I mean to me it’s just so freakin’ obvious, but I’ll just write it out here because my fellow Americans seem so oblivious….

Where to begin? First of all, the winning slogan for this election seems to be something about shrinking government and taxes, and balancing the budget. But let’s look at the actual problems the nation has faced recently. Was the economic meltdown precipitated by too much Government control? No, clearly not, in fact quite the opposite, as the Bush policy of lax regulation and letting the greed is good financial industry police itself were the man factors that  led us to the brink. Obama’s much reviled bailout saved us from a more catastrophic failure, and its only flaw was that it didn’t go far enough, chiefly because of the Republicans, whose performance of pure negativity for political gain should have  brought them the scorn of voters rather than the power they’re being handed. I can’t believe anyone in Michigan would vote GOP, because we, if anyone, should understand what the effect of letting a company like GM go down the tubes would be.

Or how about the BP gulf oil disaster? Was that caused by an obtrusive government, or was it actually the result of the Bush hands off policy? Why put a party back in power that doesn’t have a single idea differing from that of the worst administration in recent memory. Their hypocritical cant about a balanced budget is exposed by their absolute refusal to allow the “temporary” tax cuts on the super-rich to expire. They are promising something for nothing, the same old line since Reagan, and the American public is still buying it.

I have to wonder why. Why do so many people consider simplistic celebrity clowns like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to be more credible political thinkers that the actual people who have an idea how to run the country? To me it goes back to a fundamental schism in American life — on one hand it’s a capitalistic system, and the corporations prefer a fickle populace that can be swayed by sixty second commercials, have a short attention span and live in a materialistic fantasy world of ersatz celebrity and counterfeit glamor, a world where, as Joe Strummer said, you change your vote along with your overcoat. True democracy, on the other hand, calls for an informed populace, one not swayed by the big lie and demagogic slogans, who are able to make intelligent decisions as voters and jurors. Guess which one we’ve got, and now that Fox News is out there furiously propagandizing and big business is able to anonymously spend as much as they want on misleading ads, they’ve been able to convince people that supporting the right of corporations to screw over workers, the environment and the country itself is somehow a populist position. A single look at the grotesque visages of Palin and her Tea Party cronies screaming in favor of hate and ignorance is enough to instantly call to mind Yeats’s much quoted line about the best lacking all conviction and the worst being filled with a passionate intensity.

Happy election day….