It is clear now that our democracy has become a meaningless sideshow. A facade functioning only to pacify the masses through the illusion of empowerment. The much more accurate term would be plutocracy. A government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
Our representative democracy was supposed to serve as an extension of the people. The silent coup of money in Washington though created a competing dependency to the will of the people. And 9 times out of 10, big business trumps the voice and vote of the people.
So to vote for the two major parties is little different than giving money to a drug addict. Both enable and perpetuate a problem that won't fix itself.
Obviously, to some of you this must be irrelevant. You will drone into the voting booth - being the good team player that you are - to cast your predetermined vote without a second of hesitation.
But you must stop and ask yourself: Are you willing to be complicit in this sad excuse of a democracy where your interests and the interests of your neighbor are only a mere afterthought?
Many others will rationalize and say "I have to vote Obama, it's the lesser-of-two-evils." The truth is, there isn't a huge difference between Obama and Mitt or even the Republican and Democratic parties. There is a duopoly of power between the corporate parties that is strangling the range of thought in our government.
Take for instance the foreign policy Presidential debate. You would be hard pressed to find any significant differences between the candidates. Both believe in starving the people of Iran with crippling sanctions, using drones in an ever expanding war on terror, and they see things like due process as nothing more than inconvenience. The vast majority of issues on foreign policy and civil liberties have become bipartisan consensus rendering opposing ideas obsolete and lost from the national debate.
But you say, "Wait, what about social security and medicare? Mitt Romney will cut 'em if he becomes president." So will Obama. During the debt talks last year, Obama was willing to put both medicare and social security on the table for cuts. And when asked on the October 3 Presidential debate whether there was a major difference between him and Romney on Social Security he replied, "You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position." A so-called liberal willing to cut one of our nation's most successful progressive reforms that has a $2.7 trillion surplus to date.
Regardless of who is President after November 6th, our most pressing issues like the failed Drug War, the lawlessness of Wall Street, and the enormous control that big business has over our political process will not be challenged. Matt Taibbi referred to the choice as "two different versions of the same status quo." Barry Eisler offered this wisdom: "A vote for O might prevent things from getting worse. But voting for either party will prevent things from getting better."
Even if Romney did prove to be far worse than Obama, the amount of harm in enabling a continuation of the current paradigm far exceeds anyone's worst nightmare of a Mitt Romney presidency.
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