Issues? wait a minute...

[frogcycle]

I wholeheartedly support the argument that we should look at substantive differences between the candidates - not fluff like haircuts - to evaluate our choices.

However, there is far too much parsing of sentences and microscopic dissecting of "plans" in the guise of discussion of "issues."

Regardless of the details of any candidate's healthcare plan, or how exactly many months they think it will take to get the last combat troops out, or any of the many other "plans," the facts are that once in office such things as healthcare plans will need to go through the legislative process and what will emerge will NOT be identical to anything the candidate says now. Troop withdrawal will adapt to the practicality of what can be done honorably. Richardson would not have gotten them out in six months, and those who hedged several debates ago and refused to guarantee all by a specific date likely would have accomplished it in roughly the same timeframe as he.


What matters is philosophy. That is the "issue."

Do you believe that healthcare is part of the common? That it should be readily available to all, just as safe highways are available? Are flu shots as much a right as guardrails? Get the answer and that discussion is over. Exactly how it will be accomplished to deliver that care universally is the devil in the details.

Do you believe that education is part of the common?

Do you believe that corporate personhood trumps individual rights?

Do you believe that our representative democracy has been usurped by fascism?

Do you believe that we need to dismantle the entire system and find a way to restore the intended process to get legislators elected by We the People, with a "chinese wall" between them and the special interests?

Do you believe that corporate control of the media has brought us a vast mind control machine that makes the whole silly process a sham?

The candidates refuse to go out on a limb and make strong philosophical statements. They murmur platitudes about "reduce influence of special interests" to throw people a bone. But they won't actually stand up on their hind legs and say we need a second American Revolution. We are far more under the thumb of the corporatists than were the colonists when they revolted against the practices of the Hudson Bay Company backed by George III. That is at the heart of all our woes, and quibbling about the finer points of this plan or that is just diversionary.

What we have witnessed over the course of this "primary season" is just a Kabuki dance.

I predict maybe two decades of further decline, further division into the "haves" and "have nots" and eventually a violent revolution. It will be like the future state in the Terminator movies. The machines in control, though, will not necessarily be robots like in the movies, but corporate machines like GE, Blackwater, Diebold...