The 2012 "Election" thread

[MacCruiskeen]

Fuck Obama.

[MacCruiskeen]

Fuck* the whole pantomime.

*That doesn't mean "make love to it". On the contrary. So maybe our vocabulary is a wee bit lacking,not to mention a wee bit telling.

[8bitagent]

I knew this 2012 election toss away would be a stale dud show dressing, but goodness...they're not even trying. It's like tuning into WWF wrestling circa 1988 and wondering if the Ultimate Warrior was going to be defeated by the Honky Tonk Man.

I don't think RI should make up it's mind and probably couldn't to an exacting degree even if something like that were possible. It is fairly certain that the denizens here hate basically all things US policy, foreign and domestic, hate corruption and live with ideals we don't see in the lives we personally live. Some of us live within it and are sick of it and basically don't even give a shit about what is politically displayed before us anymore. Doesn't mean I existentially don't care, just means I am done and just have given up to the fact that this is a well designed dystopia and I got to see it really come into fruition in my lifetime. I don't really need to give them, at least one more positive moment of my time. Best to ignore or just hate it AND understand why I (we) do hate it and/or ignore it. We mean no harm, Jesus H Christ.

But with such limited means, there just is nothing we can do but be the intuitively stewing middle of the melting pot that possibly makes a surprise appearance once the center no longer holds in this fucked up and bullshit system. Keep up the spirit of what we would like to see and invariably never do harm to other souls. Just maybe it will turn out one day. I am an optimistic pessimist, I guess. We simply need to get people's better sides moving again. Keep compassion alive.

Well to what I was alluding at, even Devo are in the "lesser of two evils" mindsets
http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/ ... s-dog?lite

In 2008, Devo did a fundraising show for President Obama in their hometown of Akron, Ohio. Does Casale approve of his job performance over the past three-and-a-half years? "No!" he says. "Absolutely not. Devo are not naive people. If anyone still thinks that the President of the United States of America runs things, they really live in the Wizard of Oz-land. My God, we're a plutocracy. We're owned and leveraged by global corporations."

He still plans on voting for Obama, though. "That's the safer choice," he says. "Believe me. If we have real choice. There isn't freedom of choice anymore. The difference between the two parties is like the difference between Pepsi and Coke."

I love Devo, but man that's just weak. Acknowledging we're ran by global corporations, that the election is a joke...but hey we're gonna take Pepsi over Coke. Yeah, ok.

I still stand by what I said in 2008: Unlike the idiot right wingers, I dislike Obama for the correct reasons.

[ninakat]

Beaten Down, Isolated, Angry, and Distracted
'Awake we share the world; sleeping each turns to his private world.'

By Phil Rockstroh

August 15, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- A couple of decades ago, upon returning to Atlanta, Georgia, after spending a year abroad, I would frequent an independent bookshop that contained a small coffee shop/cafe, where I would sip tea, read books and periodicals, and engage in the nearly extinct art of long form face-to-face verbal discourse with other habituates of the cafe. To this day, I have long standing friendships with a number of people I came to know during those years.

Yet even then, I noticed how the atomization inherent to the internalization of the corporate state (the manner that the domination of commercial and work space had all but eliminated the public commons) had diminished so many people's ability to converse on all but the most superficial level.

Any invocation to deepen conversation or an assertion that arrived outside of the realm of status quo consensus caused all too many to simply go haywire. People checked out, went blank, testiness ensued…Comfort zones were mobilized for a siege. The space between people became a no man's land, stippled with a minefield of sensitivities.

In short, approaching life and one's fellows from a mode of mind evincing aspects of the human condition that existed outside the realm of workplace expediency and consumer desire had been diminished to the point of being rendered all but absent. People seemed adrift -- bereft of the ability to cohabit public space. The will towards communal engagement had atrophied.

Essential qualities -- traits that are uniquely human -- had been lost. A wasteland of fragmented discourse and inarticulate rage howled between us.

And the situation has only degraded since that time. Unless communal space can be reclaimed and our innate humanity re-established, to paraphrase Kafka: There is infinite hope but not for us.

