Jefferson also wrote "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a clergy-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest of ignorance of which their civil as well as their religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
That is still true, and just as relevant today as it was in the 1700s.
Obama is doing what he thinks is politically expedient, but it only reveals how willing he is to cater to right-wing conservative "religious" forces and corporate forces that continue to gain more and more power. Furthermore, Obama's invoking Ronald Reagan's name and his endorsement of the latest FISA legislation giving retroactive immunity for telecoms that engaged in illegal electronic surveillance only reveal that he is like many other politicians. But, even though he is really not the agent for the real and lasting change that we need, he will certainly do as the best alternative for U. S. president in the meantime, until the new reformation.
That reformation should also include reform of the media, because during the last elections we saw how the commercial news media bottom-feeds on dirty sensationalism and jumps all over stories about conflict and "punching and counter-punching." And that's all we hear about from the commercial media, for the most part. They tend not to serve as ethical journalists to help the public be fully informed on the platforms and issues. Instead, they stoop to the level of tabloid journalism and cover the mud-slinging, because they think that's what sells. And sadly, it does, so that what we heard about during the battle for power. We didn't hear much about principles and important things. We heard about what each side said that was offensive to the other side. Sadly, the media does not keep politicians honest, they merely encourage them to be offensive.
There certainly was a whole lot of mud slinging from malicious right-wing Neo-Conservatives. They resorted to slanderous, deceptive half-truths and outright lies against Obama, because they typically believe the best defense is a strong offense.
For example, they accused Obama of wanting to "redistribute the wealth by taking money out of your pocket and giving it to someone else." That astounded me, because politicians influenced by Reaganism and Bushism have been redistributing the wealth of the nation to the wealthiest few for the last 30 years, and especially during the eight years of the Bush presidency. The truth is that Obama merely seeks fair, equitable economic policies that are in the interests of all the people.
They also accused Obama of "associating with terrorists," and of being anti-American. In fact, the right-wing Neo-Conservatives who claim to be Christians were so deceptive that they spread malicious lies about Obama on the Internet, some of which went so far as to claim that Obama was "an Arab," and that his birth and rise to prominence is part of a conspiratorial plot to create a "one world government of the Antichrist." They do not realize that the Bush Regime was the closest thing we've ever had to a one-world government, dominated by huge, profit-hungry multi-national American corporations and the U.S. Religious Military-Industrial Complex, that will apparently stoop to anything to try to rule the world in the name of religion and patriotism.
That was evident in Republican attack ads against Democrats in the recent election campaigns, when it was typical for Republicans to slander and denigrate Democrats by claiming that they would "raise taxes and take away jobs." But even worse tactics were stooped to by desperate Republicans, which became evident to some alert people. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed in September 2008 that there were many scams perpetrated by Republicans, particularly in the "battleground" or "swing" states, to prevent Democrats from being able to vote. The Republicans have exploited and taken advantage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was passed in 2000 by George W. Bush and a Republican Congress and Senate. It institutionalized a series of impediments that have made it very difficult for Democrats to register, vote and have their vote counted.
Kennedy revealed that one of these requirements under HAVA is called "the perfect match," which has had a terrible impact. For example, a quarter of the voters in Colorado were removed from the rolls because of this. Republicans used a computer system to compare registration applications to all other government records of a registered voter in the state. They access social security records, motor vehicle records and other government records, and if there is any information on a voter registration that is different than the information on another government record, they remove that voter from the voting rolls. And the "discrepancy" can be as trivial as using a middle initial on one record and a full middle name on another.
In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 870,000 voters in New Jersey were sent letters saying that they were ineligible to vote, which means that three quarters of a million Democrats were removed from the voting rolls. Another Republican tactic is tossing out new voter registrations for "inadequate" identification. This is "legal" because most newly registered voters don't realize the identification requirements, and there is no notification of what they are. That probably meant that about 12 million new voters that the Democrats had gotten to register did not have their votes counted. Their registrations were probably tossed out.
Thank God, Obama won in spite of all that, and John McCain finally showed his true nature in his concession speech, which was very gracious. He is, after all, a decent man a far better and more fair man than George W. Bush and his cohorts --- even though McCain received very bad advice from right-wing Republican strategists, and even though he is misguided in his militaristic and economic policies which are designed to serve the interests of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex and other corporations, at the expense of everything and everyone else.
Anyway, considering all that, I submit that the rift in campaign rivalries, the media failure and the voting scams are just more reasons why partisan politics is flawed, divisive, polarizing, hindering, damaging, and unproductive. Regardless of which party won, half the people are bitter losers who resent the misleading and slanderous tactics used by the winners. Consequently, the U.S. is not and will not be a united nation, and certainly not indivisible. In fact, America is divided, and has fallen.
Americans must now realize that Neo-Conservative right-wing Republicans have served to empower and benefit huge American corporations in the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against back in 1961.
Furthermore, America's status in the world has been damaged by the foreign policies and actions of Reagan and Bush, which have been mostly about obtaining or controlling natural resources and/or maintaining or gaining strategic military footholds in other countries. (See the pages titled Neo-Imperialism, Reagan's Legacy, Bush's Real Record, and The Third Cold War.)
The point is that divisive, harmful, bad and even evil leadership can be very cunning and loves to masquerade as good. It often even thinks it IS good, which is why it often succeeds when the political climate is ripe. It succeeds because many people are easily fooled by demagogues who appeal to the human ego and its tendency toward feeling superior, whether it's because of religious beliefs or nationalism or race or political ideology. After all, the murderous tyrant Adolf Hitler easily rose to power in the 1930s by making the German people feel superior and powerful, and he was the epitome of the worst kind of demagogue.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Ronald Reagan was as bad as Adolph Hitler, because Hitler was so blatantly evil that the vast majority of people in the world and even most Germans eventually recognized it. However, the script Reagan followed as a television pitch man made him an even more successful demagogue, because most people did not recognize him for what he was. Thus he was able to open the doors wide for the forces of self-interest, greed, inequity, racism, nationalism, militarism, and political and corporate greed and corruption. And many people still do not see what he was.
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