Why I Did Not Vote On November 6, 2012

By Ed Ciaccio

November 17, 2012

"It is what you do that makes you who you are."

- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal dreams

"Empire abroad entails tyranny at home."

- Hannah Arendt

Now that the elections are history, for those who may be interested, the following is an explanation of why I did not vote. I had originally intended to post this essay before the elections, but then I realized I had no right to even attempt to influence others in how they should vote. It is up to each citizen to be well-informed and decide what she or he will do on Election Day. My decision is solely my own.

Superstorm Sandy only further confirmed my decision not to post before the election by knocking out the cable connection to the Internet, but not our electricity, so I could still use my computer to write, revise, and edit, but not to get online.

So, what follows are my reasons for not voting, well-considered long before Election Day. If they enable the reader to at least understand my decision not to vote anymore, regardless of whether or not the reader agrees, this essay will have succeeded.

Romney's Choice and Obama's Record

Once Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, many liberals opined that the choice for voters could not be more clear: with his choice, Romney did not merely certify his extreme, right-wing,Tea Party credentials, but further distanced himself from Barack Obama, the (by comparison) "liberal", supposedly-safety net-supporting candidate.

We already know Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, a relatively liberal state where Romney had to pretend to be a moderate Republican, complete with "Romneycare", the model for "Obamacare". We also know Romney will say anything to get elected (as did Obama in both 2008 and 2012).

We also know Paul Ryan's record in Congress as the author of one of the cruelest budget proposals in recent memory, unless you love the top 1% and want to do everything you can to increase their already-obscene wealth.

But now, after the three televised "debates" (actually over-hyped joint press conferences), during which neither the existential threat of catastrophic climate change nor increasing U.S. poverty and inequality were ever mentioned, especially the third debate on foreign policy, in which Romney essentially agreed with Obama's violent, imperialistic foreign policy (the foreign policy of every President), and after more than three-and-a-half years of Obama's presidency, we have an extensive record of Obama's actions, not merely his fine-sounding rhetoric, by which to judge him.

And, the morning after his re-election, and a week after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, Barack Obama further confirmed my low opinion of him by talking about the deficit and working with Republicans, with no mention of unemployment, poverty, inequality, or catastrophic climate change. As a lame-duck President who no longer needs to worry about re-election, this was his chance to set a better, more human-focused tone for his last term. Instead, he chose to mouth platitudes comforting to Wall Street, not Main Street.

In spite of this clear record, too many "liberals" and Democrats choose to judge Obama's record by a double standard which they would ordinarily object to.

Consider that, if a Republican President

- had claimed the "right" to kill anyone, any time, anywhere on earth, without trial or having to make known any evidence about this "suspect", in mockery of habeas corpus, based solely on a "Kill List" determined by a few advisors, committing extra-judicial executions of the sort committed by kings, emperors, and dictators, asserting the authority to exercise this power over life and death which had correctly been denounced when tyrants exercised it, and yet arrogantly claiming it is legal;

- had then used this claim of absolute, tyrannical power to kill three U.S. citizens abroad without trial, including a 16 year-old boy and his 17 year-old cousin;

- had authorized expanded drone strikes which also killed hundreds of innocent civilians throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa, and refused to provide information about the numbers of these victims, even though the U.S. is not officially at war with most of those countries and violates their sovereignty and airspace;

- had created a "Kill Matrix" or, in its official, Orwellian title, a "Disposition Matrix" to permanently expand the drone warfare/war on terror both worldwide and without end;

- had increased U.S. "special ops" teams which not only gather information, but actively interfere in foreign countries by meddling in their politics and committing sabotage and assassinations, from operations in 75 countries (under Bush/Cheney) to more than 120 countries, including Iran and many others with which we are NOT officially at war;

- had massively increased U.S. military and "special ops" & CIA "interventions" throughout Africa as AfriCom, the U.S. military Command for Africa set up by Bush/Cheney, grows more powerful and pervasive throughout that continent where overt colonialism had once oppressed its populations;

