The usual low November turnout will see some driven to vote
by hysteria over a sex scandal, a kangaroo court decision on Saddam, or a North
Korean nuclear test. We're lucky that Kim Jong didn't send sexy emails to
teenagers, or Armageddon might have arrived even sooner than ruling fanatics
imagined.
Exercising chronic lesser evil choice, voters may switch
from empire's instant suicide to its slower death, which could offer a
breathing space. But it might just as well aggravate the respiratory condition
of a system living on borrowed time, money and patience. And whatever band of
immoralists win, Israel's American lobby will maintain dominance over congress,
and global peace will lose.
Americans are under alleged assault by terrorists, sex
offenders, school assassins and horny politicians, but a crippled economy is
driving the nation to far more deadly crises. National and consumer debt total
well over 10 trillion dollars, and interest payments to the rich -- who loan us
our own money -- take more than 16 percent from our budget. Much indebtedness
is to foreigners we alienate with our supremacist behavior, even as we
desperately need their investments to assure we continue buying products we
don't really need, with money we don't really have.
Our imperial arrogance has created global problems that
can't be solved by our warped electoral process alone. But this election will
hardly bring the changes needed in a government that represents corporate
wealth and Israel far more than the American people. It will shamefully
deserve, and depressingly receive its usual minority vote, as most citizens
avoid the process.
As long as we accept this political perversion and call it
democracy, we might as well eat raw sewage and call it health food.
Unfortunately, recent agricultural problems indicate we may be doing just that.
We should have greater
concerns than the supposed menace of gay representatives, other countries'
nuclear programs, or alternate interpretations of biblical mythology. As if
wretched foreign policy weren't enough, consider the following.
Some 37 million Americans are living in poverty, millions
more have no health care, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and this year we
will spend more than 38 billion dollars on our pets. A family with such
contrasts would be deemed severely dysfunctional and probably
institutionalized.
Mind management that keeps us fearing our own shadows while
we blindly assault reality will go on, no matter which servants the corporados
hire to run errands in Washington. With minor exceptions, Congress will accept
paychecks from the taxpayer majority, but slavishly follow orders given by the
wealthy minority who finance its multimillion-dollar campaigns.
And they will continue saber rattling about North Korea,
which will hopefully amount to little since it represents no threat to Israel.
Only Iran, even without nukes, incurs the wrath of the Israeli lobby and its
paid staff in our government. An insane attack on that nation seems perfectly
logical to the racial supremacists who, whether awaiting a divine rapture or a
miraculous messiah, pose earthly danger to humanity's future.
There is some debate over whether the regime's actions are
brilliant, moronic, crazy or shrewder than anyone can imagine. This is
controversy over how many angels fit on the head of a pin. High intelligence or
low, under present rule this nation is a major threat to the human race, and
that rule will not change with this election. Those who truly desire peace and
social justice must be aware that it won't come simply by trading religious
serial killers for secular mass murderers.
We have to be collectively stoned or socially comatose to
believe the dreamscape implanted in our minds by consciousness controllers.
Humanity won't be able to tolerate our forced addiction or coerced ignorance
much longer, given the great danger we represent. The multimillion-dollar
corporate advertising farce we call an electoral process may not last much
longer either, before we are compelled to bring about real democracy, or face
ruin.
An election that may bring some variation into which ruling
group gets richer, and what fractional servant class maintains relative
security, will not change the fact that the majority will continue to be forced
into alienation and debt, and more violence, as we antagonize most of the world
and alienate former friends, while increasing the number and intensifying the
passion of those who hate us enough to kill us.
Replacing irrational reactionaries with immoral pragmatists
may spruce up the interior of our structure, but leave intact its
disintegrating foundation. Some may find progress, if only in their
perceptions, but many more will suffer material regression. And this will go on
until we radically reform our behavior, and not only towards foreigners.
Foreign policy is merely an extension of domestic policy; we need to begin
treating our own people with far more understanding and respect.
Intolerance for those with critically different viewpoints
is becoming as ugly as ethnic and racial bigotry. The epidemic of repressive
government is mirrored by reactionary hostility among ordinary citizens. Small
steps in the direction of understanding are too often transformed into giant
strides toward greater division. Our competitive, warlike political economics
are at the root of our conflicted social relations, and they threaten to make
us a more divided and angry nation until we come to grips with the corruption
at the core of our false democracy.
The vote may offer some minimal curtailing of our worst
excess, but we need maximum control over our political economic system before
we can create a peaceful future. That calls for real democracy of our own creation,
and not the degraded corporate perversion under which we are presently ruled.
Copyright � 2006
Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used
and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law,
and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the
author is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution,
or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the
consent of the author.
Frank Scott writes political commentary which
appears in the Coastal Post, a monthly publication from Marin County,
California, and on numerous web sites. He is a native New Yorker who now lives
in the San Francisco bay area. Email him at frank@marin.cc.ca.us.