Only Pennies for "Change"??

  

Change cartoon


My Two-Cents' worth:

The United States of America is today in some ways as upside down and underwater as those poor homeowners' loans that are being foreclosed upon.

Our historically huge debt, foreign and domestic, is beyond anything our country produces anymore.  And even our largest export, War and Weaponry, seems to be less in demand, as we become more and more the pariahs of the world, and as the Wal-Mart fattened Chinese eye buying Lockheed with their huge stash of dollars or else, they may foreclose on US! 

Meanwhile, we have the largest gap in wealth ever recorded; worse than during the Era of the Robber Barons, just before the Great Depression. Except this time, there isn't any New Deal or WPA project on our broke horizon, Unions and wages are under attack everywhere from the Right, and we already have 3 wars draining our wealth instead of the promised "Peace Dividend" after the cold war. 

All we're creating now is more wounded Vets they say they can't afford to take care of, more poor, sick and Homeless people ("Useless eaters", in their heartless Rand-inspired lexicon) who Conservatives say do not deserve affordable government health care coverage, and on the other end of this lopsided spectrum, more obscenely rich selfish misanthropists and sociopaths that mostly make up the 1% that owns over half the nation's wealth, not to mention, MOST of the Politicians and the Supreme Court, who just last year enshrined Corporate Person-hood and their billions in Congress-bribing money was ruled "Free Speech".

Those debilitating effects on our democratic elections have already been seen with this new crop of corporate-sponsored misguided Tea-party fools, who fancy themselves "Populists", elected to Congress. Absurdly, they want to help these robber barons and crooked bankers get richer with endless tax breaks, while their crooked politicians plot to take what little the working class has left of an already tattered social safety net: Social Security and Medicare, -all in the name of "Fiscal Responsibility"!

  
In this upside-down absurd nation that still clings to the delusion of calling itself a "free democratic country", they want to take from the Poor and give to the Rich, and like dumb animals waiting to be slaughtered, we are supposed to be patient and wait for...something...to "trickle down" on us. ( Meanwhile, Jobs continue to Bleed out overseas.)

Instead of reigning in and prosecuting the Bankers and international Corporate thieves that have robbed US blind, we are instead forced to subsidize them, while the biggest crooks are given the highest positions in the land, like foxes guarding the Hen house!

To placate the masses and further confuse and dumb them down, the Right wing, aided by their mighty Wurlitzer that we call the Mainstream Media engages in the most pernicious Double-speak...Oppo-Speak, really, beyond anything Orwell himself could have imagined pulling over on the populace.  (Mr Cohen was right: a mighty organ of Goebbels-style propaganda!)

Thus, Down becomes Up, Bad becomes Good, and Wrong becomes Right, and War becomes Peace...and because that's all people hear 24/7/365, they start to believe it or decide they don't care, because it's more "comfortable".  The few who are conscious and care must take the time in their beleaguered lives to do the research themselves. (The rest will "care" only when the stinking tide reaches their own doorstep.)

Those who dare to speak out against this alarming trend towards Fascism, or become Whistle-blowers to the murderous corruption of the Military Industrial Complex, are treated as unpatriotic outcasts and "Potential Terrorists", and thus fully subject to all the new draconian Police State laws Bush/Cheney cooked up for US after their "Pearl-Harbor-like Event" of 9/11, all of which Obama refuses to dismantle, preferring instead to renew and Institutionalize the Patriot Act abuses, from the indiscriminate surveillance of the general populace to abominations that include torture and illegal rendition. (witness Bradley Manning, who in a sane and free society would rightly be viewed as a Hero).

 

As Dispenser of Hope -in-Chief, Obama put the best possible spin on things in his speech, and there were some great ideas, but the realities of getting them done are as clear as Boehner's smirking eye-rolls, and if we don't see some real "change" in Obama's stance against them soon, the People will abandon him and the party, and the forces of Darkness and Fascism will have completely taken over. By then there will be little a down-trodden working class can do except suffer or organize an armed revolution that stands little chance against modern police state technology. 

I hope that instead people will turn inwards to their own communities and create inter-dependent renewable local economies and simplified sustainable systems, basically, withdrawing all energy and money from that which can only oppress us if we participate, starting with the Military using our young peoples' bodies, to the Banking system using our money, and the Good Cop/Bad Cop political system using our votes to legitimize their theft of our Economy and make a sham out of our Democracy.