Ballots Are Toilet Paper

I can already hear the distant rumbling. In another 6 months or so, the 2012 political campaign season will get underway and many in the progressive press will be beating the drums for the Democratic Party. It's not that they are so wonderful, we will be told, but they are a lot better than those nasty Republicans.

That's certainly true -- as far as it goes -- but it doesn't really go all that far. It might make a bit of a difference in your state or local community, but on the federal level, you are deluding yourselves if you think it makes much of a genuine difference.

Lest we forget, the legislation and regulations that precipitated the financial meltdown were passed NOT during the Bush years, but under Bill Clinton. While Dubya undertook the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, far too many Democrats voted to fund them. Far worse, many of his predecessor's most nefarious executive orders concerning "national security" have been maintained and broadened under Obama and, of course, our current president spearheaded the so-called compromise with the GOP to extend the egregious Bush tax cuts.

We must face the fact that it doesn't make that much difference who occupies the Oval Office and the halls of Congress. Whoever it is, they aren't there to represent us. No, they represent big money. As Chris Hedges aptly points out,

The 10 major banks, which control 60 percent of the economy, determine how our legislative bills are written, how our courts rule, how we frame our public debates on the airwaves, who is elected to office and how we are governed. The phrase consent of the governed has been turned by our two major political parties into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs...

I concur with Hedges who believes that civil disobedience is the only bona fide tool left to us. Voting is nothing more than a charade where we are allowed to choose between the candidates that meet Corporate America's approval.