Capitalist Democracy at its finest - the choice between Obama and Romney is no choice at all
A couple of nights ago I was utterly frustrated by the drivel that passes for commentary on the US elections, not least in the Guardian. Before hitting the pillow, I decided to pen an angry missive.
Comparing the initial version with that which is printed, the only sentence which was cut was ‘To put it bluntly, the Guardian’s coverage of the US Presidential election is just another example of it dumbing down.’
At the same time we learn that Starbucks, through clever accounting dodges, has paid no tax whatsoever in the past 3 years and virtually none in the past decade on over £3 billion trade. Of course Cameron and Clegg will pay lip service to the need to crack down on the spivs, speculators and tax dodgers, but it is the poor who are called ‘benefit thieves’ (New Labour) whilst the rich get away scott free with literally murder.
So it is that the land of the free, the home of western democracy, pits Obama against Romney, with near enough $1 billion spent on either side to convince people to vote for someone who will go to war on behalf of Mobil and Exxmon.
Truth was that the differences between Romney and Obama were insignificant. One was more socially liberal and that was it. Both believe in the use of US military power to enforce a world order whereby the US is ‘entitled’ to help itself to other countries natural resources and in the case of the Middle East by keeping parasitic rulers in power by arming them to the teeth, whilst hypocritically weeping crocodile tears over the dead in Syria’s civil war that they have inflamed.
Cameron is reported in yesterday’s Guardian as defending arms sales to Gulf Rulers such as the blood drenched King of Bahrain as ‘legitimate’. Presumably his use of torture against doctors and nurses who treated protestors in Bahrain was also ‘legitimate’ as is the practice of cutting of people’s limbs in Saudia Arabia if they steal a loaf of bread whilst the ruling royal family steals the country’s mineral wealth. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/05/david-cameron-arms-sales-gulf.
The tragedy of it is that there is virtually no socialist opposition to the rule of capital in Britain any longer.
Tony Greenstein
I’ll easily confess to having been quite jubilant when Obama first got elected, despite understanding that apart from a few social issues (gays and abortion basically) everything (including Israel of course) is decided by moneyed power elites securing and furthering their privileges. I guess the speechifier took me in.
ReplyDeleteThe day after his re-election, it was highly amusing (but also highly depressing) to see the low level shills for Big Corpo over at Faux News trot out their usual garbage about why Romney lost (the only ones losing here are the American people). These talking heads (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Bernie Goldstein and quite a few others) spin out of whole cloth narratives about ‘their America’ (the one that didn’t exist to begin with), their hero Ronnie Raygun and other Conservative Mythology and child believe it. I guess it pays to sleep with the enemy.
Sadly much of the ‘progressive’ press here or in the US really doesn’t seem to get it either. Corporate shills or just plain dumb?