- had escalated U.S. involvement in Afghanistan despite the huge unpopularity, both here and abroad, of that endless, unwinnable war, which costs us one million dollars per year for each U.S. soldier stationed there and which has killed or maimed uncounted numbers of Afghan's civilians;

- had refused to prosecute the war crimes of the previous administration, thereby violating his oath of office as well as the United Nations Commission Against Torture;

- had reneged on his campaign promise to close the prison in Guatanamo Bay, where many innocent people still languish;

- had sent U.S. nuclear-armed fleets to the South China Sea to intimidate China and proclaimed that the western Pacific is the new area of focus for U.S. forces;

- had deployed more U.S. forces to Australia as part of the effort to intimidate China;

- had pressured the Philippines to re-admit U.S. forces to their soil, including the Subic Bay Naval Base, years after the people of the Philippines had successfully gotten their government to finally get U.S. forces out of their country after more than a century of U.S. colonialism;

- had begun work on a new naval base, jointly with the South Korean government, on Jejun Island, against the will of the island's residents and dangerously off the coast of North Korea and close to China, for U.S. missile-carrying destroyers;

- had begun negotiations with the government of Vietnam for U.S. forces to be based at former U.S. bases in what was once South Vietnam, again, dangerously close to China;

- had still continued to fund, at more than $250 billion per year, the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases around the globe, most of them in countries whose people no longer want U.S. forces there polluting their air, land and water and disrupting their lives;

- had still continued to deploy U.S. fleets on and under every ocean on earth, including 11 aircraft carrier strike forces, with each aircraft carrier alone costing more than 2 billion dollars and the Navy wanting more of them built, while no other "rival" nation has more than ONE aircraft carrier;

- had continued to ask for increases in the nuclear weapons budget (now more than $50 billion per year) decades after the Cold War ended;

- had supported the undemocratic military coup in Honduras as well as the one in Paraguay, both removing popular, democratically-elected presidents and replacing them with military dictatorships friendly to U.S. "interests" (corporate and military);

- had ignored the horrors, political and natural, in Haiti, with the political ones mostly due to U.S. interference there for decades;

- had illegally bombed Libya in a war of aggression/regime change which violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuremberg Principles, then told Congress and us that it "wasn't a war" because U.S. soldiers weren't injured or killed;

- had armed the violent anti-Assad forces, including al-Qaida, in Syria, to bring about yet another "regime change" with the hope of installing a U.S. puppet regime such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, with his Secretary of State claiming this was yet another "humanitarian intervention";

- had armed and supported the undemocratic government of Bahrain as it kills its own people who demonstrate against their brutal government, because the U.S. naval base there is much more vital than the lives and freedom of the people there;

- had continued to support oppressive regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere, and said little and done even less about the continuing illegal Israeli settlements in the West bank and Israel's cruel blockade of Gaza, thus continuing the long, bloody U.S. tradition of hypocrisy about "democracy" and "freedom";

- had, under the guise of "the [failed but expensive] war on drugs", deployed U.S. military forces throughout South America, threatening Venezuela, including with the re-activated U.S. Fourth Fleet off the eastern coast of South America, as U.S. "gunboat diplomacy" again raises its ugly, violent head;

- had massively increased the war/militarism budget to cover all of the above operations, making the military/security budget of the U.S. larger than that of ALL other nations on earth COMBINED;

- had STILL refused to engage with Cuba, 50 years after the Missile Crisis;

- had signed the National Defense Authorization Act (late on New Year's Eve, 2011, hoping we wouldn't notice) which allows indefinite detention of anyone, INCLUDING U.S. CITIZENS without evidence, thereby ending habeas corpus, then continued to oppose the lawsuit filed to overturn this outrageous destruction of a fundamental civil liberty ;

- had signed into law H.R. 347, the anti-protest law which passed 399 to 3, with NO one in his own party opposing, and which makes it a felony for anyone to protest against anyone, anywhere there is Secret Service protection;

- had prosecuted more whistle blowers of government war crimes, illegality and incompetence than all previous presidents combined;

