The impact on America from predatory lending, skyrocketing gas prices, the Iraq War and Palestinian conflicts, “pay or die” health care, no living wage, fossil-fueled climate change, and corporate-managed trade demands solutions like an end to corporate personhood, a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance, an end to corporate welfare, a reclamation of the public airwaves for the people, a limitation on commercialism, the establishment of single-payer health care, an investment in clean energy, an enactment of a Worker’s Bill of Rights, an end to poverty through green jobs, the repeal of the PATRIOT Act and its expansions, the reversal of U.S. foreign policy, and the reform of U.S. elections and more.
The Sunday talk shows were saying Obama would win. George Will said Obama would win with over 370 electoral votes.
You didn’t have to be an ABB voter. You didn’t have to be an “anybody but Bush (McCain)” progressive or liberal when you walk into the voting booth.
You could have thought about what Howard Zinn said and made the switch like Zinn did and voted your conscience.
Look, I frequently lose people because I seem like an arrogant person with false pride (whatever that means). But, I say what I say because I don’t know and neither do you.
You don’t know that Obama will do anything that you think he will do and you don’t know that he won’t support the things that McCain fervently supports.
You don’t know that Obama will bring hope and change, but you do know and have had plenty of time to see what Obama has not had the courage to face and stand up to in this election.
You know his rhetoric has been the only thing remotely progressive or populist. But, what does rhetoric get done in America if no meaningful action results?
Certain talk should portend a certain agenda.
If you don’t know, let me educate you with---“What Do they Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?” and “Between Hope and Reality: An Open Letter to Barack Obama.”
There was another way. And there still is another way. It’s a way that wants what you want more so than what the guy you will be voting for because he has the best chance of winning does.
It may be arrogant to tell people who believe in hope and change and making history that you know better than they do, but it is not arrogant if when doing so you can document your claims. Documentation provides reason for ideological statements such as the ones made above.
Things are the way they have been largely because Americans don’t have high expectations, Americans (especially youth) are cynical (much like George Carlin was), and Americans concede too much power to those who would rather serve the corporation.
I'm on the side of the people who support Obama. I want change but I become deeply frustrated with Obama supporters because they support him based on his personality and not because he has policies for change.
If we are going to get any change or sustain any hope, we are going to have to be the change we want to see. And we are going to have to decide not to wait. And we'll have to stop trying to get things done that only seem "realistic."
Was it realistic that America would not be ruled by Britain? Was it realistic that women would have right to vote? Poor white men would have the right to own property? Black men would have the rights afforded to all white men?
