citizens he was elected to represent, and at the same time Obama's winking at his corporate BFF's who have backed him and use him as a front man to economically rape and terrorize not only us but the world!
best, libby
Jonathan, thanks for commenting and rating! I recognize that serious consideration that haunts all of us re SCOTUS. best, libby
thanks, jmac. the Floyd article I am grateful for since as you point out the Dems have done their own dirty betraying as well as the Republicans! best, libby
Hey, Zachd!
Yes, lies lies lies.
After the Iraq War I thought we had woken up. But the branding by media and the craven Dem party that Obama was the anti-Bush made everyone fall asleep again. Obama has outdone Bush even in droning and warring and gutting the constitution.
Breaking corporate control when 24/7 corporate disinformation pours out of the tv! Formidable doesn't begin to say it!
best, libby
Yes, lies lies lies.
After the Iraq War I thought we had woken up. But the branding by media and the craven Dem party that Obama was the anti-Bush made everyone fall asleep again. Obama has outdone Bush even in droning and warring and gutting the constitution.
Breaking corporate control when 24/7 corporate disinformation pours out of the tv! Formidable doesn't begin to say it!
best, libby
Steven, I think it is the "good people who do nothing" who should be woken up from both parties. Their passivity creates a vacuum for the most radical on the right to take over media and the Republican party. The guilt in this country is not exclusive tragically to a small group of eccentrics. It is a collective pathology. We, the vast majority of us, have lost the ability to respond and to support human decency ... we have abandoned response-ability in other words.
best, libby
best, libby
Bleue,
Thanks for such a thoughtful comment.
Also, thanks for such strong statements:
" I must vote my conscience and having our kids kill other people is one thing I just can't support. Everything in me says no."
This is very poignant:
"It will be heart wrenching to watch formerly middle class elderly people sink into poverty and their families pick up the slack."... "I guess those who can't make it will be collateral damage."
Life has gotten very cheap to the bastards of the universe! Gamesmen and gameswomen rather than statesmen and stateswomen.
Jill Stein believes in people, peace and planet. Who else can you say that who is running for office in the legacy parties?
best, libby
xxxx
Thanks for such a thoughtful comment.
Also, thanks for such strong statements:
" I must vote my conscience and having our kids kill other people is one thing I just can't support. Everything in me says no."
This is very poignant:
"It will be heart wrenching to watch formerly middle class elderly people sink into poverty and their families pick up the slack."... "I guess those who can't make it will be collateral damage."
Life has gotten very cheap to the bastards of the universe! Gamesmen and gameswomen rather than statesmen and stateswomen.
Jill Stein believes in people, peace and planet. Who else can you say that who is running for office in the legacy parties?
best, libby
xxxx
Stuart! Thanks. Yes, Parry has knocked my socks off with his incredibly truth to power disclosures and writing. This troubles me, too. Instead of rallying people to call out a corrupt party there is this incredible learned helplessness that we are stuck with that cesspool as Bart referred to it above! It reminds me, Parry's support, of what Amnesty Intl. is doing lately to collude with the war in Syria. Thank God the Intl Red Cross still isn't playing the lesser of two evils game there! best, libby
Victoria, I will look out for it. Thanks for commenting and mentioning it. best, libby
I can not vote for either the Dems or Repubs. They both have fatal flaws.
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