How America lost the 2012 election and what to do about it.
The political climate these days feels a lot like skating on thin ice. It might seem like a hackneyed metaphor, but it contains a lot of truth for those of us who grew up around natural ice.
I recall the day my brothers and I went out for our first skate of the season. A cold breeze blew across the pond and the new ice looked strong and inviting. We three brothers glanced furtively at a small spot of open water near the dam as the ducks, having kept it open, loudly protested our presence and left for the barn. Our parents had been distracted from weekday farm affairs with Sunday-after-dinner conversation. With a glance at the 12-degree reading on the thermometer they assumed the ice was safe. They didn't think or know about early winter thermal inversion in ponds, and the effect on ice of a large flock of ducks. Soon we were racing around the pond, with each rotation getting closer to the ducky hole of open water in the ice.
My older brother warned one of us, "That's too close; the ice is thin near there!" But our confidence and success with this first skating of the season overruled caution. I still remember the crash and tinkling of ice as my brother disappeared under the surface. A second or two of shocked silence was broken by an icy splash when he emerged, ice shards flying and skate blades digging into the clay as he stomped up the bank of the pond. By the time we ran him back to the house all of us were soaked, and we were dragging him. He was nearly frozen through, but luckily for all of us survived to skate another day.
As with my older brother's warnings, candidates for public office can no longer win in our political system by speaking the truth. We as the electorate want so badly to be told that we can skate blithely along without considering our underlying economic and societal foundation. We want to believe that we don't have to do anything hard, that all can all be simple and work out just the way we want. We'll offer our vote to those who tell us those lies regardless of reality. The euphemisms marketed by politicians all over our media made it seem like their plan will let us skate safely on thin ice, and that's all that matters.
Abe Lincoln used to ask, "If you call the tail of a dog a leg, how many legs does that dog have?" Whenever somebody answered "Five," he would say, "No. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." He was referring to slavery, and the habit of euphemizing it as "our peculiar institution." The remedy for the loss we all suffer in this bad election year is to detect and stop our euphemistic thinking.
In this election season, all of us in Big Horn County were bombarded with media-generated euphemisms. These clever phrases were designed to keep us spinning past honest problems in order to market to us a distorted worldview. Unfortunately, when we immerse our minds and emotions in these phrases, our honest concern for fellow families, our county, the nation and especially humanity worldwide is quelled. We need to be shocked into confronting the avoidable tragedies coming as irrational euphemistic thinking has been surrounding and shoving us onto thin ice.
If a car mechanic subscribed to an ideology that all car engine problems result from faults in the ignition system, the mechanic would have a very hard time fixing a car with a broken fuel pump. As illogical and unproductive as this seems, our politicians have a penchant for giving us euphemisms that blind us from real complexity. What do terms like deep recession, climate change, or preemptive defense really mean? Do they distract us from the reality of a failing economy, global warming, and international bullying?
The more we run away from the reality of our problems and dive into partisan ideology dictating one easy answer, the more those clever enough to tell us what we want to hear further their own interests at the expense of the rest of us. The best thing we can do is to embrace reality and strive to work together to address the problems we want to deny because they seem impossible to solve.
Now that the 2012 election over, its time to cure our winners of their euphemistic thinking. We've already had a national shocking plunge or two through the thin ice around our pond's ducky economic hole. It should wake us up to really working collaboratively rather than obstructively to achieve positive change in our society. Did those winners tell us what we wanted to hear? Do they have a track record of saying whatever it takes to get elected? Anyone thinking their candidate has been telling the truth and the other guy was lying needs to watch how close they are to the ducky hole. We the people need to start holding our elected government and its corporate cronies responsible for the truth they had been avoiding, starting now.
Sources are cited and further information follows below. The column as written in the paper is above.
Lie to me I promise I'll believe
Lie to me but please don't leave
Sheryl Crow, from her song, "Strong Enough"
Our political system requires lies. The swirls of distracting euphemisms by both parties creeps into our living rooms, distracting us from real problems. We want a strength based not on reality, but on euphemisms strong enough to cast a false image we can't achieve because it's not real, and all the wealth, technology and military force in the world can't make it real.
