While we watch in admiration, many in Iran take to the streets to protest what they perceive as a fraudulent election and a severely authoritarian government. The irony seems lost on us.
As we know, 75% of the American population supports a “public option” health plan. But we see the will of the people shoved under the bus for the sake of corporate profit and political expediency.
Imagine an election where one candidate enters the day with a 75% to 25% lead in the polls and comes out of the voting booth lost in a landslide. Were the polls wrong or was the election rigged? Do you take to the streets, like a people, or swallow another mouthful of resentful bile as the fat cats win again in a game where they always win and you always lose?
Last November we won the election handily with a magical candidate with a mandate for change. And since then we have not seen any change but more of the same business-as-usual. Sure, noises have been made, gestures extended and words, words, words expounded to urge patience and perseverance and prepare us to tighten our already tightened belts to save the corporate super-structure of a global Borg which regards humanity as chits in a game of power and domination.
Perhaps Obama was naïve about power and us along with him or perhaps he knew the score and his ambition outstripped his integrity to tell us the truth as he said he would always tell us the truth. Does it really matter? The point is our President is either less than we imagined or he was sold as something he’s not – an agent of fundamental change.
Or perhaps he is not less or false but simply powerless as a leader of a public in a privatized world.
Our global system of governance and finance has made bit players of great statesmen. Political rhetoric is no more than sugar Frosted Flakes sold to kids as health food. Change appears a mirage. There is an idea of an oasis ahead; one can almost hear a bubbling brook of fresh, clean water. Thirst for change is palpable and you want to believe as long as you can relief is in sight. But, alas, as with all mirages, you finally get close enough you can’t wish reality away any longer and you realize the date-nut tree and the watering hole is just more desert sand.
But perhaps Obama is crawling along the sand looking for answers like the rest of us. Considering the credibility gap between Obama’s political rhetoric and real-world results so far, one imagines the President is the most disappointed of us all. At this juncture Obama looks like just another empty suit with a teleprompter soul. Personally, I don’t believe Barack is that, but he sure looks that way along with Brown, Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi and the rest of the First World born of Empire and murdered by hubris.
It is not a conspiracy theory to suggest the public world is run by financial power held in private hands.
FDR really did say to Colonel House:
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson… The country is going through a repetition of Jackson’s fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.”
Has anything changed? Did you get the memo which said, “Hooray! Finally the US Government is no longer owned by the money-power?”
Hell no you didn’t receive the memo because the truth is the PEOPLE are beholding to the BANKS and this is why the People with a 75% policy consensus can be ignored with scorn.
It’s not rocket science. And as long as the people continue to grumble but not fight back business will be business-as-usual until the apocalypse. There is a difference between “mad as hell” and “not going to take it anymore.” We’re all mad as hell, but we keep on taking it.
And I suggest to you the Public Option is the last straw on the camel’s back. If the Public Option goes away in the middle of the night by corrupt congressmen and corrupting lobbyists, let us take to the streets and stay in the streets. When the people finally see the people are fighting against corporations for what’s best for the people in a government of, for and by the people then change will come. But not before.
Obama is a good man. I believe that. But he is impotent in a centuries-old system which over time has usurped demotic power and national sovereignty. When people must be “managed” to agree to what is not in their best interest, then, transparently, the people have no power. And when people have no power in a government of, for and by the people then who are the people with the power?
The truth is self-evident.
There are real solutions to these systemic failures which plague our society today. The problem is these solutions require systemic changes to a system which has morphed into a religion and to attack the system is to attack God.
And in our system, God is that which controls the money. And in a system where all money is debt, then God is who owns the debt. And in our system the “public” debt is owned by private, for-profit corporations. In a very real sense, the United States of America is nothing more than a “company town.” The idea of an active citizenry in a vibrant republic – above and beyond tweets and twitters – is a joke. We are receivers of news and information; consumers of dashed hopes and bitter ironies. We sit there and take it and we grumble and gripe but don’t ever do anything about anything. And so we get generations, centuries of deja vu all over again.
The Public Option is the public’s foot back in the door of our own government. If it goes away then the door is closed for good. And what does that make us but homeless in our own house.
This whole mess isn’t about politicians but the corporations who own them. Period. End of story.
Isn’t it time we found our voice against the real impediments to progress?
If the Public Option goes away consider it a declaration of war. Are you ready to fight?
