I hate to say that things haven’t changed much since the Democrats got back in office. We still have Afghanistan, Iraq, GMO’s, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and mountaintop removal. Oil, Coal, and Big Ag are still heavily subsidized. The small farmers are struggling, the renewable energy sector is hanging on by their fingernails, the middle class has all but disappeared, health care is a joke and there’s talk of doing away with social security.
In 2004, the presidential race involved two white guys who went to the same privileged university. Some of us thought we had a choice even if it looked like a choice between bad and worst. Voters were led to believe that Bush and Kerry stood on fundamentally different platforms when in fact, they were both committed to supporting the best interests of the rich.
To me, it looked like a clear choice between vanilla and vanilla. Bob and I knew that whichever guy got to sit in the oval office, things weren’t going to change much. We voted for Ralph Nader and left the country to prevent our tax dollars from going to war.
In 2008, the voting public was led to believe that this time their choice would matter. For the first time in American history, a black man was running for president. And a well-spoken man he was, wooing liberals with promises of change and hope they could believe in. A groundswell of euphoric support ensued and Barak Obama took office.
Two years later, that change has not happened. The new administration left Guantanamo untouched and sent another 30,000 troops to Afhanistan. Under Obama’s watch, the FDA has approved genetically modified salmon, sugar beets and alfalfa. With HR 3200, the 50 million citizens without health insurance were handed to the for profit health insurance companies on a silver platter after the public option was removed. And he signed a Patriot Act extension with no reforms.
At this point in the political evolution of the United States of America, the country is run by the money makers, the CEO’s of corporations. Politicians, especially those at the top, are not much more than figureheads. It’s a two party system in which both parties support the 10% who control 80% of the wealth in this country.
Many of us thought a vote for Obama would be a vote for change. Come to find out it was really just a vote for chocolate over vanilla, breeding a whole new generation of disenfranchised voters.
