The lead blog on the home page of Huffington Post this morning is a piece by Micheal Brenner in which he calls out the Republican candidates for president as the stooges for the wealthy and corporate interests that they are, and then points out that the Democratic Party and Pres. Obama are different only in rhetorical terms, but not in substantive policies. Yes, says Brenner, the conservative candidates are wild and crazy, but Pres. Obama has used his first term to continue and build on conservative policies and further the replacement of our representative government with a corporatocracy. Says Brenner: “To even ask the question "four more years of exactly what?" is to have oneself shunned from enlightened society. Still, the question must be asked -- not just because Mr. Obama long since has come out of the closet as a Rockefeller Republican.” (full story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...)
Strangely enough, Brenner is not being shunned by these words, but instead gets the top lead story at Huffington Post, one of the most widely-read online media outlets, and a beacon of liberal views and thinking. This is amazing to me that a mainstream liberal media outlet would put this sort of criticism of Pres. Obama “on the front page”, as it were. At the least, I am comforted to know that I am not the only person who understands that Obama does not stand for hope and change, but for the status quo of government by the wealthy towards the goal of greater economic and social inequality.
And for those like myself who view the loss of our democratic system of government in favor of government by the corporation, of the corporation, and for the corporation as the single greatest threat to our peace and prosperity as a nation, the discussion of Pres. Obama as an entrenched member of that corporatocracy raises the question again: who should I vote for?
Of course, to those in the democratic party and to many readers here at dKos, the answer is a loud and clear “Vote Obama!”. I am told that Obama is not crazy, like the rabid conservatives, and Pres. Obama will pick Supreme Court judges that favor liberal ideals. And believe me, I am no fan of the conservatives. Clearly, conservative politics in the US has become an insane mix of denial of facts and reality, coupled with an advocacy of a fundamental religious theocracy that is every bit as dangerous and fanatical as Muslim Wahhabism. So I will not be voting for any conservative candidates this time around. And I am at least receptive to those Democrats who tell me that if doing away with economic inequality is important to me, then I should vote for Obama..
Strangely enough, all my conservative friends and neighbors use a similar line of reasoning as they advocate for their candidates. They tell me that conservatives want more economic equality and more economic opportunities. They tell me that Pres. Obama is in the pocket of the wealthy and big business. They tell me that if I want a return to the ideals that made America great and strong, I must vote for Republican candidates.
Tried-and-true Democrats will say that the conservatives are lying, mirroring exactly how the conservatives talk about the Democrats. Democrats can point to long lists of accomplishments of the Obama administration, while conservatives compile equally long lists of the administration's failings. At the end of the day, I watch the news shows, and read the newspapers and blogs, and I a perfectly capable of separating fact from fiction.
The facts are these: our nation is firmly in the grip of wealthy and corporate interests that are concerned primarily and secondarily with amassing greater wealth for themselves. The actions and policies of this ruling corporatocracy has weakened our country economically and militarily, and deprived the people of our jobs and homes. Our standard of living and even our life expectancy are in decline, and for the first time since the founding of our nation, our children will be worse off than our own generation. The president, while clearly not a representative of the insanity conservative club, is just as clearly a bought-and-paid-for member of the corporatocracy who is not an ally in the fight for equality of economic opportunity or democracy over corporatocracy.
So who should I vote for? For those of us who wish to strengthen our American ideal of representative government, and who understand that climate change is a greater danger to the continued strength and health of our nation than any middle-eastern potentate, the Democratic Party is no longer the automatic choice.
For me, there is no automatic choice. If Pres. Obama wants my vote, I need to see action, not promises or slogans. Without concrete action taken on diminishing the power of the corporatocracy, the future articles that appear on the front page of the Huffington Post will be much more grim.