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The Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision reverberates strongly in my consciousness when I read articles like this one from Tom’s Dispatch. I am still at a loss as how to compute the base equation of $ = Free Speech, because, well… it doesn’t.
Certainly money grants access, but it begets the question: Should it? I mean, how could the Justices not see the folly in quantizing what was formerly a non-fungible good?
The dumpsterfire (dtrumpsterfire?) that is the current US polity illustrates that change (and not of the positive variety) is happening, that is not only destabilizing the US, but the world as well.
“In March of 2015, for instance, two months before The Donald tossed his hair into the presidential ring, in a post at TomDispatch I asked if “a new political system” was emerging in America and summed the situation up this way:
“Still, don’t for a second think that the American political system isn’t being rewritten on the run by interested parties in Congress, our present crop of billionaires, corporate interests, lobbyists, the Pentagon, and the officials of the national security state. Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.”
We’re now living in Donald Trump’s America (which I certainly didn’t either predict or imagine in March 2015); we’re living, that is, in an ever more chaotic and aberrant land run (to the extent it’s run at all) by billionaires and retired generals, and overseen by a distinctly aberrant president at war with aberrant parts of the national security state. That, in a nutshell, is the America created in the post-9/11 years. Put another way, the U.S. may have failed dismally in its efforts to invade, occupy, and remake Iraq in its own image, but it seems to have invaded, occupied, and remade itself with remarkable success. And don’t blame this one on the Russians.”
-Tom Engelhardt writing at Tom’s Dispatch
Don’t like it, change it. These are the tools to do it.
“I had so much hope of what was promised…but nothing has happened yet.”
“Where is the change?”
These and similar statements are filtering through the liberal blogosphere. What happened to the lovely luster of Obama circa ’08? Some would say that he is reneging on his promises, ignoring the people that brought him into office.
I think Obama is still coming to terms with the reality of the political machinations he needs to wrestle with and the weight of established opinion he is trying to change. It will not be easy.
I am very happy that McCain did not get in, I think that would have been much worse an outcome for Canada. At least with Obama in our PM cannot so unabashedly embrace the neo-conservative ideology which he seems to be in love with.
Obama raised the bar very high during his election campaign. Many people were expecting many great things from his presidency from the beginning. I think that view is unrealistic given the political reality of the situation. Change, especially progressive change is going to happen in very small increments in US politics. The administration has changed, but the ruling elite, the people who have power and influence in America, have not.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…