We have used various euphemisms
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12434-beyond-the-dead-end-of-american-electoral-politics-rethinking-the-crisis-of-politics
http://journalism.about.com/od/writing/a/Keep-Euphemisms-Out-Of-Your-News-Stories.htm
The Human Factor is Now Affirmed in Global Climate Change
Global climate change has now been affirmed significantly as having a human cause by the Cato institute and the United States Department of Defense. This has implications for a new sense of responsibility upon our nation, but has been ignored or denied in our 2012 election.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/22/509090/patrick-michaels-and-the-cato-institute-unwittingly-accept-the-climate-threat/?mobile=nc
Patrick Michaels and the Cato Institute
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=116192
http://www.wgbhnews.org/post/innovation-hub-10202012-encore-global-warmings-new-math
See the press releases selected by Pew Trusts on climate change.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_detail.aspx?id=919
China loans, the national debt, wars and waste
Our marriage of high tech industry and our military, creating dependency upon trillions of taxpayer dollars invested with no hope of return to benefit American citizens, in the last decade a significant factor in the borrowing from citizens of China.
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/iraq/
http://www.moneymatters101.com/debt/debtaddict.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/15/us-debt-how-big-who-owns
The Corporate Mad Dogs of Citizens United
by Texas Congressman Jim Hightower
http://www.nationofchange.org/corporate-mad-dogs-citizens-united-1351690614
Published: Wednesday 31 October 2012
"As feared, our people's democratic authority has been dogged nearly to death by the hounds of money in this election go 'round, thanks to the Supreme Court's reckless decree in the now-infamous Citizens United case.
"That rank political power play by five black-robed judicial partisans unleashed the Big Dogs of corporate money to bite democracy right in the butt this year, poisoning our elections with the venom of unlimited special-interest cash. But there's also been another, little-reported consequence of the malevolent Citizens United decision: It has unleashed mad-dog corporate bosses to tell employees how to vote.
"CEO David Siegel of Westgate Resorts, a major peddler of time-share schemes, warned his 7,000-strong workforce against voting for Obama. To do so, he wrote in a letter to each of them, would 'threaten your job.' Obama, Siegel declared, planned to raise taxes on multimillionaires like him, which would give him 'no choice but to reduce the size of this company.'
"Likewise, Dave Robertson, president of the Koch brothers' industrial empire, notified 30,000 workers that they would suffer assorted 'ills' if they helped re-elect Obama. In case that message was too subtle, Robertson helpfully included a slate-card of Koch-approved candidates for them to take into the polling booth."
Wall Street Won the Election. The American people lost.
http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2012/10/23/before-the-election-was-over-wall-street-won.html
By Nomi Prins, Tuesday 23 October 2012
"Banks trump citizens, and absent severe reconstruction of the banking system, the cycle will absolutely, unequivocally continue.
"Before the campaign contributors lavished billions of dollars on their favorite candidate; and long after they toast their winner or drink to forget their loser, Wall Street was already primed to continue its reign over the economy.
For, after three debates (well, four), when it comes to banking, finance, and the ongoing subsidization of Wall Street, both presidential candidates and their parties' attitudes toward the banking sector is similar – i.e. it must be preserved – as is – at all costs, rhetoric to the contrary, aside."
Naomi Prins a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, now a senior fellow at Demos, writes regularly on corruption in Washington and Wall Street for news outlets ranging from Fortune to Mother Jones. It Takes a Pillage is her third non-fiction book. It gets inside how the banks looted the Treasury, stole the bailout, and continued with business as usual. We all watched as packs of former Big Financiers commandeered posts in Washington and lavished trillions in bailouts to "save" big Wall Street firms that used that money for anything and everything except to fill in Main Street's potholes. We all watched as Wall Street heavyweights fought tooth and nail to declaw financial reform and won.
