So here we are again on the verge of another critical election between Republicans and Democrats. The heavyweights on the ticket are, of course, Romney and Obama. Both men and the parties they represent are tools of Wall Street and submissive to the policies and influence of military imperialism. Both will continue strengthening corporate power while shredding the social safety net. Both will continue illegal policies of drone assassinations, indefinite detentions and continual targeting and imprisoning of government whistleblowers. Both will continue to quash attempts to revive systematic questioning of our economic order. Both are ruthless on behalf of the 1 percent.
But there are slight yet important differences. The Republicans have become something like a blood cult relishing opportunities to scapegoat enemies and shame all those who oppose their ideology.
They are a fully fascist party lusting for the seamless integration of government, military, media and markets into one sphere of power and control. Romney’s election will seal the death of democracy through his ideological influence over the next Supreme Court appointments, health coverage, environmental priorities and the role and status of women and minorities. The “papers, please” policies of Arizona will go national.
Obama and the Democrats have sold their souls to the corporate cashbox, but they still have traces of a social compact in their rhetoric and a few, fading political priorities. They are certainly a shell of the once proud Party of FDR.
Obama and the Democrats deserve to lose power and to fade away into the historical trash bin. But to do so in election 2012 means that the full-spectrum dominance of Karl Rove’s strategy to make Republicans the one party of the land will have succeeded without much of a fight.
The reality is that a vote for someone more deserving, such as Jill Stein of the Green Party, carries little if any weight because the Green Party has no organizing roots in local politics. Stein’s campaign is top-down, not bottom-up. She doesn’t have the mass base that could help carry Green ideology into city, county, state and regional power. It might be cool to see her gain 5 or 8 percent of the vote and begin the process of establishing Green Party franchises throughout the land, but to do so is to hand the current election to the Republican Party, which would set about making Green dissent illegal, perhaps even terrorist.
Have I become hysterical? The reason I don’t think so is because I listen to Republican politicians. They don’t like pluralism. They don’t like liberal family values. They don’t like powerful women or minorities skilled in organizing power for purpose. They don’t like environmentalism or anything that would dare regulate markets or downsize the military. They don’t like the vision and values of readers and supporters of Real Change.
The gates of hell are opening, and the barbarians are close to victory.