As I see it in my cracked
and filthy crystal ball, there are two possible disasters looming on the
horizon in November 2012. The first disaster
would be if Barack Obama loses the election, and Mitt Romney, Rick Perry,
Herman Cain, or some other regressive occupies the White House. The second disaster would be if Barack Obama
wins the election. After nearly three
years, I no longer delude myself that Obama is a liberal. (That some on the right are so delusional as
to think him a socialist is downright
laughable.) He has ignored us and
insulted us—let no one forget Rahm Ehmanuel’s description of progressives as “fucking
retarded.” You can only treat your base
with contempt if you know that you don’t need them, and since most Democrats
aren’t all that progressive, he’s right. I am also doubtful that he can be “educated”
into pushing a progressive agenda. His
new reputation for “fighting” for progressive causes is wholly inadequate—much
too little, much too late. He may have
had some (very few) words of sympathy for the #Occupiers, but his policies remain,
at best, Republican Lite (health care reform that favors private insurance
monopolies, deficit reduction tailored to Republican wishes, pipelines, ongoing
wars, vetoing Palestinian recognition at the United Nations--you name it, he’s
doing it), and at worst, exacerbations of Bush’s excesses (targeted
assassinations of American citizens, stepped-up stings of supposed would-be
terrorists). It is almost as if Dubya
had been given that perpetual Presidency that Kevin and I worried might be
coming way back in the dark days after 9/11.
So while I am certain we’ll be worse off under President Romney or Perry
or Cain, I am equally certain we will be no better off with Four More Years.
The problem is, as I and many others
have pointed out, there is No. Fucking. Progressive. Party. There is a conservative party, known as
Democrats, and a reactionary party, known as Republicans. And there is, for all intents and purposes, a
reactionary’s reactionary party, called the Tea Party. A true leftist voice is almost entirely
impossible to hear in the United States government in any capacity. (Okay, there’s good ol’ Bernie Sanders ...
and if she gets into the Senate, there’ll be Elizabeth Warren—she’s pretty
left-leaning, isn’t she?) My heart’s
wholly with the #Occupiers, but even if their movement picks up steam and
numbers and media attention (and at this point it seems that is happening), it
is by no means assured that they’ll have any influence on the Democrats or
anyone else running for office. The
money power just isn’t there, and without money, you can’t buy power. It really is as blunt as that. The Teabaggers are funded by the likes of
Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers, and no wonder, since they’re anti-regulation,
anti-tax, anti-social welfare—the 1% fucking love the stupid Teabaggers! They’re perfect examples of what Stalin called
“useful idiots.” And the way things are going, they’ll probably
get their guy, whoever he (or she—Michelle Bachmann’s not out of the running
yet) turns out to be, into the White House, since they’ll be able to buy the
election—or rig it, whichever tactic proves necessary. After all, the real Golden Rule is “whoever
has the gold makes the rules” ... which pretty well sums up Citizens United.
I really hope something BIG happens
as a result of #Occupy Wall Street. We
need it. I will save my own prescription
for a future society for another time. I’m
feeling too pessimistic to go on with it right now. And so I’ll conclude on an upbeat note,
courtesy of a clever and uplifting sign carried by one of the #Occupiers, which
I saw in a photo online the other day:
THE BEGINNING
IS NEAR
Maybe—just maybe—the guy who came up
with that sign has a better crystal ball than mine. Damn, I hope so.
--Joshua Hendrickson
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