Two cracked political parties, one scrambled nation

23-07-2011

It’s truly illusory for anyone occupying the White House these days to think s/he is the president, the leader of all Americans. In political legalese, maybe; in reality, not the slightest chance… for we are the prototypical major society split between haves and have-nots. And to this day in his presidency, Barack Obama talks and acts clueless as to that irrefutable fact.

Although the socioeconomic divide between haves and have-nots is the norm in most nations of the world, how Americans view that condition is quite different from the rest. When have-nots in the United States look in the mirror, the vast majority of them still see themselves as haves, that’s how gullible they have become. Perhaps it has to do with past economic dominance of the US, still lingering in past glory and an unreal sense of nationalism, often promoted by politicians of the two brands as exceptionalism.

America’s powerless super-majority is being foolish to let Obama negotiate the debt ceiling and deficit reduction on their behalf. Obama may be bright and articulate, even well-intentioned, but he is putty in the hands of the ruling class, whether corporate moguls, generals at the Pentagon, or conservative politicians such as Speaker Boehner. In fact, things became so frightfully ridiculous in the negotiations, with Obama capitulating to the extreme Right that progressives had to send emissaries to stop such political masochism by clueless Obama. And that’s when Boehner walked out.

It might seem strange to people elsewhere in the world how a government that holds the executive branch and half of the legislative branch is so intimidated by a party that represents a minority of people, albeit most of the wealth and power. It all comes to numbers as to how small that minority is. And that’s where we go back to that deceiving mirror where have-nots Americans see themselves. Pseudo-exceptionalism and religious Christian fundamentalism have had a de-evolutionary process in America, turning the Homo sapiens (wise) population into Homo incautus (unwary, gullible).

The only items which appear to have been on the table during these negotiations dealt, for the most part, with social expenditures – not military – with a virtual hands off on revenues in an obscene tax system that is not only unjust but ineffective. And, as usual, the American have-nots are deceived with slogans that are not just mythical but outright lies, such as “you don’t tax the rich because they are the job creators.â€