- had detained and tortured a soldier, Bradley Manning, accused (but not tried for more than nine months, most of which he was held in solitary confinement, a form of torture) of giving information about U.S. war crimes to Wikileaks (obviously, leaking information about U.S. war crimes is much worse than committing them);

- had begun the construction of the largest data storage base, in Bluffdale, Utah, for the trillions of bits of information his NSA daily collects about Americans from their phone calls, emails, credit cards, tweets, Facebook, and all other electronic sources, thus expanding the Surveillance/Police State begun by George W. Bush;

- had deported more undocumented aliens, often splitting up families, than any George W. Bush had;

- had threatened Iran, in violation of the U.N. Charter (again violating his oath of office by violating the U.N. Charter) and waged a covert war and a war of sanctions on Iran, even though his own intelligence services reported that Iran is NOT developing nuclear weapons;

- had not only continued the growth of the U.S. Police/Surveillance State begun by his predecessor, such as continuing to deploy regular U.S. soldiers here as their official assignment (NorthCom) and approving the renewal of the anti-constitutional Patriot Act, but expanding the Police/Surveillance State by authorizing surplus military weapons to local police forces, coordination of the CIA with local police forces, and federal involvement with local police forces such as in the violent crackdown against non-violent Occupy members;

- had, in obvious response to his huge campaign contributions from Wall Street, appointed to powerful positions directing the U.S. economy Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and Ben Bernanke, all Wall Street lackeys and followers of CitiGroup's Robert Rubin, one of the principal architects of the disastrous repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act during Bill Clinton's second administration, a law which had successfully separated investment banks from savings banks since the Great Depression, and whose repeal led directly to the reckless speculation which caused the 2008 Great Recession (soon to become the Second Great Depression);

- had put Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid on the chopping block ("on the table"), supposedly to "cut the federal debt and deficit", even though Social Security does NOT affect the debt or deficit, and Medicare for All would save billions of dollars in currently-rising health care expenses, and millions of middle class and poor Americans depend on all three safety net programs for their bare survival;

- had appointed a commission to cut federal expenses in order to decrease the debt, which came to be called, very appropriately, "The Cat Food Commission" because its proposals, presided over by the Social Security-hating Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, included Draconian cuts to these safety net programs;

- is now working to facilitate the implementation of "The Cat Food Commission" proposals in his second term as a "Grand Bargain" with other regressive Republicans and Democrats, putting the deficit and debt ahead of creating jobs and helping the poor and middle class, when he doesn't have to worry anymore about electoral backlash for cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid;

- had continued the Bush bailout of Wall Street's fraudulent banksters with tens of billions of OUR money, while doing little for the millions of foreclosed homeowners swindled by the fraud committed by those banksters;

- had refused to have his "Justice" Department prosecute these Wall Street fraudsters who were primarily responsible for crashing our economy in 2008, and from whom he accepted huge 2008 campaign contributions (more than his opponent, John McCain);

- had pushed and signed a health insurance industry welfare act written by insurance companies which will mandate U.S. citizens to buy private health insurance, to the profit and delight of his insurance industry corporate donors, while ignoring the pleas of so many of us who support Medicare for All and the fact that 25 million Americans will still be left uninsured;

- had ignored the massive, increasing poverty and inequality in the United States, accelerated by his Corporatist/Militarist/Wall Street economic policies;

- had refused to create federal jobs programs such as FDR did so successfully to reduce the unemployment of the Great Depression, even when he had majorities of his own party in the House and Senate for the first two years of his reign and they could have gotten rid of the obstructionist Senate filibuster via the "nuclear option" (As Yves Smith points out at www.nakedcapitalism.com : "It seems pretty newsworthy for [Biden] to charge that seven members of the opposition confided to him that their party had adopted a comprehensive strategy to oppose literally everything the new President did ." So, faced with this intelligence, what did the Ds do? End the filibuster with the nuclear option ? Of course not. It's a two-fer: the Ds get to be do-nothings, and whine about it.);