After decades of economic decline, the loss of public commons, the emotional blowback of the militarist brutality required to sustain empire and the effects of social atomization and mass media-borne insularity -- the act of engaging in fruitful, democratic discourse, with all too many of the people of the U.S., without evoking angst, anger, and a host of demented fantasies, has become increasingly unlikely.

"Awake we share the world; sleeping each turns to his private world." -- Heraclitus

Exploitative social arrangements, throughout history, carry this circumstance in common: A citizenry too beaten down, harried, and/or prideful to recognize they have been swindled by a corrupt elite. Due to an indifference to outright hostility towards gaining awareness as to what forces create their degraded situation, the swindle will penetrate the populace to the bone; will become part of its (social and individual) DNA. To apprehend the reality of the situation would, seemingly, tear those afflicted asunder on a molecular level.

Once you have allowed the swindle to permeate your being -- taking back your life must become the driving force of your existence. If you don't recapture the landscape of your own soul, then your life will be comprised of a dance with dust and ash.

Do not underestimate the power of the seeds of awakening that sleep within you. Yet, do not be naive in regard to the knowledge that, all to often, all too many will choose not to cultivate their potential for humanity, and thus will yield a bitter harvest of pettiness, spite, cupidity, and cruelty.

At times, even in seemingly mundane moments, the air is plangent with a silent scream of terror. Yet, we go on, as if we hear nothing. We continue to make small talk. Wander to the refrigerator when not particularly hungry. Fumble for the TV remote. In reality, those are the times that try men's souls. And we are found wanting.

More often than not, the face of oppression is fronted by a facile smile and rewards you for your complicity by proffering piffling bribes.

The comfort zones of the checked-out, distracted, self-involved citizens of empire are perched upon a mountain of corpses. When the agendas of a culture are circumscribed to merely selfish agendas and empty appetites -- compulsive materialism, militarist aggression, bigotry cloaked as religious conviction -- the world seems to wend towards wasteland.

In such times, where can sanctuary be sought? Both within and by risking casting oneself towards the beating heart of the soul of life. Human beings contain deep reservoirs of empathy, a capacity for apprehending the sacred, and the ability to love. Deep wells of redemption pool beneath the wasteland. The human heart is a divining rod that helps one locate the source of the healing waters of life.

Recently, I was asked online: Where was God when seven human beings of the Sikhi faith were gunned down, on Aug. 5th, in their place of worship in Oak Creek, Wisconsin?

A more pertinent question might be -- as long as one possesses a desire to make inquiries into the whereabouts of invisibles -- where is the nation's collective humanity?

Will we continue to banish it by escape into distraction, denial and fantasy i.e., refusing to look deeply into ourselves and the social conditions and attendant mindsets that engender a perpetual reign of violence.

There was a god (metaphysically) present at the scene of this latest shooting rampage. The God all too many Americans revere and look to for guidance: The God of Death.

Are the people of the U.S. at this stage of the entropic decline of late empire, even capable of the type of collective introspection necessary to come to an understanding that something is fundamentally wrong with our concept of culture?

The problem of evil is far from cut and dry: both good and evil are interwoven into the souls of every person on the planet. Any attempt to wholly decimate evil would destroy what is good within us as well. The best we can do is…is to do our utmost to discern the evil dwelling within us on an individual basis, and moment by moment, attempt to channel our actions -- by harnessing the cold, powerful, impersonal energies of evil -- towards things that are warm, personal and life-enhancing. Such acts serve as an anti-evil repellant.

Conversely, viewing life as a struggle of good versus evil is intoxicating, and, like most intoxicants, can prove addictive. Yet the essence of a human being cannot be pigeonholed, cannot be limned by labeling; within each of us, dwell multiple and manifold legacies, familial and cultural, that have imprinted our character and serve as the progenitors of our actions.

Yet the notion of pure good and pure evil grip our imaginations; the image of yellow eyed, ungulate, and glowering Satan or beatified and risen Mary, Mother of God appeal to us because their existence promises to liberate us from the mundane, to deliver us from the mire of ambiguity, from our daily servitude to implacable necessity.

