"Hey America, Stop your Bellyaching and get to Work"

By Mike Whitney

11/03/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The problem with the midterms is that the political system is no longer transferable.

Consider this: Did the Bush troupe assemble all the levers of absolute power including unlimited surveillance of every phone call, e-mail, bank transaction, doctor’s visit etc just to transfer that power over to Democratic control?

Did they frantically slap together the Military Commission Act of 2006, which repeals the Bill of Rights and denies American citizens due process of law if they are imprisoned on the orders of the president, just to hand that power over to Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama?

Did they painstakingly change the laws restricting the “cruel and inhuman” treatment of prisoners or spend years composing the volumes of repressive legislation in the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 (which allows the president to deploy troops within the country against American citizens) just to deliver the entire apparatus of police-state power to Patrick Leahy and Teddy Kennedy? Be serious.

These guys are shooting for the moon and they’ve done a pretty good job of achieving their objectives. In 6 years, the government has been utterly transformed. The media now goose-step along with the political establishment, while the politicians flawlessly execute the agenda of the corporate-banking alliance.

There’s nothing new here, except that the main players now feel that personal freedom is a luxury that we can no longer afford as we begin a century where the struggle for vital energy supplies and control of the global economic system will pave the way for endless war.

Perpetual war requires strong centralized power; autocratic government, not the namby-pamby “one man, one vote” scenario that we’re accustomed to. Bush summarized the elite sentiment quite well when he opined, “There’s nothing wrong with a dictatorship, as long as I’m the dictator.”

Indeed.

So, what can we expect in the midterm elections? The real question is: What should we NOT expect in the elections. We should not expect dramatic change from our present trajectory. Whether Karl Rove engineers another electoral-coup or not, is beside the point. The system has been reshaped to meet the needs and aspirations of the ruling mandarins. Establishment elites and plutocrats are determined to seize Iraqi resources as the only reliable way of controlling China’s growth, maintaining the strength of the “dollar-system”, and preserving the Superpower-model of global rule. They have already indicated that they are willingly use nuclear weapons to defend American primacy in the world and protect the present order.

I take them at their word.

Our vote won’t change these things, so its time to grow up and realize that our freedom is no longer free. If we are serious about leaving the world a better place than we found it, or even if we simply want to pass on some of the things we enjoyed to our children, (some freedom, perhaps) we’ll have to accept all the tedious, laborious work of organizing groups for social change and getting involved in direct action.(civil disobedience?) And, of course, all that organizing will take place in an atmosphere of government suspicion and hostility, where people can be arrested, harassed and bullied without explanation and without “probable cause” of wrongdoing.

It’s a bleak picture, but it’s the truth.

The system is thoroughly corrupted. The Executive branch is corrupt, the congress is corrupt, the courts are corrupt, and the media is the most corrupted institution of all; a mere bullhorn for the political-military establishment.

Everyone should vote, but there’s no need for denial. The system is broken and if we plan to fix it we need to pull our heads out of the sand and stop whining. If we really believe in the American dream,(and I do) then we should be willing to rebuild it block by block.