Today's diary from Colorado is the Shiznit, one in which she had to actually say that SHE doesn't hate Obama really got me thinking. And you know what? I had an epiphany!
Read on to see what I think is taking place right now, how the progressive vs. progressive catfight of recent weeks is just how the status-quo forces like it, and may even have been the design of certain nefarious forces in our corrupt government. As I wrote in her diary comments.....
it's not a problem with the person, Obama, or even the policies. The reason most of us feel disappointed is that change cannot occur within the current SYSTEM. It's a systemic problem that is bigger than any one president or person's capacity to fix it. Let's get specific:
- The corporate lobbying industry, which writes laws and influences what's on the legislative agenda, is a $3+ billion per year industry.
- The major banks have infiltrated government such that financial bailout policy has been shaped to benefit the bankers and risk-takers, with taxpayer money as the lubricant to their wealth creation. Goldman Sachs and Rubinites control our economic and financial policies.
- The money needed to win elective office has warped politics, and sub-optimized the people who hold elective office. Clearly, big money and corporate donors shape who gets to run and who gets to win. The grassroots and netroots are marginalized by these big money forces.
- We have let the previous administration off the hook, and not held them accountable for the corruption and malfeasance that they presided over and engaged in. The fact that Obama said early on that he didn't want to look back at the Bush/Cheney regime has set a precedent that lying a nation to war and shaping war policy to enrich the defense industry, energy industry, and private contractors such as Blackwater is A-OK. Or at least something that is allowed to occur again in the future.
- Corporations still control our federal government. Aside from banking, the healthcare and health insurance industries control our healthcare legislation, as has become painfully obvious. Our defense industry and the military industrial complex still enables a $600+ billion defense budget. Our energy and media industries are in bed with the government.
To these factors, I would add that the system in the Senate, with 60 votes needed to overcome the minority's will to block legislation is anti-democratic and needs to be changed.
Finally, the systemic problem also relates to the ability for those in the public sector to profit once they leave politics and enter the private sector. This affects the motivations of public servants. Who are they serving, themselves and their future pocketbooks, or the public interest? I find it disturbing how former presidents get rich off of speaker's fees, honoraria, and other largesse from multinational corporations and sovereign entities. The growth of lavish presidential libraries, monuments to the egos of the once powerful, funded from sources not entirely made clear, is one symptom of how influence peddling through the backdoor can work in Washington.
This is not the system of government that the founding fathers envisioned, of that I'm quite confident. In other words, our system is rotted, and that was the first and foremost CHANGE that we needed to see addressed before we could even have any realistic HOPE of a man like Obama successfully carrying out a true, fundamentally progressive agenda.
Until our systemic problem is solved, it won't matter WHO is president. Our nation's path will continue to be suboptimal and we will lose ground as a country. Our average standard of living will continue to decline. And we will become more broke as a nation in the process. The "chickens will come home to roost" and the system will implode on itself. What follows that, 10 or 20 years from now, is a scary thought indeed, UNLESS we see the systemic problems addressed.
So, fellow progressives, stop obsessing about the man and his disappointing decisions. Start focusing on the system itself and its inabilty to allow for true change. The forces aligned against progressive change are rich, powerful, and only interested in the maintanence of their gravy trains and the status quo. That's it in a nutshell. Progressives have to realize that we play into their hands when we openly fight with each other.
In fact, their forces are so nefarious and powerful, they may even be egging us on to have these fights. Ever wonder if certain GOP and corporate interests may be infiltrating places like DailyKos, posing as progressives, to stir things up around here? I don't doubt it for one second, so you have to stay calm, take what you read with a large grain of salt, and realize that fundamental change isn't going to come about easily, even with such a gifted man as Obama in the White House. America is not run for and by people anymore. It's a corporatocracy that will not let go of the corrput status quo without a fight.
You ready to fight back? Then fight against the SYSTEM, for goodness sakes, and quit with these immature and shortsighted internal struggles that do nothing but weaken progressive resolve. I hope people start to come to understand the true enemy from within, and its not coming from progressive forces, that's for sure.