An open heart is a vulnerable heart. Therefore, some prefer to fortify themselves with a bristling bulwark of self-protective, nuance-evading prejudgments. A flight of hatred can serve to mitigate the uncertainty inherent to a commitment to love. An individual can limn their life with enmity's broad, thrashing brushstrokes -- a Jackson Pollock drip/splatter of animus.

Propelling one past angst-inducing nuance and complexity, hate, masked as purity, can carry us. After a time, its monolithic shadow becomes inseparable from one's own. When one stabs at the perceived darkness of an enemy, one wounds oneself. Confused, enveloped by one's own darkness, a person can come to believe the blow was delivered by a foe. Thus, all too often, one will hate what is different, seeing that difference as being a threat. In this way, irrational, self awareness-devoid hatred threatens all near it.

The machinations of Power have entered a new phase: a full-spectrum counterfeiting of the images of the soul…that rise like a fever dream from the abysmal, group-mind of late stage capitalism.

In this age, there is no need for thronging mobs, foisting banners and carrying blazing torches through the central squares of contemporary cities, as occurred in 1930s Germany and Italy, because every sofa has become a 24/7 Nuremberg Rally; every mass media device enables an instant immersion in the mob.

Führers and Generalissimos have been rendered obsolete, because we have little, virtual versions of the strutting breed on Reality Television; no need for serried ranks of jut-jawed brownshirts, when we have become storm troopers, ourselves, marching in a mindless parade of endless distraction. All as the sky burns and oceans seethe acidity.

The fact that so many U.S. citizens continue to believe that they inhabit a democratic nation, devoted to the concept of freedom of speech, of the press, and of free assembly reveals something very troubling: that the internalization of the tacit tenets of the corporatist state (a mutant strain of classic fascism) is now embedded so deeply in the collective psyche of the U.S. populace, and has rendered all too many with only a cursory, at best, understanding of what civil liberties involve.

Withal, it is not possible to grieve (or become outraged at) the loss of something one has no concept of ever having existed in the first place. How is it possible for one who has spent his entire lifetime in a windowless prison to know the grief experienced by fellow inmates who have known the beauty beheld when viewing the prismatic light of a dawning day?

Those who have encased themselves in a self-referential bubble of rationalization, by reflex, dismiss the assertion that complicity in an odious system (such as a blood-sustained, militarist empire) amounts to silent affirmation of the harm the system (although nebulous in nature) reaps.

By doing so, they unwittingly exact punishment upon themselves. Such unfortunate souls continue to exist. Yet to exist in such a manner, one must circumvent one's senses and blinker the life of the mind, thereby becoming like a caged wild animal that, as the years have passed, has forgotten what its true nature is, because its essential self has atrophied into mere mind-numbing subsistence.

What kind of a life is this, you may well ask? But you already know the answer: It is no life.

There exists one requisite trait needed to face evil: The knowledge of one's own capacity for embodying the trait. Inseparable, treachery and redemption arrive together. The human heart, capable of both cruelty and kindness, provides the arena where one's better nature might gain the upper hand against one's destructive inclinations.

And this is precisely why I eschew being a "pragmatic" predator drone-apologist liberal or a purity-swooning conservative: A compulsion towards partisanship serves to censor the disorderly dialog of the heart, and thus compels one to remain locked within an ego-fortified structure of imprisoning platitudes and self-serving rationalizations.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's website or at FaceBook.

[lupercal]

^sorry ninakat but that is lame. Anyone who goes on at such length to defend his right to let other people make up his mind for him is either wracked with guilt (doesn't seem likely in this case), underemployed (likely), or some kind of spook (very likely). I mean come on:

By doing so [voting] , they unwittingly exact punishment upon themselves. Such unfortunate souls continue to exist. Yet to exist in such a manner, one must circumvent one's senses and blinker the life of the mind, thereby becoming like a caged wild animal that, as the yers have passed, has forgotten what its true nature is, because its essential self has atrophied into mere mind-numbing subsistence.

What kind of a life is this, you may well ask? But you already know the answer: It is no life.

