My, My! How quickly the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election came and went before it had even begun!
AND THE WINNER: LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE EVIL OF TWO LESSERS!
The Roar of the Electorate is deafening, as all the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters join together in one huge Kumbaya!)
HURRAH! Democracy has once again been saved from The Evil of the Other Lesser! The promised land of the Bernie political revolution happily continues within the fold of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign! Hurrah! The State of the Union is assured!
Just like Good King Henry IV of France promised, in 1590, “I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.” But then, the good king couldn’t have predicted all the conditions that eventually led up to the horrors of the French Revolution.
Then there was jolly old Herbert Hoover, who promised, upon becoming President of the United States, that “There will be a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Yet he, too, wasn’t to know that seven months after taking the oath of office, America would be plunged into the stock market crash of 1929 and the entire world would face the horrors of The Great Depression.
One now wonders what new promised “chicken in every pot,” French Revolution, Great Depression horror may yet await beyond the defeat of the current evil Darth Vader Republican candidate who now threatens the universe with yet another ominous pledge of Law & Order? What really will happen once all the pious declarations, naïve optimism, false moralizing and hypocrisy abates around the Kumbaya campfire?
Bernie Sanders is now asking the vast numbers of voters, 45 years and younger, as well as the rest of us, who bought into his political rhetoric that it wasn’t just rhetoric but the real deal. That all his severe criticisms of who Hillary Clinton truly represents – and who she was, is, and always will be – is all changed now and will be dramatically different once she’s seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office of The White House. All the lofty principles to which Bernie paid lip service now somehow will be incorporated and realized in The Hillary Campaign and the Democratic Party platform. But as everyone knows, election promises and political platforms are just empty words that may never be acted upon, no matter how much they say things like:
• There will be an end to a corrupt campaign financial system that allows billionaires to buy elections.
• Public school systems will no longer be underfunded and the government will stop the privatization of public education.
• The nation’s infrastructure will no longer continue to crumble and a New Deal WPA-type program will be put in place to rebuild all the infrastructure
• The corporations will be prevented from make billions in profit, while avoiding to pay a nickel in taxes and stash their money in the Cayman Islands or other tax havens
• Children, adults and the elderly in every state of the union will no longer have to drink polluted, toxic waters that come out of their taps and faucets
• Veterans who once fought honorably for their country will no longer have to sleep on the streets, as do the tens of millions of other homeless Americans, due to a lack of affordable housing
• The Democratic Party will dramatically change its ways and become a party of the poor and working classes, and not just the ultra-rich and will courageously take-on Wall Street, the Big Banks, Corporate America, Big Pharma & Fossil Fuel industries.
• Women will no longer make 79 cents on every dollar compared to men and will receive pay equity
• Women will have the right to control their own bodies
• The LGBT community will receive all the same rights, in every state of America, as every other American citizen
• A ban will be placed on the sale and distribution of all assault weapons in every state of the union
• The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be defeated by Congress
• Social Security, Medicare, the VA, EPA, USPS and Public Education will not be cut or privatized.
• The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street will end with the creation of a modern-day Glass-Steagall Act that will create a healthy financial system
• Public colleges and universities will have free tuition
• A Single Payer Health system will be implemented for all American citizens as a right not a privilege
• Young men and women in the military will not continually be thrown into perpetual warfare in the Middle East or any other war that America creates
TERRIFIC! BUT HERE’S WHERE THE ENORMOUS LEAP OF FAITH COMES IN!
America’s voters will need to possess an enormous amount of blind trust to believe that, beyond their defeat of The Donald, all these lofty principles and ideals will come to pass with the joining of Bernie’s Revolution and the Hillary Clinton Campaign in the Democratic Party.
To those who remain un-dissuaded by the sense of betrayal they felt when all their past dreams and hopes were dashed by the Democrat Party under President Obama, and nevertheless still fervently believe that “Hope Springs Eternal!,” no matter what the reality, this writer has a deal for you. He’s offering the same $24 dollar load of cloth, beads and hatchets for which Peter Minuit, in 1626, bought Manhattan island from the local Indians.
The truth being that apparently 85% of Sanders supporters are now said to be willing to vote for Clinton in spite of her background and all the severe criticisms that the Sanders Campaign formerly waged against her. If true, this means that the remaining 15% will either vote for presidential candidate Jill Stein in the Green Party or Gary Johnson in the Libertarian Party or abstain from voting altogether in protest.
This suggests that if one actually examines American History carefully, and especially the statistics of presidential elections ever since their inception, whatever truly progressive ideas and platforms have ever come along never have garnered much more than 15% of the electorate and ever since has tended to remain somewhat of a constant; the general level of higher consciousness among the populace at large never seemingly evolving much beyond that figure.
And so it goes in 2016!
