You Decide: Republican, Democrat, or Other

Brody Mullins, writing in the April 2, 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal, “Business Donors Bypass McCain, Democrats Rake In Cash From Industry,” reports that “both Obama and Clinton have been cleaning McCain's clock among business interests that give mainly to Republicans.

Of seven major industries that have been the most reliable Republican resources, McCain has raised $13.1 million through February, compared with $22.5 million for Obama and $27.1 million for Clinton, the Journal reported.

Now, ask yourself, if the Democrats were the party of the people, if they were truly going to make the corporations serve the American people, would the corporate executives be dumping millions into their campaigns?

No they would not.

Right now, the American people are subservient to the corporations and their puppet politicians in both parties.”

And the Republicans currently? Speaking to the current administration’s impact on ordinary Americans, Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, recently commented in his newsletter. “It is one thing to read dry economic statistics which describe the collapse of the American middle class. It is another thing to understand, in flesh and blood terms, what that means in the lives of ordinary Americans. Yes, since George W. Bush has been in office, 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty, 8 million have lost their health insurance and 3 million have lost their pensions. Yes, in the last seven years median household income for working-age Americans has declined by $2,500. Yes, our country, for the first time since the Great Depression, now has a zero personal savings rate and all across the nation, emergency food shelves are being flooded with working families whose inadequate wages prevent them from feeding their families.”

Can we do better?

We must do better.

How can we do better?

Hopefully you maintain the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will as suggested by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Perhaps, to paraphrase Bill Moyers, you see the world as it is without rose colored glasses and want to try to change it despite what you know.

If so, it is going to be very difficult for you to vote either Democratic or Republican this year unless one of the political parties repudiates its policies and practices of the past decades, a most unlikely scenario. If they do not, you must decide on one of three alternatives.

* Ignore reality; remain passive, and don’t vote at all.

The old plantation mentality, exactly what those in the manor house want you to maintain.

* Ignore reality; vote for whomever you believe is the lesser of two evils.

Maintain current reality trends; put the Democrats in now, the Republicans later. Either way the plutocracy of the corporations and the super rich win at your expense.

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