The laddie doth protest too much, methinks.

[StarmanSkye]

Curious perhaps, but I strongly disagree. I found much to admire in the insights & studied reflection Rockstroh wrote that inspires contemplating our decadent, self-involved atrophied political and socioeconomic culture. I think he describes much of the interpersonal crisis we each face with the vigor & dedication required by such a deadly-serious issue we all face.

I don't think he 'protests' overmuch but describes the situation with the intense concentration that a sensitive self-conscious human-being brings to understandign it better & sharing his thought.

They resonate with me.

Different strokes and all that, eh?

Lupercal, you're committed to encouraging voting the lesser of evil as you see it -- fine. On the other hand, I renounce and despise the whole bloody charade as a plutocratic cock-up rigged-game farce that is deeply offensive & contemptable, and will not be party to it. Where has 'voting' brought us since the jackal-bastards gunned-down JFK in a public square and got away with it and advanced their twisted agenda a thousand fold, followed by the expedient murders of RFK, MLK, Malcom X -- and countless more that got in their way or couldn't be controlled?

Fuck Obama -- I simply can't & won't endorse one sell-out traitor over another, let alone privelege one genocidal front-man chump for empire over another.

[ninakat]

Thank you Starman. I was hoping you might comment on the Rockstroh piece. I had you in mind when posting it. I was not disappointed. It does my heart good to see other people of conscience not falling prey to the vultures and vampires.

[ninakat]

Babylon System

We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be;
We are what we are:
That's the way (way) it's going to be. If you don't know!
You can't educate I
For no equal opportunity:
(Talkin' 'bout my freedom) Talkin' 'bout my freedom,
People freedom (freedom) and liberty!
Yeah, we've been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!
Yes, we've been trodding on the winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!

Babylon system is the vampire, yea! (vampire)
Suckin' the children day by day, yeah!
Me say: de Babylon system is the vampire, falling empire,
Suckin' the blood of the sufferers, yea-ea-ea-ea-e-ah!
Building church and university, wo-o-ooh, yeah! -
Deceiving the people continually, yea-ea!
Me say them graduatin' thieves and murderers;
Look out now: they suckin' the blood of the sufferers (sufferers).
Yea-ea-ea! (sufferers)

Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth right now!
Come on and tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Tell the children the truth;
Come on and tell the children the truth.

'Cause - 'cause we've been trodding on ya winepress much too long:
Rebel, rebel!
And we've been taken for granted much too long:
Rebel, rebel now!

(Trodding on the winepress) Trodding on the winepress (rebel):
Got to rebel, y'all (rebel)!
We've been trodding on the winepress much too long - ye-e-ah! (rebel)
Yea-e-ah! (rebel) Yeah! Yeah!

From the very day we left the shores (trodding on the winepress)
Of our Father's land (rebel),
We've been trampled on (rebel),
Oh now! (we've been oppressed, yeah!) Lord, Lord, go to ...

[8bitagent]

Curious perhaps, but I strongly disagree. I found much to admire in the insights & studied reflection Rockstroh wrote that inspires contemplating our decadent, self-involved atrophied political and socioeconomic culture. I think he describes much of the interpersonal crisis we each face with the vigor & dedication required by such a deadly-serious issue we all face.

I don't think he 'protests' overmuch but describes the situation with the intense concentration that a sensitive self-conscious human-being brings to understandign it better & sharing his thought.

They resonate with me.

Different strokes and all that, eh?

Lupercal, you're committed to encouraging voting the lesser of evil as you see it -- fine. On the other hand, I renounce and despise the whole bloody charade as a plutocratic cock-up rigged-game farce that is deeply offensive & contemptable, and will not be party to it. Where has 'voting' brought us since the jackal-bastards gunned-down JFK in a public square and got away with it and advanced their twisted agenda a thousand fold, followed by the expedient murders of RFK, MLK, Malcom X -- and countless more that got in their way or couldn't be controlled?

Fuck Obama -- I simply can't & won't endorse one sell-out traitor over another, let alone privelege one genocidal front-man chump for empire over another.

