We are entering the 2012 presidential race--as the new media never ceases to remind us--and I don't see any other way to approach it. The campaign season is a coming storm that arrives slowly, almost in slow motion. It sucks the air out of the air. It spins like a giant big wall cyclone. And while the two parties stake out their own camps and plans for battle, they seem relatively the same; cut from the same broadcloth; lacking in imagination.
At recent republican debates, we've been witness to crowd cheers and applause. Tea party activists have applied their purity tests with wild abandon. They've celebrated the number of executions under Texas Governor Rick Perry. They've booed a gay soldier with a heartbreaking story to tell. And they've shown no compassion for those unable to get health care and even those who have died for lack of care and resources. And they're supposed to be representative of the pro-life movement?
But the Obama White House has been equally skilled at honing its recent message to market itself for the election season. The jobs plan tour has taken him to the states he needs to win in 2012 and yet his advisors will say there is no political intent in this action plan. He's just selling jobs.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are out of work. Sold down the river by political inaction, by 3 decades of increased globalization and a government bailout of the national moneyed class that let their greed get the best of them. The economy we now face, the very one that is sucking the life out of the middle class, was created intentionally by the very greed that was rewarded by both parties.
Republicans denigrate a new class warfare. Democrats try to look like they're doing something useful to help the middle class. The only real class warfare is the one that has been going on since Reagon took office. It's the one that has effectively shrunk the very segment of our population from which has sprung this nation's ingenuity, work ethic, and creation of goods.
A new political season is upon us. But there's no reason to believe that the status quo created by the two parties--working in concert in ways that they may not fully realize--will bring positive change for the vast majority of Americans suffering in these economic times.
At recent republican debates, we've been witness to crowd cheers and applause. Tea party activists have applied their purity tests with wild abandon. They've celebrated the number of executions under Texas Governor Rick Perry. They've booed a gay soldier with a heartbreaking story to tell. And they've shown no compassion for those unable to get health care and even those who have died for lack of care and resources. And they're supposed to be representative of the pro-life movement?
But the Obama White House has been equally skilled at honing its recent message to market itself for the election season. The jobs plan tour has taken him to the states he needs to win in 2012 and yet his advisors will say there is no political intent in this action plan. He's just selling jobs.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are out of work. Sold down the river by political inaction, by 3 decades of increased globalization and a government bailout of the national moneyed class that let their greed get the best of them. The economy we now face, the very one that is sucking the life out of the middle class, was created intentionally by the very greed that was rewarded by both parties.
Republicans denigrate a new class warfare. Democrats try to look like they're doing something useful to help the middle class. The only real class warfare is the one that has been going on since Reagon took office. It's the one that has effectively shrunk the very segment of our population from which has sprung this nation's ingenuity, work ethic, and creation of goods.
A new political season is upon us. But there's no reason to believe that the status quo created by the two parties--working in concert in ways that they may not fully realize--will bring positive change for the vast majority of Americans suffering in these economic times.
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