An Alleged "Two Party System"

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

We must be clear about the following bitter realities:

1. "Every 10 minutes an Iraqi civilian is injured or killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 hours an American soldier is killed in a war that George Bush says will not end until he leaves office. Every 10 days $2 billion is removed from the U.S. Treasury and placed in the accounts of Halliburton, Blackwater and all other war profiteers that are getting rich off the misery of Iraqis and Americans by a government that will continue to remove those amounts or more every ten days as long as George Bush is President of the United States" (from Sally B. Davidson at Veterans for Peace, NY).

While Bush and Cheney remain in office, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan will continue. Bush's recent announcement of his (probably illegal) "agreement" with the increasingly unpopular, discredited, U.S.-puppet Maliki regime to continue Iraq deployment of U.S. troops indefinitely shows Cheney/Bush's absolute and total contempt for our Constitution and the wishes of 3/4 of U.S. citizens. As even Alan Greenspan admitted in his recently-published book: the Iraq War was largely about oil. The U.S. power elite, Democratic as well as Republican, wants those permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to protect access to, and control of, "our" oil, especially as China, India, and Europe become stronger economic and trade threats to U.S. global hegemony.

2. Why do BOTH major parties agree that the U.S. "needs" access to, and control of, this oil? Because, implicitly, most Americans believe that we "need" this oil to live the way we have become accustomed to living in 2007. The one, true religion of all Americans is Consumerism, and we all practice it daily via TV & radio, the Internet, and in our mega-cathedral of consumption, the shopping mall. We need to be honest with ourselves and face up to how much our consumptive (pun intended) U.S. lifestyle depends on maintaining our oil and other fossil fuels addictions, and how complacent, if not comfortable, we are about expecting that our political and military leaders will continue to secure these foreign fossil fuels to support our lavish "American Dream" lifestyle. Then we need to ask ourselves how much we are truly willing to cut back, and how we can make this a part of our activism.

We are a shallow and materialistic society, and there is no doubt that the blood shed in Bushco's wars is about money...and power of course...as Americans sell out freedom for more things that we don't even need. We have become a society of spoiled and demanding children, too busy whining for more things to care about the loss of our rights and our humanity. I know people who literally go into a panic when the cable goes out...as if it were as serious as losing one's heat on a blustery winter night...You won't see these same people upset at the reports of more innocent children blown to bits in Iraq to make sure the SUV can have a full tank, or the reports of thousands more children here drugged up for the depression and other emotional problems that stem from being raised in the empty wasteland that our culture has become. Of course many of them never see those reports, consumed with celebrity gossip and the latest sale at the mall. We have the President and Congress we elected....and they are a remarkably accurate reflection of what our society has become. Despite all the hard times and suffering that it will bring, I won't necessarily be sorry to see the house of cards that our economy has become collapse. Unfortunately, an event that extreme may be the only way our society will ever get its priorities back in order....I hear many economists saying our recent economic woes are a huge market correction, and necessary to get the country back on sound footing....well, I think that what is much more necessary for a solid and sound America is a massive values correction....and perhaps that will be the good that will come from a financial catastrophe.