Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama »
Posted By hyperbola 4 months, 3 weeks ago in Political OpinionThe American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.
The sad reality is that all the well-meaning groups and individuals who challenge our permanent war economy and the doctrine of pre-emptive war, who care about sustainable energy, fight for civil liberties and want corporate malfeasance to end, were once again suckered by the Democratic Party. They were had. It is not a new story. The Democrats have been doing this to us since Bill Clinton. It is the same old merry-go-round, only with Obama branding. And if we have not learned by now that the system is broken, that as citizens we do not matter to our political elite, that we live in a corporate state where our welfare and our interests are irrelevant, we are in serious trouble. Our last hope is to step outside of the two-party system and build movements that defy the Democrats and the Republicans. If we fail to do this, we will continue to undergo a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion that will end in feudalism.
...Our task is to build movements that can act as a counterweight to the corporate rape of America. We must opt out of the mainstream. We must articulate and stand behind a viable and uncompromising socialism, one that is firmly and unequivocally on the side of working men and women. We must give up the self-delusion that we can influence the power elite from the inside. We must become as militant as those who are seeking our enslavement. If we remain passive as we undergo the largest transference of wealth upward in American history, our open society will die. The working class is being plunged into desperation that will soon rival the misery endured by the working class in China and India. And the Democratic Party, including Obama, is a willing accomplice.
...Obama has expanded the assistance to our class of Wall Street extortionists through subsidies, loan guarantees and backup declarations to banks such as Citigroup. His stimulus package does not address the crisis in our public works infrastructure; instead it doles out funds to Medicaid and unemployment compensation. There will be no huge public works program to remodel the country. The president refuses to acknowledge the obvious—we can no longer afford our empire.
The massive borrowing acts as an anesthetic. It prevents us from facing the new limitations we must learn to cope with domestically and abroad. It allows us to live in the illusion that we are not in a state of irrevocable crisis, that our decline is not real and that catastrophe has been averted. But running up the national debt can work only so long.
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Submitted By:
hyperbola
Military brat (14th generation American) with unassuaged wanderlust. By age 11, schools in four states and three foreign countries (in 3 languages). Left home at ...
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berkeley4 months, 3 weeks ago
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while it is good to see chris h write this, his description of our present dilemma is both true and dismal. the time it will take to undo all this could be decades, but how will it look by then?
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how does nader keep going as the only honest man in the national arena? -
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RTHTGakaRoland4 months, 3 weeks ago
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Wars only grow and go awry under Dems. I am not a total anti-interventionist, just a cautious one; but if you are support Libertarians. Dems. do it, but poorly, and we get bigger longer conflicts. Bush too often played at Democrat Lite and Republican Lite and hamstrung nearly every success that he might have had.
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rbiii4 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is all because Obama isn't a "liberal" so much as he's a LEFTIST and wannabe totalitarian.
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The difference between him and all the other statists that we've ever seen throughout history is that he thinks he can pull off the ideology without anyone noticing. The other guys eventually took off the mask and took power by force. Obama simply smooth talks the idiots into submission. -
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Painesright4 months, 3 weeks ago
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Socialism has never worked long-term and it never will.
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Socialist countries, as well as former Communist countries, are warning us to turn around before it's too late.
They know where the path to Socialism leads... a dead end.
We need to get back to our roots... the Constitution, Freedom, Individual Liberty and "Honest" Capitalism... no gov't interference in our businesses and daily lives, no corporate welfare, no relentless encroachment on our liberties.
We were intended to be a Republic. A land of laws, not of men.
If we can ever get back to that, we might have a chance to save ourselves. -
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icono14 months, 3 weeks ago
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"“There comes a point when the public imbibes the ultimatum of the plutocracy,” Nader said when asked about public apathy. “They have bought into the belief that if it protests, it will be brutalized by the police. If they have Muslim names, they will be subjected to Patriot Act treatment. This has scared the hell out of the underclass. They will be called terrorists.
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Or Nazis or unAmerican or a threat to homeland security.
Or better yet; well dressed unAmerican Nazis. -
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