Obama isn't even a toenail clipping of the powerful grace and amazingness of MLK, Shirley Chrisholm, George Mcgovern or what was clear RFK was going to turn out to be HAD he not been shot and won the presidency. I get no such vibe from him, and this is coming from someone repulsed at all the blind Obama hate from the right wing.

Obama was chosen for a special reason, tapped for some time, to be right where he is. Why would they run fuddy duddy jobbers like Mccain or Romney if they(the PTB) DIDNT want Obama to win?
I mean Obama claims he's for gay rights, but then gives tens of millions to the Ugandan government. He courted the gullible (mainstream) anti war left but then dramatically escalated the war in Afghanistan to new horrors and initiated an unforgiving daily drone campaign on Pakistan and many other countries. Black sites and gulags actually increased, and it felt like it was more than simple continuity with the Bush Cheney neocon agenda...in some areas it was an escalation. Pretty sure Iraq would have drawn down under a third term Bush anyways.

Why has Obama and Eric Holder aggressively tried to shut down medical pot clinics? Or pretty much banned poker? Or gave the TSA at airports free reign to molest anyone they wanted.
Actual civil liberties under Obama have been more intrusive than Bush...(yet you wont hear the Fox News right wing idiots talk about it)

The American election isn't so much "rigged" in the traditional vote rig since of other countries. It's more like it's shaped and in this nauseating facebook-twitter-smart phone-reality tv addicted society, Obama is the perfect yesman for the job. The PTB just likes to keep the neandrathal conservatives happy with a bone or two.

[Nordic]

Today we were told that MF Global and John Corzine won't be prosecuted for stealing over a BILLION dollars of their own customer's money.

So how is Romney's DOJ supposed to be any more a greased up whore of the Wall Street gangsters than that?

[lupercal]

^maybe Obama's DOJ would have more time to pursue cases if its chief didn't have to waste his days defending himself against the batshit GOP House that seized power in 2010 because "disillusioned" Democrats failed to up get up off their asses and vote:

Oversight committee files contempt case against Holder
August 13, 2012|By the CNN Wire Staff

Republicans say Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department are concealing details on Fast and Furious.

The House Oversight Committee filed a civil contempt lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday seeking the release of documents linked to a controversial weapons crackdown. . . . The lawsuit also seeks an order requiring Holder to turn the documents over to House investigators.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-13/poli ... rrell-issa

[justdrew]

there's more to it than that, constantly cutting budgets, etc 8 years of bush appointees all through the system, etc.

After a 10 month probe, investigators are convinced that it was just chaos and loose risk controls that caused the loss, not actual fraud.

I don't see why there isn't some sort of criminal negligence charges at least though.

[Nordic]

^maybe Obama's DOJ would have more time to pursue cases if its chief didn't have to waste his days defending himself against the batshit GOP House that seized power in 2010 because "disillusioned" Democrats failed to up get up off their asses and vote:

Oversight committee files contempt case against Holder
August 13, 2012|By the CNN Wire Staff

Republicans say Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department are concealing details on Fast and Furious.

The House Oversight Committee filed a civil contempt lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday seeking the release of documents linked to a controversial weapons crackdown. . . . The lawsuit also seeks an order requiring Holder to turn the documents over to House investigators.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-08-13/poli ... rrell-issa

I didn't realize you had such mainstream sensibilities.

[ninakat]

fuck it -- this guy speaks a lot of truth, with a lot of passion... and sure he's got his spin (and his connection to Rense - ugh), but honestly, he's got the evidence. It's fucking terrible. And I'm depressed. Nothing new in that regard. It's a 21st century thing. You had to be there.

[8bitagent]

Continued slaughtering of Pakistanis via drones, continued troop deaths and mass aerial bombardments in the Afghan war, continued persecution of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange,
banning of online Poker, aggressive take down of medical marijuana shops, ratcheted covert and overt wars, kill lists, etc...

Uh, yeah why am I suppose to vote for this guy I ask my so called "liberal friends". Because the racist right wing hates him and he now claims to support gay rights?

LBJ "supported and helped" black rights, but also murdered countless Vietnamese.