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"We will
all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take
it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it
from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him
even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will
be administered.
Corporate power, no matter
who is running the ward after January
2013, is poised to carry
out U.S. history’s most
savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s
ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to
stop it.
If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched
charade of a two-party democratic
election at least be clear about what you are doing. You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or
Republican voter in this political
theater, giving legitimacy to a corporate
agenda that means your own impoverishment
and disempowerment.
All the things that stand
between us and utter
destitution—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head
Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states
and cities, the Women,
Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors—are about to be
shredded by the corporate
state.
Our corporate oligarchs
are harvesting the nation, grabbing
as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent...
Obama is not in charge. Romney would
not be in charge. Politicians
are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their
promises, their rhetoric
and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless.
And that, perhaps, is why the cost
of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate
state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a
lot of money to sell.
You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest
our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You
can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser
of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is. "
Chris Hedges, How Do You Take
Your Poison?
Read the rest here.
Quo
vadimus, Domine?
 
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