- had enthusiastically, but virtually secretly, promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive new international trade pact being pushed by transnational corporations, involving the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, but which could also include Japan, Korea, China and others, and would become "a NAFTA on steroids for the Pacific", with the usual outsourcing of U.S. jobs to lower-paying job markets;

- had supported tar sands pipelines (all of which leak and some of which are on land over precious fresh water aquifers in the U.S. West), drilling offshore (remember B.P. in the Gulf of Mexico?) and in the Arctic, and fracking for natural gas, all of which will increase human destruction of our only planet and further accelerate already-increasing catastrophic climate change;

- had done NOTHING to mitigate or reverse catastrophic climate change, the one natural disaster which threatens all of us, but especially our children and future generations;

then liberals and Democrats and Alternet and Truthout and Truthdig and Common Dreams and MoveOn and The Nation and The Progressive and In These Times, and all the other "liberal", Democratic Party-friendly web sites and blogs and publications would be screaming for the defeat of this terrible, murderous, constitution-destroying, warmongering, anti-environmental president. And they would all be correct.

So why should Obama's dismal, anti-environment, anti-human, pro-war, pro-militarism, pro-corporate record be "ignored"? He has already done so much harm that he should be impeached, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned, NOT re-elected.

Obama's Claim of Absolute Power

The fact remains that Barack Obama STILL claims the power to order extra-judicial executions of anyone, anywhere, based on his say-so and his "Kill List"/"Disposition Matrix". Romney wants to have this same power as president. They are assassins or would-be assassins, and few commentators are talking about how immoral and illegal this is.

Tyrants and dictators and ruthless kings and queens always claimed the "authority" to have anyone killed, and the right of habeas corpus was created through centuries of bloody struggles, and the American Revolution was fought, at least in part, against this absolute power over life and death. Why is this claim of absolute power OK when Obama says so and Romney wants the same power? Why are few pundits questioning this illegal, immoral assertion of god-like power over others' lives? Why do so many Americans go along with this assertion of absolute power when it's THEIR president who asserts this power and orders these extra-judicial executions, when they correctly and jusitifiably would be outraged if Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted it and had people killed, by drones or otherwise, due to such an assertion of ruthless power?

Obama or Romney, and every future U.S. President elected in this evil system, will continue to wage drone warfare on people all over the planet, violating national sovereignty and human rights, and terrorizing people from the air.

Drone operators, remotely protected from physical harm (though some do suffer PTSD as a result of their killing), refer to their victims as "bug splats", and carry out a tactic know as the "double tap", by which they bomb a group of "suspects" according to Obama's latest "Kill List" or "Disposition Matrix", then, when others such as the victims' comrades, family and friends go to help the victims, our drones bomb the rescuers. Of course this is deeply immoral and savage, as well as a clear violation of international laws such as the Geneva Conventions. But it is now part of U.S. strategy to terrorize the people in areas the U.S. considers suspected of supporting "terrorists". As recent, independent studies have show, despite U.S. government propaganda, very high proportions of U.S. drone warfare victims are NOT "terrorists" at all, but innocent people, including women and children, going about their normal daily activities.

Arthur Silber is an essayist who writes powerfully about such matters of basic morality. Here are excerpts from one of his recent essays on the subject of Obama's "Kill List":

"The claim of a "right" to murder anyone for any reason is the greatest expression of evil we can imagine. Both Obama and Romney claim the President has such a right. Obama has actualized his belief on many occasions. Any individual who claims such a right cannot, by definition, represent a "lesser evil" of any kind. He claims as his own the greatest evil possible. Every other issue, no matter how important it may be in itself, no matter how passionately we may feel about it, is necessarily less significant.

...........................................................................................................

It is a fact that Obama and Romney both claim the President possesses absolute power, the power over life itself -- and this with regard to every human being alive. It is a fact that a vote for Obama or Romney means that you support their claim. Demand that anyone who says he or she will vote for Obama or Romney declare: "I vote for Obama/Romney proudly. I am proud to be a knowing accomplice to their murders, including the murders of innocent human beings."

