Altruism is Out of Focus

The Left has almost totally lost its focus, and that will be our unravelling next November.

We relentlessly attack Bush et al. for lying to us. We ceaselessly catalog how "we" are right and "they" are wrong; how Bush et al. refuse to release documents on the Plame leak and 9-11; how the Clean Air Act is just the opposite; how "No Child Left Behind" will result in the opposite; how Bush has isolated us from everyone except the citizens of the Marshall Islands; how the liberal media really isn't liberal; those darn tax cuts for the rich that are going to saddle future generations with unfathomable deficits; the union-busting conglomerates led by Wal-Mart; how the Right is just so wrong, wrong, wrong.

As incredible as it may now seem, Bush has a guarantee of re-election. His cronies own the media, the single largest source of information for most voters. He has led a coalition of government hacks who have done nearly everything possible to reverse the last 40 years' social advances in America, and yet the majority of the population continue to think he has done a fair to good job.

Republicans control the majority of all major corporations, the prime source of power and money in this nation. This guarantees the continued success of the Right's agenda through the next several generations. Arianna Huffington and others have raised that point for years now, yet we keep ignoring that most important fact, focusing instead on the messengers, those political hacks who ride into office on the back of corporate campaign support. It's all, ALL about money and power.

We seem to gloat whenever a new Republican dirty trick is uncovered. We keep comparing the Republican lack of righteousness about Bush's follies to a theoretical over-the-top reactionism of "if Clinton had done the same thing..."

Republicans, if not now, will soon control the judicial system of this nation. Bush has already appointed more judges in his first three years than did Clinton in eight. This of course will remove the last democratic recourse for countering the lawless behavior of the Right.

We are wringing our hands about maybe not putting enough effort into successfully passing an "electable" candidate through the primaries. Leiberman is too "republicanish"; Dean too left right much to the center; Kucinich too serious; Clark too late; Gephardt too this, Kerry too that.... blah blah blah. We all know any semi-moron can beat Bush, given the proper support (proof? how about Bush himself). Any one of the current Democratic candidates could do a far superior job of making decisions in the best interest of the average American than Bush has done since he took his first step into the oval office. All you need is a strong support staff to get the job done, as Clinton proved in spite of a Republican Congress and Supreme Court.

Recently intelligent political pundits have said that the ultra-right is on its last legs. Even if that were true, the damage they are doing now will not be resolved before I or my children die of natural causes. Human nature allows for rapid political change in the negative, but only excruciatingly slow change for the better.

We seem to have fallen back into our easy chairs and decided to let things roll on and keep our fingers crossed until next November. Need proof? Look at the pathetic turnouts in anti-war demonstrations since March 20.

We watch the Sunday talk shows and righteously scream about the lies, the endless lies. We worship and reprint the words of Moore, Krugman, Franken, Ivins, Byrd, Gore and so on. We make our daily visits to the big-time bloggers (Kos, Atrios, Marshall, Gilliard, Buzzflash, OSP...) and the "independent" media (Guardian, Salon, SCOOP, Reuters, Wash. Post, Nation, TAP...) and spout our righteousness by reprinting their increasingly redundant and recycled story lines, adding our narrow-minded comments and rehashing the same Bush-is-bad-and-this-is-why critiques.

It's starting to get old.

It's too easy to continue down this worn path. We've set up our blogs (a hard experience for many of us) and now we pass around our links and comments to the same visitors ad nauseum. We try to find out if one of our regular high-brow reads has found a scoop no one else has posted so that we can be one of the first to re-post and gloatingly cite the high-brow source. There are so many liberal bloggers out there, we've diluted ourselves to the state of uselessness. And to add insult to injury, many of the more popular sites have a perpetual hat out for donations. Good old capitalism.

And speaking of capitalism, when will we finally acknowledge that democracy and capitalism mix as well as altruism and greed? The very principles of capitalism undermine the maintenance of democracy. The very essence of capitalism, which is the financial and social success and growth of the individual above the whole of society, directly contrasts the democratic principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community. We will never be able to see the potential roots of democracy in our society through the political waters polluted by capitalism.

Except for Dennis Kucinich, no other candidate for President has presented coherent analyses and proposals for the fundamental changes necessary to return to the path of democracy and altruism. Every other candidate wants to either maintain the status quo or tweak a few policies here and there in accordance with the "spirit" of the Democratic Party. If any of the other candidates should happen to win, there will be no major change in the policies and politics of our government. Oh, there may be adjustments in taxes, some increase in health care for the poor, some adjustments in trade policies, a bit more $ thrown at education, an attempt to placate the U.N., reversal of some recently changed environmental policies, etc. None of this will lead us down a different path, away from the steamrolling takeover of government by big business.

We are all wasting our time assuming that a Democrat in the White House will solve our problems. What proof exists that such a thing could possibly happen, that our fortunes will magically reverse? It isn't going to happen, because the White House isn't in charge. Republican Big Business is in charge. Once we all come to grips with this reality, then we can start returning the basic fabric of our society to the people.

Nothing less than a true revolution will accomplish this.