I saw the President's proposed budget today, and I just don't want to think about or talk about politics anymore. With a 3 trillion dollar budget that includes a largely fictitious $515 billion defense outlay, cuts in domestic programs like medicare, and a laughable assertion that the deficit will be eliminated by 2012, it's clear that we have entered some fantastic world of imagination that only occurs when a thief tries to cover up a massive fraud.
But what are our candidates talking about? The minutiae of how many people will be covered by slightly different healthcare plans - both woefully inadequate. No discussion of the only sensible plan - medicare for all. And this constant bleating of the word "change" and the word "experience". I really and truly do not see the point in voting for one or the other.
People talk about "The System". You know why it is called The System? It's because, no matter who the players are, the play itself is unchanging. The American political system is the finest mechanism yet invented to ensure that the will of the people is ultimately frustrated. As evidence, look at the Senate. It is designed to enact a blockade of the House of Representatives, the people's house, through a profoundly iniquitous allocation of Senate seats and then gives inordinate power to each Senator to frustrate legislation or to add riders to Bills in order to essentially steal from the Treasury in aid of some supporter or other. Consider too how wealthy you must now be even to run for election to the Senate! It is a club of the wealthy who pursue the interests of their class with fervor - and it doesn't matter whether they are Republican or Democrat. The wealthy serve the interests of their class more than of their Party.
And then we come to the Presidency itself. Is their a more odious Institution in this world? Over the last 200 years, and especially since the Civil War, it has grown in power and reach until today we see a President more feudal ruler, more despot, than anything. It is an institution that consumes everyone who lays his hand upon it, that destroys and besmirches everyone and everything it touches. It has overseen the creation of a vast war machine that has essentially militarized the entire society. We now have a country perpetually at war or preparing for war, and there is literally no ceiling to what we are prepared to spend to reach heavenwards in an endless search for even more godlike powers to destroy nations and peoples.
So, forgive me for raining on the big parade of endorsements and ballyhoo. The problem with America is not that the wrong person is President, although obviously Bush (a pathetically weak man) was even more susceptible to Presido-toxicity than most people would be. The problem is that the American system itself is inimical to fair and effective government. I have no doubt that having a decent person in the White House would be a step forward, but it's a tiny step, an almost insignificant step. Jefferson and his contemporaries thought that each generation would make big changes to the Constitution so that it conformed to the needs and desires of that generation. What we got instead was a system that really could not change in any significant way. The system of government of the United States is not broken. It works very well if you are an 18th Century Virginian planter or Boston merchant. But it is totally unsuited to today's society and now, by its very existence, has become a threat to us all.
Given that we have a system so at odds with the needs and desires of the American people, why on earth should it matter who the next inhabitant of the King's throne might be?