Make them say it. I still have hope for the future, but whatever hope I have rests on our understanding, identifying and accepting the meaning of what we are doing. To vote for Obama or Romney is to be a knowing accomplice to their murders. If that is what you are, say it. Say it -- and be damned.

Then we can defend ourselves."

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/accomplices-to-murder.html

The U.S. "War on Terrorism" is, itself, terrorism, creating more revengeful terrorists every day. Noam Chomsky has told us, " Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. " But there is too much money in waging war for Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and all the other war profiteers, and their dutiful servants in Congress and in every White House, for any of them to pay attention to Chomsky's sage reminder.

Of course, Romney/Ryan would not have been any better. The Republicans would have continued their failed (except for the wealthy and corporations) economic policies of cutting taxes for the rich and corporations, waiting for the private sector to create more jobs (which is like waiting for Godot), cutting every safety net program, increasing military/security spending and U.S. "interventions" abroad, increasing subsidies to fossil fuel and polluting industries (while denying catastrophic climate change), and nominating extreme right-wing and pro-corporate ideologues as judges.

All that is clear and, for many liberals, in spite of Obama's bloody, dismal record in his first term, amounts to enough of a difference to vote against the Republicans by voting for Obama/Biden.

But asking if Romney/Ryan would be any better than Obama/Biden is asking the wrong question, the question which only perpetuates the current rule of the corporate/military imperialists running the United States and arrogantly and recklessly dominating much of the world.

Here is the right question all of us who care about the future MUST be continually asking from now on, long after the current electoral circus has ended and the next group of corporate imperialists has been crowned: What will it take to make the U.S. a true democracy, free of the ruinous rule of the Corporate/Wall Street/War-Profiteering sociopaths and their White House, Congressional & Supreme Court lackeys?

Please read the articles listed below this essay and think about the future of the whole planet, including the lives of people already suffering due to Obama's expansion of the ruthless U.S. global Empire of militarism which protects predatory corporate capitalism (not "our freedom"), and his callous, irresponsible, greedy support for more fossil fuel drilling and fracking while ignoring catastrophic climate change.

Barack Obama has already been a disastrous U.S. President to millions around the planet here and abroad because of his cruel and ruthless economic and military policies, and to the entire planet, all species included, due to his greedy, cowardly, irresponsible neglect of catastrophic climate change.

Obama/Biden (or Romney/Ryan) will merely continue the misery the U.S. government is committed to carrying out by its Wall Street/Corporate/War-Profiteering Masters.

Voting to Continue an Evil System

Only by ending this imperial duopoly and the ruthless U.S. global Empire will we save the lives of billions of people and other creatures, and give ourselves a chance at true democracy and a sustainable future, rather than the murderous corporatocracy we have had since at least 1886, when the Supreme Court declared that corporations were "persons".

But voting for "the lesser of two evils" not only keeps evil in power. It also reinforces and continues to legitimize a deadly, deeply corrupt, destructive, anti-human, anti-environmental political system which has developed in this nation since at least 1886, if not since its inception.

As Gary Younge says, in the November 19, 2012 issue of The Nation:

Democrats are not entitled to progressive support and have done precious little to earn it. Their achievements don't outweigh the significance of children killed by drones or the one in fifteen black kids who has a parent in prison. In most European countries, their agenda would comfortably be embraced by mainstream conservatives. But we're not in Europe, and the viable alternative is always worse. That's the problem. When Democratic loyalists chide disaffected progressives with the mantra, "Well, this is the only choice," they apparently don't realize that this is less an endorsement of Obama than an indictment of an entire system. (Ed's italics)

In 2008, having learned enough about both John McCain and Barack Obama, I voted for the Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, because only she represented what I believed in. In her activism since then, such as her participation in one of the flotillas attempting to break the inhumane, illegal, cruel Israeli blockade of Gaza, she has continued to prove, by actions as well as words, that she was well worth supporting.

