U.S.A.: How Things Are And What The Future May Hold

The following is a very interesting take on the current elections in the U.S. - of course, I thought I'd pass it along to you good folks:

Who will write the United States' next great poem?
by Bernadette L. Wagner

I watched a couple of YouTube videos the other night. One featured angry Palin supporters on their way into a Palin rally. The other was an interview with McCarthyesque Michelle Bachmann, a Republican senator calling for "liberals" to be investigated for anti-Americanism. Ugly. I quickly clicked on to a photo of the 100,000 supporters at an Obama rally in Missouri.

And then I cried. The juxtaposition was too much.

Some say Obama's followers are cult-like, cheerleaders for a good sales pitch. I don't think so. One hundred thousand people do not show up to a political rally for a sales pitch or cheerleading duty. Obama touches something deeper within than any salesperson could ever hope to reach. He reflects to the American people a sense of their own power and they respond with a willingness to write a new narrative, a new poem, for their country.

In declaring his support for Obama, Republican Colin Powell called him "transformative." Obama is definitely transforming the face of American politics, the poem for which much of America has dug deeply into its psyche to uncover. Sadly, Hillary Clinton would not have accomplished this. Misogyny lies still deeper within.

Racism is bubbling up, however. Many fear for Obama's life. Will there be a fair election in the U.S.?

Republicans believe they're doing a fine job. On their own terms, they are. But those terms are based on moving the country further to the right. That they have done. It is as far right as it can be without becoming a closed society. And, on paper, they are ready to make the move. American feminist Naomi Wolf, said, "The coup has already taken place.” It just needs to be activated.

Suggestions that the Republicans are throwing this election seem unfounded. Losing might be a default plan, but they're not throwing anything away. Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast document how the right is trying to steal this election in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

The influential neo-con William Kristol discovered Palin and introduced her to the Republican inner circle, apparently selling her as a "blank page." An employee of the neo-conservative think-tank The American Enterprise Institute said, "She's bright...She's going places."

Wolf suggests Palin's the cult figure, similar to Evita. The neo-cons know McCain isn't going anywhere. But he's not their choice. Palin is. The Rove/Cheney cabal are grooming her to be ready to take over in less than a heartbeat. Her neo-conservative advisers, not the American people, would then write the poem.

(Keep reading ...)