Reply #99: My take

[MadHound]

Many people here(myself included), and many who don't even know that DU exists are angry for one reason. They see that no matter who is in the White House, or DC in general doesn't really give a damn about them or their concerns. They see that it doesn't matter if it is a Dem or 'Pug, the politics of corporate cronyism is going to continue. It doesn't matter whether or not they have a D or R behind their name, the one group that politicians look out for first, foremost and always are their corporate masters. It doesn't matter if they are Dem or 'Pug, the first(and sometimes only) thing that matters is money, money for re-election, money for the next campaign, money for paying off election debt, money for individual gain. Voters' wishes, constituents' wishes, even if these wishes are the right and moral thing to do, all come in a distant second(at best) to the overarching concern of money.

Money, and the corporations who twist our government around their finger using it, has become the primary purpose of our government. No longer are the concerns of the people heard, much less met, unless monetary gain is involved. The governmental(and by extension corporate) pursuit of monetary gain has sent us into immoral and illegal wars, it has ripped large holes in our Constitution, it has needlessly polluted our country and the world at large, it has divided our society, and set one against the other in scrambling for the scraps from the corporate/governmental table.

This process has been ongoing and subtle. Signs have been there for fifty years or more, if one knew where to look. But the boom of the post war years, along with the Cold War secrecy kept many many details from the public view. But now as resources start becoming scarce, as the Baby Boomers and their children realize that they cannot have the prosperity or oppurtunity their parents and grandparents had, a questioning attitude and abiding cynicism have developed amongst the population at large. And with the advent of the Information Age, and the disappearnce of the Cold War, unprecedented amounts of information on how the we the people have been, are, and will be screwed is becoming instantly available.

Combine this with the open and out front abandonment of core Democratic constituents and positions, especially during the Clinton years, and you have a societal mixture that is ready to either ignite a civil war, or a revolution to take our government back from the hands of the corporatists. Having a Democrat willing to pander to corporate profit ala Clinton and NAFTA, and then adding injury to injury by ripping away our societal safety net via welfare "reform" is not an easy pill to take by anyone. Having Democrats further blur the lines by voting for an illegal war(and flying in the face of their constituents by doing so), voting to do away with large chunks of our constitution via the Patriot Act, these among other recent matters have all but cemented the deal in many many peoples' heads; both parties have now sole out to big business.

You see the expression of this anger expressed in many ways. The '02 election should have been a wake up slap for the New Dems, continue to walk down the corporate whore path, and loyal Dems will stay home in droves. Apparently that didn't work, since in looks like the new Dems are all set for the corporate coranation of their boy Kerry. Perhaps by resolutely voting third party the population will get their dissatisfaction across. But that didn't work in '00, and it will take years before we know if it is being effective. Some are have hunkered down, merely wishing to survive. Others are loudly taking to the streets. And a few are working on one of the few hopeful solutions to this dillema, publicly financed election campaigns.

But no matter what happens, a solution needs to be found soon. Otherwise we explode into the anarchy and agony of a second civil war, or quietly whimper under the heel of a corporate totalitarianism. These are the futures we face if we don't take our government back. Working within the party to effect change has been tried and proven ineffective. If we wish to prevent the train wreck coming down the tracks, we the people have to take matters into our own hands while we still can. The rise of a third party unattached by monetary strings to corporations is one good way to effect real change. The other is to start working on publicly financed election campaigns.

The time to start is now. Effective change can be achieved but only by working outside of the corporately corrupted two party system. If we don't start soon, then it will be too late for all of us, and our country.