Let me begin by saying I like John Edwards for his tendency to fight... and I think Barack Obama is an incredibly smart guy who has his own style of playing political cards which differs from Edwards.. so I am NOT trashing Obama... I just want to make sure that none of us, especially our Democratic candidates, forget what the long struggle ahead of us is really all about. Hillary also would benefit from reading the sources I reference here, but I fear she may be too connected with the corporate political machine to change.
WE ARE FACED NOT ONLY WITH THE TASK OF CLEANING UP THE WORST MESS, POLIITICAL, ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL, IN THE HISTORY OF THIS GREAT REPUBLIC AS WELL AS STOPPING THE NEO-CON GAME PLAN TO MARCH THIS COUNTRY INTO COPORATE FASCISM. IT WILL NOT BE EASY, AND THE REPUGLICAN/CORPORATE NOISE MACHINE WILL TRY TOI BLAME IT ALL ON THE DEMOCRATS IN POWER. (Why do you think they are running only dogs and old war whoreses? They WANT the Dems to win, IMHO.)
With the idea that we NEVER FORGET the true nature of the beast that Saints Obama and John would confront and conquer, I am posting this diary.
We should all mail postcards to Mr. Obama that state the title of this diary... Corporations Are NOT Your Friend, Republicans Are NOT Your Friends...
Let's start with a trip over to one of the best blogs (KOS notwithstanding) on the Net... David Niewert's ORCINUS ...Sara Robinson, Dave's handpicked and equally skilled writing partner, is blogging a multi part series about the coming wars for the heart and soul of this nation.
From her latest post "2008 Part III: Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish"
The job of articulating visions, uniting people behind them, and creating the climate of trust that enables people to greet change belongs to people called leaders. (You may remember them. America used to produce good leaders the way it produced good food, good jobs, and most of the other good things the world needed, but it's been a while.) Since the great task of this coming year is to choose ourselves a leader who's going to take on the heroic effort of seeing us through this mess, it may be useful to contemplate the qualities that this moment in history demands.
The big thing to bear in mind here is that that leadership is not the same thing as management.
Sara goes on to write:
The problem we've had with our politicians in the past few years -- both Republican and Democrat -- is that they're managers in denial about the fact that the system they're ruling over is in total breakdown, and hurtling toward a fundamental reorganization. Take Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, both of whom are running as seasoned, experienced corporate candidates who are savvy managers of the status quo. The fact that they're offering their management skills as a selling point tells you everything you need to know about just how out of touch they are with this particular historical moment. They haven't even admitted to themselves, let alone us, that the American life we've known for the past 60 years is collapsing underneath our feet: instead, they're still blithely making happy promises to take us back to the glory days of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, respectively.
Those promises, far from being reassuring, should terrify us. These candidates apparently haven't noticed yet that the world they want to take us back to doesn't even exist any more. They're still in denial, offering the benign security that comes with doing things they way they've always been done. (Pay no attention to those four horses. They're just there to tow our carriages back across that bridge to the past.)
Sara is absolutely correct in this analysis... and this is why Obama and Edwards have struck resonant chords with the voters, and Hillary is slip sliding away... she has been allied with corporate management far too long, she approaches everything with the calculus of a skilled executive.
We don't another executive, we need a LEADER WITH VISION, a leader who understands what the real dragons to conquer look like and where they live.
Sara's previous diary, 2008, Part II: Hold On Tight To Your Dream gets to the true nature of this beast.
Her argument connects the dots of the neo-conservative steps over the last 30 years to fundamentally change our democratic republic into a corporo-fascist neo-liberal state. This is not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory folks, it is the real deal, and it is happening all around us. I just spent the last year in eastern Europe, and what I saw taking place there, as well as Russia, fits the paradigm Sara describes.
Decades of conservative contempt for shared American values, strong communities, and the common good has left our sense of collective destiny and common purpose in tatters -- just at the moment when we're about to rely on it most. They've rewritten our history, muted our media, squandered our dominance in technology and science, replaced the rule of law with the rule of men, and co-opted government to the point where it can no longer effectively address our future. All these assets were a sort of national trust fund that generations of Americans paid into, specifically so we'd have resources to fall back during times of challenge and change. Like every other American legacy left to us, the modern Republicans have spent it, quite literally, as if there was no tomorrow.
And worse: they almost certainly did it on purpose. In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein lays out the events through which conservatives learned how to deliberately undermine other countries' ability to fall back on their common cultural resources to regroup and recover. "Shock and awe" techniques are intentionally designed to cut people loose from these solid moorings. Since no one can articulate shared values, set community priorities, or identify the common good amid all the free-floating chaos that these techniques foment, well-prepared corporate opportunists are able to rush into the void and fill it with a new order of their own design. They destroy cultures on purpose, in order to steal people's futures right out from under them. "After that, nothing happened" -- unless the new overlords wanted it to.
Sara points out that what worked in Chile and the former Soviet bloc states is working here as well...
t's not the total-war blitz of "shock and awe;" but over time, the corrosive effects are the same: the right wing has intentionally weakened the bonds of shared vision and mutual trust that have held Americans together for 220 years, and that were meant to hold us together through future eras of transformative change. And they did it on purpose, so they could conquer America, subdue her people, steal our futures, and divide the spoils for themselves.
I suggest you check Naomi Klein's book, maybe send a copy to Obama and Hilary... my fear is that Obama's vision of Hope and stated desire to work with our Republican "friends" is like the optimistic frog in the slowly boiling vat of water who thinks things will get better and that he can work with the chef... and that is a misplaced optimism we do not need and absolutely must avoid at this crossroads in our nation's history...
I will close this rant with a comment from the esteemed Charles Pierce on Eric Alterman's Altercationblog regarding Obama's message of Hope and Reconciliation..
As to Obama, well, I'm still waiting. He gives a good speech and he plainly can get people off the parliamentary side of their arse. However, after seven years of God Told Me To Screw This Up, and people telling me that it's the president's job to "protect" me and my family -- Give me a break. I wouldn't hire the incumbent to park my car -- I am very wary of messianic appeals to the better angels of my nature. I don't want reconciliation with this party full of vandals until we have truth first. Does the current frontrunner have an opinion on what should happen to the people who stonewalled the 9/11 commission? Is that something we have to "get beyond" so as to march together into bipartisan Shangri-La? Well, f**k that. How's the damage get repaired that way? If it's OK, I'm not kneeling at the grotto just yet.
Another way to look at it is thru the Schulz lens and Charlie Brown and the annual Lucy and the Football strip... guess who is Charlie Brown, and we all know who Lucy represents.
Corporations are NOT Our Friends, Republican Are NOT Our Friends... engrave it on your forehead if you want my total support and money... that goes for my two Seantors from Washington as well...