I refused to throw my vote away on either two Democratic or two Republican Corporate Imperialists and their Congressional cronies who all view people and nature as commodities ripe for exploitation by their Corporate Funders. Deluding myself that one is "preferable" to the other plays right into the blood-soaked, greedy hands of the Ruling Class who will be toasting themselves with expensive champagne no matter which Corporate Imperialists win on election night.

As long as any of them win, the rest of us, and our only planet, all lose.

But I also refused, this time, to vote for any Third Party candidates, regardless of how much Green Party candidate Jill Stein and her Green New Deal represented nearly everything I believe in.

Why?

Since the 2008 election, when I still foolishly and naively believed that my vote meant anything, I have become convinced that the U.S. electoral system merely disguises a corrupt, brutal economic/political/militarist system which depends on the continued domination and exploitation of the planet, its people, other species, and resources for its existence, and that my vote only gives this evil system more legitimacy.

Most people I know, very good people, refuse to face the fact that we now live in an evil empire which is not only capable of doing horrible things, but is actually doing those things every day all over the world. They cannot bring themselves to face the bitter truth that the political/economic/militarist system in which we live is essentially and fundamentally evil, based on violence, exploitation (of people & planet), and the commodification/objectification of everything, including life itself. This system will continue as long as the Ruling Class and its two political parties run things, regardless of which Corporate/Militarist/Wall Street figurehead sits in the White House. As Noam Chomsky has said: " If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. "

Like fish who are unaware that they swim in water, most USans are willfully unaware that they live in such a murderous, evil system because it is their "normality". Every part of our culture, but especially "news" and entertainment media, confirms this perverse, violent "normality".

To pull oneself out of it and see it clearly seems like extremism, exaggeration, and hysteria to most people I know. I realize I am considered by some to be such an "extremist" for seeing things as I do, but 45 years of intense thought and grappling with these basic questions of morality have resulted in my current perspective.

As an "extremist", I now realize that a "moderate" is someone who quietly supports the murderous U.S. global Empire abroad and the corporate state at home which redistributes income from the poor and middle class to the Ruling Class, while saying she or he supports "civil rights" such as women's rights and gay rights. One who truly champions global economic justice and the abolition of war, and especially of nuclear weapons, is considered an "extremist". Sanity is "extreme". U.S. imperialism is "moderate" and "sensible", "practical and "pragmatic", provided you are not one of its tens of millions of victims worldwide.

As a result, I will no longer willingly participate in this system of officially authorized murder and destructive exploitation of people and our only planet, and its continuing preparations for mass murder by the most powerful arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history. I will no longer contribute to this evil system's undeserved legitimacy by voting in its sham elections and faux "democracy".

Our taxes support murderous dictatorships such as in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and oppressive militarized regimes worldwide as long as they are "friendly" to corporate interests. Because of this greed-oriented foreign policy, d irectly and indirectly, overtly and covertly, economically and militarily, the U.S. has been responsible for the deaths of more than 15 million people, mostly civilians, since 1945, as well as injuries to countless millions more. In Iraq alone, policies of the administrations of Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, all supported by bipartisan majorities in both chambers of Congress, have killed more than two million Iraqis and injured millions more, and made more than four million Iraqis refugees. No other terrorists come close to the effects of U.S. state terrorism.

20 years after the end of the USSR and the Cold War, our nuclear arsenal STILL has the destructive capacity to end ALL life on this planet. Nuclear weapons are weapons of omnicide - killing ALL living beings. That is god-like power in the hands of one person with access to our nuclear codes contained in "the football", the attache case containing those codes, a black case chained to the wrist of the President's aide who accompanies him everywhere he goes.

Tell me this is not insanity and the worst immorality.

This worship of the ultimate power over life is reflected in most of our movies and TV shows, where violence is the main way of creating "interest" and "excitement". It has permeated all aspects of our daily life to the point where we simply accept it as "normal".

But it is deeply pathological, not normal.

I refuse to any longer willingly participate in such an evil system of terrorism and domination, or give it any more legitimacy by willingly participating in it.

