Let's start giving credit where it's due-- on why the 2014 elections went the way they did-- so very, very badly for the Democrats.
The Koch brothers, Mr. and Mrs. Adelson, the Waltons-- a handful of other billionaires-- they bought this contemptible election (or fill in your choice of expletive.)
How is this a contemptible election? Let me count the ways.
-billionaire bought
-totally corruptible and un-recountable electronic voting machines-- They are built for corruption and even backwater nations like Afghanistan know it. The neocons were able to totally screw up their economy but they couldn't screw up their voting counting system.
-neocon-led Democratic part of the Corporatist duopoly.
-Obama-- another neocon-- he never sold us out. He was bought and paid for from the beginning. While he didn't sell us out, he did lie to us. And about that Obamacare-- it was a gift to the healthcare industry that probably bought them another 20 or more years before they had to worry about the USA joining the rest of the first world nations providing single payer health care for all. And don't forget the sh*t job he has done with unions and immigrants.
-The five traitors in the Supreme court who have handed the US over to, first, George W. Bush-- in a coup-- appointing him president-- and then handing the US over to corporations and billionaires with Citizens United and allowing laws making it harder for people to vote. Why are they traitors? Because their decisions have made it easy for dark money to influence elections-- and dark money can easily come from corporations, billionaires and even nations outside the USA.
-Billionaire and corporate money-- the US now has, in most places, the best politicians money can buy. And we're not just talking about money for TV ads. In Chicago, for example, a leading church leader in the black community, who was reaching for a bigger church, sold out his soul and his community to the new Republican Governor of Illinois-- Bruce Rauner- who spent over $30 million to buy his way into office. Talk about feudal lords-- remember-- they worked with the church.
-Gerrymandering-- this is a vile, insidious system-- I believe the Democrats started it-- but it has done incredible damage to the thin threads of democracy that still exist.
-the Delusion of Democracy-- yeah, right. We live in a democracy. Like hell we do. Add up all the above items and it is a deception leading to a delusion. We live a corporatocracy-- what Mussolini called a fascist state. The only exception, in some instances, is local elections.
-Hillary Clinton-- when the Democratic party allows, no, encourages another right wing, republican-lite neocon to be the looming leader and the next president-- to represent their brand-- no wonder people, by the millions, decide to say, with their votes, "screw the democrats."
-Elizabeth Warren-- Yep. This ties in with the Hillary Clinton problem. Elizabeth Warren could have announced that she was running for president-- standing up in stark opposition to Obama's and Hillary's positions-- and she would have massively changed the optics. It's time we have a female president, but definitely not Hillary.
-Democratic leaders-- they are visionless patsies for big finance, big banking, big agra, big pharma and they sure haven't shown the American people that they give a sh*t about them.
-The Mainstream media-- all owned and run by the big corporations-- too many of which now have headquarters outside the US to avoid taxes and accountability. They focus on distractions instead of what's important for the American people. We would be more accurate to call the media the distraction media rather than the News media. Bring us back Phil Donahue. Put Thom Hartmann and Cenk Uygur, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras on prime time.
-Predatory Psychopath Capitalism-- there were times when different flavors of capitalism existed, after the Great Depression of the thirties, for example. The middle class was not written off as an externality-- an item left off the accounting books. Today, we are living in a world where psychopaths and psychopathic corporations are taking control.
-Fundamentalist Religions-- I don't care which religion-- if it's fundamentalist and believes that it is better than any other, if it believes that its way is the only right way and that non-believers don't deserve... then it is dangerous.
-Top-down values-- patriarchy, hierarchy, centralization, categorization, straight lines, numbers over nature, control over vs caring and empathy, embrace of the idea that bigger and more, production and consumption are better-- these ideas are non-sustainable and don't work for the ninetynine percent. They ARE embraced by people who have been brainwashed to desire authoritarian leaders and laws.
-Big government-- yep. I've flipped on this one. Government can be a good thing, but in the hands of neocons and corporatists, like Obama, like his Robert Rubin acolyte appointees, it is a tool of corporations and billionaires that strip mines America and creates favorable hunting of the ninetynine percent for predators. it's time progressive face the reality that supporting big government as it now exists means supporting regulatory agencies run by former corporate lobbyists, attorneys and CEOs who enable even more rapacious, strip-mining, predatory actions by corporations, means supporting spy agencies like NSA, means supporting the terrorist war machine that is the US military working with the CIA and all the privatized legions of mercenaries.
It's time to stop being nice. That's what liberals and Democrats do. I'm neither. There's a growing movement-- a revolutionary, people's movement-- spreading all over the world, that is refusing democracy as we now have it-- as I've described-- it's delusional deception anyway, not real DEMOCRACY.
The answer is to stop playing the fool, deluding yourself, thinking that voting is enough. It is not enough. It is something you do, and only do, knowing that it is a fraud, that, except for local elections, it will change nothing. American Democracy is the Emperor's new clothes. Sure, go ahead and vote, but don't let that induce the delusional trance that you live in a real democracy where votes actually mean anything. Look at the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong-- people out in the streets because they refused to let someone else choose who they get to vote for. That's exactly what our stinking two party system does. Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, a handful of governors-- almost all of them millionaires or billionaires who bought their way into office-- they're the ones who decide who gets to run in the primaries, who the pollsters even pay attention to.
What we need to do is get local. That starts with your wallet and local money, as in local food, local banking-- public banking. I've been writing about and publishing articles on going local. I've been doing interviews on it and will be doing more. (This is a rant about the negatives. I promise to continue writing about and encouraging others to write about progressive positive visions and alternatives to voting to make change happen.
And don't forget, Occupy is not dead. It is still alive. It has metamorphosized into local activism, helping protect victims of foreclosure, victims of Hurricane Sandy. This is not over. Sometimes an addict, a drunk or a profoundly mentally ill person has to hit bottom before waking up with his/her head in the gutter before facing reality and healing. We are close to that moment. We'll be even closer in two years.
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