|
I remember way back in 1992, some well-informed friends of mine (leftists, environmentalists) had read NAFTA (about a foot high of fine print). They may have been the only people in the United States, besides a few highly, highly paid corporate lawyers, who did so (because they wrote it). They told me that NAFTA would destroy the economy of the US for the poor and middle class, by the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing to the cheapest labor markets, and that it was a grave assault on the sovereignty of the American people, because it would undermine their right to regulate corporations and environmental impacts. They also said it was totally lacking in environmental and labor protections, and would lead to vast destruction of third world countries' forest and other resources and to sweatshops and slave labor.
So I paid close attention to this issue during the 1992 election. When Bill Clinton promised not to sign NAFTA unless it contained labor and environmental protections, I figured that the wisdom of leftist activists, who actually read things, had leaked upward, and NAFTA wouldn't be so bad. So I voted for Clinton (--not having much choice anyway, as we never do).
Clinton wasted little time in breaking his promise on labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. He signed it with no such protections--quickly, before anybody (even Congress critters) could read it, or get the word out about it.
Only now, over the last few years of the Bush Junta, have the American people begun connecting the dots, as the enormous impacts of NAFTA and other "free trade" (global corporate piracy) agreements have hit home. NAFTA is bad for everybody but the super-rich.
You and I have both known these kinds of activists, like my friends who warned me about NAFTA. People who read things. People who know what's what. I've been such an activist myself, on some issues, and so maybe have you. And the sad part is, no matter how hard we work to get the word out on something, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies' overweaning control of our public airwaves (combined in newsprint, news magazines and entertainment megalopolies) means that there is a big lag time in public understanding of vital issues that greatly affect their lives and the lives of others.
The Telecommunications Act (signed by Bill) also comes to mind--the cementing of corporate control of the media. And two other major lag-time items: The Iraq War, and electronic voting machines run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, the latter coup fast-tracked across the country during the 2002-2004 period, with $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding, to defeat the significant 56% majority of the American people who opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb. '03), and to insure that, as that percentage grew--now at 70% opposed--the American people would be helpless to stop the war.
Corporate-controlled electronic voting with "trade secret" code is not the only thing that is wrong with our election system, but it is the coup de grace, the thing that makes change, even incremental change, impossible. It serves war, and it serves long term corporate agenda items like looting Social Security and preventing regulation of corporations and taxing of the rich.
It's rather remarkable that 56% of the American people opposed this war from the beginning. I attribute it to the Vietnam War still being in living memory (--a burning awful memory), and to activists like my friends who got information to people quickly, via the internet. (We didn't have the internet of today back in 1992, as NAFTA was foisted upon us.) But the American people had no burning memory of a betrayal of the magnitude of "trade secret" vote counting to guide them in recognizing the horror that this represented--complete, final loss of their sovereignty. And with the Democratic Party leadership in collusion with the Bushites, in black-holing this radical change, the very few people who understood it (nerds, mostly--not political activists) had no chance at all of getting the word to many people or of preventing it.
Then, in 2004, when many more people got onto this issue, especially after the obviously stolen 2004 election, there was a clampdown on the news like we have never seen before--not just by the usual suspects, but including the entire Democratic Party leadership across the country and including many leftist blogs and magazines whose editors and writers evidently were trying to curry favor with the Democratic Party leadership ("go mainstream"). "Election fraud" was an absolute no-no issue. Sweep it under the carpet. Don't talk about it. Don't investigate it. Don't credit it in any way--from the DNC/DLC down through the ranks. An "Iron Curtain" over the election fraud issue, and most especially over the matter of "trade secret" vote counting. A few Democrats broke ranks on vote suppression which was primarily aimed at black voters (John Conyers, Barbara Boxer), but the electronic element of the 2004 election theft--an egregiously non-transparent vote counting system, spread like a cancer all over the country--was markedly de-emphasized, even by them.
Now we have yet another canned corporate candidate--Bill's wife Hillary--who supports the war (no matter what doublespeak she may be putting out now), who supports global corporate piracy ("free trade"), who is a tool of the DLC (fascist Democrats), and who--while she and Schumer were the only two Senate votes against the e-voting bill (HAVA), which is likely attributable to New Yorkers' affection for their old, reliable, and virtually unriggable lever voting machines, and not to Clinton's and Schumer's devotion to democracy--has said absolutely nothing about "trade secret" vote counting since then, and has done nothing to free the American people from this democracy-killing curse, as it was spread across the land.
Thus we have a situation in which Hillary Clinton is the "front-runner," and the word from knowledgeable leftist activists cannot catch up with, and overtake, public perceptions like name recognition, fond memories of the "good times" under Bill (--an era of instant millionaires, yet with NAFTA et al corroding the foundations of our country), panic among women voters about women's issues (we need a woman in the White House to protect us from the witch-burners), perceptions like Clinton good government and honest government from that era (some truth to it, until you take a wide view--including NAFTA, bombing of Iraq no-fly zones, death of millions of children in Iraq due to the sanctions, the Telecommunications Act, serious erosion of environmental regulation, and the steady gains in rightwing/fascist corporate power throughout that era), the handy meme (some truth to it) of the Clintons harassed by the rabid right (a struggle within the oligarchy that really means nothing to the lives of ordinary people).
Hillary Clinton is the WORST POSSIBLE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE on any issue you could name*. The MOST LIKELY to consolidate all the fascist corporate gains and nazification of the last 6 1/2 years. The MOST LIKELY to attack Iran and expand the Mideast war. The MOST LIKELY to use the fascist powers that Bush has pioneered under the guise of the "war on terror" to suppress dissent (no Seattle '99s, embarrassing the corporate rulers, on her watch!). The LEAST LIKELY to end the war on Iraq. The LEAST LIKELY to create universal health care. The LEAST LIKELY to stave off looting of Social Security. The LEAST LIKELY to support election reform. And, in my opinion, the LEAST LIKELY to protect women's rights from the witchburners, because she is such a terrible compromiser, and is into mollifying the rabid right, instead of listening to the majority of the Democratic Party and the majority of the American people.
Her "resonance" with women voters, on women issues, will go the way of Bill's "resonance" with voters on labor and environmental protections in NAFTA. Right down the rightwing rabbit hole to Wonderland.
I don't think there is much we can do about this. She has the assets she has, plus $100 million from big donors. But I guarantee that "buyers' remorse" is going to hit the American people hard, as it did with Bill and NAFTA and other Clinton extensions of Reaganomics and corporate rule. We may be in for hard times--a military Draft, a crashing economy, food riots, repression, as all the Bush Junta chickens come home to roost. Our entrenched, corporate-run political establishment putting a woman with a "D" attached to her name in the White House is not going to change their dreadful fascist program.
And all I can say is: Think long term. Think past the next election. And throw Diebold, ES&S and other election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' at the earliest opportunity!
That IS the problem. The democracy-killer. The final blockade to change and reform. And it is greatly affecting both the primary elections (who we get to vote for) and general elections (who wins).
------------------------------------
*(--with the exception of Christopher Dodd, who helped author the e-voting bill, with the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney; I think he may be the Bilderberg Group's stealth candidate; a real snake-in-the-grass; don't be surprised if this "dark horse" starts winning Diebold/ES&S-run primaries--out of the blue, with no support base. Hillary is more upfront with her fascism, and if I was forced to choose between her and Dodd, I'd choose her.)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