It's time to address the most significant unaddressed real issues, fogged out by the fraudulent fakery of fisticuffs, in hopes President Rombama will rise to the occasion with the election over. These are the issues that have disunited our nation most grievously, and stand to threaten global humanity and Big Horn County residents unlike any other. We, the people of these United States, need to talk out our disunity.
Fatalities in the GOP War on Regulation
Thursday, 01 November 2012 09:10By Dr Brian Moench
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12463-fatalities-in-the-gop-war-on-regulation
Federal investigators close off access to the offices of the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, October 16, 2012. Criminal investigators from the FDA were on site at the center on Tuesday in the first public indication that the government was preparing a criminal case against the company linked to a deadly outbreak of meningitis. (Photo: Barry Chin / Boston Globe)
More Americans than died in the attacks on the World Trade Center die every year from contaminated medicine, food, air and water. Yet the GOP argues we cannot afford the promulgation and enforcement of the regulations that would save these lives.
I doubt Lilian Cary, 67, would be voting for Mitt Romney or any Republican this year. Actually, Lilian won't be voting for anyone next week, because she died of meningitis, weeks after being injected with steroids for back pain. She is one of 25 people so far to have died from contaminated vials of epidural steroids. Her husband was also given those injections at the same clinic and could be facing a similar fate. As of late October, 338 people have been stricken by infection. In all, over 14,000 people have been injected with these contaminated steroids. There will undoubtedly be more illnesses and deaths before this mass tragedy is over.
The Weimar Syndrome and the American Economy
Thursday, 01 November 2012 13:35By Charles Derber and Yale Magrass, Truthout | Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12477-historys-magic-mirror-americas-economic-crisis-and-the-weimar-republic-of-pre-nazi-germany207
"Germany's economic crisis of the 1930s led to the rise of far-right populism and the Nazi Party, fueled by the corporate and military establishment. An American version of this "Weimar Syndrome" could emerge as the far Right closes its grip on the Republican Party.
"Contrary to common wisdom, the ascendancy of the Tea Party, Christian fundamentalist, militarist, anti-feminist, anti-immigrant and other racially-coded right-wing elements in the Republican Party - that could gain preponderant influence over the nation in a Romney/Ryan Administration - is not new. It is the most recent example of the "Weimar Syndrome," where liberal and Left parties fail to solve serious economic crises, helping right-wing movements and policies - that lack major public support, but are groomed and funded by the corporate and military establishment - to take power."
Two dangerous crises ignored in the presidential debates..
http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-america-acts-it-owns-world-while-endangering-planet-nuclear-war-and-climate-change
Chomsky: "America Acts Like It Owns the World, While Endangering the Planet from Nuclear War and Climate Change"
Inability to face the truth about ourselves in this country is all too common a feature across American society.
October 26, 2012 |
Note: In a recent speech, Professor Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign, from China to the Arab Spring, to global warming and the nuclear threat posed by Israel versus Iran. He spoke last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at any event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. His talk was entitled "Who Owns the World?" Democracy Now! transcribed Chomsky's talk
The War Against the Poor (and middle class)
http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/04/who-didn%E2%80%99t-win-presidential-debate
But save the big government issue, the part of it that's real.
The most important disagreement between the two parties is over the size of the federal government vis-à-vis state local and state government, especially the family. Those of us fed up with bureaucrats dictating our personal and financial affairs swarm like flies into a flytrap that takes our intention of "we built that" and reduces rather than enhances our control of our destiny.
Those who claim constitutional support to reduce our federal government's role, increasing state and local control, are badly distorting the historical foundation of our American government. We have in Big Horn County many families who, without federal government subsidy, would not survive here. And many are farmers. So let's take a look at what really happened two centuries ago that helped our families here to work for a living, and thrive.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/how-mitt-romney-would-screw-red-states-support-him?akid=9617.144927.amFqBw&rd=1&src=newsletter736736&t=3
Mitt Romney's suggestion that emergency management is best left up to the states is not just a silly, ideologically informed bit of campaign rhetoric. It represents a radical departure from what most people think it means to be an American – a view that has been litigated in our past, and consigned to the dustbin of history
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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
graberdb@gmail.comwww.greenwoodfarmmt.org