To offset the amount of my taxes used every year to support this system's military/security state operations, I use the information provided at Visualize Your Tax Dollar - National Priorities Project http://nationalpriorities.org/en/interactive-data/taxday/ to calculate that amount, then donate an equal or larger amount to charities such as Doctors Without Borders, national and local food banks, and organizations helping injured veterans.

I will continue to write and speak in opposition to the U.S. Empire and all the evil it commits at home and abroad, knowing full well that my words will do little to help dismantle such a firmly-established system of terror and evil, supported as it is not only by immensely powerful and wealthy individuals and corporations, including the most successful propaganda system in history, the corporate media, and by the most powerful military on earth, but also by most of its citizens who rarely, if ever, question the existence, let alone the evil, of this Empire.

Chris Hedges is an author and former foreign correspondent for the NY Times who experienced firsthand the horrors of war when he reported from Yugoslavia during the bloody breakup of that country and has been to Gaza, the world's largest open air prison maintained by the cruel, oppressive Israeli blockade. In his most recent essay

The presidential election exposed the liberal class as a corpse. It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved into an instrument of personal vanity, burnishing the hollow morality of its adherents. Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves--the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. The liberal class clung desperately during the long nightmare of this political campaign to one or two issues, such as protecting a woman's right to choose and gender equality, to justify its complicity in a monstrous evil. This moral fragmentation--using an isolated act of justice to define one's self while ignoring the vast corporate assault on the nation and the ecosystem along with the pre-emptive violence of the imperial state--is moral and political capitulation. It fails to confront the evil we have become.

Hedges ends this possibly prescient essay with a warning to all of us in the complacent United States:

The corporate state, faced with rebellion from within and without, does not know how to define or control this rising power, from the Arab Spring to the street protests in Greece and Spain to the Occupy movement. Rebellion always mystifies the oppressor. It appears irrational. It does not make sense. The establishment asks: What are their demands? Why do they hate us? What do they want? The oppressor can never hear the answer, for the answer is always the same--we seek to destroy your power. The oppressor, blind to the brutality and injustice meted out to sustain dominance and prosperity, escalates the levels of force employed to protect privilege. The crimes of the oppressor are seen among the elite as the administering of justice--law and order, the war on terror, the natural law of globalization, the right granted by privilege and power to shape and govern the world. The oppressor cannot see the West's false humanism. The oppressor cannot, as James Baldwin wrote, understand that our "history has no moral justification, and the West has no moral authority." The oppressor, able to speak only in the language of force and increasingly lashing out like a wounded animal, will be consumed in the inferno.

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction," Baldwin wrote, "and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."

So I urge you to read the articles following this essay, and leave you with words from Albert Camus, via a character in one of his novels:

"All I say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims -- and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.

[W]hen you see the suffering and pain that it brings, you have to be mad, blind or a coward to resign yourself to the plague."

- Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus' The Plague.

Resources:

Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil | Black Agenda Report http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil/

Paul Craig Roberts: The Next Election: High Stake Outcomes Based on Non-issues : Information Clearing House: ICH

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32162.htm

Chomsky: America Acts Like It Owns the World, While Endangering the Planet from Nuclear War and Climate Change | Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-america-acts-it-owns-world-while-endangering-planet-nuclear-war-and-climate-change?akid=9596.44712.JpSu98&rd=1&src=newsletter734154&t=2

OpEdNews - Article: The Top 6 Critiques of Obama from a Progressive (Reality-Based) Perspective http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Top-6-Critiques-of-Oba-by-Tim-Hjersted-121026-407.html

The progressive case against Obama - Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/?source=newsletter

Time to Boycott the Election | Dissident Voice

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/08/time-to-boycott-the-election/

Criminalizing Dissent by Chris Hedges - Dandelion Salad http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/criminalizing-dissent-by-chris-hedges/

Will 2012 be the Final Election of Lesser Evilism? |

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2012/08/14/will-2012-be-the-final-election-of-lesser-evilism/

