... I just can't buy the finality of that depressing statement.

Do you really feel "We have no choice," as your post is slugged? Or that we seal the deal ourselves by continuing to accept the unacceptable from our so-called leaders, then claiming that you can't fight city hall?

Not singling you out or anything, but that's just a lousy and self-defeating excuse for refusing to accept the obvious truth: 300 million people have the power of numbers required to make their own choices. It's our abysmal failure as a nation -- PR-ed and advertised into submission and rendered powerless by our own mindless addiction to consumption and corporate "values" -- that turned us into neurotic wage and debt slaves in the first place.

It's axiomatic in the spin-meister business that as long as you can confine the terms of the so-called debate within an acceptable set of talking points -- with both "sides" perpetuating the status quo and subverting even the most feeble efforts at gaining a few progressive crumbs -- you can't lose.

That's what the two party system does so well: It perpetuates itself by limiting the range of acceptable opinion to a narrow spectrum between greedy far-right self-interest and pure wingnut sociopathic malevolence. It excludes any points of view outside to the "mainstream," which has shifted so far to the right since Watergate that this country is unrecognizable as the one in which I was born and raised.

Instead of having to work to draw their own conclusions, the 90+ percent of people who rely on CNN/Pox Nous/GE$NBC/The Mouse Network/CBS (CeaselessBullShit), corporate-owned newspapers or the putrid, toxic swamp of wingnut talk radio as their sole or main source of "information" learn that...

Taxes on the rich are killing our competitiveness. They hate us for our freedoms. This is the land of equal opportunity for all. Free trade is an economic godsend. Guns don't kill people. The US is a Christian country, founded on biblical principles. The criminal justice system protects the powerless from the powerful. Elections aren't stolen in America. TV news tells the truth. America always acts internationally out of benign motives. The surge is working. Gay marriage is destroying the family. The war on terror is making us safer. The bible is the literal word of god. 9/11 was an OBL/Al Qaeda production and happened exactly as the official conspiracy theory says it did. Saddam helped finance OBL and 9/11. The policeman is our friend. The liberal media is poisoning this country with secular humanist lies. Brown people are disposable. Global climate change is a leftist fantasy. Evolution is just another creation myth. Socialized medicine is evil. Capitalism lifts all boats. The rich are rich because they're morally and intellectually superior.

I agree we're not given any choices beyond the two wings of the "business party." Nobody else can afford to run a competitive campaign these days anyway.

But I don't really want anything from these presumptuous bastards anyway. It's illogical to expect benevolent gifts from the enemy and, like it or not, these swine are the enemy.

If there are any answers, the begin with public financing of campaigns; a strong, progressive, aggressive pro-labor party that can and does win a good percentage of the time; ridding ourselves of the elitist shitheels among congressional incumbents -- of both parties -- who just take up space, suck up corporate bribes and vote against the interests of their constituents; breaking up media monopolies using existing legislation like the Sherman Anti-Trust Act...

And my personal favorite: rebuilding centuries-old stocks in the public square, reserved for the rotten lying bastards who inflict their corporate employers' agendas on us. And for those with decent throwing arms but who lack 40 acres and a mule, a new law that says there must be huge piles of rotting vegetables provided at no charge.

Kinda like what Daschle has earned after his latest cave-in. The asshole's so used to losing that he can fail miserably without even needing to hold public office. Just a classic example of the modern democratic party, which really needs to go the way of the Whigs, the Know Nothings, the Free Soil Party and, if there is a gawd, the accursed GOP.


sf

(the blabbermouth formerly known as Warren Pease now writing as Steven Franklin cuz that's like, I mean, kinda like, y'know, 2/3 of my, like, real name, eh?)