Whether Obama’s commitment to break away from the obsolete
practices of the past, taking government out of the hands of big business and
placing it back into the hands of the people is shared by the majority of
Americans will be decided on the political battlefield by the close of 11/6-12.
For those honest, hardworking Americans who simply desire to get past the drudgery and hopelessness of working merely to pay bills, who hope someday, somehow to be able to afford to exist with a reasonable degree of comfort and safety which includes some form of economic security, a nest egg for tomorrow, election day looms as the threshold of either a great and promising opportunity for the working man or a lost one.
For those honest, hardworking Americans who simply desire to get past the drudgery and hopelessness of working merely to pay bills, who hope someday, somehow to be able to afford to exist with a reasonable degree of comfort and safety which includes some form of economic security, a nest egg for tomorrow, election day looms as the threshold of either a great and promising opportunity for the working man or a lost one.
For many weeks I have remained silent; listening, watching,
thinking and hoping that this presidential race was not about race but about
real, tangible, human issues. Issues that
would touch the lives not only of pampered millionaires but of the millions
whose nitty gritty work actually brings those millions into Wall Street… It
seemed so strange that the republicans could be blinded to the fact that their
obsolete recipe for capitalism had run the country into the ground during the 8
years of the Bush Administration.
Partisanship or not, I wondered,
could they really have been oblivious to the way in which the Bush
Administration allowed wall street bankers to rape and pillage the once healthy
American economy? Did they miss the
patently gangster process by which Americans paid for a war in which Iraq was physically
devastated in order to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and
then taxpayers were made to pay for Halliburton to rebuild it again? Did they not know that Bush and Cheney owned
significant economic interests in Halliburton?
I had to stand back as a democrat and look at the picture more
objectively. My head was spinning with ugly
images of the obvious… Every molecule of the republican administration under
Bush revealed a massive fear campaign steeped in alleged terrorist and illegal
alien threats clearly launched to blind the public of the real threat the
American way of life, the elitist and corrupt Republican Party itself! Each day under republican rule painted a
different code color of fear and suspicion.
In contrast the Obama administration has been like smooth, gentle
surface of a woodland pond. If the
terror was so real where did it go? Was
it coming for Bush and the republicans or was it just conjured up by them?
I wondered how those who worked for a living, just like me,
could even think about supporting a party that still believed in trickle-down
economics or what I like to call “Pie Crust” economics… The wealthiest classes eat the meat filling
of the pie and the rest of the population picks up the fallen pie crust crumbs…
hardly an acceptable condition. Some
might even call this form of capitalism, “Pig-Foot” economics… not too far removed from the “Voodoo”
economics of an earlier republican president.
Both Reaganomics and the republican policies of Bush ignored the welfare
of the common man. Life was about big
business acquisitions and international trade while the American worker was
looked at as some filthy parasite leeching away at the ill-gotten profits of
big business. Why would anyone opt for such a miserable existence except if
they did so with the intent that however bad off they might be, others would be
harmed even more possibly eliminating them from the pool of competition… my
face grew grim because I knew that only two things could cause a person to be
so ignorant to and accepting of their own demise… racism… or just sheer
ignorance… As always, I hesitate to pull
the race card because it truly has no place in logical, rational assessment but
since the prospect has been raised so many times both openly and subliminally I
had to visit it if just for one unpleasant moment… but I happily moved on… I am
sure there have been some reasons for the resistance to Obama based in racism
but in order to be bigger I mustn’t dwell on it… the first Obama win proved
that racism, though present, was far less a variable than I had ever imagined…
but a variable nonetheless…
Well, I sighed, if it is not racism then what have could
make poor, working class or even middle class people identify philosophically
with the very rich? The answer, if indeed it was the real answer was even more
disturbing… I thought; it is because supporting elitist policy, even though
they are far from being part of that elite class, makes them feel closer to
something they wish to be but are not or may never be; a reality they cannot
cope with accepting… It reminds me of
the mid-twentieth century sitcom “Bewitched” in which the child Tabitha was
possessed with the magical power of “Wish-Craft”! The rusty special effects that unconvincingly
transformed Tabitha’s wish-craft into reality appeared to be the very same faux
magic as a poor man’s misguided support for elitist republican policies that
saw him only as a poor an insignificant pawn.
How could a poor man think about supporting the enslaving policies of
the very rich? It is like the ancient
practise of the warrior to eat the flesh of a formidable animal of prey and/or
array himself in the animals likeness in order to become enamored of that
animals legendary qualities… Wish craft yes… I can see why desperate and
hopeful people could fall into such folly but what does any of this buffoonery
have to do with reality? The reality is
that the very wealthy and powerful Americans are not on the same side as the
poor and working and middle classes… we are diametrically opposed… they can only remain wealthy if we remain
poor…
Obama’s seasoned perspicacity is a clarion to all who truly
love freedom and want to protect it! His commitment invigorates the spirit of
fairness and humanitarianism as well as to encourage sound economic and social
policy is unprecedented… He sees past
the next 4 years knowing that change may not be felt before the ending of his
term and that is the very definition of a new start! He is the first runner in the relay… he is
steadfast to get the game going and ready to pass on the baton having made a fundamental
gain in the first heat. He is the
president of the common man… He thinks
like we think… A rich man does not understand the simple setbacks and
challenges common men face in their day to day existence because it is not
their experience…
I cannot touch every man and woman in ways that will help
them identify a betrayal to themselves and to others. Common men and women who
support policy designed for the wealthy, elite are traitors to their own
cause. Common men and women do not have
time in this life to wait for the crumbs of trickle-down, pig-foot, pie-crust
or wish-craft economics to fall onto their already bare plates… their lives
will be over and spent in need and want… The world is far too wide and all I can
do is hope that the misguided will one day wake up from their disconnected fantasies
and join those who struggle for real freedom and justice. In the present my thoughts are with those
brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, sexes, religions and nationalities
who are still able to see through the heavy cloud of deceit and distraction
created to masque the villainous misdeeds of the very rich under the guise of
the republican party. My only hope is
that most of us who call ourselves Americans can keep the commitment to real
change and not weaken and fall back into imprudent and corrupt practices of the
past. But in order to do this Americans
must understand that real change is not an overnight process and Americans have
not ever truly done what they needed to do in order to effect real change. Change is not a magical spell achieved
through the instantaneous process of “Wish-Craft”, it comes only after long
hard effort and struggle to remove the old and replace it with the new. So those of like mind who still have hope for
the America envisaged by the framers and the slaves and their descendants who
upheld the commitment to freedom and social evolution, they are my glimmer of
hope in a grey world…
FIN
Written by David Vollin
No comments:
Post a Comment