UN Official: Aspects of US Drone Program Clearly 'War Crimes' | Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/26

ZCommunications | Life in Waziristan, 2012 "AD" by Leah Bolger | ZSpace

http://www.zcommunications.org/life-in-waziristan-2012-ad-by-leah-bolger

UN To Investigate Civilian Deaths From US Drone Strikes - Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/un-to-investigate-civilian-deaths-from-us-drone-strikes-2012-10

Drone 'Double Tap' Targets First Responders - Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/drone-double-tap-first-responders-2012-9

Not Even the White House Knows the Drones' Body Count | Danger Room | Wired.com http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/drone-body-count/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous

Undernews: White House kill list to keep growing

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2012/10/white-house-kill-list-to-keep-growing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+prorevfeed+%28UNDERNEWS%29

"Disposition Matrix": President's 10-Year Plan for the Kill List http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/13373-disposition-matrix-presidents-10-year-plan-for-the-kill-list

President Romney Can Thank Obama for His Permanent Robotic Death List | Danger Room | Wired.com http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/disposition-matrix/

Exposed 'Kill Matrix' Gives Permanence to US 'War on Terror' | Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/24-11

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list

Hidden History: America's Secret Drone War in Africa | Danger Room | Wired.com

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous

Remote US Base at Heart of Drone Wars Revealed in New Report | Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/26-8

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Tomorrow's Blowback Today? | TomDispatch http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175580/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_tomorrow%27s_blowback_today/

OpEdNews - Article: Institutionalized State Assassinations and the November 6 Election

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Institutionalized-State-As-by-Bill-van-Auken-121027-232.html

Obama's Gitmo betrayal | Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-gitmo-betrayal/5309826

Guantanamo Files: Massive Leak Reveals Innocent Detainees

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/389-guantanamo-bay/5737-guantanamo-files-massive-leak-reveals-innocent-detainees

Activist Post: US knew Guantanamo detainees were innocent: WikiLeaks

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/us-knew-guantanamo-detainees-were.html

Obama Ruling Shields Torturers | Consortiumnews

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/09/07/obama-ruling-shields-torturers/

No Substantive Difference between Obama and Romney's Foreign Policy | Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/no-substantive-difference-between-obama-and-romneys-foreign-policy/5309845

15 Things Neither Romney Nor Obama Is Brave Enough to Stand For | Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/15-things-neither-romney-nor-obama-brave-enough-stand?akid=9596.44712.JpSu98&rd=1&src=newsletter734154&t=6

Obama and Romney Unite on Destructive Bioenergy Policy

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12361-obama-and-romney-unite-on-destructive-bioenergy-policy

Expediting Tar Sands at the Pipeline Crossroads of the World - Campus Progress http://campusprogress.org/articles/expediting_tar_sands_at_the_pipeline_crossroads_of_the_world/

Why Voting for Democrats Doesn't Help Working People - Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/14/why-voting-for-democrats-doesnt-help-working-people/

Obama channels his inner Reagan on welfare - Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2012/08/09/obama_channels_reagan_on_welfare_salpart/

The Obama Enabler's Big Lie: "We Never Had the Votes" - naked capitalism http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/the-obama-enablers-big-lie-we-never-had-the-votes.html

OpEdNews - Why Goldman Sachs, Other Wall Street Titans Are Not Being Prosecuted http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=154393

"President Ryan" - Another Shrewd Move in the Corporate State's Long Game | OurFuture.org http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012083212/president-ryan-another-play-corporate-rights-long-game

Pay me now or Pay me later: The 2012 Presidential Election

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Pay-me-now-or-Pay-me-later-by-Steven-Jonas-121026-551.html

80 top CEOs tell Obama, Romney to slash social spending http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/ceos-o26.shtml

ACLU fights the good fight to stop government surveillance of our citizens | Naomi Wolf | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/19/aclu-fisa-government-spying-nsa

Britain: Talks Under Way on US Using Bases for Iran Attack -- News from Antiwar.com http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/26/britain-talks-under-way-on-us-using-bases-for-iran-attack/