It's hard to feel encouraged. One day after the ninth anniversary of 9/11 the memory of solidarity and the outpouring of sympathy toward those who perished by all Americans (and the world) seems so long ago.
We seem "fractured" in ways which go beyond the Islamophobia of the pastor in Florida and the resistance to an Islamic civic center to be built a few blocks from ground zero. This is but a renewed "nativism" that rears its ugly head from time to time in America by those who need to scape-goat a minority as the source and focus of its discontent and hatred.
The real "fracturing" (from this perspective) seems more related to an astonishing level of ignorance and/or acquiescence of the forces behind what is really happening in this country and that is the depth of corporatism infecting and influencing everything in this country. From political policy to what we eat, what we buy and where we buy it, to the entertainment we see from T.V., movies and to sports, every phase of life has corporate tentacles' influence enmeshed within it.
The corporatists see us as so much fodder to be used and ground up, just another commodity to be marketed and sold, sanitized, brain numbed and infantilized.
Botox removes the wrinkles of real life and toil while vacuous T.V. sanitizes the brain of the ability for critical thinking.
We become inured to the unnecessary wars we fight. We use volunteers from small towns and rural areas to fight those wars; those whose fundamentalist religious beliefs and well intentioned patriotism is misused by the war mongering corporatists who benefit from the fighting and dying of those they send to do the actual fighting.
On the left we exhibit passivity and indifference that is equally dismaying, revealing a lack of courage to side with the economically dispossessed, unemployed and foreclosed, content with our own affluence that is disconnected from the plight of the millions within our midst in distress.
We tolerate our government's resort to torture and the killing of innocents in drone and missile attacks anywhere we deem terrorists may be lurking in our endless war on terrorism.
Our law makers, Republicans and Democrats alike are so beholden to their corporate and special interest backers that they are little more than sycophants and parasites doing the bidding of the powers that bankroll them.
We have not been vigilant to the slow but inexorable usurpation of this country by these corporate and special interests.
They produce the man made disasters (BP and the Gulf) and underwrite and produce the grossly incompetent leaders that turn a natural disaster (hurricane Katrina) into a humanitarian disaster.
We have allowed our domestic industrial base to be moved and transferred to third world countries decimating our middle class while enriching the corporate moguls who are behind the shuttering of factories and decimation of manufacturing in this country.
Now in two months we are about to witness a mid term election where the Republican Party of no and obstruction is seemingly about to return with a vengeance, not because they have anything to offer (which is nothing) but solely because they are the party out of power. It will be nothing more than a recycling whereby the corporate and special interests place their largesse behind those who will continue to do their bidding maintaining business as usual, regardless of who is in the majority in Congress.
The people's interests will continue to suffer and be ignored as per usual and in 2012 we'll go through a new charade" will it really matter?
Of course there is a solution to this dreary situation, one that involves citizen funding and public financing of elections.
This financing alone will not eliminate corporate and special interest influence that currently dominates but (from here) is the only chance for the people's interests and candidates to be placed on a level playing field and the only chance of the people retaking our country back from the present scoundrels who are in charge.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
