The Message and the Messenger (X-Posted from GD:P)

[Mythsaje]

Corporations should not be dictating our foreign policy. For that matter, they shouldn't be dictating our domestic policy. They shouldn't have more of a say in our government than We, the People. They are given a remarkable amount of leverage, particularly due to the quite illegal and unconstitutional actions of a single law-court Judge who altered a Supreme Court decision with what amounted to his OWN signing statement.

Because of that single unprincipled action, corporations are afforded rights and privileges they were never intended to have. Because of their status as artificial "persons," a certain segment of our population (the ones with specific anti-American agendas, usually) are able to defend advertising, lobbying, and campaign contributions by very powerful industrial agents as "free speech" when it is little more than buying influence in the halls of power.

When invited to the table, they assume that the feast is meant for themselves, and devour everything in sight with no thought for the average citizens who are the true intended recipients of the banquet.

Far too many of us on the left are willing to allow the corporate media to obfuscate the true stakes of the game at this point. Of all the three top tier candidates, only one is communicating the nature of the REAL battle we're facing in the next several years. Our most significant danger to the American way of life isn't Muslim extremists in another part of the world, but religious extremists and, let's face it, money-grubbing whores, in THIS part of the world. It has been their alliance thus far that has taken us down the road to political perdition, and it's going to take some very serious sacrifices to pull us back from the brink.

It IS time for Americans to get patriotic about something besides war. We need to be patriotic about our belief in human potential, in the inherent rights of free men and women to shape their own destinies. We have to be patriotic about the notion of open government, where industry insiders aren't shaping government policy behind closed doors. We need to be patriotic about the notion of leaving a better world to our children than the one that was left to us.

The people need to hear and understand this message, and that's not going to happen if more corporate-friendly candidates are given the limelight by the corporate media and the more important message is drowned out by meaningless drivel and saber rattling.

The last thing we need is a candidate who can't distinquish from the cash laden lobbyists of the energy, pharmaceutical, and banking industries and the sincere but cash poor lobbyists from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. A candidate who doesn't understand that agencies such as the People For the American Way are not operating on the same playing field as Big Oil.

No matter his voting record, one candidate has stood up and taken up the mantle of We, The People. He is proving himself to be no friend of Big Business and, in reflection, they are proving to be no friend of his.

The hard-luck, minimum wage fellow who's lost his job at the local factory because it was outsourced to China needs to hear the message that it doesen't have to be this way--that America CAN reinvest in itself. That it MUST reinvest in itself, and his primary enemies aren't gays, or immigrants, but fat cats who have unparalleled access to the halls of power and the money to push through legislation that no sane, rational human being should ever contemplate.

We stand at a crossroads here, folks. And the fork the corporate media would like us to take will NOT lead us to greener pastures.

And THAT'S the bottom line.