Like an abused spouse, Americans who still love and embrace "democracy" with a little d-- the American version-- are in love with what they thought they were getting, what might have been at one time, maybe a bit during WWII, when Roosevelt was in the White House and the Supreme Court had humans who cared about humans and the middle class, not corpo-whores who serve corporatism.
To love American democracy today is to love a fantasy, a delusion, a memory of what never really was.
Clearly, when the American people were faced with rotted food or pure sh*t, they chose the lesser of two evils over misogynist, racist, greedy, extremists who served corporations over people.
But the choices that we were given were not because we have a wonderful, enlightened democracy. When we watched the debates, the mainstream media-- symptoms of the cancer that is strangling American democracy-- kept legitimate candidates who were on the ballot in a majority of states out of the debate. They protected the two corporatist, lesser of two evils candidates from having to talk about the issues the third party candidates were raising.
We have four more years now to do all we can to treat the cancers on American democracy. Those malignancies will continue to metastasize, feeding on the corporatist and billionaire blood supplies unless we take big, bold, serious, aggressive action. We will not be able to vote our way out of this problem. We must do it extra-electorally.
That doesn't mean we stop voting. There were a few motes of light in the election last night. There's a second independent in the senate. The first openly gay senator has been elected, and I have hopes that Elizabeth Warren will prove herself to be a solid advocate for the middle class-- though it's hard to tell how much Harry Reid and the other Democratic corporatists in the senate will leash her in.
But at the state level, Republican legislatures have successfully gerrymandered voting districts so they've protected the house. That must change. We need to end gerrymandering altogether and create districts that are as even in size, with no odd extensions or 100 mile long peninsulas. That won't be legislated by congress.., ever. So we need to make it happen by our actions-- street actions.
Sadly, that's not likely. The peace movement, under a Democratic president, has become almost dormant, except for a few groups, like Debra Sweet's World Can't Wait, Medea Benjamin's and Jodie Evans' Code Pink, Veterans for Peace and David Swanson's War Is A Lie.
I've been involved with a local peace group and the turnout has almost collapsed. There are a handful of mostly over 65 dedicated activists, but it's been really hard generate interest under this lesser of two evils Democratic president.
The reality is that Obama has been as bad as the Republicans, maybe worse, when it comes to cozying up with banksters. When the Obama win was looming on election day, the DOW was up, just as it was when Obamacare was passed.
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